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While the pandemic has transformed almost every aspect of our lives, you still have got lots of opportunities for advancement if you’re a CPA. The criteria for achieving success haven’t changed much. If you’re proactive about your professional development, you can have the best chance of moving up the ladder.
In this post, we’re going to take a closer look at accounting CPE courses and how they can help you in getting better at your profession. Whether you’re working for a CPA firm, running your own firm, or working as an independent professional, this post would help you develop a clear understanding of the essential things related to accounting CPE courses for CPAs.
Regardless of your experience as a CPA, accounting CPE courses can greatly help you become a reliable financial advisor and maintain a high standard of quality when offering your services. Here, we’ve jotted down the top five reasons to prioritize taking these courses.
Whether you’re looking to display your professional competence to your potential clients or existing employer, taking the best accounting CPE courses can help accomplish your goals. These days, you must have a thorough knowledge of a broad range of accounting topics to excel in your profession. When you keep your CPA license active by earning CPE credits through accounting CPE courses online or other study formats, it certifies your professional expertise.
It lets your clients/employer understand that you’ve got exceptional skills to handle a wide range of accounting issues and that they can have trust in you.
When it comes to staying ahead of the curve, gaining knowledge of the latest accounting rules and regulations isn’t enough. You need to polish the fundamental principles upon which new rules and regulations are built. Several top-tier CPE sponsors offer these types of accounting self-study CPE courses to help CPAs review or update previous knowledge.
With the rise of the pandemic, the world has already become heavily reliant on digital technologies. And this reliance is going to be even more as we continue leveraging the benefits of those technologies. With the majority of businesses mainly operating online, CPAs need to stay relevant by taking appropriate tech-related courses to deliver expert services.
Some trending topics that you should focus on include cloud computing, business intelligence, artificial intelligence, machine learning, etc. Basically, you need to aim for developing a perfect mix of knowledge on the latest accounting topics and related technical skills to bolster your professional competence.
While remaining skillful in the accounting profession requires a high level of dedication and a significant amount of effort, accounting CPE courses for CPAs help make your journey a bit convenient.
Subjects related to FASB and IFRS are among many subjects that accounting CPE courses for CPAs cover. Let’s take a closer look at these two and some other important ones.
The FASB (Financial Accounting Standards Board) is responsible for setting up accounting and financial reporting standards in the United States. The FASB performs many different functions, some of which include:
The IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) refers to a set of common rules that help to make financial statements transparent, comparable, and consistent around the world. These standards are issued by the IASB (International Accounting Standards Board) and address many different aspects of financial reporting including account reporting and record keeping.
The IFRS has mandatory rules for specific aspects of business practice. These include a statement of financial position (more commonly known as a balance sheet), a statement of changes in equity, a statement of comprehensive income, and a statement of cash flows.
Note that IFRS is different from GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles). GAAP is a rule-based system primarily used in the United States, while IFRS is a standards-based, more dynamic approach that’s used internationally.
The U.S. SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) is a federal government regulatory agency responsible for controlling the securities market and safeguarding investors. The primary function of the SEC is to oversee individuals and organizations in the securities market, such as dealers, investment advisors, brokerage firms, investment funds, and securities exchanges.
It promotes sharing and disclosure of market-related information, protection against manipulative and fraudulent activities, and fair dealing through securities rules and regulations. By taking accounting CPE courses on subjects related to SEC practice, you’ll be able to develop a thorough understanding of all these and more.
Forensic accounting refers to the investigation of financial manipulation or fraud by conducting a detailed analysis of financial information of a business or individual. It can be performed for different types of legal proceedings – from securities fraud, financial theft, economic damages, and bankruptcy to corporate valuation disputes, tax evasion or fraud, and more.
Forensic accountants are sometimes employed by public accounting firms, banks, insurance companies, government agencies, or police forces.
The accounting field of study has a governmental subfield. By pursuing related accounting CPE courses online or offline, you’ll be able to improve your knowledge of preparing or maintaining the financial records of governmental entities and the procedures and principles of governmental accounting.
One key subject area in this subfield is the accounting reporting standards established by the GASB (Governmental Accounting Standards Board). The mission of this independent board is to promote comparable, clear, transparent, and consistent financial reporting for local and state governments.
These days, the Internet is getting flooded with almost a countless number of online accounting CPE courses along with webinars and other learning materials. While online learning offers some unparalleled benefits, it may lead to a complete waste of time, effort, and money, if you don’t choose the courses wisely.
So, how will you figure out which accounting CPE courses will serve your purpose the best? Here, we’ve rounded up some essential questions, answering which will help make up your mind.
It’s important to take a thorough look at the description of the course before you enroll in it. Usually, the descriptions of accounting CPE courses for CPAs give a clear idea of what you can expect to learn by taking them. If you don’t find the description satisfactory or irrelevant to your current job role and responsibilities, the course may not be the right one for you.
To figure this out, you need to determine your short- and long-term professional goals first. If you’re working for a firm, you can discuss your options with the employer to understand whether or not the course will benefit your career. You can also go through its review as sometimes, past customers mention how the course has helped to advance their career.
Often, CPAs pursue accounting CPE courses only to meet their CPE requirements. If you too belong to this league, ensure that your chosen course offers CPE credits that you’re aiming for, apart from being relevant to your career. Even if you’re taking the course to improve your knowledge and expertise, it’s always better if it offers CPE credits.
With the sudden spike in the demand for online accounting CPE courses, lots of inexperienced CPE sponsors have started offering CPE courses, webinars, and online workshops to make quick money. To ensure that the course instructor is an industry expert, check his/her LinkedIn profile and search him/her on Google.
One of the key characteristics of leading CPE sponsors is that they prioritize offering high-value accounting CPE courses online. By conducting some online research on your chosen sponsor, you can validate its credibility. If you get a positive indication, the course will most likely serve your purpose well.
This question becomes even more important if you’re working full-time. For example, you can take self-study accounting CPE courses at your own pace whereas you need to attend live webinars on specified schedules. Therefore, see if the course offers enough flexibility to help manage both your job and study conveniently.
Often, CPE courses covering complex topics require some kind of expertise in related fundamental concepts. If your chosen course has any such criteria, we strongly advise developing the required expertise first and take it later.
Many CPE sponsors that offer accounting CPE courses for CPAs on complex topics also provide basic courses on those topics to help learners build fundamental knowledge. If your chosen provider does it too, try to take the basic courses from it.
In these difficult times, it’s strongly advisable to determine a realistic budget for CPE courses. Try to maintain it whenever you take them, even if a course looks highly effective. Fortunately, some top-tier CPE sponsors offer subscription packages and bundled CPE courses that significantly lower the cost of individual courses. By choosing one of these features, you should be able to stay within your budget while taking your chosen course.
Do a quick Google search on “sponsors of accounting CPE courses for CPAs” and you’ll see a huge number of them with each claiming to be the best. Choosing the wrong provider is not only a waste of time, effort, and money but it may not help you learn what you’re looking for as well.
Here’re a couple of tips you can follow when choosing a CPE sponsor.
Before joining a sponsor of accounting CPE courses, try to find out how it sources, vets, and curates its courses. One useful method to check this is to go through its courses and the profiles of its course instructors. If you find that a sponsor offers courses on valuable topics and those are created by industry-leading, experienced instructors, joining it will most likely be worth your time and money.
People learn in different ways and many CPE sponsors don’t offer enough flexibility in terms of study formats. Your chosen sponsor should offer different study formats such as text-based courses, videos, webinars, etc. and its platform must be easily accessible. Additionally, once you complete a course, you need to be able to access its completion certificate for a reasonable period of time.
Once you’ve decided which accounting CPE courses for CPAs to take and the sponsor you want to join, it’s time to chalk out a realistic study plan to avoid unnecessary stress at the eleventh hour. Here’re two tips you can follow when creating your study plan.
This is a key element of any effective study plan because how much time you can dedicate to study greatly impacts how much study material you’ll be able to cover in a specific period of time. Ideally, you should set a timeline for each of the accounting CPE courses and try to complete that within that timeline. Also, remember to consider your other commitments that may affect your time to study when creating the plan.
Complete focus and concentration are central to mastering the topics covered by online accounting CPE courses. While you can complete the study materials of these self-study courses from anywhere, it’s always better to have a dedicated space to study to absorb the materials thoroughly and quickly.
Completing accounting CPE courses on time and earning your credits isn’t an easy task. However, by taking care of the aspects we discussed above, you should be able to make the journey much easier. If you’re searching for an extensive collection of accounting CPE courses for CPAs, be sure to check our course catalog.
Want the Best Accounting CPE Courses anywhere on the Internet? You have found them right here and to prove it see what our current and past customer say about us online. Go to https://www.cpethink.com/cpe-reviews and see why we are the most prefered and have the most return visits of any CPE provider.
Reviews are given by customers only after they have made a purchase and completed one of our courses.
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