Attest Services occur when a practitioner is engaged to issue or does issue a report on subject matter or an assertion about subject matter that is the responsibility of another party. It is a consulting service in which a CPA (Certified Public Accountants) expresses a conclusion about the reliability of a written statement that is the responsibility of someone else.
An attest service is one in which the CPA firm issues a written communication that expresses a conclusion about the reliability of a written assertion that is the responsibility of another party. These services may be classified into four categories:
(a) Audit: The primary example of an audit service is the financial statement audit. This type of audit involves obtaining and evaluating evidence about an entity’s historical financial statements wild contain assertions made by entity’s management.
(b) Examination: The term examination is used to describe other services that culminate in the positive expression of an opinion as to whether or not another party’s assertions conform to stated criteria.
(c) Review: A review service consists primarily of inquiries of an entity’s management and comparative analysis of financial information. The scope of this service is significantly less than for an audit or examination.
(d) Agreed upon Procedure: The scope of work in performing agreed-upon procedures is also less than that in an audit or examination. For example, the client and the CPA firm may agree that certain procedures will be performed on only specified elements as accounts in a financial statement as opposed to the financial statement as a whole.
Finally, those are the main Attest services provided by CPAs.
