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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.
BUSINESSES have been forced to evolve by the operational, financial and workforce disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, and adapting to the new normal includes updating norms to be followed.
The responsibilities of auditors are piling up, fueled by the need to focus on areas such as risk oversight, management of internal and external audits, and ethics and compliance as the integrity of companies has become more vulnerable.
For professional services firm P&A Grant Thornton, the main role of auditors is to ensure that corporate governance is not compromised. In the new normal, auditors should help redefine existing internal audit plans in a bid to re-prioritize audits, based on evolving organizational risks, ongoing regulatory requirements and practicalities in executing each audit.
This reshaping of auditing frameworks can help management and boards address crucial risks while also reinforcing the relevance and purpose of internal audit teams. Internal auditors must enforce stricter measures to promote accountability in the workplace and make these tailor fit to address any potential risks.
“One example is implementing a penalty system for employees who manipulate financial statements by making up accounting numbers. Penalties can include removing the office in the question from [his or her] position and reducing compensation such as bonuses and/or pensions,” said Marivic Españo, chief executive officer and Chairman of P&A Grant Thornton.
Internal auditors can also investigate how an organization does risk assessment. They can review the anti-fraud or anti-corruption measures an organization has in place. After these, auditors should analyze an organization’s risk tolerance and mitigation method.
“As businesses shift to more flexible work arrangements, internal auditors can contribute to achieve effective crisis-management plans through their periodic review of business processes that can be used in case of fraud or corruption allegations,” Españo said.
Whenever there is a financial crisis, there should, likewise, be a plan ready to be employed to maintain confidence among investors, who count on a company’s integrity as it does business with them.
On the part of external auditors, Españo said they can help companies release credible financial reports. Government regulators, in particular, rely heavily on these audited financial statements in the performance of their duty to protect investors from fraud and other irregularities.
“In light of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the economy, new risks may emerge or the assessments of previously identified risk may need to be revisited by external auditors because the expected likelihood of misstatements in the financial statements has changed,” she noted.
Españo added that changes in incentives or more pressure put on management could lead to new risks of misstatement due to fraud or changes to the external auditor’s prior assessment of misstatement risks.
Similarly, changes in management processes, systems and controls may contribute to increased audit risks.
There are several areas auditors need to pay attention to in a depressed economy, Españo noted. These include asset impairment, going concern issues, accounting estimates, fraud risks, and accounting for contractual modifications and government grants, among others.
Since impairment involves using data to predict cash flows, auditors need to be skeptical when they examine client models. Going concern is another factor to focus on since auditors need to understand their clients’ operating models and determine the quality of underlying data and forecasted cash flows.
With regard to accounting estimates arising from market uncertainty and volatility, estimation uncertainty associated with accounting estimates may require significant attention. Estimates need to be revisited as the sources of these outlooks may have changed due to the pandemic.
Dealing with fraud is one area auditors are known to focus on. They must be fully aware of fraud to avoid struggles with revenues cashflows debt and payroll. Alterations in contracts should also be scrutinized since the pandemic has caused additional pressures that may affect accounting for loans, revenues, compensation and leases. Auditors, likewise, need to closely monitor government programs and financial reporting reliefs as there is risk of noncompliance among businesses.
Españo pointed out that the companies and external auditors should also be made aware that their decisions could be subject to future litigation and investigations if they are not careful or thorough.
“It is important that companies and auditors assess which aspects of their financial reporting, disclosure and audit processes are most likely to be subject to scrutiny during and after the present crisis and to take steps now to help ensure that decision on those points are reasonable and defensible,” she said.
However, spotting irregularities and discrepancies is not the only role of auditors. They can also help with a company’s fiscal recovery by examining data and analyzing how it can recover.
“With risks such as fraud, corruption and manipulation of data currently at large, the challenge of strictly adhering to corporate governance policies comes up,” Españo noted.
External auditors must also ensure that companies do not misdeclare its income taxes. This area needs special attention as taxes are used to support various government programs, geared towards addressing the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In conclusion, Españo said auditors were needed now more than ever given the disruptions brought by the pandemic. They must continue to fulfill their usual roles and, at the same time, take on new responsibilities.
Their role now includes developing alternative procedures, gathering sufficient evidence to support their opinions and understanding enhanced considerations. These are especially needed by stakeholders, who rely on auditors’ guidance and insights to help them make the correct decisions for their organizations when it comes to operations and risk management.
Auditors can be considered the partners of top management and the board as they ensure that companies maintain their integrity and responsible corporate governance in the face of adversity.
As published in The Manila Times Top 500 Corporations.