Accountants: directory of firms

NASBA puts the two central steps simply: passing the Uniform CPA Examination and meeting the licensing requirements of the state where you want to practice. Education and experience thresholds are set board by board, which is why two CPAs can hold the same exam result and very different paths behind it.

Because it is a state licence, the discipline history sits with that state. NASBA's Accountancy Licensee Database, published to the public as CPAverify, pulls licence records from participating boards; boards that do not take part run their own lookup on the state website. Either way, a licence number and a status you can read yourself beats a logo on a website.

Mobility rules let a CPA in good standing serve clients in another state without taking out a second licence, on conditions that state sets, and NASBA maintains state-by-state summaries. Firm registration and attest engagements are frequently treated differently from an individual's practice privilege, so ask specifically rather than assuming the licence travels intact.

It starts with an engagement letter. That document names the work, the deliverables, the fee basis and what is excluded, and it is the only thing that settles an argument later about whether the sales tax registrations were ever in scope. Decline to start without one.

Then comes the handover: prior year returns, the accounting file or its login, bank statements, payroll reports, loan documents and any notices you have received. Expect pointed questions about who owns the business, which states you operate or employ people in, and whether you hold foreign financial accounts, because each of those opens a separate filing obligation.

The engagement ends with a deliverable and a conversation about it. A set of statements with nobody to explain the movements is half a product. Ask for the review meeting to be part of the fee rather than an extra.

A quarterly check-in beats one annual scramble. Half an hour looking at the numbers in July changes what you can do about them; the same conversation the following March only explains what happened.

Tell your accountant about changes before they happen, not after. A first employee, a first sale into a new state, a new owner, or a foreign account each create obligations that are cheap to set up in advance and expensive to unwind.

Hold on to what supports the numbers. The IRS says to keep records as long as needed to prove the income or deductions on a return, and to keep employment tax records for at least four years. Storage is cheaper than reconstruction.