Most New Year’s Resolutions don’t include CPE (continuing professional education) courses—unless you’re a CPA, that is.
It’s common for CPAs to begin the year by making a commitment to learn new professional skills and grow their careers. The cool, crisp January air, the restoration from a relaxing holiday break, the knowledge that you still have a few weeks before busy season truly kicks into high gear—it all combines to form an aura of newness that inspires you to make big promises and set bold goals.
By about Groundhog’s Day, however, the picture has changed. Busy season is rapidly revving up, workloads are growing larger, days are getting longer, and clients are becoming less patient. The buzz of New Year’s optimism is starting to erode, and you’ve made little progress toward fulfilling ambitions that seemed so doable just a few weeks earlier.
Too often, those January resolutions turn into December resignations. But Becker is here to help you put a stop to all that—and make 2023 the year you shift your CPA career into beast mode. Plus, how great would it feel to meet your CPE credit minimum before the third week of December?
Becker’s constantly growing catalog of online CPE courses on trending CPA topics can help you stay current, learn new skills, and provide a higher level of service to your clients. Plus, our CPE courses are offered in flexible learning formats that fit your lifestyle and preferred way to learn—so you can avoid falling behind and steadily progress toward meeting your goals for 2023.
As you start planning how you’ll meet your state’s CPE requirements for CPAs this year, let’s look at five great CPE courses from Becker that will help you grow in your career.
The best CPE courses for CPAs in 2023
1. 10 Habits of Highly Successful Careers
Achieving success in your career means being highly productive. But that’s no easy feat, especially considering:
- 88% of workers admit to procrastinating for at least one hour a day
- Work-related stress has reached an all-time high, with 44% of workers saying they feel stressed for “a lot of the day”
- When a person’s focus is disrupted, it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back on track
To stay productive, overcome stress, and get through distractions, developing healthy work habits is critical. Something as simple as remembering to take a lunch break can not only increase productivity, but also improve mental well-being, boost creativity, and provide you with more time to develop other good habits.
Check out the 10 Habits of Highly Successful Careers course to learn:
- Habits you can work on to advance in your career
- Tasks you should be working on
- Questions you should ask yourself in taking ownership for your career
- When to ask others for help to ensure you are getting the guidance and advice you need
2. 2023 Audit Update
Keeping up with the ever-changing rules, regulations, and standards for audits is one of a CPA’s biggest responsibilities. After completing this course, you should be able to:
- Describe the requirements of recently issued generally accepted auditing standards related to audit reports, related parties, significant and unusual transactions, employee benefit plan audits, materiality, auditing estimates, audit evidence, risk assessment, and more.
- Explain the primary objective of proposed changes for quality management systems and audit risk assessment.
- Explain the impact of recent SSARSs on the preparation of financial statements, compilations, and review engagements.
- List recently issued SSAEs for attestation engagements related to materiality, agreed-upon procedures, direct examination engagements, and reviews
Staying current (or better yet, ahead) of changes in the accounting profession is one of the best ways you can deliver better service to clients and differentiate yourself from other CPAs. By developing a strong understanding of recently issued AICPA standards like the ones listed below, you can provide your clients with better advice and guidance that will lead to greater satisfaction.
Here are some of the most impactful recent changes to auditing standards*:
- Understanding the Entity and Its Environment and Assessing the Risks of Material Misstatement (SAS No. 145)
- Amendments to the Description of the Concept of Materiality (SAS No. 138 and SSAE No. 20)
- The Auditor’s Responsibilities Relating to Other Information Included in Annual Reports (SAS No. 137)
3. 2023 Accounting Update
One reason CPAs are so highly respected is that the rules governing your job change every year. The average business can’t possibly keep up—so they hire you or your firm to do it for them.
2023 is no different, with several new accounting standards set to go into effect and sure to send clients flocking to you for help. Notable changes include*:
- New standards for software used by large public insurance companies, which are expected to be beneficial but expensive to implement (ASU No. 2022-05)
- New rules for how private companies measure credit losses, which may improve financial forecasts (ASU No. 2016-13)
- Continued rollout of new standards that will force companies to classify more leases as assets/liabilities, causing balance sheet chaos—at least for those without a good CPA (ASU No. 2021-09 and many more)
The earlier and more thoroughly you understand these changes, the more value you can provide your clients—and the further you can take your career. Take this course to receive an overview of:
- Recent U.S. GAAP accounting standard activity relevant to public or nonpublic entities
- Lease accounting and other recent changes that have a deeper impact on financial reporting
- Recent accounting standard-setting activity and proposed technical agenda
4. 2023 Fraud Update
Today’s companies and consumers are tired of being victimized by fraud. Unfortunately, the problem isn’t going away anytime soon. Fraudsters are employing increasingly treacherous techniques to take over accounts, falsify payments, abuse return policies, and much more.
CPAs play a critical role in helping their clients navigate the fraud landscape, prevent fraud where possible, minimize the impact of an incident, and ensure a quick recovery when disaster strikes.
By keeping yourself up to date on the latest fraud trends, you can establish your CPA practice as providing an essential service in 2023—and one expected to grow even more critical as the impact of fraud continues to expand.
Take this course to learn about:
- Fraud facts, trends, and cases
- Reducing the fraudster's advantage
- Diagnosing the health of hotlines
- Managing third-party fraud risks
- Finding red flags of fraud in the data
- Building an anti-fraud road map
5. 2023 Yellow Book Update
Looking for an overview on updates to the Generally Accepted Government Accounting Standards (GAGAS)—aka the Yellow Book? Look no further than this course, which helps you build your understanding of:
- The scope and nature of Yellow Book
- Yellow Book general standards, including independence
- Requirements for performing a financial statement audit performed in accordance with Yellow Book
- Differences in audit objectives and reporting requirements for various Yellow Book engagements, including performance audits
Government audits are a notoriously difficult field, where even the most practiced auditors struggle to determine which standards to apply in various circumstances. It’s such a specialized, complicated practice that, according to The CPA Journal, only 10% of firms perform it. That means CPAs with a strong, current understanding of government auditing will be able to seize opportunities that the vast majority of firms turn away—and even, perhaps, charge a premium for it.
Make 2023 the year of you
With 700+ on-demand courses and 1000+ webcasts available every weekday, in-depth content, and expert instructors brimming with real-world experience, Becker’s CPE catalog is the perfect resource to help you meet your CPA career goals for 2023—and beyond.
Improve your accounting knowledge and make 2023 your best year yet. Register for the courses in this article and explore others today.
Browse the Becker CPE catalog >
*These specific topics may or may not be covered in the Becker CPE courses.
