Congratulations on getting an internship. Public accounting is a great start to your career. If you’re still on the hunt for an internship, check out the Big 4 Blueprint, where I outline networking, the Big 4 interview questions and how to answer them. You will typically see the same KPMG, EY, Deloitte, and PWC Interview questions at the big 4 or regional firms, and mastering how to answer them is key to landing an offer. Now on to how to be a pro:
What you will be doing:
Interns are a prized possession by audit teams because they will do they the tasks that no one else wants to do. This doesn’t mean that the tasks are difficult or hard, but rather just the opposite. It’s fitting for the intern to have these kinds of responsibilities because they are often tasks that do not need a lot of instruction. Here are a few of the most common tasks (and how to be a pro at them).
1) Placing orders for lunch/dinner, and picking it up/having it delivered.
When we are confined to a conference room for countless hours of the day, the absolute best part of the day is eating. Plenty of (billed) hours are spent scouring the online menu for the perfect meals, just slightly under the price threshold.
How to be a pro: Develop a system, and stick to it. The most common method for interns placing food orders is either through the firm’s instant messenger or through email. You’ll likely start with sending out menu to everyone. Make sure to send out the menu, not the website. For example, instead of qdoba.com take the extra 2 seconds and find the menu online and send out http://www.qdoba.com/menu-nutrition. Write down their order or print out their emails.
Do a completeness check. Completeness in audit means making sure that everything that should be included, is included. So completeness of a food order means DONT FORGET ANYONE. If the team is in multiple rooms, it probably means the managers/partners are in another room. Make sure to run down your list of who you sent the menu out to, and who you got orders from. They might not want to be bothered to place an order, but they will be pissed when they don’t get food.
I know it sounds trivial that I’m explaining this much about placing a food order, but it will be a large portion of your responsibilities and is one of the only times some of the seniors and managers interact with you – so don’t mess it up.
2) Sending out confirmations.
Auditors send out confirmations to third party bankers, customers, and vendors. For example you could send out an accounts receivable confirmation which is a document that says something to the effect of “The auditors want us to ask you to confirm that you owe us money. Please confirm that you agree that at 12/31/13, you owed us $XX for invoices 1, 2 and 3.” The company being audited will sign these paper documents with their letterhead, and then they will be mailed out by the auditor’s with return envelopes that go back to the auditor’s office. So a company that has accounts payable with the company you’re auditing will sign it (hopefully) and say that they agree with what was said within it. An intern will frequently be tasked with taking these letters to the office, copying them, and mailing them out.
How to be a pro: Make copies and SCAN! I was an intern and sent out some confirmations and lost one of the copies. The team will usually tell you to make sure you make copies of everything you send, but making a copy and a scan of the document protects you from you or someone else losing the paper copy. Before you put them in the envelopes and send them off, do a 1 to 1 check, matching each original with the copy. Then just run all the copies or originals through a scanner. Grab a folder from the supply room and put a label on them.
3) Actual Testing
If you’re lucky you might actually get to do some auditing! The most frequent types of testing that is done interns is going to be some simple stuff, but doing it with 100% accuracy is the what you’re after. One of the biggest things that will help you is when you find out what you will be working on, to look through the prior year testwork. Try to get an understanding of why the work is done the way it is and what the audit objective is. Usually there will be a “Purpose:” in the file somewhere to show you what it is doing. Here is an example to see what kind of testing you will be doing.
Accounts Receivable confirmations:
To test that accounts receivables “exist,” auditors send out confirmation to the customers who owe them money, with the hopes that the company responds and says yep, that is correct. An accounts receivable confirmation will look something like this (in obviously more legal terms):
XYZ Firm is auditing our financial statements, and we need your help with one of their procedures. Back on 12/31/XX, our records show that you owed us $10,255 for invoices 112, 114, and 119. Could you confirm that these numbers are correct?
The customer will sign that they agree with what is on the paper or disagree and mail it back to the audit firm office. They could also just not send it back at all, which happens pretty frequently.
Your job is to (I assume other firms do it this way, I can’t imagine another way) scan the mailed confirmation to PDF, and then document it in the PDF, and make it look exactly like the prior year confirmations. If there aren’t prior year workpapers, they will show you the template for how to document a confirmation. There will be a confirmation testwork excel sheet with the invoices and amounts listed. You will agree the amounts that were signed by the customer to the invoices amounts in the testing sheet. You will reference the file name for the PDF confirmation beside the invoice in the excel sheet, and then from the PDF to the excel sheet. This is called “ticking and tying.” This sounds simple, but make sure that you review your work, and don’t leave anything out.
4) Rely on other interns or first years
You aren’t expected to know everything as as a big 4 or accounting intern and are definitely expected to ask questions. I would recommend choosing who you ask questions to, depending on the question. I say this because seniors usually have a lot on their plate and their time is in big demand. If you have simple questions about the software, expenses, or where to drink at the upcoming intern conference, try to reach out to first years or other interns. All large firms have internal chat software where you can easily communicate these quick questions. Especially if you are doing a winter internship, the first years are perfect because they have been through all of these same questions recently (if they started on the usually fall start date). I don’t mean to discourage you from asking questions from the senior, because you should feel you should be open to any question. Also if you talk among your intern cohort, it looks like you are really smart and just know the answers!
With all of this said, one pet peeve people have of the interns is that they appear to be scared to ask questions, and end up sitting there doing nothing. This is not what you want. If you are stuck, ask a question. If you don’t know what you’re doing – ask questions. The good thing about public accounting is that you learn so much because you are forced to ask questions, and get immediate direct feedback. You will typically be sitting in a conference room with 4-8 other people, and if one person doesn’t know the answer, someone in the room will. My point with this last tip is to think about your question first, and then direct to the most appropriate person.
This is a syndication from Big4Bound.com the best resource for Big 4 Internships and Big 4 Interview guide.
In before whining about a Big 4 post.
Good points, I'd just say 1) toe the line between asking too few and too many questions and 2) be someone the rest of the team will stomach 10 hours a day, and you'll get a FT offer. Easier said than done.
"If you're lucky you'll get to do some actual auditing." I did lol at that
Solid post. Here's to hoping our intern reads WSO!
A few other things to consider:
My firm/team is definitely trying to send as much of the busy work to our little helpers in India, so you will actually most likely be doing more audit work than I certainly did as an intern. But, don't be afraid that you will mess up something and cause the entire audit to fail, or that you will miss something and not catch fraud. You are doing low risk areas with little to no judgement. Just have a positive attitude and be willing to learn.
As mentioned above, ask questions! We do not expect you to know anything! There's no amount of studying that would prepare you for the specific task that we are about to ask you to do. It will vary depending on the firm's methodology, the industry, and even the firm itself. Take a few minutes to try and figure it out on your own. If you can't, then find someone to ask. It is more efficient and effective for you to ask questions, than for you to not know what you are doing, guess incorrectly, and then have to have someone redo your work. Oh, and when you ask questions, make sure you write down the answers!
Great point - I've actually heard a little dissatisfaction from managers/parters because as we an industry push clerical work to India, it takes away some of those basic tick/tie and clerical skills 1st years typically develop. But it helps the budget a good amount, especially after you use them a 2nd year in a row and can re-use the instructions and they can re-use their prior year work
Definitely agree - it's kind of disheartening for the interns (and 1st years as well) who are typically smart, high performers in school to come in and be completely lost on a task. But as you said, take a stab at it and then ask questions. But try and only ask questions once.
Fine tips, but you're missing the one about leaving audit as soon as something (marginally) better pops up.
You have the best tip by far. I realized that after I interned in public accounting. Definitely wasn't what I was looking for.
You gotta let them drink the cool aid before you let them know about the DQ Blizzards! Some say learning through experience is the best teacher ;p
It's great there are posts like this. That way when new interns find these pages from google searches, they can also discover WSO. Then they can jump into a different career path before even making the mistake of accepting their offer!
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