A professional accountant who acquires a license from the state is known as a CPA or a certified public accountant. To become a CPA, a person needs to pass a 14-hour rigorous test covering topics like auditing, tax and business laws, business management and accounting after finishing formal college studies specializing in business and accounting. As the CPAs are from broad business backgrounds, they are regarded as the most suitable people for purposes of corporate accounting, auditing and business consultation.

For creating innovative business models, all business firms today are in need of professionals capable of integrating knowledge and skills from different sources for addressing strategic business issues. The accounting professionals have sound knowledge of traditional accounting system as well as possess cutting-edge professional business acumen with knowledge and skill of multiple disciplines.

The chief functional areas of CPAs are assurance services and public accounting. However, all CPAs have their own preferred field of activity such as consulting, auditing, etc. In the income tax preparation sector too, the CPAs have a suitable position. Every business firm has a tax and auditing department.

There is a broad range of services and activities performed by public accountants in auditing, accounting, tax, and consultation. Their clients are mainly corporations, non-profit organizations, government organization, and individuals. As an example, there may be certain public accountants who concentrate only on tax matters. They provide advisory service to many companies regarding the impact of taxations corresponding to certain business decisions and also prepare their income tax (IT) returns. The public accountants, mostly the Certified Public Accountants (CPAs), work independently in their privately held own accounting firms.

CPAs also provide various write-up services such as maintaining credit, managing operations, and preparing payroll tax and IT returns. These services find crucial importance at different stages of business management. Their write-up services also include payroll tax calculation, asset register maintenance by calculating depreciation, preparation of financial statements from raw trial balance data, and general ledger creation.

Many CPAs offer their services in the field of healthcare benefits and compensations. Certain CPAs find interest in designing and developing some accounting-related data processing system and giving advice on selecting controls for safeguarding assets. There are still others who provide accounting services in forensics. The forensic accountants make use of their accounting and financial knowledge along with the investigatory principles to ascertain legality of certain human activity.

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