What Does a CPA Do for Small Business Besides Tax Prep

Who is a Chartered Professional Accountant?

A chartered professional accountant is a financial expert who provides several services, from planning tax to managing bookkeeping, providing business advice and crafting financial strategy. A CPA has met the rigorous education, experience, and examination requirements set by CPA Canada. CPAs are popular for their financial reporting, taxation, assurance, and management accounting expertise. 

Provide Consulting service

CPA helps small enterprises to manage daily account operations and supervise financial staff. Apart from that, they also provide professional consultation in several areas like insurance, risk management, investment selection, human resource management, design and review of internal controls, and contract negotiation. 

Budgeting and Forecasting

A chartered professional accountant in Calgary prepares financial plans, makes a budget, and forecasts potential cash flow, which can be used for both internal purposes like managing operations and external purposes such as lenders, shareholders, and investors. Since modelling and forecasting can be complex and time-consuming, hiring a professional will help small business owners develop certain processes for tracking actual results against short and long-term plans and budgets. 

Audit Service

 Usually, a company's financial statements may be required by government grants, lenders, and shareholders. Audited financial statements by a chartered professionalaccountant ensure that the small business owner demonstrates the financial statement fairly and complies with government guidelines. In addition, the expert audits a company's internal control on financial reporting. 

Compilations and reviews

A professional chartered professional accountant or CPA firm offers services like compilations and reviews for financial statements, which are less extensive than audits. Lenders or external parties give utmost importance to compilations, which are done by a CPA. 

 

In a compilation, the CPA reviews but doesn't assure the accuracy of the financial statements and also checks for potential errors. On the other hand, a review is a detailed analysis of the financial statements.