The Firm's accounting and auditing personnel perform services in many different capacities, including financial statement audits, compilations and reviews, as well as attestation engagements and compliance audits of federal programs (Single Audits and OMB Circular A-133 Audits).
Audits of Financial Statements
Companies, nonprofit organizations and employee benefit plans are required to have audited financial statements for various reasons, including funding, complying with regulatory agencies, bonding, and providing information to the owners or board of directors. Audits provide the highest level of assurance that the financial statements are presented in conformity with generally accepted accounting principles. This level of assurance is obtained by examination and verification of the financial information presented by the client. Inquiries of management and analytical procedures are also conducted to ensure fair financial statement presentation. Link, Murrel & Company audits a wide variety of clients in many industries, including manufacturing, construction, mortgage banking and retail. We also perform audits of nonprofit organizations and employee benefit plans.
Compilations and Reviews of Financial Statements
In certain situations, lending institutions, bonding companies and business owners, may want a certified public accountant (CPA) to report on a company's compiled or reviewed financial statements. Compilation and review reports provide a lower level of assurance that the financial statements are presented in conformity with generally accepted accounting principles. A compilation is the minimum level of service that a CPA can provide.
A compilation engagement involves presenting information, consisting of management's representations in the form of financial statements, without expressing assurance on them. Accountants are not required to make inquiries or perform other procedures to corroborate or review the information supplied by management.
An engagement to review financial statements involves performing inquiry and analytical procedures that provide the accountant with a reasonable basis for expressing limited assurance that there are no material modifications that should be made to the statements for them to be in conformity with generally accepted accounting principles or, if applicable, with an other comprehensive basis of accounting.
Attestation Engagements
Link, Murrel & Company performs engagements to issue reports on a subject or an assertion about the subject that is the responsibility of another party. Attestation engagements allow Link, Murrel, & Company to meet our client's needs in matters more varied than reporting on financial statements.
The following are examples of attestation engagements:
-
Reporting on Pro forma information - Pro forma presentations are
essentially recast historical financial statements. Their purpose is to
show what the effects on historical information might have been had a
transaction or event occurred at an earlier date. Pro forma financial
information is usually presented by applying certain "what if" adjustments,
which are based on the assumptions of management, to amounts in the historical
financial statements. Such information is frequently used to show the
effects of business combinations, dispositions of business segments and
other financial transactions on historical financial statements.
Reporting on Prospective financial information - Financial forecasts and projections are used by businesses, lending institutions, venture capitalists and others to evaluate a company's planned or hypothetical course of action on operations.
Single Audits and OMB Circular A-133 Audits
The Single Audit Act Amendments of 1996 is the federal statute that establishes a legal requirement for governmental entities and nonprofit organizations expending stipulated amounts of federal awards to have an audit in accordance with Government Auditing Standards and other regulations including the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-133.
Link, Murrel, & Company has extensive experience performing Single Audits for governmental entities and OMB Circular A-133 audits for its nonprofit clients.
Audit partner Wm. Gary Crouch has over 30 years of experience providing accounting and auditing services to a wide variety of clients and industries. In addition to being a CPA with a Bachelor of Science degree in accounting, he is a Certified Fraud Examiner with a Master of Business Administration. Mr. Crouch has a dedicated accounting and auditing staff ready to meet your needs.