CFAB: Life as a trainee auditor

Hello!!

I have been working as a trainee auditor for 2 weeks now, and so I decided to write about my life as a trainee auditor for the past 2 weeks. The first reason is to give CFAB-ers and prospect CFAB-ers an insight to the job of an auditor (this might only apply to the first 2 weeks of an auditor or maybe only apply to the interns of the audit firm I joined). The second reason is because I do not want to leave my blog hanging for a long time. So, let's start.

On the first day, I reported to the office with other interns and we were brought to listen a short introduction about the company. Then, we were assigned to a team or rather assigned under a partner's team. For the first 2 days, we were told to read employee's handbook, firm's policies and procedures and other stuff (a so-called training). Since I was bored reading the stuff that they gave me, I asked my senior (though they are only associates, but they are senior to me, so for now, I just call them senior) if they are things I can help out with. Luckily, it is not a peak period, and my senior taught me a few things here and there, mostly how to use printer and follow up some documents (basically it is just checking for mistakes in the documents. If there are mistakes, send them back to the typist for correction). If it was a peak period, I doubt my senior would teach me all these things...

The next week, I was assigned a proper job together with my seniors (associates), seniors in-charged (semi-senior) and an overall senior (senior). Seniors in-charged are those who have a higher position than my seniors, and overall senior is basically the one with the highest position among my seniors. So, the position goes like this: interns -> associates ->  semi-senior -> senior -> manager or reviewer -> partner.

Since it is a new client for my company, we had to do opening test. Opening test, based on what I have done, means checking whether the client's accounts tie back to the previous auditor's report. If tie, then good for both of us (client and auditors); if not tie, find out the reasons from the client, and that's where the troubles come.

On Monday, we went to the client's company and did opening test. We had a short meeting with the CFO of the company and from there I learnt how seniors do audit and communicate with clients. The first job I received was to do the opening test for cash and bank balances (another word, working paper for cash and bank balances). It is said that all newbies start from doing cash and bank, and that did not exclude me. Long story short, doing cash and bank balances means extracting information from audited report and transferring the information to excel nicely and neatly. Also, not forget to sight the numbers by referring to the original documents. Later, I also did working paper for other categories, such as plant, property and equipment (PPE). I thought that was quite fun, at least I learnt something. 

Due to client constantly delayed in searching some documents for one of my category, I had nothing more to do, so did my senior. So, I was non-officially transferred to another senior, an overall senior this time. For another senior, I did a few opening test on other categories and also learnt to prepare a few memorandums. As the time went by, my senior asked me to get some documents from client or asked the reasons for the variance from the client. That was when it troubled me the most. This is because I did not prepare the working paper from the start, I had no idea where the amount came from when the client asked me, plus, when the client said some documents that I had never heard before, it further confused me. So, I had to run back and fro, from my senior to client and to my senior again. That's when everyone get annoyed. To overcome this situation, I learnt to take notes. However, I'm really bad at taking notes on the spot, what client said while I was taking notes, could not enter my brain or if I took the notes after client finish saying, I forgot what he said. Anyone care to teach me some skills? Please?

Another troublesome thing that I encountered is to get the listing or some documents from client. As some documents are really old or the client could not find it, I had to follow up with the client to get the documents, in other words, remind them to give us the documents, no matter what. Sometimes, I do really pity them, but I had to follow my "boss" order.

That concludes what I did for the past 2 weeks. Next week, my company will have an annual training. That is when I can take a breather, I hope...

To finish off this boring post, here's a picture of my aunt's handmade passion fruit mousse cake, specially made for my birthday.