Good CPA's are concerned with providing their clients with the best possible service. In some cases large CPA firms are not the best fit for every service and need. That is where C.E.A. Scholtes & Associates, Certified Public Accountants, come in. We provide the following services to large audit firms and their clients:

• Financial Statement Audit Preparation
• Accounting Records Clean-Up
• Auditing Services (staff, management, technical reviews)

In some cases, we recognize that we too might not be the best firm to provide certain services to a client. Consistent with our core values, we refer our clients to other highly qualified CPA firms when appropriate. Oftentimes we refer our clients to other CPA firms for very sophisticated services that we do not specialize in. Two-sided referrals, along with our good service and exhibited loyalty, is how we earn the trust of large CPA firms.

Financial Statement Audit Preparation

We assist companies with the preparation of schedules requested by auditors and used by them to conduct their audit. We perform these audit preparation services for large CPA firms for many reasons:

• We can do audit prep work cheaper than large CPA firms because we don't carry their overhead. Large CPA firms provide goodwill to their clients by passing off these services to our firm which saves their client money.
• We have the staffing resources to devote to audit preparation. Large CPA firms devote their staffing and resources to providing services with higher price tags.
• Other CPA firms like using us for audit prep work because we provide them with a binder of auditor requested schedules and we make sure that those schedules reconcile to the general ledger. This helps ensure that audit firms get a great realization rate on their audit because they won't have to spend time struggling to reconcile balances or prepare schedules. Since our employees have a combined 36 years experience performing financial statement audits, we know exactly what schedules the audit firms want.
• With the heightened awareness of auditor independence due to the recent failure of such companies as Enron and Worldcom, audit firms are more comfortable in outsourcing the audit prep/accounting services function to our firm, rather then performing audit prep services as well as the audit.

Accounting Records Clean-Up

Many smaller companies typically have a hard time keeping up with their accounting records. It is not unusual for small companies to not have performed bank reconciliations for several months. Large CPA firms like to hire us to assist their smaller clients with cleaning up their books. We refer to this service as a "mini-audit." This basically means that we reconcile all balance sheet account balances to their supporting detail and provide journal entries to correct differences. This provides the users of the financial statements with a stronger management tool and thus will enable better business decision making. We will also train the company's staff on how to appropriately account for various transactions so that the books retain their integrity into the future.

Auditing Services

CPA candidates are now required to have a Master's Degree. As a result, more would-be accounting students are majoring in Information Systems, Economics, Finance, etc. This has resulted in a sharp decline in supply of auditors.

The employees of our firm have a combined 36 years of experience in performing financial statement audits, reviews and compilations. We have experience in performing audits for Maryland's largest for profit and nonprofit companies. We are happy to serve as outsourced staff, management or technical reviewers, for large or small CPA firms needing assistance in completing their audits.

Tax Services

C. E. A. Scholtes & Associates are not tax specialists. We subscribe to the theory that it is better for the client to receive expert accounting services from an accounting specialist rather then receive mediocre accounting services and mediocre tax services from a generalist who engages in both accounting and tax services. As a result, we refer our clients needing tax advice to CPA firms with an experienced tax department employing staff devoted solely to tax strategy and compliance. For these reasons companies should be cautious when engaging a sole practitioner offering both accounting and tax services.

There are numerous accounting pronouncements issued by the Financial Accounting Standards Board, Accounting Review Board, Securities and Exchange Commission, and other governing bodies. We have devoted our practice to understanding these pronouncements for our clients.