Any accountants??

Einstein

Can any accountant tell me the difference between a qualified and unqualified set of company accounts?

D

sceptre

I'm not an accountant (hated the idea).

However it's perfectly simple and it's all to do with what the auditor thought of the accounts (note: it's nothing to do with whether the accountant who prepared the accounts is qualified or non-qualified as an accountant - the accounts are qualified or unqualified, not the guy preparing them).

An unqualified auditor's report will read something along the lines of "in our opinion the set of accounts give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of company X blah blah blah and have been prepared in accordance with the provisions of <insert relevant acts>"

In other words, as far as the auditor is concerned any idiot can read the accounts and see where the company is at pretty much without any little things that might mislead (either intentionally or unintentionally). An auditor is like a watchdog rather than a bloodhound as someone or other (the relevant case is Re Kingston Cotton Mill Co, IIRC)everyone's had to quote in their college auditing exam (I know I did) once said.

With that in mind, a qualified auditor's report contains exactly what you might expect - things that the auditor reckons haven't been presented properly in the accounts. It'll include small things like (small) transactions that they think should have been included in a different financial year (watch out for phrases like "subject to" or "except for" before the "true and fair view" bit). In the case where the non-bloodhound auditor stumbles over rampant pissing about with the accounts it'll have the nice phrase of "does not give a true and fair view of the accounts..." or "we have been unable to form an opinion..." Put simply if either of the last two phrases appear either someone's cooking the books (badly) or the auditors reckon they probably are - and the company is having a big fight with the auditors too as otherwise they'd work to sort the situation as having an entry like this is frankly very bad and looks very bad (an auditor may just be a watchdog but a good auditor isn't going to be a lapdog either IMHO, cof, Arthur Anderson regardless of whether they shredded files or not).

So unqualified opinion is either good or the company has just been diddling the books well enough that the auditor didn't spot it and qualified opinion is bad but might be not so bad or very bad.

Einstein

thanks sceptre,

excuse me while I go kick my accountant where the sun don't shine

D

sceptre

You're going to kick him in his blackened soul?

Mightn't be so bad (it's rare that it's actually that bad) - if you've a large amount of cash transactions in your business there will usually be a qualifier of some sort.