A Day in the Life of an Accounting Intern
I haven’t written much about my daily tasks, which I know I was really curious about as a student. Also, I need to write a paper about my intern experience, so I’m supposed to keep track of what I do. Honestly, so far it’s been a pretty different experience depending on the job I was on.
Dirty Work
I have had to make a few copies in the last few weeks. Someone has to do it, and we don’t take an administrative staff with us to a client, so whoever is the least busy, which is usually the intern, gets to do it. This kind of work doesn’t bother me at all. It’s kind of nice not to be staring at a computer screen for a bit.
This kind of work, for all it’s mundane-ness, can be tricky. It is really, really bad to mess up on who gets mailed what, or where hard copies get stored. People get concerned about their own private data if you accidentally mail someone else’s to them. If you store a hard copy in the wrong place, it may never get found. So make sure you pay as much attention to this job as you would to one that feels more “important.”
Monotonous Work
This is what I’ve been doing for the past couple of days. It feels like more direct audit work than copying, but it is very repetitive and detailed. It can get monotonous, it’s easy to screw it up (actually, I did a little bit, but I’m told it was easy to fix.) So be careful.
The client I’m working at right now is huge, with a bunch of subsidiaries. I have to match subtotals on the income statements and balance sheets that we’re using for our testing, to a giant consolidated income statement and balance sheet broken down by companies. I’m not sure where the glitch comes in, as they are based on the same raw data, but some accounts are in the wrong categories in our broken-down balances, and I have to check each little number for that, and figure out where it should’ve been put.
With this kind of work, I tried to keep in mind that everyone on the team with be using this workpaper, and they will notice if I don’t do it perfectly. Also, when I did find errors, I got my manager to teach me how to fix the files myself, rather than relying on him to do it.
Also, I have done much more boring work in the past for no pay or minimum wage. If it feels like a monkey could do it, be glad they’re not paying you a monkey’s wage to do easy work!
Audit Work
I have gotten to do a lot of regular work on the audit itself so far too. It mostly entails selecting a sample from a population, for example, unpaid invoices, and looking through payment schedules to make sure that those invoices are truly unpaid. You get to look at lots of invoices, check details, and shipping documents when you’re doing the actual testing.
Your accounting background will help you understand what the test is trying to check and why. For example, if something is recorded as a prepaid expense in December, it had better relate to an expense during the following year or so-and not the period before December. (Otherwise it should just be recorded as an expense, not a prepaid expense.)
Really, this covers the general type of work I have gotten to do pretty well. I won’t give specifics of exactly WHAT we do to test things, because I think all firms have their own methods for how they set up their workpapers, etc.
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You’re so right about the importance of carefully tracking those simple yet hard paper-pushing tasks. If you know how to work a fax machine, you’re miles ahead of so many others!
I’ve had to tie horrendous balance sheets. My moment of joy was getting the document in PDF form, and also having the good fortune to get the Full Professional version of Adobe Acrobat on my computer so I could tick and tie electronically.
Absolute.
Bliss.
Especially when your manager is chill and allows you to digitize the whole file.
I declare the absolute horror of horrors the manager who tells the intern to PRINT OUT an entire digital file, just because “reading it on screen is too hard”.
BAH.
Cutoff testing is fun though, especially when you find that one rare error.
Well, luckily all the tieing is on excel, so still electronic. I just wish I had multiple computer screens to work on!
As for prepaid expenses, the worst is when client’s make a journal entry that’s a debit to prepaid and a credit to A/P. How do people think that makes sense?!
Oh my goodness, this client does that all the time, and when I questioned it my manager just looked at me like I’m crazy, because apparently this is normal!
Oooh lucky you can use a computer. I didn’t even really have a table and worked my power-left-hand calculating! I mentioned your article on my new accounting internships blog, FYI.
Thank you!
Hello! I was just wondering, what basic knowledge should you possess before starting internships? I just started taking audit courses so I don’t have that much knowledge in audit. So I am a little scared of applying for internships because I feel inadequate still. Your response will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Hi Hazel!
Where are you studying?
In my undergraduate program, we only had one “audit” class. Since this is a class most people take in their last semester, many people did internships before they had taken the class.
In internships, they don’t expect you to know how to audit, so don’t worry about that when applying!
Hi! I am taking my bachelor’s degree with University of Maryland University College. I am a military spouse and they have onsite classes in the bases we’ve been stationed before. But since we moved here in Colorado, I’ve been taking my classes online. It is different than actual classes, a lot of reading and you have to motivate yourself to study. With UMUC they have audit sequence, forensic acctg sequence, and Acctg Info syst sequence. I chose the audit sequence so I am taking auditing & assurance services, internal auditing, and fraud and forensic acctg rig ht now.
I have been preparing my cover letter and resume to submit to the different cpa firms here in Denver. I feel so inadequate because I feel like I don’t know anything at all. But I like reading your posts and it encourages me to persevere. Thank you for sharing!
Don’t feel inadequate! Just because your education is “non-traditional” doesn’t mean you aren’t learning the right things. There’s a lot of stuff our career counselors in the accounting school taught us that your school might not, but you can look up articles on things like interviewing skills for yourself–there’s plenty out on the internet about it!