Yacht Crew Training, Inc. is a privately owned corporation that has been in business for 15 years. The company specializes in training individuals who work on private yachts. Its promotion materials state that in 2009 the company trained 600 deckhands and 900 stewards and that the two mock-up yacht environments on the property used for training replicate a 120' and 180' yacht, respectively. Yacht Crew Training, Inc. is a legitimate training company with a sound reputation among everyone who has personal knowledge of the business. The environment usually “sells itself” when anyone personally visits the site. However, the company encounters difficulty when potential customers are not local and want some means to establish that it is a legitimate business. Up to this point, Yacht Crew Training has provided references and has referred potential customers to the local Better Business Bureau. The manager is wondering about the possibility of having an accountant’s report as a way to respond to potential customers’ inquiries.
(a) Given that there is no organization that sets standards for yacht crew training, and there is no certification regarding the skills, can management state any assertions about the quality or effectiveness of its training process that an accountant can attest to for a general use report? Why or why not?
(b)Write a management assertion for attestation purposes on: (1) the years Yacht Crew Training has been in business; (2) the number of individuals trained in 2009; (3) the size of its mock-up environments. Can the auditor provide a general distribution attest report on these assertions?
(c) Yacht Crew Training states that it teaches basic seamanship, docking procedures, ropes and knots, bartending, and flower arranging. Write management assertions and agreed-upon procedures that would provide useful information to someone who lives a distance from Yacht Crew Training and wants to know that these subjects are actually covered in the training materials. Is there any way that an attestation report addressing these assertions could have general distribution? Would your answer be different if the Coast Guard wrote standards on training for seamanship, docking, and ropes and knots, and the American Hotel and Restaurant Association wrote standards for training on bartending and flower arranging? Write the attest report assuming the standards exist.