American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) in the United States

The AICPA is the main trade association for Certified Public Accountants. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants is the national, professional organization of certified public accountants comprised of more than 350,000 members who advise clients on Federal, state and international tax matters as well as prepare income and other tax returns for millions of Americans. The members provide services to individuals, not-for-profit organizations, small and medium-size businesses, as well as America’s major businesses, including multi-national corporations. Many serve businesses as employees.

The AICPA Web site posts information about the AICPA, AICPA publications and activities, accounting-related news, accounting links, the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct, back issues of AICPA newsletters and journals, AcSEC Exposure Drafts and Comment Letters, etc. (www.aicpa.org).

To Get AICPA Materials: You can buy, borrow or go online to get AICPA publications.

To buy AICPA publications, use the online AICPA Catalog posted on the AICPA Web site or call the AICPA’s main number (1-888-777-7077) and asking for the Order Department.

To borrow AICPA publications, contact an accounting firm library, an academic library that supports an accounting school or the University of Mississippi library (866-806-2133), to which the AICPA donated its entire library in 2001.

To get AICPA materials online you will probably need a subscription to RIA’sCheckPoint, CCH’s Accounting Research Manager or the AICPA’s “reSOURCE online” database on CPA2Biz.com. The sources posted include AICPA Professional Standards, AICPA Technical Practice Aids, AICPA Audit and Accounting Guides, AICPA Audit Risk Alerts, and AICPA Accounting Trends & Techniques. Checkpoint and the Accounting Research Manager are far easier to use than reSOURCE online.

Key AICPA Publications:

Following is a list of select AICPA materials and where to to get them.

AICPA interpretations, practice bulletins, audit guides, etc. published in FASB’sAccounting Standards: Original Pronouncements. Original Pronouncements is a multi-volume loose-leaf service found in many large law firm libraries, as well as most accounting libraries. It is also available on the FARS CD-ROM, through RIA’sCheckpoint CCH’s Accounting Research Manager and reSOURCE online (discussed above).

AICPA documents (e.g., Document No. 927) are available from the AICPA’s 24-hour automated fax-back service for free. Just call 201-938-3787 from a telephone hooked up to a fax machine and the document will be faxed right away.

For AICPA Statements on Auditing Standards, see the separate entry for “Auditing Standards.”

AICPA Statements of Position (SOPs) of the Accounting Standards Division are the written opinions of the AICPA’s Accounting Standards Executive Committee. SOPs are first published as individual documents and are later included in that year’s volume ofTechnical Practice Aids (TPA). SOPs can be purchase from the AICPA (as discussed above), copied from TPA or printed from the TPA section of RIA’s Checkpoint, CCH’sAccounting Research Manager or the “reSOURCE online” database on CPA2Biz.com(also discussed above).
Note: We linked the resources to archive.org in an effort to decrease the number of broken links cited.

See Also

Accounting
Auditing Standards
Certified Public Accountants (CPAs)
Financial Accounting Standards Board