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Audit and Assurance Services for Compliance and Your Peace of Mind

 

Is your bank officer or bonding company asking you for audited financial statements?

Does your nonprofit require an annual audit per its bylaws or Board or due to grant requirements?

Does your entity have compliance work such as government or private contracts that require CPA assurance services?

Do you suspect fraud or that something is not quite right with your books or your cash flow?

If you said yes to any of the situations above, then you may benefit from our audit and assurance services. 

Trusted Advisors

There are many benefits to engaging us for assurance work. Here are just a few:

  • We’ll provide the financial reports that have been requested by your third party – bank, bonding company, government, grantor, board of directors, or other interested entities or persons.
  • We suggest ideas to improve and strengthen your internal controls.
  • We provide objective insight with fresh eyes.
  • We can identify areas with potential cost savings to boost profits.
  • We can point out where procedures are being followed and where they aren’t.
  • We can often recommend operational efficiencies that can be implemented and areas of waste that should be eliminated as we review your processes and procedures.
  • We can work with management on inter-department issues to improve communication and streamline workflows.
  • We can list business and management risks to assist in expanding your planning horizon or the company’s preparedness.

Types of Audits

When you hear the word “audit,” it can be a bit confusing.  There are many different types of audits. For example, most businesses have to perform annual workers comp “audits,” but these are effectively reconciliations and not audits in the CPA sense of the word.

You might hear the word audit in conjunction with the IRS.  That’s a different kind of audit that we can help you with too.  See our tax resolution services for help with an IRS audit.

When a CPA firm audits your financial statements, we perform work to review the strength of your internal accounting controls, the integrity of your accounting transactions, and the accuracy of your account balances. We also review the business overall, including current and future contracts and risks to the company that might impact your business continuity.  It’s a little more involved than a workers comp audit!

Assurance Options

When we start an assurance engagement, we determine what your goals are and investigate how the audit reports will be used. That will help us understand what type of engagement we need to perform for you. 

There are many levels of assurance services and engagements:

  1. Compilation. In this engagement, the CPA performs basic checks on your financial statements and puts them together with a cover letter. It basically tells a third party that you have a CPA, but it provides the least amount of assurance service. 
  2. Review. In a review, there are a few more checks and tests that a CPA will perform before issuing financial statements. This service provides more assurance than a compilation, but less than an audit.
  3. Audit. An audit is very comprehensive and will take time. The CPA team will perform many accounting tests and procedures as well as review your overall business model and strategy. For large companies, our audit team works with your internal audit team and your management team to collect the information needed. This service delivers the highest level of assurance of these three options.
  4. Agreed-upon procedures. An engagement with agreed-upon procedures is a very specific engagement where one aspect of the business is reviewed in accordance with a specific goal. For example, if you want a CPA to review your PPP Loan Forgiveness application before you turn it in, it would be an agreed-upon procedure engagement. 

If the assurance work is required by a bank, the size of the loan may determine the level of assurance that the bank wants.  For larger loans, as an example, they will probably want an audit performed. For smaller loans, a review might suffice.

Don’t worry!  You don’t have to know which option you need before coming to us for assistance.  Many people think they need an audit, when a review or compilation will work just fine. We can help you figure out what’s best for your situation. 

Contact Us

If you need any type of assurance services performed, please reach out to us to find out more.