Question

You have recently joined the board of an NFPO that has never had a public accountant involved in preparing its financial statements. Explain to the board the different ways a public accountant can be involved in the preparation of the external financial statements, and how the ways differ.

Answer 1

I have recently joined the board of an NFPO that has never had a public accountant involved in preparing its financial statements.I have explain to the board by following ways a public accountant can be involved in the preparation of the external financial statements :-

Financial accounting is the field of accounting concerned with the summary, analysis and reporting of financial transactions related to a business. This involves the preparation of financial statements available for public use. Stockholders, Suppliers, banks, employees, government agencies, business owners, and other stakeholders are examples of people interested in receiving such information for decision making purposes.Financial accountancy is governed by both local and international accounting standards. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles(GAAP) is the standard framework of guidelines for financial accounting used in any given jurisdiction. It includes the standards, conventions and rules that accountants follow in recording and summarizing and in the preparation of financial statements.

When producing financial statements, they must comply to the following:-

• Relevance: Financial accounting which is decision-specific. It must be possible for accounting information to influence decisions. Unless this characteristic is present, there is no point in cluttering statements.
• Materiality: information is material if its omission or misstatement could influence the economic decisions of users taken on the basis of the financial statements.
• Reliability: accounting must be free from significant error or bias. It should be easily relied upon by managers. Often information that is highly relevant isn’t very reliable, and vice versa.
• Understandability: accounting reports should be expressed as clearly as possible and should be understood by those to whom the information is relevant.
• Comparability: financial reports from different periods should be comparable with one another in order to derive meaningful conclusions about the trends in an entity’s financial performance and position over time. Comparability can be ensured by applying the same accounting policies over time.

Objectives of Financial Accounting

• Systematic recording of transactions: basic objective of accounting is to systematically record the financial aspects of business transactions (i.e. book-keeping). These recorded transactions are later on classified and summarized logically for the preparation of financial statements and for their analysis and interpretation.
• Ascertainment of result of above recorded transactions: accountant prepares profit and loss account to know the result of business operations for a particular period of time. If expenses exceed revenue then it is said that the business is running under loss. The profit and loss account helps the management and different stakeholders in taking rational decisions. For example, if business is not proved to be remunerative or profitable, the cause of such a state of affairs can be investigated by the management for taking remedial steps.
• Ascertainment of the financial position of business: businessman is not only interested in knowing the result of the business in terms of profits or loss for a particular period but is also anxious to know that what he owes (liability) to the outsiders and what he owns (assets) on a certain date. To know this, accountant prepares a financial position statement of assets and liabilities of the business at a particular point of time and helps in ascertaining the financial health of the business.
• Providing information to the users for rational decision-making: accounting as a ‘language of business’ communicates the financial result of an enterprise to various stakeholders by means of financial statements. Accounting aims to meet the financial information needs of the decision-makers and helps them in rational decision-making.
• To know the solvency position: by preparing the balance sheet, management not only reveals what is owned and owed by the enterprise, but also it gives the information regarding concern’s ability to meet its liabilities in the short run (liquidity position) and also in the long-run (solvency position) as and when they fall due

Hence by classify above quality and value of financial statement , Public accountant should be involved in preparation of financial statement