the Price of Business Accounting Services

The price covers the audit of a financial statement for a medium sized business (~100 employees).

As is expected, the audit was performed by a local affiliate (our usual one, actually) of one of the Big Four accounting firms. Prices vary depending on the complexity of the process. And other services running the full gamut of accountancy are, of course, available.

The business is owned in part by a number of private investors and by its nature tends to require several short- and long-term bank loans to be active at any time, the acquisition and management of each (private investors and bank loans) is made easier by a certified financial statement.

Our accounting practices are a bit outside the standards of generally accepted accounting practices, so until we found an auditor who could easily translate our internal numbers into GAAP stuff we were getting the somewhat undesirable amended reports. Though in truth all it really meant is that the auditor was having a tough time understanding what we were saying.

A couple times the service came in unusually useful as it once uncovered a few thousand dollars worth of employee fraud and another time found we'd overpaid a short term note by a similar amount.

Unless you're a publicly traded company, you don't have to release a financial statement (there are other conditions, but that's a biggie under SEC rules), but it can be valuable to have a certified copy of assets and liabilities and cash flow to attract investors and secure decent loan rates. The question is whether it's worth the fairly substantial price. It only is if you figure you can leverage financial advantages greater than the cost of the audit.

If you decide to go through with an audit, make sure everything is consistent and in order. If you've changed accounting practices a bunch of times recently, or use non-standard practices, expect that to reflect poorly on the final report.