As the news surrounding COVID-19 changes daily, CPA firms are monitoring developments and taking necessary precautions to ensure the safety of staff members and clients. Those efforts include varied types of communication procedures including teleconferencing, skype, zoom, e-mail, internal web-sites and other methods. Many of these methods require resilient leadership who can envision issues timely or pro-actively in order to adequately address concerns.

With the pace of the pandemic and the timing with which it has rolled out, firms have found themselves in the predicament of abiding by their clients “work-from-home” edicts. This can inflict greater difficulty in obtaining information needed for completing the first quarter filings. As such, it is critical that firms establish a solid process for employee and client communication.

Who should attend: - CPA firm members, partners, directors, staff. - Clients who wish to understand protocols for proper communication with their auditors.

Topics Covered: This webinar will focus on some of the challenges being experienced in the CPA consulting industry and evaluate methods to enable timely and effective communication with clients while working to meet their needs on a timely basis.

Learning Objectives
  • Discover the need to properly communicate firm contingency plans, including pandemic preparedness to all internal firm employees who have a role in implementation and execution.
    1. This includes communication needs to ensure employees understand methods to protect themselves and clients and limit/mitigate the spread of disease at facilities.
    2. It also includes methods to communicate with clients in the event any event or action would negatively impact performance of services.
    3. Explore how to ensure clients that your firm has established effective employee protocols for public health events and working with clients.
  • Identify requirements for investing in adequate communications technology to ensure employees can work virtually.
  • Recognize needs to leverage work relationships with other firms or offices during this time of resource constraint.
  • Identify client and internal IT infrastructure and evaluate risks or challenges in the event any given piece of infrastructure is off-line.
  • Identify need to maintain a line of sight on regulatory and SEC requirements for public company reporting during this crisis period and properly communicate requirements to clients.
Last updated/reviewed: August 17, 2023
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1 Review (9 ratings)

Reviews

5
Member's Profile
Lynn, This was a tough course to get through with content including SEC and IT issues. The human communication issues were easier for me follow. I learned a lot about regulatory issues concerning Covid that I did not know existed. Thank you for the debriefing. Happy I took the course. Larry
Prerequisites
Course Complexity: Foundational

No advanced preparation or prerequisites are required for this course.

Education Provider Information
Company: Illumeo, Inc., 75 East Santa Clara St., Suite 1215, San Jose, CA 95113
Contact: For more information regarding this course, including complaint and cancellation policies, please contact our offices at (408) 400- 3993 or send an e-mail to .
Instructor for this course
  Course Overview CPE
Course Syllabus
INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
  Introduction to CPA Firms Employee Management and Communication Process4:24
  Contingency Plan Communication9:45
  Communication Recommendations14:47
  Steps for Effective Communication10:00
  Leveraging Work Relationships to Enhance Communication2:52
  Client and Internal IT Infrastructure13:41
  Communicating SEC Requirements3:53
  Summary1:22
CONTINUOUS PLAY
  CPA Firms Employee Management and Communication Process1:00:44
SUPPORTING MATERIAL
  Slides: CPA Firms Employee Management and Communication ProcessPDF
  CPA Firms Employee Management and Communication Process Glossary/ IndexPDF
REVIEW AND TEST
  REVIEW QUESTIONSquiz
 FINAL EXAMexam