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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.
Who would have thought that a 17-year-old girl would spark a generation of Filipino stars on Broadway and the West End? That was what Lea Salonga did when she got the role of Kim in Miss Saigon 27 years ago.
Lately, we have Filipinos winning reality talent shows all over the world and bagging plum roles in rock bands and sensational roles through YouTube and other social media networks.
For Lea and the constellation of Filipino stars that followed, a valuable brand—or to use a much broader term, brand intellectual property (IP)—could arise through a successful audition, excellence in sports, creation of a new fictional character or concept, or a new television format.
Not only are literary and artistic and athletic achievements the subjects of IP, other commercial endeavors, like a successful restaurant business, are usually covered by IP.
We have several restaurants that have been around for years like Max’s, Jollibee and even the relatively new Mang Inasal. Their critical and commercial success meant that they are harboring hand-me-down trade secrets or patents that are subjects of IP. Restaurateurs and other business owners should be granted rights on their trademarks, secret recipes and related trade secrets the same way that Salonga and other Filipino artists are granted copyrights on their creations.
In all cases, the brand represents intangible value above and beyond a singular product or service.
Now, imagine this: you have an IP, or you are hot property, and licensees are beginning to knock on your door suggesting new ways to exploit your brand. Well, what do you do? Aside from registering your IP with the IP office, which is first and foremost on our list, here are our six tips to ensure new and growing brands are protected.
1. Nail down a license agreement
The backbone of your relationship with any licensee is the license agreement. Work with experienced advisers at the start of the process to ensure the agreement covers all matters that are important or may become important to you.
Pay extra attention to deal terms that may be open to interpretation. Any ambiguity can cause grief later on down the line. Prioritize issues that are important to you and use creative deal terms to ensure that these are fully covered in the agreement.
2. Get the experts in early
Engage lawyers and accountants who can bring their cumulative legal and forensic experience to your benefit. Advisers can help you consider and define your key terms early:
Specifying royalty rates for different income streams, reflecting the margin norms of the licensed product category (if the rate is too high, retailers must be willing to reduce their margins – if too low, you lose potential income), or tiered royalty rates based on sales volumes;
Distinguishing between sales based on invoicing and sales based on cash receipts;
Clearly identifying who bears the risk of bad debts and wrapping this up within the definition of ‘sales;’
Clarifying allowable deductions and perhaps giving some clear examples of what is not an allowable deduction;
Spelling out any overall caps on total deductions or any marketing commitments required from the licensee (to ensure sales are optimal) or your rights to factory approvals.
3. Make sure boundaries are clear
Specify if the licensee is allowed to hold back reserves for product returns, provide price increases without approval, or enter into transactions with related parties without your consent. Ensure the process for approving any special price increases are explicitly explained, and remember to consider that wording accounts for the rapid evolution of technology – you cann ot predict the future but you can predict that the future will look different: so utilize language that will protect you, whatever happens.
4. Know your audit rights
One of the most important license terms, of course, is your audit rights. All licensing is risky but a licensee monitoring program will help to reduce this risk significantly. Trust is not enough; include audit rights and spell out how long you have to ‘look-back’ – the period after which you are no longer allowed to audit a royalty statement.
5. Exercise your right to audit
Ensure you engage auditors that understand the industry and the ongoing nature of your relationship with your licensing partners—the delicate line you tread between trust and control. Audit results reflect more than just underpayment of royalties; it helps you identify contract languages that have unintended consequences and may help to identify any unauthorized or damaging use of your brand or IP early.
6. Maintain good relations with your constituents
Finally, don’t make your relationship with your licensees (or your advisers) purely transactional—communicate, communicate, communicate.
Goods and services today contain a high proportion of design, invention, creativity and identity that make them highly saleable and marketable. Thus, not just for entertainment stars like Lea Salonga or a successful restaurant chain like Max’s, any young brand should look after their exclusivity and put the necessary protections in place from the beginning.
Mai Sigue-Bisnar is a partner, Audit & Assurance, and head of the 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 21 partners and more than 800 staff members. For your comments, please email mai.sigue-bisnar@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 11 January 2017