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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.
While queueing at immigration upon my arrival at Terminal 3 of Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) recently, I found it sad that Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) — our “modern day heroes” — coming home for Christmas are not getting the heroes’ welcome they deserve.
After traveling for four to 18 hours, they are treated to a long wait in disorganized queues, in sweltering temperatures inside the airport. Waiting for one’s turn at the immigration counter from such chaotic queues is like trying to get out of a maze. I observed that such could be avoided if there were sufficient signs for directions and the entire immigration area was utilized to avoid congestion. What happened that time indicated inadequate planning to accommodate the surge in the number of arriving passengers.
If my count is right, there are at least 20 immigration counters at NAIA Terminal 3, but only about six were manned when I arrived, and a couple of them were even reserved for foreigners. Based on the large crowd I saw gathered before the immigration counters, there could have been as many as five flight arrivals that time. Philippine passport holders had to wait a lot longer from their queues, while foreigners breezed through the foreign passport lane.
I understand that making it convenient for foreign tourists is a way for us to show our hospitality and encourage tourism, but I cannot help but ask: Who is more important to us? Is it the foreigners, or the OFWs, who also have their own designated lane but is not enough? What is Filipino hospitality if you cannot even make your own countrymen experience it? If I were a concerned foreigner, I would find this hospitality rather insincere, for how could you be hospitable to others if you’re not hospitable to your own people?
In other countries where I’ve been, the experience is the opposite; i.e., those countries give priority to their citizens. In Singapore, for example, even our fellow Filipinos get to experience the express lane accorded to Singaporean citizens when they have already obtained the permanent resident status. While other foreign passport holders may not be given priority, they can conveniently queue up in very organized lines and their entry is processed quickly. Minus the ambience and the highly digitized system, this can likewise be done at our airports for greater convenience and efficiency.
The struggle for the arriving passenger does not end at the immigration area; it is just the beginning. After going through the long queues, passengers will again have to wait 15 to 30 minutes for their luggage. If they are lucky, their luggage could come out with little damage. Otherwise, the damage could be severe, and worse, stuff from their suitcases could go missing.
After collecting their luggage, they again face a huge crowd of people waiting at the lobby for family or friends among the arriving passengers, blocking the way out. The whole airport experience could just be a foretaste of the inconvenience that awaits them outside – the traffic and the heat as they step out of the airport premises and into the streets of Metro Manila.
NAIA 3 is relatively new but as you may have experienced, the elevators next to the covered parking area look as though they have been used for decades. And there is nothing pleasant about the toilets nearby.
There appeared to be some improvement in the airport as it looked when I arrived, but clearly not enough. I believe that being a third world country is not an excuse for having a poorly operated airport. We have so many highly qualified engineers who could do a good job of improving the facilities and the systems of operation there, and make a big difference in the airport experience of passengers and visitors. The only problem is the mentality that continues to pull us down; i.e., “Puede na ang puede” [That’ll do].
Can the number of arriving passengers, including foreigners, be predicted using inputs from the various airline companies using our airports so the management can prepare to cope with demand for better passenger service? Why not let Philippine passport holders use the foreign passport lane when there are only few foreigners arriving?
If the toilets are dirty, why not hire a cleaning service to maintain them? We have so many unemployed among the poor and maybe homeless. Instead of giving them alms, why don’t we train them to be maintenance people and give them wages to cover their basic needs? We may be able to solve two problems: unemployment and the poor quality of our airport facilities.
This seems like a simple exercise of management and leadership skills and care for our fellow Filipinos, the OFWs, who are fueling our economic growth.
The quality of our airports may be far below the international standards, but it doesn’t have to be this poor. I believe that even as a Third World country, the Philippines can make a difference in the global traveler’s airport experience. Though simple and small, if managed competently by those who would put the welfare and interest of visiting passengers, the Philippine airports may be the first showroom of warm hospitality for which Filipinos are known all over the world. We need personnel and staff who use not only their brains, but also their hearts in making sure foreign visitors and homebound Filipinos are accorded a pleasant, comfortable and efficient welcome and exit service at our airports.
If we cannot give top priority to our fellow Filipinos who are arriving, we can, at least, make their return convenient and exciting. With that, I believe the world famous Filipino brand of hospitality will be truly authentic.
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 firms in the Philippines with 21 partners and m,re than 850 staff members. For your comments, please email chris.ferareza@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 13 December 2017