Nearly 4,000 accounting and tax professionals from across the country came together for the largest free CPE event of the year. Ensuring Success was held on December 12, 2019, with ten live, online CPE sessions covering a variety of topics. The video sessions are now archived and can be watched on-demand.
CPA Practice Advisor editor-in-chief Gail Perry, CPA, hosted the 10 hour event, which was broadcast live over the internet from a television studio in Dallas, Texas. Perry was joined in each session by CPAs, consultants and technology specialists, discussing the impact of trends and future possibilities for the profession.
Click the titles below to view the 2019 Ensuring Success sessions.
(CPE credit is not available for the archived versions.)
If you missed the live event this year, be sure to register for Ensuring Success 2020, which will once again offer ten, 50-minute, free CPE credit sessions to those participating in the live event. Registrants will be sent a reminder email.
Session 1: Be a Better Small Business Advisor: Implementing Marketing Skills to Expand Your Business
How do you go about acquiring additional business? Do you add to your client/customer base; do you sell more and/or different products and services; do you add value to and thus charge more for existing products and services? All of these types of changes require marketing efforts. In this session, we explore a variety of tools and resources you can use to expand your own business and to help your clients expand their businesses as well.
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Session 2: Be a Better Payroll Advisor: The Future of On Demand Pay
In the very near future, on demand pay will be front and center. Learn how you can help your clients prepare for the next generations. It goes beyond how the clients are being served in the payroll area to best solutions to meet their employees’ expectations.
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Session 3: Be a Better Tax Advisor: Solving Real World Sales and Use Tax Issues
When and where are services taxable? How do you know if clients are selling across state lines? Which sales are exempt? How do states collect use tax? What’s the best way to stay on top of sales/use tax law changes? How can we make sales/use tax a profit center in your firm? These are just a few of the questions we answer as we delve into the sales and use tax issues that are most likely to impact you and your clients.
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Session 4: Be a Better Income Tax Advisor: Tax Planning Tips You Need to Know
Tax accountants offer suggestions and advice to clients regularly, but many are missing the opportunity to focus on tax planning as a service, separate from the preparation of the tax returns. In this session, you’ll learn how tax planning can expand your service offerings, how to communicate this service area to your clients, how to charge for the planning service, and how your relationships with your tax clients will improve.
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Session 5: Be a Better HR/Talent Advisor: Things Your Professors Never Taught You
College accounting programs sometimes overlook the non-technical skills that professional accountants need in order to be successful in their careers. What are these skills, why is it their absence a problem, how can they be obtained, and how can we as a profession address this? No matter what level you are at within the accounting profession, if you are working with people who have differing expectations, hiring new staff, offering training to colleagues, or just trying to get through the day with your co-workers and clients, you won’t want to miss this necessary session.
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Session 6: Be a Better Technology Advisor: How to Use Technology to Be a Better Advisor
Concepts like real-time accounting, cloud collaboration, video conferencing, customer relationship management, management dashboards, and so much more provide accountants with the ability to help clients make decisions proactively. By using technology to customize solutions for clients, accountants are taking on new roles of being a necessary part of their clients’ businesses. In this session, we show you how you can use technology to be the advisor your clients need to make their businesses a success.
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Session 7: Be a Better Auditing Advisor: How Current Trends are Impacting the Auditing Process
We’ve steamrolled ahead into the 21st century with mobile technology, Software as a Service, eCommerce, video streaming, cloud computing, and automated data entry – and we are constantly challenged to keep our processes up-to-date in order to accommodate these changes. The threat to data security is constant. Meanwhile, accountants are moving toward providing strategic advisory services and a customized experience to their clients. In this session, you’ll learn how all of this fits with the service of providing audits and how accounting firms are restricting their audit processes to embrace these trends.
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Session 8: Be a Better Accounting Advisor: How Future Trends Will Impact the Profession
Think about the trends we can see coming our way: Client Accounting Services, Big Data, Blockchain, RPA, and AI, and more. How are these trends expected to change the way accountants will work in the future, and how they will be implemented? What challenges will accountants face regarding these trends and how will those challenges be overcome? What does this all mean to the small to medium-sized CPA firms and their clients? These aren’t speculative ideas – these trends are already making their way into the profession. Learn how you can prepare to take advantage of the changes coming your way!
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Session 9: Be a Better Financial Planning Advisor: Your Opportunity to Help Clients is Here Now
Today’s society faces job instability, potential long-term insolvency of the Social Security system, student loan debts, and a lack of personal financial planning education. These are the people who need your help the most! Join author Gail Perry-Mason, the founder of Money Matters for Youth, in a discussion about money management for younger members of our society, and explore ways in which you can add value to this growing client base.
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Session 10: Be a Better Advisor: Asking Effective Questions
In this session, we address advisory behaviors that can improve your stickiness with clients and ability to market services to both new and existing clients as you move to more of an advisory practice. You will leave this session with the tools you need to have for the right conversations with your clients.
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Remember to register for Ensuring Success 2020 so that you can earn up to 10 hours of CPE credit, too!
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