-
Audit approach overview
Our audit approach will allow our client's accounting personnel to make the maximum contribution to the audit effort without compromising their ongoing responsibilities
-
Annual and short period audit
At P&A Grant Thornton, we provide annual and short period financial statement audit services that go beyond the normal expectations of our clients. We believe strongly that our best work comes from combining outstanding technical expertise, knowledge and ability with exceptional client-focused service.
-
Review engagement
A review involves limited investigation with a narrower scope than an audit, and is undertaken for the purpose of providing limited assurance that the management’s representations are in accordance with identified financial reporting standards. Our professionals recognize that in order to conduct a quality financial statement review, it is important to look beyond the accounting entries to the underlying activities and operations that give rise to them.
-
Other Related Services
We make it a point to keep our clients abreast of the developments and updates relating to the growing complexities in the accounting world. We offer seminars and trainings on audit- and tax-related matters, such as updates on Accounting Standards, new pronouncements and Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) issuances, as well as other developments that affect our clients’ businesses.
-
Tax advisory
With our knowledge of tax laws and audit procedures, we help safeguard the substantive and procedural rights of taxpayers and prevent unwarranted assessments.
-
Tax compliance
We aim to minimize the impact of taxation, enabling you to maximize your potential savings and to expand your business.
-
Corporate services
For clients that want to do business in the Philippines, we assist in determining the appropriate and tax-efficient operating business or investment vehicle and structure to address the objectives of the investor, as well as related incorporation issues.
-
Tax education and advocacy
Our advocacy work focuses on clarifying the interpretation of laws and regulations, suggesting measures to increasingly ease tax compliance, and protecting taxpayer’s rights.
-
Business risk services
Our business risk services cover a wide range of solutions that assist you in identifying, addressing and monitoring risks in your business. Such solutions include external quality assessments of your Internal Audit activities' conformance with standards as well as evaluating its readiness for such an external assessment.
-
Business consulting services
Our business consulting services are aimed at addressing concerns in your operations, processes and systems. Using our extensive knowledge of various industries, we can take a close look at your business processes as we create solutions that can help you mitigate risks to meet your objectives, promote efficiency, and beef up controls.
-
Transaction services
Transaction advisory includes all of our services specifically directed at assisting in investment, mergers and acquisitions, and financing transactions between and among businesses, lenders and governments. Such services include, among others, due diligence reviews, project feasibility studies, financial modelling, model audits and valuation.
-
Forensic advisory
Our forensic advisory services include assessing your vulnerability to fraud and identifying fraud risk factors, and recommending practical solutions to eliminate the gaps. We also provide investigative services to detect and quantify fraud and corruption and to trace assets and data that may have been lost in a fraud event.
-
Cyber advisory
Our focus is to help you identify and manage the cyber risks you might be facing within your organization. Our team can provide detailed, actionable insight that incorporates industry best practices and standards to strengthen your cybersecurity position and help you make informed decisions.
-
ProActive Hotline
Providing support in preventing and detecting fraud by creating a safe and secure whistleblowing system to promote integrity and honesty in the organisation.
-
Accounting services
At P&A Grant Thornton, we handle accounting services for several companies from a wide range of industries. Our approach is highly flexible. You may opt to outsource all your accounting functions, or pass on to us choice activities.
-
Staff augmentation services
We offer Staff Augmentation services where our staff, under the direction and supervision of the company’s officers, perform accounting and accounting-related work.
-
Payroll Processing
Payroll processing services are provided by P&A Grant Thornton Outsourcing Inc. More and more companies are beginning to realize the benefits of outsourcing their noncore activities, and the first to be outsourced is usually the payroll function. Payroll is easy to carve out from the rest of the business since it is usually independent of the other activities or functions within the Accounting Department.
-
Our values
Grant Thornton prides itself on being a values-driven organisation and we have more than 38,500 people in over 130 countries who are passionately committed to these values.
-
Global culture
Our people tell us that our global culture is one of the biggest attractions of a career with Grant Thornton.
-
Learning & development
At Grant Thornton we believe learning and development opportunities allow you to perform at your best every day. And when you are at your best, we are the best at serving our clients
-
Global talent mobility
One of the biggest attractions of a career with Grant Thornton is the opportunity to work on cross-border projects all over the world.
-
Diversity
Diversity helps us meet the demands of a changing world. We value the fact that our people come from all walks of life and that this diversity of experience and perspective makes our organisation stronger as a result.
-
In the community
Many Grant Thornton member firms provide a range of inspirational and generous services to the communities they serve.
-
Fresh Graduates
Fresh Graduates
-
Students
Whether you are starting your career as a graduate or school leaver, P&A Grant Thornton can give you a flying start. We are ambitious. Take the fact that we’re the world’s fastest-growing global accountancy organisation. For our people, that means access to a global organisation and the chance to collaborate with more than 40,000 colleagues around the world. And potentially work in different countries and experience other cultures.
-
Experienced hires
P&A Grant Thornton offers something you can't find anywhere else. This is the opportunity to develop your ideas and thinking while having your efforts recognised from day one. We value the skills and knowledge you bring to Grant Thornton as an experienced professional and look forward to supporting you as you grow you career with our organisation.
Making your financial statements an effective communication tool
Maria Isabel E. Comedia
04 May 2016
Going through audited financial statements nowadays is like reading through a long technical paper. It has become more difficult for management to prepare, more cumbersome for auditors to audit, and more complicated for users to understand for their management and investment decisions.
The financial statements are getting lengthier over the years as the new financial reporting standards (i.e. the Philippine Financial Reporting Standards or the PFRS) are introduced or amendments to existing ones are made.
Moreover, the regulatory agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Bureau of Internal Revenue require additional disclosures. Of course, disclosures are required for good reasons: to respond to more complex business models and transactions, and to meet the investors’ need to understand them.
Unfortunately, many investors complain that these result in cluttered financial statements where the truly important information is hard to find.
Lately, however, there has been some good news. With encouragement from regulators in big economies and from the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), the global standards setting body, companies around the world are making innovations in their financial statements. Every company is doing so in its own way, in order to better tell its own story. The goal is to refocus the communication objective without losing sight of the need to comply with the technical requirements.
Grant Thornton, one of the world’s leading accounting and auditing, tax and advisory firms, has taken an active role in this project. It has identified four themes—or best practices—that companies who are preparing the financial statements may follow. The four best practices are interdependent; each should be used to a greater or lesser extent depending on your circumstances. These are:
Comply but communicate
The disclosures in PFRS are voluminous. Some are labeled as minimum requirements while some standards set out a disclosure objective, along with examples of the types of information that might meet the objective. While you need to comply with these standards and regulations, you also need to ensure that your financial statements become an effective part of your broader communication with your stakeholders. We suggest that you take a holistic approach where you consider your annual report as a whole with a consistent and coherent message throughout. More importantly, we suggest that you keep it simple; by providing commentary on more complex areas in plain language. For example, in defining a derivative, the disclosure can start with, “A derivative is a type of financial instrument the Company uses to manage risk. It is something that derives its value based on an underlying asset.”
Omit the immaterial
Traditionally many companies have taken a checklist approach. It may seem easier to simply include a disclosure than to make a difficult judgment about whether it is material. With the risk of regulatory challenge, companies have traditionally taken a ‘safety-first’ approach and opted for greater disclosures. But there are new developments; the new consensus is that including immaterial information is not only unnecessary but actually reduces the usefulness of your financial statements. Information should only be disclosed if it is material. It is material if it could influence users’ decisions based on the financial statements. While the disclosures in PFRS are voluminous, there is a drive to disclose information only if it’s material.
Rethink the notes
Companies are challenged to reevaluate how the notes to the financial statements are organized to improve their effectiveness as a communication tool. There are ways to do this: (1) Integrating the notes – combine your notes to achieve a more effective communication. For example, integrate your main note of a line item with its accounting policy and any relevant key estimates and judgment. (2) Reordering the notes—move away from the traditional order of the notes by grouping notes into categories, placing the most critical information in a prominent position, or a combination of both. (3) Using signposting—assist users in navigating your financial statements through the use of effective signposting, cross-referencing and indexing.
Prioritize the policies
The aim of accounting policy disclosures is to help your investors and other stakeholders to properly understand your financial statements. To make accounting policy disclosures effective you should: (1) Disclose only your significant accounting policies by removing insignificant disclosures that do not add any value. Use judgment to determine whether your accounting policies are significant by considering not only the materiality of the balances or transactions affected by the policy but also the other factors including the nature of the company’s operations. (2) Make your policies clear and specific—reduce generic disclosures (for example, those that summarize the accounting standards) and focus on company’s specific disclosures that explain how the company applies the policies. (3) Articulate key estimates and judgments –use effective disclosures about the most important estimates and judgments to enable investors to understand your financial statements. For estimates, focus on the most difficult, subjective and complex. Include details of how the estimate was derived, how the key assumptions were involved, how the process for reviewing and sensitivity analysis was chosen, how the sufficient background information brought on the judgment, and how the judgment and conclusion were reached.
In making these changes, one thing does not change. Financial reporting is a regulated activity and compliance with the requirements is a must. Getting it right requires professional expertise, care and attention to detail, proper planning and project management and fit-for-purpose systems and controls.
Mabel Comedia is a Partner for Audit & Assurance, and Partner-in-charge of Technical Standards and Quality Control of P&A Grant Thornton. P&A Grant Thornton is one of the leading Audit, Tax, Advisory, and Outsourcing firm in the Philippines, with 20 Partners and over 700 staff members.
As published in The Manila Times dated 04 May 2016.