What industries do public accounting firms audit?

  • This topic has 4 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 8 years ago by Mayo.
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  • #201149
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    I am still in college and I don’t have any public accounting experience so please forgive me if this may be a “dumb question.” Would anyone be able to list the industries that your audit clients may be in? The only reason I ask is because when you start in public accounting I believe you choose or are assigned an industry or multiple industries for your audit clients and I just wanted to be aware of all the industries available. I believe there is real estate, government, not for profit. I know there is also employee benefit plan audits. I would appreciate any insight you have as I am wanting to learn more about public accounting.

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  • #771119
    Yolonge
    Participant

    I am a new staff in regional public accounting firm (80ish employees) so my knowledge is limited. It can vastly differ from each firm, but we mainly focuses on government and NFP. To name a few it can be district (say Washington D.C), local and municipal government, universities, hospitals, and so on.

    I am currently working on insurance industry regarding federal medical loss ratio which is totally different from those.

    There can be audit, review, and compilation. There can be employee benefit plan, single audit for organizations who gets over certain amount of gov't funding, etc etc.

    To summarize, it can be anything and some firms focuses on couple field more than other so It will vary.

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    #771120
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    All industries go through a financial statement audit if they're a large enough organization to need audited financial statements (aka if they'll need any substantial lending, since lenders require audited financial statements waaaaay before there's any legal requirements to have them for issuers and such). So, retail, hospitality, construction, oil & gas, manufacturing, transportation, service, every industry you can think of gets audited, including the ones you listed (real estate, government, and not-for-profit, though government and not-for-profit have a lot of industries within each of them, too).

    I think maybe what you're referring to – or maybe what mhei has answered – is what different types of audits are there. Like am employee benefit plan audit is different than a financial statement audit, and the single audit for organizations that get a lot of government funding is different from either of those, etc. (Oh, and despite the name, it's not the only audit they receive. 🙂 ) If that's really what you're looking for – what types of audits – I don't know a full listing, but that's a different question than what your title is.

    If your question really is what industries are audited, the answer is “all industries”. The NAICS codes for industry classification is the best industry listing I know of if you wanted a listing of industries: https://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/sssd/naics/naicsrch?chart=2012 However, I don't think you could choose, for example, to audit just agricultural clients, since a) there's probably not enough of them and b) you don't get to choose to that extent when you first come in. I think what you do get to do as an incoming employee is ask questions during the interview(s) to try to find out what type of audits are done most out of the office you're interviewing with, then if you have 2 offers, you can pick the one that has more of the type of audits that you like. If they ask you your preference, then you can make a choice, but from what I've gathered, most of the “choosing an industry” would be after you've been employed for a couple years, when you've got some seniority and a bit more opportunity to make requests. Though at that point, if you're an expert on XYZ Fishery, they might not move you to ABC Stores, just cause you'd rather do retail than agriculture.

    #771121
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Thanks so much both of you! This makes everything more clear, especially the link that Lilla posted. And Lilla. my question was about the industries but I also wanted to learn about the types of audit. I want to mainly just learn about public accounting in general.

    #771122
    Mayo
    Participant

    AnnuityDue, what exactly do you want to know?

    The only “types” of audits are public and private. And from Private you can separate them into “do we rely on controls or not?”.

    Mayo, BBA, Macc

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