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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.
Professional quotients and competencies for accountants in a world of unprecedented change
03 Mar 2021How do we define the needed skills, behaviors and attitudes to perform jobs effectively? How do we know if an individual qualifies for the job or not?
Some people think formal education matters while others believe training and experience are more important. People also argue that personal characteristics hold the key to adopting effective work behavior. Although all these are important, none seems enough to define the ideal set of behaviors and traits needed for a job.
To improve a person’s work skills, a more comprehensive approach to linking individual performance to the business’ objectives calls for the use of a “competency framework.”
What is a competency framework?
A competency framework is a valuable tool that defines the comprehensive set of knowledge, skills, judgement and attributes an individual needs to work in a specific occupational role. Competency describes the behavior behind a person’s competent performance in the workplace.
In the accountancy profession, this framework captures what successful and effective practitioners do and deliver across every aspect and specialism of their work.
This framework, developed by the Association of Certified Chartered Accountants (ACCA) defines 12 competency areas. Each is designed to strengthen and support the profession, and support the career development of accountancy and finance professionals.
In a nutshell, this framework is a professional toolkit for accountants, a blueprint they can use to develop all 12 competencies throughout their career. The framework comprehensively sets how accountancy and finance professionals can add sustained value to their organizations today and in the future.
Recently, the ACCA published “Professional Accountants – The Future,” a report outlining key drivers of change and the future skills of accountants in public practice. In it, the association listed seven professional quotients required for future accountants.
The seven professional quotients for success
Professional quotients (PQs) refer to behaviors and qualities required of an ACCA-qualified accountant to meet the future needs and demands of his or her profession. These are professional skills gained not only through ACCA qualification, but also enhanced as an individual’s career progresses.
Accountants will need to balance their professional quotients to fit their roles at specific stages of their career. Each accountant’s PQ will reflect his or her competency and skills across seven constituent areas:
– Technical skills and ethics quotient. These are skills and abilities needed to perform activities according to a defined standard while maintaining integrity, independence and positive skepticism.
– Creative quotient. This is the ability to use existing knowledge in a new situation, make connections, explore potential outcomes and generate new ideas.
– Digital quotient. This refers to the awareness and application of existing and emerging digital technologies, capabilities, practices and strategies.
– Emotional intelligence quotient. This is the ability to identify one’s own emotions and others, harness and apply them to tasks, and regulate and manage them.
– Experience quotient. This refers to the ability and skills needed to understand customer expectations, meet desired outcomes and create value while at it.
– Intelligence quotient. This is the ability to acquire and use knowledge, thinking and reasoning, and solve problems.
– Vision quotient. This is the ability to anticipate future trends accurately by extrapolating existing trends and facts, and filling the gaps by thinking innovatively.
The accountant of the future
The world is in a period of unprecedented change — one that will affect the role of accountants moving forward — that would enable them to become leaders, trusted expert counsels and key strategic advisors to public and private organizations.
With this transformation comes the need to possess a whole new set of skills. On top of technical excellence, accountancy and finance professions now require creativity, emotional intelligence and the vision to lead.
Accountants must focus on tools relevant to the evolution of their career. These tools are developed by accountants as they undergo relevant continuing professional development (CPD). Those who do not revisit and reinvent their skills set run the risk of being left behind.
P&A Grant Thornton Academy, in collaboration with ACCA, designed a learning pathway to help individuals and organizations reinvent their career strategies by focusing on the professional quotients accountants need to adapt to change.
The pathway is based on the results of the aforementioned report on professional accounts, which identified four major drivers of change: regulation and governance, digital technologies, expectations, and globalization. Together, these drivers will help redefine accountants’ roles in the future.
In the context of Covid-19, we sought the educational technology expertise of the ExP Group, a United Kingdom-based platinum electronic-learning provider, to deliver remote learning to students and professionals in the Philippines and Southeast Asia.
These global partnerships are part of P&A Grant Thornton’s initiative to foster learning and development in the most effective and cost-efficient way.
In conclusion, the future accountant will need an optimal and evolved combination of professional competencies: a collection of technical knowledge, skills, and abilities, combined with interpersonal behaviors and qualities. With technology, individuals can be empowered to develop themselves through financial expertise and organizations can improve their performance through enhanced human capital. Ultimately, this would lead to communities and families reaping the benefits.
Jess Obana is the head of ACCA programs and a senior managing consultant of the Advisory Services Division of P&A Grant Thornton. P&A Grant Thornton is one of the leading auditing, tax, advisory, and outsourcing firms in the Philippines with 22 partners and more than 900 staff members. We’d like to hear from you! Connect with us on Twitter: @GrantThorntonPH. “Like” us on Facebook: P&A Grant Thornton. Email your comments to gin.francisco@ph.gt.com or pagrantthornton@ph.gt.com. For more information, visit www.grantthornton.com.ph.
As published in The Manila Times, dated 03 March 2021