Accountant and Management - Certified Public Accountants

If you think all accountants and other business advisors are alike, think again. As advisors to businesses and individuals, Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) provide the technical expertise, innovative thinking and personal service that help organizations thrive and families and enable individuals to achieve financial security.

In today's global, competitive and information-driven environment, CPAs' core competencies - integrity, objectivity and independence - bring new and diverse value to clients.

Some functions of a CPA are:

Installing accounting systems and controls
Developing cash flow models
Identifying ways to improve profitability
Securing or restructuring financing
Providing business valuations
Advising on mergers, acquisitions and divestitures
Designing employee compensation and benefits packages
Ensuring compliance with government regulations

Some services of a CPA are:

TAX SERVICES
ACCOUNTING & AUDITING
ASSURANCE SERVICES
TECHNOLOGY
Bankruptcy and insolvency reorganizations
Divorce settlements
Civil lawsuits
Fraud investigations
Professional liability claims

TAX SERVICES ( back to top )

Ever-changing tax laws and the growing complexity of financial and investment decisions have prompted more individuals and businesses to seek a CPA's help. CPAs offer tax planning strategies to minimize current and future tax liabilities; prepare federal, state and local tax returns; help clients comply with tax laws and regulations; and represent clients during examinations by various tax authorities.

ACCOUNTING AND AUDITING SERVICES ( back to top )

Virtually all entities - whether they are privately held, publicly owned, governmental or nonprofit - must prepare reports on their financial performance. These reports help owners and management make operating decisions, enable creditors to evaluate loan applications and assist individuals in making investment decisions. To serve their clients' varying needs, CPAs offer several kinds of financial statement services.

COMPILATIONS
A compilation is useful when limited in-house capabilities for preparing financial statements exist. In these cases, CPAs prepare financial statements from information provided by management. Compilation standards permit an accountant to omit footnote disclosures as long as the omission is clearly indicated in the compilation report and there is no intent to mislead users. However, if a business needs to provide some degree of added assurance that its financial statements are reliable, it may need a CPA to perform a review or an audit.

REVIEWS
A private entity may engage a CPA to perform a review and issue a report that provides limited assurance that material changes to its financial statements are not necessary. In a review engagement, a CPA will apply analytical procedures to company-prepared financial statements to identify unusual items or trends in the financial statements that may need explanation. A CPA remains independent of the client during the review and is required to include all appropriate footnotes in the reviewed statements.

AUDITS
A public or private company or governmental agency may engage a CPA to audit its financial statements and to issue a report that provides the highest level of assurance that its financial statements are presented fairly and in conformity with generally accepted accounting principles. Audits also provide a reasonable level of assurance that the financial statements are free of material errors and fraud.

ASSURANCE SERVICES ( back to top )

Public trust in the integrity and objectivity auditors bring to client engagements has led to the development of new services in which many CPAs provide added assurance as to the reliability of various kinds of information. These newer, value-added assurance services are aimed at improving the quality of information, or its context, for decision-makers. They include:

Providing business risk assessments
Measuring business performance
Measuring health care performance
Reporting on the reliability of information systems
Assessing whether systems and tools used in electronic commerce provide appropriate data integrity, security and privacy
Asserting on the reliability of websites
Offering eldercare assurance services

TECHNOLOGY ( back to top )

Many CPAs work with clients in harnessing the power of technology by providing IT planning and assessments, designing systems, selecting and implementing software solutions and advising on the use of electronic commerce. CPAs can also be instrumental in developing information security policies and helping both individuals and businesses remain technologically competent.