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Our Consulting team guarantees quick turnarounds, lower partner-to-staff ratio than most and superior results delivered on a range of services.
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Our Business Risk Services team deliver practical and pragmatic solutions that support clients in growing and protecting the inherent value of their businesses.
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Corporate Finance
Our experienced Corporate Finance team has provided a range of transaction, valuation, deal advisory and restructuring services to clients for the past two decades.
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Digital Risk
Our Digital Risk team offer advisory and consulting solutions that give our clients peace of mind, clear value for money and an enhanced ability to react to cyber attacks.
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Digital Transformation
Our Digital Transformation team work with business leaders to deliver efficient digital strategies and operating models that provide new or enhanced capabilities.
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Forensic Accounting
Our Forensic and Investigation Services team have targeted solutions to solve difficult challenges - making the difference between finding the truth or being left in the dark.
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Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)
Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) is a goal setting framework that helps teams, individuals and organisations set and track measurable goals.
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People and Change Consulting
Our People & Change Consulting team help clients adapt to the changing nature of the workforce - how they attract, retain, engage, develop, deploy and lead their people.
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Restructuring
Grant Thornton is Ireland’s leading provider of insolvency and corporate recovery solutions.
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Outsourced Payroll
Our outsourced payroll teams become your dedicated payroll department, aiming to process your payroll in the most cost effective and compliant manner.
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Outsourcing
Grant Thornton's reliable and cost-effective outsourcing services help you streamline your business operations by taking care of your workload.
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Audit and Accounting Advisory
Our Audit and Accounting Advisory team takes the headache out of multi-jurisdictional audit compliance requirements as well as technical compliance with accounting standards and legislation for clients.
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Business Process Outsourcing
Grant Thornton’s Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) team serves the needs of rapidly growing mid-tier multinationals operating out of Ireland and other hubs through the provision of services across the full range of finance functions.
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Flexible People Solutions
At Grant Thornton, our Financial Accounting and Advisory Services (FAAS) department have a dedicated team that help finance functions maximise efficiency.
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Global Compliance & Reporting Solutions
Our Global Compliance & Reporting Solutions service offering covers a full suite of compliance services including financial statement preparation and related filings, dual bookkeeping, direct and indirect tax, statistical returns and payroll.
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Global Payroll Solutions
At Grant Thornton, we meet the challenges of our clients. Our Global payroll compliance service offering is tailored to meet all your payroll requirements through a single point of contact.
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Actuarial
Our Actuarial team provides a comprehensive range of services to our insurance clients. From regulatory support for compliance to delivering specialist expertise in insurance & reinsurance.
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Data Analytics
Our team helps to unlock the potential of data analytics within your organisation, allowing you to be more innovative, efficient and customer-centric than ever before.
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Digital and Fintech
Our FinTech team are experts in technology and financial services and have a long track record of helping companies achieve sustained advantage.
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Digital Risk
Our Digital Risk team offer advisory and consulting solutions that give our clients peace of mind, clear value for money and an enhanced ability to react to cyber attacks.
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Financial Services Audit
Our Financial Services Audit team offers expertise and knowledge along with a horizontal approach to solving clients’ problems and queries.
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Financial Services Consulting
We work closely with clients to understand their strategy and benchmark their performance against the very best international standards.
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Financial Services Tax
Grant Thornton Ireland has a team of over 100 tax professionals providing advice to a diverse range of clients in the Financial Services sector.
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FS Business Risk Services
Our FS Business Risk team have real experience of the financial services sector, through working within regulatory bodies or holding leadership positions in Risk, Compliance and Internal Audit functions.
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Grant Thornton Pensioneer Trustees Limited
The Grant Thornton Pensioneer Trustee service can offer business owners, directors and employees the opportunity to manage their own retirement choices with full transparency.
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Pension Audit
The Grant Thornton Pension Audit team has vast experience in managing schemes and preparing annual reports on them for clients.
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Prudential Risk
Our industry leading Prudential Risk team works with clients on a range of areas including regulatory reporting, regulatory authorisations, on-site investigations and data quality assurance.
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Quantitative Risk
Our Quantitative Risk team members bring a wide range of experience with many of them having backgrounds in banking, investment markets, regulation, professional practice, and academia.
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Sustainability desk
We recognise that businesses are operating at different levels of maturity when it comes to sustainability, and pride ourselves on working with our clients to develop bespoke solutions to their needs.
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Financial Accounting and Advisory Services (FAAS)
Our Financial Accounting and Advisory Services (FAAS) team designs and implements creative solutions for organisations expanding into new markets or undertaking functional financial transformations.
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Grant Thornton Financial Counselling
Grant Thornton Financial Counselling (GTFC) comprises a team of highly qualified professionals who offer financial advice to individuals and corporates across a range of areas including savings, investments, pension planning, and inheritance and succession planning.
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Inheritance Planning
Our services on Inheritance Planning mirror those on Succession Planning whereby the foundations of the plan are derived from meaningful conversations with those that wish to pass on or protect their asset base.
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Personal Tax Compliance & Planning
The Grant Thornton Personal Tax team helps clients remain compliant and up to date with all of their tax obligations whilst ensuring that they are solutions driven and manage their finances in the most tax efficient way possible.
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Succession Planning
We have extensive experience guiding our clients successfully through the succession process. This involves advice on both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the process. While there is a business at the core of each succession plan we advise on, it is all predicated on understanding the people and their respective wishes.
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Company Secretarial
Grant Thornton’s Company Secretarial team contains qualified Company Secretaries. Clients are assured that they will meet all of their obligations under the Companies Acts and other relevant legislation and regulations.
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Corporation Tax
Our Corporation Tax team is made up of more than 40 highly experienced senior partners and directors who work directly with a wide range of domestic, international, and financial services clients. We place a strong emphasis on direct service to clients and we pride ourselves on the close personal relationships we build and the deep understanding of their businesses we develop
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Employer Solutions
Attracting and retaining key talent, managing employment costs and ensuring compliance with complex tax rules presents one of the most serious challenges today for many businesses. You need to ensure that your business complies with increasingly complex tax legislation and can adapt to updated Revenue guidance in a cost-effective way and we are here to help.
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Financial Services Tax
The Grant Thornton team is made up of experts who are fully up to date in terms of changing and evolving tax legislation. This is combined with industry expertise and an in-depth knowledge of the evolving financial services regulatory landscape.
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Global Mobility Services
Grant Thornton Ireland offer a different approach to managing global mobility. We have brought together specialists from our tax, global payroll, people and change and financial accounting teams across Ireland and Northern Ireland, while drawing on the knowledge and insights of our global network of over 143 offices of mobility professionals to provide you with a holistic approach to managing global mobility.
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International Tax
We develop close relationships with clients in order to gain a deep understanding of their businesses to ensure they make the right operational decisions. The wrong decision on how a company sells into a new market or establishes a new subsidiary can have major tax implications.
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Tax Advisory
The Grant Thornton Tax Advisory team blends commercial experience and knowledge with tax expertise to advise clients on the full range of transactions including sales, mergers, restructurings and succession planning.
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Tax Incentives
Our Tax Incentives team help clients access vital cash funding and tax incentives to enable them to achieve their growth ambition.
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Transfer Pricing
Our Transfer Pricing team has extensive experience across all industries. They can assist clients in overcoming challenges and deliver sector specific, sustainable solutions.
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VAT
Grant Thornton’s team of indirect tax specialists helps a range of clients across a variety of sectors including pharmaceuticals, financial services, construction and property and food to navigate these complexities.
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Real Estate Tax Advisory
The Irish real estate market has experienced considerable change in recent years. This has resulted in the emergence of a number of challenges for investors, but has also brought about significant opportunities. With this in mind, taxation is now more than ever one of the key factors for real estate investors when appraising investments, financing methods and development structuring.

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Don’t treat an audit as an afterthought
It should come as no surprise that the most important step you need to make in preparing for your audit is to plan ahead. Being well prepared will minimise risks of missed reporting deadlines, added costs and strain on company management’s time. Being organised can save time for all parties involved in the audit.
Set a clear project plan to include timelines and completion dates
In advance of your financial year end, meet with your auditors and together work on a clear project plan for timelines and deliverables and this can act as a tracker through the audit process. Communication is key to a successful audit and ensuring all expectations are fully aligned.
Allocating the responsibilities
A critical part of audit readiness is allocating the responsibilities internally in regard to handling the audit. This includes scoping the level of resources and expertise necessary, and setting a timeline for project management.
Documentation and filing
Keeping all documentation in a secure, easy to access location, is key to avoiding scrambling to find documentation for the auditors. For example, keep track of debt agreements, leasing arrangements, lawsuits, complex transactions, technology modifications, and contracts with major customers and vendors.
Don’t leave everything until year end
Your financial year end can often be a very busy period for the organisation for completing your month end and year end reconciliations and then quickly moving into the new financial year. Don’t leave everything until that already busy time to start getting ready for your audit. Complete reconciliations and prepare any of the required information for the audit in the lead up to the year end. At year end it will only be updating for the movement in the month and any additional required accruals. This should hopefully help from an efficiency and resourcing aspect.
Identify significant changes
You need to ask yourself how has the company's financial situation changed since last year? Are there new projects/ agreements? Is there more revenue coming in? Are there grants or government supports that your organisation has accessed over the past 12 months? These are some examples of key questions that you need to answer ahead of the year-end audit to be fully prepared.
It is also important to note any non-financial changes that have occurred in the company. Have internal control systems been altered or were new processes introduced? You should be aware of these things as they could indirectly impact the fiscal findings for the financial year.
Incorporate learnings from previous year’s audit
Most year-end audits will have adjustments made and management letter points, these can be a great starting point to help you to draw more accurate conclusions for the current year audit. Schedule a planning meeting with those performing the audit and the decision-makers to see how you can navigate the previous year end recommendations made and improve the accuracy of this year's audit.
Communication
The auditor and the client should be in constant communication. Frequent communication is key to ensure queries, questions and/ or requests are being addressed in a timely manner in order to prevent delays. Maintaining constant communication will minimise the pressure of the audit and help ensure a successful audit. We would recommend weekly calls throughout the audit process with the audit project plan and tracker being used as a basis to track overall progress. We would also recommend a pre planning meeting in advance of the audit process kicking off to identify some of the potential issues identified above such as significant changes in accounting or auditing standards that may impact the audit in a different wat to last year.
Monthly reconciliations
Although your statutory audit is an annual requirement, you should be thinking about it throughout the year. Keep records and schedules up to date. This will reduce the lead-in time necessary for each year end audit. A month end “hard” close for best practice, along with a closing financial checklist each month. This will ensure all month-end processes are performed and all journal entries are posted. This also provides an opportunity to identify problems early.
Inventory
For companies that will be performing a year-end physical inventory count, plan carefully and educate your teams. Consider counting before year-end and doing a roll forward, with approval from your auditor. Like your year-end sales cut-off, you should also have a strong process in place to ensure proper cut-off of shipping and receiving.
Conclusion
Audit preparation is having proper documentation and processes in place to streamline the financial statement and audit preparation process. While every company faces its own unique challenges, following these few key guidelines throughout the financial year is a great start to ensuring your audit runs smoothly and efficiently and is in line with the your expectations.
Remember, the key to decreasing the stress of an audit and increasing the benefits is communication and preparation.