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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.
The value of client satisfaction surveys to professional firms
Mailene Sigue-Bisnar
27 Apr 2016
McKinsey & Company, a worldwide management consulting firm that conducts qualitative and quantitative analyses in order to help businesses evaluate management decisions, found that an unhappy customer tells between 9 and 15 people about his or her experience. In fact, 13 percent of unhappy customers tell more than 20 people about their experience.
The challenge for us then is: how do you get the pulse of your customers before they tell others about their bad experience? The common method used to measure such pulse is usually the client satisfaction survey (CSS). But how effective are these surveys, especially for professional services firms?
Chances are, you have been asked to respond to a customer survey. You see these everywhere—as pop-up on online sites, in restaurants and hotel rooms, as part of a conference or training kits and many others. Honestly, have you answered one? If yes, how often do you respond to these surveys? Many of the forms given out to respondents are usually left unaccomplished. Customers always have an excuse not to do it: “I’m in a hurry,” or “I have nothing to say,” or “I just don’t believe in it.”
Getting a survey done by patrons of restaurants and hotels, where the experience is common, immediate and, as they term it now, atm (at the moment), is difficult enough. More so if the survey is done by clients of professional services firms such as ours.
Besides, restaurants, hotels, retail shops or online sites can draw survey participants from a bigger population, while accounting and audit firms and law firms, by their service portfolio, usually have to contend with a smaller pool of possible respondents. Thus, professional services firms have a smaller set of data for the analysis of their survey results.
And yet, we believe and advocate the use of CSS in the professional services industry. We do conduct CSS yearly and we have seen its value in our service delivery and overall customer satisfaction experience. It helps us focus on our commitment to deliver quality service and alerts us to reach out to clients with potential problems.
The value and importance of client feedback is non-debatable. There are two imperatives that we assess: one is the quality of the outputs that we deliver and the other is the relationship we build with clients in the course of delivering the outputs.
Assessing the quality of output is quite straightforward. Our questions are geared toward the client’s actual experience against their expectations, their current experience against their experience in the past years (for recurring clients) and even relative to the professional fees paid. Since professional services firms are delivering services—which are intangibles—the survey tries to capture the ‘client experience.’
The second component refers to relationships. As a partner in a professional services firm and a business a dvisor, I build and nurture relationships through every client touchpoint. I believe that relationships are based not only on our sincerity to help clients find solutions to their financial and business concerns but also through a consistent showcase of professionalism in every aspect of client interaction, enriched by the firm’s collaborative mindset. Relationships should also mean having shared values and goals, supplemented by an honest and open feedback mechanism.
Another important measurement we look for is the net promoter index. This index tells us who among our clients will potentially recommend us to their friends and colleagues, who are passively or neutrally happy and who are unhappy and at risk of leaving.
Today’s clients demand and expect more from professional services companies. Amid stiff competition and the evolving world of the services sector, client relationships could make or break a firm’s chances in acquiring or retaining accounts. It is not enough that the outputs and results are excellent; the client experience in achieving the said results also equally matter.
Thus, in parallel with CSS, we should be able to create windows for dialogues and conversations that will allow both parties to discuss issues and concerns at an institutional and strategic level. We should establish ethical, open, and regular discussions with clients on how the relationship (and not just the ‘work’) is performing. Results of the CSS could serve as the kick-off point in exploring other aspects of the relationship.
Relationships, however, are two-way streets. Partnerships with clients will only be meaningful if both parties are open to communicating with each other; and also if the clients are willing to provide honest and constructive feedback. As I challenge professional services firms to conduct CSS and analyze the results and act on the issues raised, I also call on the clients, especially when answering the CSS, to evaluate their engagements and relationships with professional services companies and respond to the CSS in a straightforward manner. Are the services you are receiving up to your standards and expectations? Has your partnership evolved into a productive one? What should be done to improve the relationship?
We challenge you, the clients, to be candid with your assessment of your professional firms. Maximize the feedback channels they give you. These provide valuable feedback to your professional services firm for them to deliver the great client experience you deserve.
Mai Sigue-Bisnar is Partner, Audit & Assurance, and Head, Markets Group, of P&A Grant Thornton. P&A Grant Thornton is one of the leading Audit, Tax, Advisory, and Outsourcing firms in the Philippines, with 20 Partners and over 700 staff members
As published in The Manila Times dated 27 April 2016