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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.
Traveling back and forth between Manila and Davao City has become a routine for me during the period we, external auditors, normally consider the busy season. From November to May, I earned a lot of airline miles that enabled me to attend various client meetings down south. My trip to Davao City last November 26 was different.
This most recent trip was special, as it coincided with almost the same date 27 years ago when I reported for work as one of the pioneering audit junior staff members of Punongbayan & Araullo (P&A) Davao Branch.
While shuttling from Davao International Airport to the hotel, I still vividly recalled the time I arrived in Davao City on November 25, 1990. It was a sunny Sunday. That was my second visit to the city, the first time being sometime in March 1985 with my friends. We traveled from my hometown in Cotabato City to buy shoes for our high school graduation. Unfortunately, we were held up right after we saw a movie at the Galaxy Theater. We went home empty-handed, with no shoes no show for our Davao trip.
Setting my feet again on Davao City to start my professional career brought back those terrifying memories. With just a thousand pesos to spare, I first secured my board and lodging. The amount left was just enough for me to survive another week before I received my first salary.
It was my birthday a few days after. It was one of my loneliest: No greetings received (a telegram from my parents arrived a day after), away from my family, and I had no extra money to celebrate. As early as 7 p.m., there was no other option but to go to sleep. While lying in my double deck bed, I promised myself that this situation would just be temporary, hoping things would change for the better someday.
It was tough at that time for an average student to land a job with a prestigious accounting firm. You needed to be a graduate of a reputable school, be at the top of your class, possess leadership skills or have the potential to be a CPA board topnotcher. P&A at that time was only two years old, yet had already established a mark in the industry by having at least half of its recruits being in the top 20 of the CPA board exams (the Board of Accountancy publishes the top 20 examinees back then). A few average students were given a chance, though some would say, it was simply by luck that they were picked in the draw. However, I believe recruiting junior audit staff members was not just for the sake of completing the lineup for the busy season. Of course, there must be something in the candidate that stood out during the interview, placing that person in the roster of new hires.
When I got back to Manila from Davao earlier this month, I had a scheduled “meet the partners” session with our new audit staff hires. I shared with them my journey at P&A and what I had learned and observed to survive this challenging auditors’ world. I would like to share with you as well what these learning experiences are, as they are valuable to everyone and not only to those who are working in this industry.
Make the most of your opportunities
Once you are on board, don’t waste the opportunities that present themselves right in front of you. New hires in an auditing firm would somehow be on equal footing prior to training. During the training, the top performers would naturally increase their chances of getting the opportunity to handle the big-ticket accounts for obvious reasons. Hence, if you are one of those top performers, you are already ahead of the pack. Although there could be an apparent difference in the opportunities afforded to new hires, one must not use that as an excuse not to give their 100 percent. The crux of the matter is how seriously you take the work that was assigned to you. Big or small assignments should always be given your 100 percent. Better performance will lead you to new and possibly bigger opportunities. Therefore, do not lose heart if it seems that you are not given challenging opportunities at work. Stay focused and always give it your best shot.
There will be personal sacrifices
It is not going to be a walk in the park. You have to understand the nature of your work and what it demands. The irony of working in an accounting firm is that, when everyone is celebrating, auditors are working: either attending an inventory count observation near the year-end, or finalizing an account during Valentine’s Day or Holy Week.
Good luck if your birthday falls in March or April, the busiest months prior to tax payment deadlines for calendar year-end clients. Of course, auditors always find time to party during and after a grueling busy season. My point here is that you need to set your priorities and be willing to make sacrifices.
Mind your gap. Invest in yourself
Read. Read. Read. You need to invest in yourself on top of the available training programs provided to you by your employer. This is the only way to be ahead of others.
Find your fit
Be conscious of how you fit in the organization where you work. Find your passion. That passion may be in the
work you are currently doing, in the periphery of your core work, or in another department within your organization. It could also be outside, with you being an entrepreneur. The learning experiences you accumulate and the work habits that you developed in your first job will always be with you and at your disposal, whatever career you want to pursue afterwards.
Now it’s Christmas time, happy inventory count (and Merry Christmas, of course)!
Ramil Nanola is a partner, Audit & Assurance of P&A Grant Thornton. P&A Grant Thornton is one of the leading audit, tax, advisory and outsourcing firms in the Philippines, with 21 partners and over 850 staff members. For your comments, please email ramil. nanola@ph.gt.com or PAGrantThornton.marketscomm@ph.gt.com. For more information about P&A Grant Thornton, visit our website www.grantthornton.com.ph.
As published in The Manila Times, dated 20 December 2017