A Certified Public Accountant (CPA) is an accountant who has received accreditation from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. This requires passing an exam and completing educational and work requirements from his or her local regulatory agencies. Additionally, a CPA is required to take part in continued education to maintain the designation. In turn, CPAs can assess the fairness of a financial statement. Furthermore, CPAs are bound by ethical guidelines, which may prevent them from providing different services to the same client simultaneously.
Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) are the standards for preparing financial statements in the U. S. These standards concern the aggregation and presentation of financial information, and the disclosure of supporting information. They create a general set of rules and formats to help analyze the figures. However, reports created according to the GAAP are not always completely accurate since they forbid the use of adjustments to explain nuances specific to the company’s operations. Because of this, companies are allowed to use non-GAAP reporting, so long as it is disclosed as such.
International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), formerly International Accounting Standards (IAS), are similar to the GAAP, but apply to international dealings. The two sets of standards are generally similar but have significant differences in their definitions of revenue and expenses. Although they are not required to use in the U.S., companies are adopting them, nonetheless. The U.S. is not the only country that uses a standard other than IFRS, meaning that it can be challenging to compare financial statements from two companies that use different methods of reporting. Because of the differences between the IFRS, GAAP, other countries’ standards, and non-GAAP reporting, financial reports can appear, or be deliberately made to be, misleading. Therefore, understanding the differences between the standards or the specific adjustments in the case of non-GAAP reports is critical to analyzing reports.