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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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Behind the Numbers: People of P&A Grant Thornton
Discover the inspiring stories of the individuals who make up our vibrant community. From seasoned veterans to fresh faces, the Purple Tribe is a diverse team united by a shared passion.
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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.
Last November 7, 2018, I talked on the Fourth Industrial Revolution (or Industry 4.0) and its impact on the accounting and assurance professions, as a guest speaker to the 13th Washington SyCip Lecture of the University of Sto. Tomas Alfredo M. Velayo College of Accountancy.
The term Industry 4.0 was introduced at the 2011 Hannover Fair by the German government. Matteo Talmassons described it as ‘the time for cyber-physical systems (CPS’s), which are the integration of computation, networking, and physical processes, and which are promising to transform the way people interact with engineered systems, just as the internet has transformed the way people interact with information.’ The Fourth Industrial Revolution is characterized by highly intelligent connected systems that create a fully digital value chain.
In their study Readiness for Industry 4.0, Grant Thornton India identified nine components: big data, cloud computing, internet of things, simulation, autonomous robots, augmented reality, cyber security, system integration, and additive manufacturing. A Siemens Financial Services report identified six challenges in embracing this industrial revolution: digital skills, access to finance for the scale of investment, creating a culture of collaboration, data and cyber security, comprehensive access to proof points, and specialized strategic management and planning capabilities. On its readiness to reap the benefits of emerging technologies, the Philippines was ranked 77 out of 139 countries, according to The Global Information Technology Report 2016 of the World Economic Forum. Singapore came out on top, followed by Finland, Sweden, Norway, and the United States.
In addition, investments on SMAC—social, mobile, analytics, and cloud—by venture capitalists accelerate the effect of technological disruption on these accounting functions: transactional accounting processes, fiscal period-end accounting close, auditing, business process outsourcing of accounting tasks, and regulatory filings. With evolving smart and digital technologies, the continuing globalization of reporting and disclosure standards, and newer forms of regulation, the impact on professional accountants may include loss of job, downward pressure on salaries, or increase in workload or work hours.
In my lecture, I posited five assurance practices that may emerge or continue to grow.
Data assurance
With data collection and mining technologies advancing at a rapid pace, we have access to whole data sets using powerful technologies.
Sampling methodologies are now being replaced by comprehensive testing, bringing about high quality, deep dive audits. This deeper connectivity with client data shifts our question from ‘What could go wrong?’ to ‘What has gone wrong?’ improving focus and better judgment.
The rise of data assurance services requires adopting appropriate processes on data integrity and availability.
Knowledge assurance
Using data visualization and predictive analytic technologies, auditors are now able to provide better insights and business intelligence.
For example, a shift in overall behavior of time-in data of employees from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. may indicate the need to change time-in policies. Moreover, continuous controls monitoring (CCM) tools may evolve to continuous
transaction monitoring (CTM) systems.
The rise of knowledge assurance services required that we are able to harness data and technology to make meaningful insights and advice.
Privacy assurance
As more data and systems connect with others, either physically or in the cloud, the need to secure the privacy of data and systems has now become a regulatory requirement. Privacy assurance will ask us whether our process of creating, collecting, using, disclosing, disposing, storing, or sharing data remains robust and continuously tested.
Technology assurance
There is a lot of discussion around blockchain technology. My simple understanding is that the entry of one transaction in one ledger-system gets replicated to various other systems.
As I imagine it, an expense entry in system one (owned by the company) may be connected-replicated in system two (owned by a regulator that may have real-time view access) and again connected-replicated in system three (probably owned by a supplier that will have real-time data on the usage of a company).
Imagine business transactions and financial statements blockchained from across the company to a bank to a regulator to the external auditor, and the efficiency this interconnectedness brings to the audit cycle or exchange of information. Technology assurance will now have to provide us comfort, quality, and integrity on data travelling across the chain.
Brand assurance
As the level of communication intimacy shifts from face-to-face conversation to technology-enabled Twitterverse, Facebook, and other social media platforms, there is a need for the company to be mindful of its message, image and how it converses on social media. Conversation risk is important to many organizations, because someone out there is saying not-so-good things about your organization.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution has disrupted many things, processes, and relationships. As with any innovation, the speed of adapting to change will spell the difference between our organizations’ success or failure.
In today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world, there is an ever-pressing need to assure that our data, knowledge, privacy, technology, and brand remain robust to contribute to the achievement of the strategies and objective of our organization.
Mhycke Gallego is a Partner for Advisory and Head of Knowledge Management. P&A Grant Thornton is one of the leading Audit, Tax, Advisory, and Outsourcing firms in the Philippines, with 21 Partners and over 900 staff members. We’d like to hear from you! Tweet us: @PAGrantThornton, like us on Facebook: P&A Grant Thornton, and email your comments to Mhycke.gallego@ph.gt.com or pagrantthornton.marketscomm@ph.gt.com. For more information, visit our Website: www.grantthornton.com.ph.
As Published in The Manila Times dated 21 November 2018