Customer story
Walker & Dunlop
Punongbayan & Araullo (P&A) is the Philippine member firm of Grant Thornton International Ltd (GTIL), one of the world's leading organisations of independently owned and managed accounting and consulting firms. They provide services in audit, tax, advisory, and outsourcing solutions. The firm combines local expertise with global capabilities to help dynamic organizations unlock growth and navigate complex business challenges across various industries.
The audit team at Grant Thornton Philippines faced several operational inefficiencies that impacted both productivity and accuracy across engagements. Manual processes, fragmented documentation, and inconsistent data formats created unnecessary friction in critical audit workflows.
1. High Administrative Overhead
Auditors spent a significant portion of their time on repetitive, manual tasks—such as validating supporting documents and organizing audit evidence. The volume of documentation to manage during peak periods further compounded this burden, increasing the risk of delays and missed steps.
2. Inefficient Financial Statement Review
Reviewing financial statements remained a largely manual effort. Tasks like matching balances, validating totals through footing and cross-footing, and comparing figures with prior periods were time-consuming and prone to human error. Without automation, ensuring accuracy required multiple layers of manual checks.
3. Manual Vouching of Electronic Supporting Documents
Auditors regularly received supporting documents—such as invoices, contracts, and bank statements—in various digital formats. Tracing transactions between financial records and these source documents required manually opening and inspecting each file, leading to inefficiencies. In many cases, inconsistent naming conventions and unclear file labelling made it difficult to establish clear audit trails.
4. Client-Provided Schedules in Unstructured Formats
Clients often submitted key schedules in PDF format, limiting the auditors’ ability to extract, test, and analyze the underlying data. Converting these PDFs into usable formats like Excel frequently introduced formatting errors or incomplete conversions, requiring additional time to clean and prepare the data before substantive procedures could begin.
"DataSnipper doesn't just help in efficiency, it also enables the workpaper for additional documentation. It simplifies audit tasks, supports better traceability, and reduces manual work, making audit procedures faster, more organized, and less prone to error, while enhancing overall documentation quality."
DataSnipper has transformed audit workflows by enabling teams to automate repetitive tasks, enhance financial review accuracy, and efficiently process large volumes of supporting documents. Its core features have delivered measurable improvements in audit execution, documentation quality, and team efficiency.
1. Administrative Tasks
One of the most immediate benefits of DataSnipper is the automation of manual administrative work. Tasks that previously required auditors to manually input or transfer data from source documents into Excel are now handled through intelligent data extraction. This reduces the time spent on low-value tasks and allows auditors to shift their focus toward more critical areas of the engagement. By automatically pulling in document content and mapping it within the Excel workbook, DataSnipper enables faster file preparation and more structured audit evidence, significantly reducing administrative overhead.
2. Financial Statement Review
DataSnipper has proven particularly effective in reviewing financial statements, offering features like the Financial Statement Suite (FSS) and Version Compare that make it easy to identify changes between reporting periods. Auditors can quickly reconcile figures, trace key amounts, and ensure appropriate referencing throughout the document. Common review tasks such as checking for tick-and-tie errors or validating prior year consistency have been streamlined, helping reduce human error and improve overall accuracy. In particular, the platform assists in catching frequently overlooked issues such as incorrect footings and mis-referenced notes, making the review process both faster and more reliable.
3. Vouching Soft Copy Supporting Documents
The vouching process, traditionally a time-consuming and error-prone task, has been significantly improved with DataSnipper. Auditors have found the platform particularly helpful for navigating and referencing electronic documents like invoices and contracts. The ability to Snip amounts directly from supporting documents into Excel and maintain traceable links has made the process both more efficient and better documented. Reviewers can easily verify the source of financial data and trace back to the relevant section of the supporting file, increasing transparency and reducing the risk of misstatements. Auditors have also noted that minimal editing is required once snips are created, further accelerating their workflow.
4. Client-Provided Schedules in PDF Format
Client-provided schedules, especially those in PDF format, have historically been difficult to work with due to formatting limitations. DataSnipper addresses this challenge by enabling quick and accurate conversion of hard-coded PDF content into Excel. This is particularly useful when clients provide non-consolidated schedules across multiple branches, as the platform helps organize and filter the data more efficiently. Auditors have highlighted that DataSnipper’s ability to extract real-time, structured information from unstructured files dramatically improves their ability to analyze and test client-provided data, ultimately saving time and improving audit quality.
Simplify documentation
Auditors can easily create consistent, traceable, and well-organized documentation—reducing review time and ensuring clarity for both preparers and reviewers.
Improve quality and accuracy
By automating manual checks and standardizing review processes, teams reduce the risk of errors and strengthen audit quality across every engagement.
Innovate way of work
With intuitive tooling and streamlined workflows, auditors spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time on high-value, judgment-based procedures.
