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Who knew?

It's been a pretty tough week already - lots of practice cases and lots of technical study, but something that really surprised me this week was how much I actually referred back to some of my past engagements and auditing experience to get me through some of my study days!

Being an auditor, you come across lots of different challenges. Working through busy season (which often times has some long hours), being assigned on special engagements (forcing you to think outside of the box), and working with lots of different people (learning how to work with unique individuals), gives you a diversity of different skills and experiences. Also, PwC has a variety of different clients - from large public companies to small private clients, from companies that are just starting up, to those that have been around for many years. Each client and engagement offers a unique learning experience and it’s those experiences that help you grow and develop as an accountant and as an aspiring CA. Despite the challenge of these situations and scenarios, it will definitely help you and I get through the CA process.

Getting Back Into It

So what does a typical day for an Experienced Associate look like? Hopefully I can provide some insight on what it’s like to work out in the field.

Adjusting to life as a Senior Associate…..

One of my first memories at PwC was when I was scheduled to go to my first audit engagement as a New Associate; I was so nervous! Although I had just come out of training the firm provides to all new starts, I was still a little uncertain as to how I would apply the knowledge and skills I had learned. And although I found training to be very helpful, practical hands on experience goes way beyond what any textbook can ever teach you, which I’m sure most current students would agree!

Back to Work!

Well I’m back at work! After having nearly 2 months off, I returned to work as a senior associate, and let me tell you, it was an adjustment!

Welcome Back, Jack!

This week I got to go back to a very interesting client that I worked on briefly in the past. It was a new client of ours, and they are in the business of providing marketing services for products at sporting events, in convenience stores, in condominiums, and so forth. There are lots of characters at this client – read on to find out!

Rolling Off

So remember how I described that I went to a “kick-off” meeting for one of my clients? Well time just flies by, and it’s already time for me to roll off! “Rolling off” is a term we use at PwC once we are done working on a client or job. Now this can either be a good thing or a bad thing, but in this case, I wanted to stay!

Wrapping Up

So remember that client I said I was on by myself? Well it turned out really well! I met with the client to return documents and to finalize some things, and he was really pleased with the way the audit went. He even wanted to have an audit lunch, so hopefully one day when the senior and partner are free, we can organize that. It’s always fun to celebrate after an audit is over!

Busy Week!

Last week was a busy one for me! I am part of the UFE Newsletter Committee at PwC, where we write articles about the UFE exam process for those associates studying for them. Since we have members on the Committee from across the offices in Ontario, we had a conference call Monday morning outlining the types of articles we wanted to have for our upcoming May 2008 CKE newsletter (the first of the 3 professional exams), setting up deadlines for writing the articles, and distributing them to writers. My role was to edit the newsletter (which I love to do – I think I’m an editor at heart!). It’s so rewarding to help people out, especially when you know what they’ve been through!

Kingston - what a place!

I’m currently working in a hotel room in Kingston – it’s a nice way to start off a Thursday! A few of us are here from PwC for a recruiting event.  Last night we were at “All Firms Night” for an information session / mix n’ mingle with students. Afterwards, the PwC reps went out for a nice dinner. I really like Kingston – has a nice vibe to it!  This afternoon we have a wine and cheese event to go to and then we will take the train back to Toronto as I’m helping out with another recruiting event in the office tomorrow.

Was I too optimistic?

So, remember last week when I was saying how great this client engagement was? Right, well not so much anymore! It turns out there was some mistakes made by the client in some of the calculations.  They have since fixed it but it has had a “domino effect” on how great things had been going before!  But I shouldn’t be too surprised that we found some errors; it’s rare that an audit will go perfectly – that’s the point of our job, right? :-)  Yesterday we took a break for a team coffee run – it’s a big team so we all looked funny walking in a line to Starbucks for some much needed caffeine!