Top

Yellowbook-CPE.com

CPAs and Auditors - Continuing Professional Education

You are here: Home / Archives for In-House Seminars

In-House Seminars

Performance-Based Budgeting

Performance budgeting may be the best way to respond to increasing customer demand at a reasonable cost. Performance budgeting provides the means to link performance goals to the appropriate resources and then hold managers at each level accountable for achieving the results.

Performance-based budgets put the money where the goals are. Large organizations and the government are increasingly turning to this results-based approach to allocate limited resources.

Course objectives include:

  • Select meaningful performance measures
  • Create a performance-based budget, step-by-step
  • Decide if performance-based budgeting is right for your organization
  • Choose the key questions to ask in developing a strategic plan and a balanced scorecard
  • Link annual plans with the budget

Who should attend: Anyone who creates, audits, or must comply with a budget.
Program level: Basic
Prerequisites: No prerequisites or advance preparation required
Delivery method: Group live
Recommended CPE credit: 8 hours

Questions? You can find our FAQ here.

How to Interpret Financial Statements: The Basics of Finance for Non-Financial Professionals

No doubt about it, the more you know the language of business, the more you will be able to contribute to your organization’s success. Understanding the ins-and-outs of business finance, budgeting, and costs leads to wise and profitable decisions.

This fun and interactive course starts with a humorous DVD starring John Cleese, of Monty Python fame, and includes a competitive board game called Profit & Cash where participants simulate running a business.

Leita Hart-Fanta, CPA, the author of the McGraw-Hill book, Accounting Demystified is your guide.

Course objectives include:

  • How profits are made and why profit can’t be your only focus
  • How to use the three key financial statements to tell a story about the financial health of an organization
  • What key financial metrics mean and how you impact them
  • How the concepts of liquidity, solvency, and profitability impact a business
  • How to scrutinize a P&L statement
  • How to use cost terminology including variable, fixed, indirect, and direct costs
  • How to develop revenue, expense, and capital projections
  • How to determine the true cost of new hires
  • How to increase cash flow
  • How to best manage working capital
  • How to determine a decision’s impact on profit and cash
  • How to extract the information you need to manage from the organization’s financial reports
  • How to link your strategic plan to your budget and performance metrics

 Topics:

  • The three key financial statements

– The balance sheet
– The income statement (P&L)
– The cash flow statement

  • The concepts of liquidity, profitability, and solvency
  • The common metrics used to determine the health of a business and the viability of a proposal
  • The principles of cash flow and work flow management
  • The terminology accountants used to discuss costs
  • The line item budget and performance based budget
  • The balanced scorecard and strategic plan and how to link them to the budget
  • The family of performance metrics that keeps you on track with your budget
  • The evidence necessary to back up budget projections
  • The reports used by your organization to report on budget performance and financial results

Benefits:

  • Professionals understand how to manage their departments using financial information
  • Professionals become more confident in discussions with executive, customers, suppliers, employees, budget analysts, and controllers
  • Professionals realize the tradeoffs between liquidity, profitability, solvency, and growth

Methods:

Financial Acumen is designed to be interactive and engaging for participants. Self-discovery is aided by numerous self-checks and discussions. The methods of training include:

  • Terminology quiz
  • Small group exercises
  • Group discussions and questions
  • John Cleese DVD
  • Profit & Cash board game

Who should attend: Professionals
Program level: Beginning
Prerequisites: No prerequisites or advance preparation required
Delivery method: Group live
Recommended CPE credit: 16 hours

Questions? You can find our FAQ here.

Government Accounting for the Non-Financial Professional

Have you avoided accounting and finance all your life? Have you noticed lately that your career and influence are limited because you don’t speak in accounting terms? Do you wonder why you are told to wait on some purchases but allowed to spend freely on other things? Do you ponder the meaning and purpose of encumbrances, internal service funds, and performance measures? Well, this the class for you!

Let Leita teach you the language of government finance so you can have an intelligent conversation with a finance or accounting professional. Imagine the respect and awe you will engender when you sprinkle your statements with government finance terminology! We won’t get too technical, but instead give you the information you need to start and maintain conversations about money.

Leita is the author of Accounting Demystified, a McGraw-Hill book and is a Certified Government Financial Manager and Certified Public Accountant. She has taught over 1000 full day seminars. As part of our time together, we will play a board game that teaches accounting and finance fundamentals called “Profit and Cash,” watch a John Cleese video, evaluate the financial health of a local government, design a financial performance metrics, and calculate activity-based costs for a government program.

Course objectives include:

  • Determine a decision’s impact on fund balance and cash
  • Discern between fund types
  • Consider restrictions on fund use
  • Understand the key financial statements and documents that government managers use to run their programs
  • Calculate cost per unit of service in accordance with federal uniform guidance
  • Use a comprehensive annual financial report to tell a story about the financial health of a government
  • Create and maintain a simple performance-based budget
  • Apply cost terminology including variable, fixed, indirect, and direct costs
  • Extract the information you need from the organization’s financial reports

Who should attend: Non-financial professionals AND financial professionals who want to improve communications with their customers.
Program level: Basic
Prerequisites: No prerequisites or advance preparation required
Delivery method: Group live
Recommended CPE credit: 16 hours

Questions? You can find our FAQ here.

How to Conduct a Performance/Operational Audit: Live & Customized

Operational audits are impactful and fun to perform because they are so creative and responsive to user needs.  Operational auditors (often also known as performance auditors) generate their entire project from scratch, including choosing the audit criteria, developing an audit objective, and writing the audit program.

The Institute of Internal Auditors and the Government Auditing Standards give us some guidance, but don’t lay out a step-by-step approach. In this class, we will go over a logical step-by-step approach to perform an operational audit on any subject matter against any given criteria.

We’ll use an interesting case study to tie it all together. Frequent references to standards will keep us grounded and compliant.

Course objectives include:

  • Determine the scope of your audit
  • Describe what the IIA and the GAO have to say about performance audits
  • Set clear objectives and sub-objectives
  • Design actionable audit program steps to minimize fieldwork
  • Use a simple risk assessment model that considers inherent and control risk
  • Breakdown a broad audit subject
  • Connect the audit finding elements to the risk assessment and audit methodologies
  • Formulate a solid conclusion and auditable recommendations

Who should attend: Auditors who conduct a performance audits or are thinking about taking one on.
Program level: Basic
Prerequisites: No prerequisites or advance preparation required
Delivery method: Group live
Recommended CPE credit: 12+ hours

Yellow Book Auditing Standards 2018: Live & Customized

The GAO’s Yellow Book auditing standards (also known as GAGAS) set a high bar for auditors of government programs.

The 2018 revision moves the standards around, re-emphasizes audit independence, and increases the auditor’s responsibilities for assessing, documenting, and disclosing internal controls.

This course will be customized for your audit team – whether your team performs performance audits, financial audits, Single Audits, or attestation engagements.

Major Topics:

  • The Yellow Book Auditing Standards course is customized for your team’s situation.

    Audit planning

  • Evidence
  • Continuing professional education
  • Quality control standards including peer review standards
  • Reportable conditions including waste and abuse
  • Documentation
  • Reporting including conclusions and findings
  • Individual auditor and audit team independence

Objectives Include:

  • Select the Yellow Book auditing standards that apply to your engagement
  • Define requirements for peer review and quality control
  • Apply the 2018 independence and competence standards to your team
  • Use the elements of a finding to flesh out an audit issue
  • Label reportable conditions as waste, abuse, fraud, non-compliance, & an internal control weakness
  • Differentiate between types of audits
  • Review the Green Book and the auditor’s responsibilities for documenting, evaluating, and reporting on internal controls

Program level: Intermediate

Instructional method: Group live instruction

NASBA Category of Study: Auditing (Governmental)

Advance preparation: One or more years of auditing experience

Who should attend: Auditors and monitors of governmental funds and programs.  The course will concentrate on either financial/single audits or performance audits, depending on the needs of the audience.

Recommended CPE credit: 8 hours of NASBA qualified hours that counts toward the 24 hour Yellowbook CPE requirements.

Read more on this topic here.

What People Say About This Seminar

“It’s been a most entertaining and valuable learning experience and we thank you for making dry audit standards and principles so alive! “ – V.I. IG Auditor

“Thanks very much for the great class today. I found it interesting, informative and a lot of fun!!

As someone new to auditing, not to mention government auditing, I was aware that I needed to have a much better understanding of the Yellow Book, and I feel that today was a perfect overview of how the audit process of the Yellow Book works and should work. The instructions, Q&A, and exercises, as well as the asides and personal stories, helped reinforce the core content. Overall a great day of learning for me that will help directly with my OSA duties and responsibilities. “ – Gene B. Assistant State Auditor

Subscribe to Updates

Sign up here to have the lastest from Yellowbook-CPE.com delivered to your inbox.