Transformational CPA Technical Skills

In this module, you will be exploring four key areas of the corporate accounting process. While some of these terms may be familiar to you, it is important to review these concepts and understand how they all fit together.

These include the key principles of financial accounting process; financial close process, trial balance, and account reconciliation; preparing financial statements; and key financial ratio.

Why Attend:

• Explain the key principles of the financial accounting process, including the accounting equation.
• Describe the purpose and key steps within the financial statement close process, describe the purpose of a trial balance and its preparation process, and describe the account reconciliation process.
• Identify the main elements of financial statements, explain compliance requirements, and identify key steps in preparing financial statements.
• Walk through the key financial ratios and explain the insights they provide in analyzing a company’s performance.

Who Should Attend:

• New professionals within the accounting profession.
• Professionals looking for a refresher in corporate accounting concepts and application.

Additional Course Information:

This self-paced module is a part of The Ohio Society of CPAs Workforce Development: Upskilling & Reskilling the Accounting Profession Technical Skills bundle. We encourage you to explore each of these courses as a part of your professional development plan. If interested in purchasing the entire bundle, refer to the related products below the product description.

In this module, we will explore some technology tools that are currently used in the field of accounting, including some exciting and emerging technologies. You may be familiar with some of these terms while others may be quite new. During this module, you will also have an opportunity to learn some practical applications of accounting software. 

Why Attend:

• Identify key factors that drive the accounting technology needs of an organization.
• Distinguish between internal and external accounting requirements for public and private companies.
• Define cloud computing, its risks and benefits, and accounting applications most suitable.
• Differentiate between artificial intelligence and machine learning and explain how current developments are impacting accounting processes.
• Explain robotic process automation and the opportunities it creates within accounting and finance functions.
• Identify the accounting decisions required to establish an entity’s accounting ledger (e.g., fiscal year-end, the basis of accounting, entity structure). 
• Use accounting software to generate internal and external financial reports. 

Who Should Attend:

• New professionals within the accounting profession.
• Professionals looking for a refresher in accounting technology tools, concepts, and application.

Additional Course Information:

This self-paced module is a part of The Ohio Society of CPAs Workforce Development: Upskilling & Reskilling the Accounting Profession Technical Skills bundle. We encourage you to explore each of these courses as a part of your professional development plan. If interested in purchasing the entire bundle, refer to the related products below the product description.

Gain a broad overview of the capabilities of Excel in the world of accounting. You may be familiar with Excel to enter data and create spreadsheets. But do you know what else Excel can do? It’s a powerful tool that provides a range of options to support your work. First, we will take a look at some tips and tricks accountants can use to improve their Excel experience. Then, we will delve a little deeper to understand how to use Excel to create financial reports, analyze the data we enter into Excel and create powerful visual presentations from Excel. Lastly, we will explore how to turn columns of numbers into understandable visuals that can be shared with the executive leadership team of our company.

Please note that this module focuses on a broad survey of some of Excel’s capabilities. It isn’t meant to be a how-to tutorial. Rather, we want you to gain an appreciation and understanding of the many possibilities of Excel when used by capable accountants who understand what to use, when, and why. The overarching objective is for you to be able to name and explain some of the various functions and how they can be used. But remember, if the information entered isn’t correct or accurate, then no shortcut or chart will fix that. 

Why Attend:

• Learn three Excel tools and techniques that can improve productivity.
• Explain how excel formulas can be used to create budgets and quarterly forecasts.
• Walkthrough how to use Excel to analyze financial data for key trends using Vlookups, Hlookups, and financial ratio functions.
• Identify the most appropriate visualization tools in Excel to present data.

Who Should Attend:

• New professionals within the accounting profession.
• Professionals looking for a refresher in excel accounting tools and application.

Additional Course Information:

This self-paced module is a part of The Ohio Society of CPAs Workforce Development: Upskilling & Reskilling the Accounting Profession Technical Skills bundle. We encourage you to explore each of these courses as a part of your professional development plan. If interested in purchasing the entire bundle, refer to the related products below the product description.

In this module, you will learn how to use advanced techniques in Excel to analyze data at a deeper level. Using tools such as advanced pivot tables, you will learn how to ask the right questions to analyze your data in-depth and then find ways to answer those questions through several of Excel’s more advanced data analysis techniques. 

You will then move on to explore Power BI, a powerful tool for visualizing data. You will have the opportunity to explore some of its capabilities and think about how you might use data visualization to share complex information with a variety of audiences. 

Please note that this module focuses on a broad survey of some of Excel’s advanced data analysis tools as well as an introduction to Power BI. It isn’t meant to be a how-to tutorial. Rather, we want you to think about the various ways you can drill down into the data to investigate it from multiple perspectives and how to share that complex information through visualization. The overarching objective is for you to be aware of the various advanced tools and visualization techniques that enable you to add value to your job by enhancing your analytic skills. 

Why Attend:

• Identify when advanced Excel techniques are needed including when and how to use advanced options in Pivot Table, PowerPivot, and Regression Analysis. 
• Discuss four advanced Excel Visualization Techniques used to communicate financial information to internal and external customers and explain the purpose of each one.
• Learn two ways that Power Query and Combine Functions in Power BI are used to shape, transform, and combine data to meet different needs. 
• Describe the steps needed to build visualized reports from models and create an effective dashboard in Power BI.

Who Should Attend:

• New professionals within the accounting profession.
• Professionals looking for a refresher in data analysis and visualization tools and applications.

Additional Course Information:

This self-paced module is a part of The Ohio Society of CPAs Workforce Development: Upskilling & Reskilling the Accounting Profession Technical Skills bundle. We encourage you to explore each of these courses as a part of your professional development plan. If interested in purchasing the entire bundle, refer to the related products below the product description.