Accounting and Tax Department errors in 2024

Managing Director Healy Consultants

Aidan Healy
Chairman
Healy Consultants

For every country on the planet, Healy Consultants Group in-house Accounting and Tax Department (ATD) annually serves more than 400 multinational Clients. Unfortunately, our staff sometimes make errors that cause Clients’ dissatisfaction. I apologise for these errors.

Out of respect for our multinational Clients, and because of the importance of our fiduciary duty to timely, accurately and completely discharge our multi-national Clients’ annual statutory, accounting, audit and tax obligations, it is important we transparently advise them of the challenges ATD faces, and the reasons for these unintentional errors.

  • As they develop into a role, new junior staff make errors. Across all industries in Singapore and Malaysia, there is high staff turnover. Annually, and despite our best efforts, ATD staff leave Healy Consultants Group. Consequently, we need to retrain new joiners to make sure our team provides high quality services to our multinational Clients. This challenge is outside our control and I apologise for the business inconvenience caused to your Firm. My Firm has struggled with this problem since 2015.
  • In February 2020, we appointed a new ATD Director. Mr. Nik is working day and night to mould policies and procedures to his new professional standards. In the meantime, and during employee retraining, our in-house ATD staff will make errors. Once a quarter, my Firm hosts training seminars for the Department. I apologise for the business inconvenience caused to your Firm.
  • Because of the global economic crisis, the volume of Client accounting and tax queries received by the ATD team has increased significantly. Each week, ATD staff handle 20-30 engagements and receive approximately 300 e-mails per day. Consequently, errors happen.
  • A key KPI in ATD is to reply to every Client enquiry within one working day. For quality purposes, each Client e-mail is reviewed and approved by the ATD Director, resulting in additional processing time. Because of the current volume of enquiries, and the complex nature of some engagements, it is difficult for our staff to quality reply within one working day.
  • Furthermore, the ATD team conducts extensive research and communication with government departments around the world to accurately and legitimately answer our Clients’ enquiries. This is also time consuming, particularly when engagements are complex.
  • In addition, because we are a global business with Clients around the world, and offices in Singapore, Dubai, Europe and Malaysia, it is challenging to communicate and complete deliverables on the same business day.
  • ATD experiences seasonal bottlenecks and busy seasons due to financial year-end etc, which adds workload pressures to staff.

Conclusion

As always, we will continue to be open and transparent with our multi-national Clients’. While we believe we are the best corporate services provider in the world, we know we can do better.