compilation

How can a football team’s position for scoring the game winning points illustrate the differences between an audit, review, compilation, and preparation?

Image courtesy of Adobe Stock.

Let’s think about a football team and how they are positioned for scoring the winning points in the last few seconds of a tied game. They could be 4th-and-goal or perhaps not yet to a position for a field goal attempt.

Let’s use that illustration to explain the services provided by your outside accountant.

A CPA can provide four levels of services if you’re looking for financial statements.

You can hire a CPA firm to provide:

  • audit,
  • review,
  • compilation, or
  • preparation service.

What is winning the game?

We all know what that is in football.

In our accounting illustration a winning score would be perfect financial statements. Every number is correct. Not just close-enough, but exactly correct. Every disclosure complies with every single requirement.  The presentation and classification are picture perfect.

That probably never happens in real life, so let’s simplify it by saying that there is nothing even close to materially incorrect in any number, presentation, or disclosure. The financial statements are as close to perfect as is humanly possible.

That is what a win looks like.

Audit

Let’s say there is under a minute left in a tied game. Our favorite football team has just completed a successful drive and is sitting on the 1 yard line on fourth down. There’s only one play left in 30 seconds and the game is over.

Likelihood of getting a touchdown and winning the game is pretty good. Right about now the odds look incredible.

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Jim Ulvog

Price cut on print books

I’ve dropped the prices for the print copies of my books available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iTunes store.

Here is what you can find on-line:

tragedy-cover

 Tragedy of Fraud – Insider Trading Edition

Story of Scott London’s fall from regional audit partner at KPMG to prison inmate because of his insider trading.

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Jim Ulvog

SSARS 21 updates the compilation and review standards previously explained in SSARS 19

The body of SSARS literature has been updated and clarified. The new document, SSARS #21, was released on October 23, 2014.

It will be effective for financial statements after December 15, 2015. That means it will usually be required for 12/31/15 financials. We will all have to move away from SSARS 19 for our work in 2016. (Unless you choose to apply SSARS 19 for clients with years ending before 12/31/15.)

Since starting this blog, all discussion of compilations and reviews have been posted on my other blog, Attestation Update.

You can find all my discussion of the new standard at the other site.

Check out:

Jim Ulvog

“Audit. Review. Compilation. What’s the difference?” – New book now available.

Audit. Review. Compilation. What’s the difference? – Illustrations using a football game, buying a used car, and filling a bucket.

 audit-cover

What’s the difference between getting an audit, review, or compilation from your CPA firm? This short, 29 page book will help you understand.

Three illustrations help explain the differences:

  • A football game – How does advancing to the 10-yard line compare to an audit? What would a review look like in a football game?
  • Buying a used car – How does taking the car for a test drive compare to a review?
  • Filling a bucket – How filling it up with water to three different levels illustrates the differences between three levels of service.

This is a compilation of articles at my blog, Nonprofit Update.

The book is now available at Amazon.

Now available here in other formats:

  • ePub format for your iDevices
  • PDF or text
  • Mobi for your Kindle device

Soon to be available at Barnes and Noble.

Jim Ulvog

Level of Services Provided by a CPA – The Differences Between Compilations, Reviews, and Audits

There are three different levels of services you could obtain from a certified public accountant.  These are referred to as compilation, review, and audit.

Financial statements are presented on the basis of some set of accounting rules. This is referred to as the financial reporting framework.

The vast majority of the time, this would be a large body of knowledge that is called generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP. Imperfect in implementation though it may be, the concept is that similar transactions will be recorded by all organizations in the same way. In addition, financial statements of similar organizations will actually look similar.

If there is some unique reason to do so, the financial statements could be presented on another basis of accounting.

Compilation

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Jim Ulvog

Evaluating a used car as an illustration of the differences between compilation, review, and audit

You could figure out how good a car is by looking at it from across the street. 

Or you could look inside & drive it around the block. 

Or you could take the car to your mechanic for a couple of hours to get it really checked out .

We can use that as an analogy of the differences between a compilation, a review, and an audit.

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Jim Ulvog

Sample compilation and review reports under SSARS 19 for NPOs

Update – SSARS 19 had been replaced by SSARS 21. All the reports have been revised. You can check out these posts at my other blog, Attestation Update:

Here is a list of the sample reports under SSARS available on my blogs. The samples are available on this blog as well as my other blog, Attestation Update. (These links go to the other blog.)

Jim Ulvog