Kaplan University Auditing Determining Appropriate Services Discussion

Whatif a client approaches you with an engagement request that you are notsure your CPA firm provides? Knowing which services are offered and howthey are performed helps to ensure you provide your clients with theservices they need.You are approached by the Emerald ProductionCompany management to review and analyze their customer satisfactiontrends over the past 5 years. This assurance service would tellmanagement if their suspicions were correct in that customersatisfaction has been declining, especially in the past 2 years.Management currently evaluates customer satisfaction based on customerretention and sales increases. While management sends out surveys viamail and email to customers, response rates are very low. Managementdoes not consider the survey responses to be an accurate representationof their customer service. In fact, only customers with negativefeedback are the ones who respond.

• Assuming that your firm can provide this type of service, where would you look to find guidance for this service?
• What standards would you need to follow?

What type of report would you issue, and what should be included in the report?

Just do response each posted down below only.

Posted 1

Hello all!

CPA’soffer many services and assurance services is one. These services helpto improve the effectiveness of the quality of information provided tohelp management make decisions. As for guidance, a CPA would turn toAICPA’s Assurance Standards Executive Committee.

To name a few standards that must be followed would be professional standard, positive attitude and communication skills.

Thereis not a particular report for assurance services. However, I would usean analytical report that would show the research on how to handle thecustomers in a management perspective. The report will also containmarket conditions and different skills such as attentiveness, attitude,and so on.

Posted 2

Hello Class,

CPAsprovide assurance services to improve the effectiveness of qualityinformation that could help management in making decisions. For thistype of service, the CPAs follow AICPA’s Assurance Standards ExecutiveCommittee to obtain data that involves in evaluation and analysis of thecompany’s information to identify the necessary requirements to resultin the highest benefits (Whittington & Pany, 2016, p. 766). In otherwords, quality assurance includes the steps that help to preventproblems, increase performance, reliability, and better to understandcustomers, etc.The standards that we need to follow in this caseare the criteria in measuring the customer care level and monitor theclient’s performance. This includes customer service satisfaction,product and service quality, customers’ reliability and opinion, sales,and many more. In order to have a solution, auditors need to collectdata through surveys, focus on groups, and area, etc. Then analyze theinformation to come up with solutions.For assurance service,there isn’t a particular format report like for an audit. In fact, theremay or may not need to issue a report or just a simple report. Theissuance report is based on different circumstances to provideinformation. For Emerald Production Company, the report should include“the representation of the subject matter on customer satisfaction wouldmost likely include the criteria describing the way in which customersatisfaction was defined and measured” (Whittington & Pany, 2016, p.771).

Posted 3.

Good morning classmates,

Assuming that your firm can provide this type of service, where would you look to find guidance for this service?A CPA firm that was asked to perform this type of assurance servicecould seek guidance from the AICPA’s Assurance Standards ExecutiveCommittee. In today’s technological business environment, accountantsare called upon to provide more than just financial data. Theseassurance services coincide with good financial reporting and gives thebusiness a better all-around approach to operating their business atpeak efficiency. What standards would you need to follow?Other assurance services are covered under the general performancestandards of AICPA, following Rule 201 in their Code of ProfessionalConduct (Pany & Whittington, 2016, p. 767). What type of report would you issue, and what should be included in the report?The advantage to this type of assurance service is that there are nostandard forms. This allows the CPA firm to customize the data to eachclient that will work best for that client. It allows the CPA firm tonot only be creative but give specific and relevant information to theclient. With standard forms, you might have to include data that isirrelevant to their assurance service request, but with no standardreport or form, all of the data you give the client will be exactly whatthey want, so they do not have to read through things that they have nointerest in. This allows the client to get right to the point whenreading your report so they can start immediately interpreting the datato make internal control changes. For the Emerald Production Company, wecould show ratio data between sales and customer satisfaction, as wellas looking at customer satisfaction compared to sales returns andpotential warranty issues from production. Research could also show abetter way for Emerald Production Company to obtain survey feedback fromall customers, not just the ones with negative feedback.