Accounting for Financial Statement Uncertainty: Estimates, Contingencies, and Going Concern

Course Description

Understanding the proper accounting for and reporting of financial statement areas containing uncertainty can be challenging, especially ensuring adequate disclosure of risk to the financial statement users. This course will provide critical considerations when evaluating the proper treatment of accounting estimates, loss contingencies, and going concern in U.S. GAAP-basis financial statements.

Major Topics

• Identifying financial statement areas containing recognition, measurement, presentation, or disclosure uncertainty
• Applying common techniques for evaluating the proper accounting treatment of loss contingencies, allowances, accruals, and other areas with recognition and measurement uncertainty
• Describing important presentation and disclosure considerations when highlighting uncertainty to financial statement users making economic decisions
• Evaluating the adequacy of disclosure of going concern uncertainty under U.S. GAAP

Learning Objectives

Upon completing this course, you should be able to:

• Identify areas of the financial statements that contain accounting or reporting uncertainty
• Recall the proper accounting treatment of loss contingencies under U.S. GAAP
• Recognize how to evaluate the sufficiency of accounting for areas of estimation, such as common allowances and accruals
• Describe the important considerations when determining the proper disclosure of going concern and other areas of uncertainty

Course Information

• CPD Credit: 2.0 hours Accounting
• Prerequisites: None
• Program Level: Basic
• Advance Preparation: None
• Who Should Participate: Public and industry accountants responsible for monitoring fair presentation of financial statements

Instructor

• Name: Jennifer Louis
• Hometown: Charlotte, NC
• Bio: Jennifer has over 25 years experience in designing and instructing high-quality training programs in a wide variety of technical and ?soft skills? topics needed for professional and organization success. In 2003 she founded Emergent Solutions Group, which is dedicated to meeting organization?s professional training needs on a project or part-time basis. Jennifer serves a wide variety of clients, including public accounting firms, state CPA societies, private industry corporations, and public sector agencies.Previously Jennifer served as the Director of Audit Product Development at Surgent Professional Education for three years. Prior to that, Jennifer was Executive Vice President/Director of Training Services at AuditWatch, Inc., a highly respected training and audit process consulting firm later acquired by Thomson Reuters. Over her six years at AuditWatch, Jennifer served many roles. She began her career at AuditWatch as Vice President of Product Development. Jennifer also served as an instructor and consultant for the firm?s Audit Productivity Improvement Program (a comprehensive program enabling accounting firms to enhance audit quality and improve audit efficiency), as well as various other training courses. Later, Jennifer was primarily responsible for working with clients to design high-caliber, customized training programs. She led the Training Services Division, which includes AuditWatch University (?core-level? staff training for new hires to managers) and related offerings. She also co-authored the Guide to Value-Added Auditing (Thomson/Practitioners Publishing Company, Fort Worth, TX, July 2001). Before joining AuditWatch, Jennifer was the Financial/Operational Audit Manager at AARP. While at AARP she served as one of their specially trained facilitators available as a resource throughout the organization for designing and leading strategic meetings and trainings. Jennifer was also an Audit Manager at Deloitte, in Washington, DC. During her five years with Deloitte, she was a frequent local and national instructor. Jennifer also served as an instructor for the firm?s national ?Train the Trainers? program. Jennifer graduated summa cum laude from Marymount University with a BBA-Accounting. She is currently a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and is licensed to practice accounting in the Commonwealth of Virginia and North Carolina.Contact Jennifer via email at jlouis@emergentgroup.net, or via LinkedIn