As financial professionals it’s our duty to keep up with the ever-changing financial reporting rules and regulations. However, it can be a daunting task, especially when governing bodies delay dates and send mixed messages. It seems like just yesterday that the International Accounting Standards Board, US Financial Accounting Standards Board, and US Securities and Exchange Commission announced a plan to require all US companies to transition their reporting from US GAAP to IFRS by 2014. Years later, the boards are not even close to converging the two sets of standards and many experts wonder whether the full transition will ever take place. Or how about when the FASB and IASB announced a project in 2010 to move all leases to the balance sheet and account for them using the effective interest rate method by 2014. The proposed “Right-of-Use” lease accounting model received so much criticism from the business community that the FASB eventually decided to reverse their position and allow most real estate leases to continue to be accounted for under the traditional straight-line model.

These are just two of the many examples in which a proposed change has led to many of us scrambling and spending countless hours reading through articles and updates to try and keep up. Who has time for that?

Live webinars are an excellent way to absorb accurate financial reporting updates and they will not take up much of your time. Whenever there is a significant proposal or change in financial reporting, you can be sure that there will be many webinar offerings that summarize and explain the timing and implications. Typically, a webinar will only run for 50-60 minutes and you can leverage the presentation slides for future reference. And if you are going to spend time learning a new concept, why not get CPE for it?  

Another benefit of webinars is the ability to ask questions. How many times have you read a great article but wanted the author to clarify a point? On webinars there will typically be a “question box” to enable viewers to ask questions about the content. If your question is not answered during the live event, the presenters will almost always follow up with you offline.

Next time you feel overwhelmed in keeping up with all the financial reporting updates, checkout Encoursa. We partner with the top thought leaders in the industry to help keep you abreast of all important changes impacting the accounting and finance profession.