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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.
It has been six months since our Philippine government implemented the Covid-19 pandemic measures on lockdown and various versions of community quarantine within and outside Metro Manila. In those six months, like any other excited couple who had already prepare for almost a year for their wedding, my fiancée and I were devastated when we had to reschedule our church wedding that was supposedly in June 2020.
It may seem to be an uncomplicated decision to reschedule right away because of safety and regulatory reasons. However, once you go back to the drawing board, you realized that there are many factors that need reconsideration. Should we do an intimate wedding instead? How about a civil wedding? Should we totally move it by a year because of the uncertainty? The repercussions of each major decision to make would take from tens to hundreds of considerations to think about while you are always in the middle of your daily endeavors. I may be exaggerating a bit but it was a very difficult position to be in.
Have you ever encountered a similar situation, particularly in your business, when you wished you had more time and space to think critically, either alone or with your business partners? Perhaps there is someone outside your circle whom you want to talk to from a simple sound-off of an idea to as far as getting professional guidance?
This situation is common among family business owners in the Philippines. Addressing the day-to-day demands of owning and running a business makes it more difficult to find sufficient headroom and time for the strategic and other long-term aspirations of the business.
By simple definition, a family business is a for-profit enterprise where two or more family members are involved in the management and governance, and majority ownership or control lies within the family. Structurally speaking, it gets more complicated when we look at a family business using “The Three-Circle Model” (Tagiuri and Davis,1982).
In basic terms, this model clarifies the three interdependent and overlapping groups (i.e., the big circles) that comprise the family business system: family, business and ownership. Since these three circles overlap one another, they create seven interest groups, each with its own interests, motivations and objectives.
For example, a family owner-employee arguably has a lot more to lose than anybody else from the other circles because such individual has interests and/or roles in all three circles. On the other hand, some families would not even allow non-family members to manage the business. Any disagreements within these circles typically result in various problems for the business.
Some of the common business challenges faced by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are access to market and finance, branding constraints, keeping up and fighting with competition, compliance with regulations, human resources and the overall business operations (Francisco and Canare, Asian Institute of Management, 2017).
When these problems mixed up with issues surrounding familial ties, business and ownership features, the situation could be chaotic. Figuratively, it may seem as if the business stepped right onto a quicksand. You might even begin to wonder if wealth does not pass three generations based on the famous Chinese saying – “Fu Pu Kuo San Tai.”
Another aspect for debate is exclusiveness. While some family firms have been dealing with various problems themselves or with limited non-family members’ involvement over the last 10 to 20 years, there is a steadily growing number of family firms exploring more help from outside professionals. This is evolving among local family businesses yet more rampant in the global landscape, particularly when family businesses face the challenge of significant changes.
Grant Thornton (GT) Australia, a pioneer of family business practice within the Grant Thornton International Ltd network, notes among others that succession in leadership or owners, period of significant market and/or regulatory change, financing, restructuring, crisis reputation, new business integration, new market, and other significant non-recurring transactions are some of the common triggers in making room for changes in the business. Formally, GT Australia developed and called this approach as the Owner’s Room (the Room).
The Room is a critical thinking space for business owners where conversations with outside professionals, regarding core areas on the current business journey, assumptions about the future, goals and timeline, and importance of leadership and bringing clarity to stakeholders. Such Room can be used in any stage of the business life cycle. It can be helpful anywhere during start-up, survival, stable and growth stages of a business. More than the guided conversations and freethinking space in the Room, the knowledge transfer and self-realization could be happening simultaneously.
Overhauling a wedding plan in the midst of a Covid-19 pandemic situation and strategizing for long-term run of a family business are clearly two different circumstances but the context is relatively the same in terms of carrying the joint accountability and reflecting where you are, where you want to go, and how you get there. We need to “get a room” where we can be “in the zone” and have purposeful conversations with ourselves, together with various stakeholders, professionals, and other collaborators within and outside our circles.
My fiancée and I eventually decided to move our church wedding exactly by a year to 2021 but agreed to have a civil wedding during the latter part of this year. Despite the Covid-19 pandemic ravaging the situation for everyone, we remain optimistic and ambitious about the decisions we made in the “room.” We are now fast approaching to our civil wedding while our church wedding details and agreements are locked-in for next year. So to speak, our “room” was big enough for a lot of stakeholders to fit in – particularly our families and wedding suppliers.
Endel Mata is a Partner of the Audit and Assurance Division of P&A Grant Thornton. P&A Grant Thornton is one of the leading audit, tax, advisory, and outsourcing firms in the Philippines with 24 Partners and more than 900 staff members. We’d like to hear from you! Tweet us: @GrantThorntonPH, like us on Facebook: P&A Grant Thornton, and email your comments to anton.ng@ph.gt.com or pagrantthornton@ph.gt.com. For more information, visit our website: www.grantthornton.com.ph
As published in The Manila Times, dated 23 September 2020