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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.
Imagine a company started by a struggling entrepreneur: it began with one accounting staff, likely a non-CPA, and used Excel spreadsheet, largely a manual system. In the beginning, the attention of the business owner would primarily be focused on producing quality products or the efficient delivery of services, as well as developing and growing its client base. Over the years, the business has succeeded and expanded into an operation that now has more than 20 branches with a significantly much higher volume of transactions. However, its accounting group has likely remained lean, still employing a manual accounting system.
This story is not uncommon. Most businesses see their front office, sales and operation units or the units generating revenues as priority areas for resources and funding. On the other hand, the back office, the accounting unit – the one that tracks information after the operations have generated revenues and incurred expenses, is considered a cost center and thus, receives the least allocation in funding.
Because of this mindset, it is not surprising that business owners wake up one day finding their financial records in disarray and the financial reports either lacking or unreliable, or both. Common signs that indicate problems in the accounting group would include, among others, missing or unavailable financial reports or basic financial statements; months of backlog in transaction records; various unsupported transactions; unreconciled general ledger and subsidiary ledger; and a lack of or substantially delayed bank reconciliations.
The lack of attention to the proper and timely accounting of business transactions has significant consequences. Management is not properly guided when making business decisions, resulting in foregone opportunities or bad decisions that could lead to losses. Reliance on cash flow reports or the movements of funds in the company’s bank accounts, which are used as an alternative basis for assessing the business’ position, poses dangers to decision-making. In this scenario, business owners usually fail to consider other critical aspects affecting the business such as contingent liabilities, unrecorded obligations. Likewise, fraudulent transactions within the organization may go undetected when accounting records are not in order.
The lack of proper accounting records is also one of the reasons why companies are unable to comply with their tax obligations. The business is likely to be very vulnerable and unprepared for any examination by the tax authorities.
As a Firm, we have always advocated maintenance of proper accounting records. We always believe that management will have a better picture of the company’s current financial status and will make better informed decisions of the future when the financial records are updated, prepared on time and in order.
It is, thus, pleasing to see an increasing number of businesses that are realizing the value of maintaining proper accounting records. They engage accounting professionals to help them fix and keep their books in order. While updating financial records generally takes time and requires investment, companies now understand that not having accurate financial information is risky and may result in more costly business decisions in the long run.
The participation of the younger generation in family-owned businesses has also paved the way for the founding members of family to consider infusing new technology and professional consultants into their operations. Increasingly, these new generations of business owners are able to convince their parents that the way of doing business has now evolved and, to be competitive, finance and accounting practices must not only efficiently record the results of operations and financial condition of the company but also provide critical information for a more accurate analysis of customer behaviors and needs.
The transformation of these companies has several benefits – some companies are finding it easier to access financing and some are even able to launch an IPO. With better quality financial reports, decision-making by the management improves significantly.
Clearly, the accounting unit of a business organization is no longer seen as a cost or just a back office but as a necessary support group enabling the operations to achieve its strategy. We have seen companies that took the hard route to keeping their records updated and reliable, and several companies that regressed or decided to continue doing things the old way as the cleaning-up process took its toll. Those that took the hard road found the path to success.
Chris Ferareza is a Partner, Audit & Assurance and In-Charge of Training at 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 23 March 2016