Monroe Shine has developed an audit practice niche in which we perform audit and compliance services for a wide variety of employee benefit plans including 401(k) plans, 403(b) plans, profit sharing plans and employee stock ownership plans. Auditing employee benefit plans is a specialized practice area that requires industry-specific experience and knowledge. For that reason, our professional staff serving employee benefit plans are organized as a practice group which allows the officers and staff serving these clients to develop and maintain the necessary knowledge and skills to perform these audits in the most effective and efficient manner possible. Members of the employee benefit plan audit team attend regular training specifically dealing with these audits such as the AICPA National Conference on Employee Benefit Plans and the AICPA Employee Benefit Plans Accounting, Auditing and Regulatory Update.
In addition to auditing services, we also provide consulting services for many of our employee benefit plan clients regarding Form 5500 preparation, ERISA compliance and nondiscrimination testing, and plan setup or termination. We have also assisted a number of clients in self-correcting operational failures in accordance with guidelines established by the Internal Revenue Service and Department of Labor to minimize potential penalties imposed upon the plan sponsor.
Our firm is a member of both the Center for Public Company Audit Firms and the Private Company Practice Section of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). The firm is also registered with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). We maintain a quality control system to ensure that our accounting and auditing practices are in accordance with professional standards. We monitor quality by annual inspection and testing of compliance with our quality control policy and procedures by detail review of audit files and an independent peer review every three years. Our latest AICPA peer review resulted in an unqualified opinion, and our latest PCAOB inspection did not identify any audit performance or quality control system defects.
