Stark & Marsh Chartered Accountants: Assurance and Audit

Assurance and Audit

Whether your enterprise is private or public, the key to good decisions is accurate and timely financial information. Stark & Marsh offers a wide range of assurance and audit services that provide meaningful, reliable financial information in a timely fashion. More importantly, we are available to help you interpret and analyze your financial information.

It is management's responsibility to prepare financial statements, but in some cases organizations without financial expertise may engage the services of Chartered Accountants to prepare financial statements on their behalf.

Chartered Accountants provide three levels of service in association with financial statements:

Audit;
Review; and
Compilation Engagement.

Each of these services lends different levels of credibility to the statements, depending on the nature of involvement. For each service, the CA provides a different report which communicates the extent of work performed and the degree of responsibility accepted by the CA.

1. Audit

Nature of involvement: Application of Canadian generally accepted auditing standards in support of each significant financial statement item.

Report provided: Auditor's report

Level of assurance: The Auditor's Report provides reasonable assurance to readers.

2. Review

Nature of involvement: Application of Canadian generally accepted standards for review engagements (enquiry, analytical procedures, and discussion with management).

Report provided: Review engagement report

Level of assurance: A review is not as extensive as an audit (but is more extensive than a compilation) and therefore, provides less assurance and credibility to the financial statements.

3. Compilation Engagement

Nature of involvement: Limited to compiling in the form of financial statements of data provided by management.

Report provided: Notice to reader

Level of assurance: A compilation engagement provides no assurance.

At Stark & Marsh, we consult with our clients to determine their needs, expectations and professional service requirements before preparing and executing our audit plans. Partners lead our audit engagement teams, supervise both planning and performance, and provide our clients with meaningful advice and insights on the condition of their enterprise.

Our audit approach is risk-based, which means we focus on the key issues that affect our clients and their financial statements as a whole.

We recognize that every client is unique, requiring an audit plan tailored to their particular operations, accounting processes, control environment and financial reporting requirements. As a consequence, our focus is both industry-specific and client-specific.

Stark & Marsh is available for an initial exploratory meeting at no charge. Contact us to learn more.