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Get Off Nintendo Switch and Earn Some CPE While You’re Working From Home

Posted on by Adrienne Gonzalez

If you work for any of the 40 accounting firms we’ve confirmed are on mandatory work-from-home policies as of publication time, chances are you won’t be attending professional conferences anytime soon. Lucky for you our friends at Workiva have set up a virtual, two-day conference (that you can score CPE for attending!) that kicks off this Tuesday. Oh and look away, interns, this event isn’t really for you.

The Connected Organization: Bridging the Gap Between People, Process, and Technology gets the Amplify GO show started at 1 p.m. EDT on March 24. After this hourlong session, you will be able to:

  • Identify ways to modernize your reporting processes by connecting data, documents, and teams at scale.
  • Determine new ways to connect your reports and build trust in your data.
  • Utilize best practices for reporting and share them with stakeholders across your organization AND walk away with one unit of CPE.

We’ve all heard the complaints of firms being less-than-adept when it comes to people and technology, so I expect some of you will line up to learn more about how to solve these pain points at your firm.

The conference continues on March 25, and attendees can choose one of six available sessions, including one on using intelligent data to increase trust in disclosures and a session with speakers from Intel on how their company was able to shorten their close process through tighter processes and the wonders of technology.

The full list of sessions and more details can be found here. We strongly encourage you to head over and check it out yourself (click through each session icon to learn more).

After the first sessions of the day, the floor is opened to a customer roundtable panel discussion. Attendees who attend the March 24 keynote, one March 25 1 p.m. session and the March 25 2 p.m. session will receive three units of CPE. Not bad for an afternoon you’d probably tend moving your mouse around to appear active in Skype while working from home.

To see the full list of available sessions and register, just head on over to the Amplify GO site. Registration only takes a moment and is open through the end of the event, so if you don’t see this until Tuesday, you still have a chance to sign up and join.

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How Do Big 4 Exiles Get Their CPE?

File this one under first world problems.

Hello,

I’m starting to think about post-Big 4 opportunities and I am wondering how people maintain their CPE credits after leaving the Big 4. Since we need to take 80 hours of CPE credits every 2 years to maintain a CPA, do most employers offer trainings that give CPE credits? If not, will they give you time off and pay for the classes? I’d be very interested in hearing from you, and from the Going Concern community.


Well considering so many of the country’s employable CPAs somehow manage to meet their board of accountancy’s CPE requirements year after year, there’s got to be a trick to stay current that doesn’t involve firms forking out the cash for “experts” to school their staff on all things billable to the CPE time code. Are you telling me you have somehow escaped the wrath of NASBA and don’t get emailed weekly with new CPE offers? Congratulations.

I spoke to one of my favorite HR people at a reasonably-sized but definitely not Big 4 firm to find out what their CPE policy is and found out that most firms above 50 people pay for CPE in one way or another. According to a national survey conducted by the AICPA and the Texas Society of CPAs, 42 percent of the smallest firms paid for CPE in 2010. So unless you end up working out of some ancient CPA’s basement, you will probably not be expected to pay your own way.

Obviously, smaller firms will not be able to provide in-house CPE but you can likely get your online CPE comped, or get reimbursed for any travel associated with in-person CPE you attend. But seriously?! In-person CPE? Get with the times, man.

If you do end up needing to pay your own way (again, totally unlikely as long as you stay gainfully employed by a real accounting firm, even a tiny one), your state society of CPAs can probably provide information on their CPE offerings, or there is always NASBA (as anyone on their email list will tell you) or the AICPA.

Remember too that if you are attending conferences like AICPA Council, you get CPE for doing so, so maybe those dumb meetings aren’t so pointless after all.