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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Tax compliance
We aim to minimize the impact of taxation, enabling you to maximize your potential savings and to expand your business.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Global culture
Our people tell us that our global culture is one of the biggest attractions of a career with Grant Thornton.
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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
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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.
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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.
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In the community
Many Grant Thornton member firms provide a range of inspirational and generous services to the communities they serve.
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Fresh Graduates
Fresh Graduates
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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.
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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.
There is no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most disruptive world events of the last century. Its impact is surprisingly greater than that of SARS in 2003, or Ebola in 2014.
The effects of our response have been unprecedented. We have seen cultural organizations receive zero visitors, religious institutions shut off mass gatherings, the entertainment industry canceled big events, and educational institutions made hard decisions to carry out online classes.
What has been the effect to your organizations? As we approach the end of the year, the pandemic’s effects are not showing any signs of stopping. This has made the future impact on the economy difficult to model and assess.
Organizations and businesses should start to shift their focus to recovery and stabilization. Right now, it is best to start preparations for a post-pandemic recovery in order to become well-positioned towards sustaining operations and achieving mission delivery.
Which areas can we focus first? Let us look at these five: Governance, risk management, budget and forecasting, liquidity and human capital.
Transforming governance structures
At the onset of the pandemic, organizations were pushed to exhaust their crisis management teams. The risks affecting business needed to be identified immediately, so that concerns with inventory, cash flow and operations can be quickly addressed. Because of the fast transformation of the business landscape, boards and management were urged to make uninformed decisions and act without weighing the pros and cons. This forced organizations to change their governance structures and reporting lines to allow boards and management teams to speed through crises. Constitutions, bylaws and guidelines were basically shunned to make way for the implementation of necessary crisis strategies.
In line with these, a thorough review of the organization’s crisis and continuity strategies, governance documents, the composition of the crisis management team, protocols and checklists can help restart operations safely. Knowledge management teams must determine the skill set of the current board to ensure the right expertise and appropriate guidance by the board. These skills should include occupational safety and healthcare, financial resilience and sustainability, people and culture, risk and business continuity, and information technology.
Applying learnings from the pandemic
Many companies still have inadequate risk management processes, and the time to strengthen them is now. On the other hand, companies with advanced risk management processes should prioritize updating their risk registers, applying learnings gained from the past few months. Gaps in business continuity plans should be identified to minimize unexpected mishaps. There are many factors to consider when creating a well-designed risk management plan, including the following: operations assessment, people, information technology, treasury, stakeholders and program constituents, communication with staff, physical assets, among many others.
Another measure to take is evaluating vendor relationships, business partners and advisors to ensure readiness for challenges that come from the pandemic. Contract disputes with third parties may lead to strains in organizations. A post-pandemic environment would require companies to secure critical supply chains and strengthen relationships with peer institutions/networks for better collaboration.
Adapting with budget and forecasting
As organizations drastically reduce expense on utilities, travel, events and meetings, budgets were somehow positively impacted. Similarly, the office space being used for administrative purposes can be renovated to become programmatic space. The loose budget can be repurposed to prioritize expenses for contactless business processes, IT systems and technologies useful to the work from home arrangement.
This time for recovery can also be used to review measures for reserves management as well as determine the effectiveness of policies in the navigation and reaction to the crisis. The cost for existing programs can also be examined for re-allocation to necessary programs aligned to the mission of the company. Forecasting tools can be used to refine key assumptions and desired outcomes based on the review of all the mentioned factors, allowing for an efficient model and strategy to emerge.
Analyzing liquidity
One of the most difficult parts of pandemic recovery is liquidity, leading to stress on company treasury functions. Some strategies that sustain healthy cash position include reducing nonessential costs, cutting on salaries, furloughs of employees and delaying payments to suppliers and vendors. These were immediately countered by decreasing receivable collections from constituents, cancelling events and refunds, calling organizations to exhaust all available lines of credit to boost cash balances.
Since we are on the road to recovery, it is recommended that companies should identify and analyze the available levers to manage liquidity and respond accordingly. Management’s crisis analysis can also include the evaluation of credit facilities.
The impact on human capital
With the crisis making furlough of employees a viable option, a formal policy must be implemented to protect an organization’s people. Formalizing established policies can help ease future activation so they can be more readily available and structured. Code of conduct policies should also be reviewed and modified to address the effects of a remote workforce. As the pandemic can take a toll on one’s mental health, including or enhancing mental health benefits for employees can also be considered.
Sustainability is key
In conclusion, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to responding to the immediate impacts of the pandemic, and there are no accurate predictions of what is to come. Business leaders must have a mindset that allows flexibility to be able to quickly shift to sustain operations and mission fulfillment. Surely, the effects of the pandemic are damaging, but there are lots of lessons learned. It is a matter of cleverly applying these learnings to ensure sustainability during post-pandemic recovery.
Mhycke Gallego is a Partner of the Advisory Services Division of P&A Grant Thornton. P&A Grant Thornton is one of the leading audit, tax, advisory, and outsourcing firms in the Philippines with 24 Partners and more than 900 staff members. We’d like to hear from you! Tweet us: @GrantThorntonPH, like us on Facebook: P&A Grant Thornton, and email your comments to mhycke.gallego@ph.gt.com or pagrantthornton@ph.gt.com. For more information, visit our website: www.grantthornton.com.ph
As published in The Manila Times, dated 23 December 2020