| name | verify-accountant |
| title | California DCA Licensed Accountant Verification |
| description | >- Verify a California-licensed accountant (CPA, Public Accountant, or accounting firm) on the DCA license search at search.dca.ca.gov — boardCode=19 (California Board of Accountancy). Returns full license record with status, dates, city, and any disciplinary actions. |
| website | search.dca.ca.gov |
| category | licensing |
| tags | - licensing - accountancy - cpa - california - verification - compliance - read-only |
| source | 'browserbase: agent-runtime 2026-05-18' |
| updated | '2026-05-18' |
| recommended_method | browser |
| alternative_methods | - method: api rationale: >- No public API. Direct POST /results without a Cloudflare Turnstile token returns HTTP 302 to / (verified by direct fetch). Probed /api/license, /api/search, /license, /licensee, /detail, /details — all 404. Live browser session with Turnstile solve is the only verification path. |
| verified | true |
| proxies | true |
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.
-
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"
-
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.
-
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.
-
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">.
-
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.
-
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>.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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>"
}
