Independence & Quality Control
The single most important thing to settle before you engage an accounting firm is which role that firm can take with your company. Here is how we handle it.
If we prepare it, we cannot audit it
Independence rules do not permit an accounting firm to audit financial statements that the firm itself prepared. This is not a matter of firm policy or preference — it is a requirement, and for SEC registrants it is enforced by the Commission and the PCAOB.
What that means in practice: if JV CPA INC. performs your accounting, prepares your financial statements, or provides the bookkeeping behind them, then your audit must be performed by a different firm. There is no version of this where we do both.
How we handle it
We raise this in the first conversation. Before scope, before fees, before anything else, we establish which chair we can sit in with your company — accountant or auditor. It is a short conversation and it prevents an expensive problem.
Where we serve as auditor, non-audit services are evaluated against the applicable independence rules before acceptance, and for issuers, permitted services require audit committee pre-approval. Where a service is not permitted, we say so and decline it. We would rather decline the work than create an independence question that surfaces during a filing review.
Separation of engagement teams
Audit and non-audit engagements are staffed by separate teams. The people performing accounting work for a client are not the people performing audit work, and audit engagement decisions are made by the audit engagement partner.
Registration and oversight
JV CPA INC. is registered with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, Registration No. 7333. Our issuer audit engagements are subject to PCAOB oversight and inspection, and our Form AP filings identifying the engagement partner are publicly available through the PCAOB.
For our non-issuer attest work, the firm is enrolled in the peer review program; our first peer review is not yet due.
What we will not do
Not sure which role we can take?
Describe your situation and we will tell you in one conversation — including when the answer is that you need a different firm for part of it.
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