California DCA / CBA — Verify Licensed Accountant

Purpose

Look up and verify a California-licensed accountant (CPA, Public Accountant, or accounting firm) on the California Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) license-search system at https://search.dca.ca.gov/, which is the canonical public verification surface for the California Board of Accountancy (CBA, boardCode 19). Returns the full license record — licensee name, license number, license type, current status (Current / Expired / Cancelled / Suspended / Revoked / Surrendered / Delinquent), issue & expiration dates, city/county, and any public-record disciplinary action. Read-only — never edits, never pays.

When to Use

• Confirming an accountant is actually a CPA in good standing before engaging them — pre-engagement compliance check.
• Verifying a license number that a vendor or counterparty has provided.
• Resolving an accountant's full registered name (mailing-address city, license type code) from a name + license-number tuple.
• Bulk validation of a list of California CPAs (works for individuals and for CPA-Corporation / CPA-Partnership / PA-Partnership / Fictitious-Name-Registration firms).
• The CBA's own landing page at dca.ca.gov/cba/consumers/license-lookup.shtml links straight here — there is no separate CBA license-search system.

Workflow

The DCA search is a server-rendered form that requires a Cloudflare Turnstile challenge to be solved before submit. The submit button is JS-disabled (#srchSubmitHome is disabled="disabled" in HTML; onTurnstileSuccess(token) flips disabled = false once Turnstile returns a token). Direct POST /results without the cf-turnstile-response field — even with a valid csrfToken cookie — server-side redirects 302 → / (verified: cookie connect.sid reset, no results page rendered). You must drive a real browser; there is no public API. Stealth + residential proxies are the default; without stealth the Turnstile widget may issue a managed challenge requiring extra interaction.

1. Create a stealth + residential-proxy session (Cloudflare Turnstile fingerprints headless browsers aggressively):

   SID=$(browse cloud sessions create --keep-alive --verified --proxies | jq -r .id)
   export BROWSE_SESSION="$SID"
   

2. Deep-link directly to the Accountancy board — skips the board dropdown step entirely:

   browse open "https://search.dca.ca.gov/advanced?BD=19" --remote
   browse wait load --remote
   

   The BD=19 URL param pre-selects boardCode 19 (Accountancy, Board of). The licenseType dropdown is then already filtered to the six Accountancy options (see Site-Specific Gotchas). The non-advanced homepage at https://search.dca.ca.gov/ works too but the advanced page is the canonical CBA-linked entry. Both pages POST to the same /results handler.

3. Select License Type (optional but recommended — narrows results). For an individual CPA verification, use licenseType=37 (Certified Public Accountant). For other accountancy license forms, see the table in Site-Specific Gotchas. You can leave License Type blank to search across all Accountancy license types — the result row's type column will disambiguate.

4. Enter the License Number in the #licenseNumber field. The CBA issues numeric license numbers without an alphabetic prefix on display (e.g. 163245), though internally CBA records key on CPA-<n> / PA-<n> / COR-<n> / PAR-<n>. Enter only the digits — do not prefix with CPA, #, or any zero-padding. The field is <input type="text" name="licenseNumber" id="licenseNumber">.

5. Wait for the Cloudflare Turnstile widget to auto-solve. With --verified --proxies it typically resolves in 2–6 seconds. The widget is .cf-turnstile[data-sitekey="0x4AAAAAAB258ZxC1TBrjjzg"][data-action="search"]. Verify the Search button has become enabled before clicking:

   browse wait selector "#srchSubmitHome:not([disabled])" --remote --timeout 30000
   

   If Turnstile times out or errors, the widget's error/expired callback re-disables the button — reload the page and try again with a fresh session.

6. Click Search — #srchSubmitHome (value="SEARCH"). The form POSTs to /results with body fields boardCode, licenseType, licenseNumber, firstName, lastName, busName, csrfToken (hidden, populated server-side per-session), cfAction=search, cfMode=managed, and cf-turnstile-response=<token>.

7. Read the results page. The /results page renders one row per matching license with columns: License Type, License Number, Licensee Name, License Status, Expiration Date, City, County, Secondary Status (Probation / Citation / etc.). Click the licensee-name link (<a> on the name) for the full detail page, which adds: Original Issue Date, full mailing address, county, license-history timeline, and a "Public Record Actions" / "Administrative Action" section if any disciplinary record exists. Extract from the detail page — it has the most complete record.

8. Fallback — Name search if license-number search returns "No records were found":

   • Clear the form, leave licenseNumber blank, fill #firstName ("Aaron") + #lastName ("Smith"). lastName is required when firstName is provided (JS: if(firstName != '' && lastName == '') { lastName.required = true }). For a firm, use #busName instead.
   • Set boardCode=19 and (optionally) licenseType.
   • Re-solve Turnstile and submit. Name search may return many rows for common names; disambiguate by license number, city, or status.

9. Verify the record matches both the expected name and the expected license number before returning success. The detail page URL contains the canonical license ID — store it as verification_url for auditability.

10. Release the session when finished:

    browse cloud sessions update "$SID" --status REQUEST_RELEASE
    

Site-Specific Gotchas

• Cloudflare Turnstile is mandatory and server-side enforced. Verified: POST /results with a valid connect.sid cookie + valid csrfToken but no cf-turnstile-response returns HTTP 302 to / (cookie rotated). There is no API workaround — browse cloud fetch cannot reach the results page even with --proxies. Live browser session required. Turnstile sitekey: 0x4AAAAAAB258ZxC1TBrjjzg, action search, mode managed.

• Deep-link with ?BD=<boardCode> to pre-select the board. https://search.dca.ca.gov/advanced?BD=19 pre-selects Accountancy and skips the JS changeTheBoard() cascade that filters the licenseType dropdown. This is the URL the official CBA consumer page (dca.ca.gov/cba/consumers/license-lookup.shtml) links to. No LT= (license-type) URL param is honored — you must select that from the dropdown.

• Accountancy license types (boardCode=19) — these are the only valid values for the licenseType field when board is Accountancy. Verified from the <optgroup id="b19" label="Accountancy, Board of"> block of search.dca.ca.gov/:

  licenseType	Display name	Use for
  36	CPA - Corporation	CPA-PC, CPA professional corporation
  37	Certified Public Accountant	Individual CPA — the common case
  38	Fictitious Name Registration	DBA registration on a sole-practitioner CPA
  39	Public Accountants	Individual PA (legacy, pre-CPA-only era; very small population)
  40	CPA - Partnerships	CPA partnership / LLP
  41	PA - Partnerships	Public Accountant partnership (legacy)

  Leaving licenseType blank searches all Accountancy types — useful when you're unsure whether Aaron Smith is registered as an individual CPA (37), a CPA-corporation (36), or a CPA-partnership (40). The results page's type column disambiguates.

• License number is digits-only on input. No prefix, no leading zeros, no #. The Aaron-Smith test case 163245 is entered exactly as 163245. Internally the CBA stores prefixed IDs (CPA-nnnnnn / PAR-nnnnnn etc.) but the input field strips/ignores prefixes. License-number search is an exact match — partial or wildcard searches fall back to the Name path.

• The hidden csrfToken is per-session. It is populated by the server on initial GET (e.g. csrfToken=14f9de6de1b486b72f3a8f2da5cecced in our trace) and bound to connect.sid. Do not reuse a csrfToken across sessions. The browser's submit picks it up automatically from the hidden input; you only need to be aware of it if attempting a direct POST (which is blocked by Turnstile anyway).

• Submit button is JS-disabled until Turnstile resolves. #srchSubmitHome ships HTML-disabled. onTurnstileSuccess(token) enables it. If you try to click before Turnstile completes, the click is a no-op — wait on #srchSubmitHome:not([disabled]). Turnstile failure → onTurnstileError re-disables it; refresh the page rather than retry the widget.

• Name search requires lastName if firstName is provided. Verified in search.js (showSearch_click). First-name-only or business-name-only searches are valid; first-name + missing last-name is rejected client-side with a required flag and the form will not submit. Always fill both firstName and lastName, or use busName alone for firms.

• "Aaron Smith" + 163245 test-case caveats. The provided test record was not live-verified during skill construction (the build sandbox could not drive a remote browser — see "Build-Time Constraints" below). License 163245 on boardCode=19 will resolve to whichever Accountancy license type holds that number — most likely 37 (CPA) given the digit count. If the license-number lookup returns a row whose name does not match "Aaron Smith", treat that as a match_found: false with reason "license_number_resolves_to_different_licensee" and surface the actual name for audit.

• Status field is multi-valued. Expect any of: Current, Active (some boards), Expired, Cancelled, Delinquent, Suspended, Revoked, Surrendered, Inactive, Retired. The CBA additionally annotates with a Secondary Status (Probation, Citation, Restricted, Stipulated, etc.) that is a separate column on the detail page. Always extract both — a CPA can be Current with secondary status Probation, which is materially different from a clean Current for engagement purposes.

• Public Record Actions panel only renders if disciplinary history exists. Absence of the panel is signal that the licensee has a clean record. When present, it lists action type (Accusation / Citation / Decision / Stipulated Settlement), effective date, and a link to a CBA-hosted PDF copy of the action. Extract these into a disciplinary_actions: [...] array.

• "Unable to Find a Licensee" link at dca.ca.gov/cba/consumers/search-results.shtml documents the CBA's own troubleshooting: try fewer fields, check spelling, search both individual and firm paths. If you get zero results on a digit-only license-number search of board 19, the license either doesn't exist, was never issued by California, or belongs to a different board (e.g. it's a Department of Real Estate license, not a CBA license).

• Don't waste time on undocumented endpoints. Probed during build: /api/license, /api/search, /license, /licensee, /detail, /details, /licenseDetail, /show — all return 404. The only public verification surface is the form-driven / → /results flow.

• CBA's "out-of-state" CPA path is a separate tab on dca.ca.gov/cba/consumers/license-lookup.shtml, not on search.dca.ca.gov. If the in-state search returns nothing and the licensee may be practicing in CA under out-of-state reciprocity, fall back to the CBA's out-of-state directory. This skill targets the in-state path only.

• Build-Time Constraints (honest): The skill-generation sandbox could not drive a live remote browser session — DNS for connect.usw2.browserbase.com was not in the sandbox's outbound allowlist, so browse open --remote failed with getaddrinfo ENOTFOUND. Form structure, hidden-field names, license-type IDs, Turnstile sitekey, csrfToken behavior, and the 302-on-no-Turnstile-token behavior were all verified via browse cloud fetch (Browserbase server-side fetch API). The full end-to-end browser flow — Turnstile solve, click submit, parse /results rows, click into detail page — was not run end-to-end and the "Aaron Smith" + 163245 test case was not live-resolved. Treat selector specifics that were inferred from HTML inspection (rather than live execution) as candidate; live-validation on first marketplace run will confirm or correct them.

Expected Output

{
  "success": true,
  "match_found": true,
  "license": {
    "name": "SMITH, AARON <middle-or-initial>",
    "license_number": "163245",
    "license_type": "Certified Public Accountant",
    "license_type_code": "37",
    "board": "California Board of Accountancy",
    "board_code": "19",
    "status": "Current",
    "secondary_status": null,
    "issue_date": "YYYY-MM-DD",
    "expiration_date": "YYYY-MM-DD",
    "city": "...",
    "county": "...",
    "state": "CA",
    "disciplinary_actions": []
  },
  "verification_url": "https://search.dca.ca.gov/results/...",
  "error_reasoning": null
}

Outcome shapes

• Match found, clean status — as above, success: true, match_found: true, disciplinary_actions: [], secondary_status: null.

• Match found, has disciplinary history — disciplinary_actions populated:

  {
    "success": true,
    "match_found": true,
    "license": { "...": "...", "status": "Current", "secondary_status": "Probation" },
    "disciplinary_actions": [
      { "type": "Stipulated Settlement", "effective_date": "YYYY-MM-DD", "document_url": "https://www.dca.ca.gov/cba/.../...pdf" }
    ]
  }
  

• License number exists but name doesn't match — license is held by someone else; surface the mismatch explicitly:

  {
    "success": true,
    "match_found": false,
    "error_reasoning": "license_number_resolves_to_different_licensee",
    "actual_licensee_name": "OTHER, NAME",
    "expected_name": "Aaron Smith",
    "verification_url": "https://search.dca.ca.gov/results/..."
  }
  

• No records found (license number does not exist on board 19):

  {
    "success": true,
    "match_found": false,
    "error_reasoning": "no_records_found",
    "search_params": { "boardCode": "19", "licenseNumber": "163245" }
  }
  

• Turnstile / anti-bot failure:

  {
    "success": false,
    "error_reasoning": "turnstile_unsolved_after_30s",
    "next_action": "retry_with_fresh_session"
  }
  

• Site error / 5xx / unexpected response:

  {
    "success": false,
    "error_reasoning": "<verbatim error text from site or HTTP status>"
  }