Tate & Tryon Careers in Public Accounting – An Intern’s Perspective

Midway point

Wow.  It’s hard to believe that it’s the end of the 5^th week of my T&T internship.  My fellow interns and I are halfway through the summer, and I feel like it’s gone by so fast!  This past weekend was a blur of Independence Day activities - barbecue, fireworks, and friends - my first experience of the fourth (my favorite summer holiday) in our nation's capital.  Although I was sad that the weekend was over, I'm glad that I have such an enjoyable job to go back to.  Since my last post, I have been doing a three week rotation at N Street Village, a non-profit that “provides services for homeless women including a day center, night shelter, wellness center, addiction recovery programs and community living.”  It's a great organization with a strong mission and dedicated staff.  Officially, I’ve been filling the role of “accounting intern,” but really, I’ve been having an insider’s look into the operations department of a non-profit organization.  I know that when I hear about charitable non-profits, I mostly hear about their missions, purpose, who they help, etc.  Seeing a non-profit from the operations side, however, has enlightened me to the business side of things. After all, non-profits still have to operate as a business, and achieving the most favorable efficiencies behind the scenes allows such organizations as N Street Village to pass on the best service it can to those who really need it.  My day-to-day work for the past couple of weeks has consisted of working with Quickbooks, entering invoices and the like, organizing hard copy employee time sheets and inputting their electronic versions into a spreadsheet to calculate pay allocation (a concept that I'm a bit familiar with after my Strategic Cost Accounting class), sitting in on various meetings, and the occasional filing or copying.  I've learned about what sort of controls N Street has and how it can illustrate them to it's auditor's.  And I've the learned the importance of what financial statements show and don't show, especially when it comes to non-profits' fundraising.  Furthermore, I've learned about all the great programs and services that N Street offers which make it imperative that the operations department run smoothly.  All-in-all it's a typical intern's life, but it has been a great experience thus far.

Next week, I start a new assignment - I'll be going out on my first audit trip.  A new location and new tasks at hand.  So, more on that later...

~ Cherrie

T&T interning- second entry

     As an intern at Tate and Tryon, I have learned that the work never seems to get repetitive. Since I wrote my last blog, I have been in the office only a couple of days. My first day out of the office was for the Tate and Tryon Audit Fun Day. The Fun Day was held at ESPN Zone, where there was an open bar and lots of appetizers. Being a month and a half away from being 21, I still had a good time cleaning up the appetizers and sipping on my sprite. Each employee then got a game card to play any of the ESPN Zone games. The games of choice seemed to be basketball, football, and hockey. Hockey wasn't the game for me because I'm a lefty, and they didn't have a left-handed stick. So I ventured over to the basketball game and placed a solid 4 th out of 4 players. Later on I got a little better at that game as I found my shot, but the game for me was the football game. Growing up with backyard football and playing football in high school, I’ve picked up on how to throw the old pig skin pretty well. After a cut throat competition with one of the other interns, I ended up on top by one point. ESPN Zone was a great time.

     After getting more training in the office for a few days, I headed over to 14 th Street for my Pro Bono work with Central Union Mission. The first day we had a monthly lunch for the third Tuesday in June. After I was introduced to everyone, I got familiarized with the accounting system that Central Union used. James, one of the members of accounting department was in charge of me for the first week. James was in charge of filing the invoice expenses and entering them into the system. The software they used was QuickBooks which I was slightly familiar with. I helped James enter those invoices in the system, and then filed them for the upcoming audit. Every Friday they would cut the checks, and, because it was a nonprofit organization, they would have to choose what time the amounts should be paid because of their gift income. Then I rolled forward the filing system they use for their invoices and created new folders for the next fiscal year. The next week I worked with John who was in charge of the deposits that are made in donor's names. I would scan the checks with the SunTrust check scanner and it would make an automatic deposit. I would then reconcile this total with a manual total I made to see if it matched. I began to get very good at this as the week went on, and it was interesting to see how the deposit slips were filled out and they kept track of the batches. You don't really learn the more practical side of this type of accounting in your accounting class so real life experience is definitely helpful to see. I also helped Len Conner, Senior Manager, take a look at a capital expenditures report. I debited and credited out the buildings with the liabilities payable to see if the badges made sense. I was glad to have taken intermediate accounting as I used those recent skills to balance the accounts. I arrived back at T & T on the 2 nd of July where it was a half day, and Friday was a holiday. Now being back in the T & T office, I feel fresh and ready to help out the audit department again.

-Tim Tishman

Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University

The life of a Tate & Tryon intern: Part Deuce

Greetings from the bullpen.  Us interns are just wrapping up our 4th week at T & T.  I think I speak for us all when I say that it has been a tremendous experience thusfar.  Personally, I am throughly enjoying getting to know the staff here.  A coule of weeks ago was Audit Fun Day.  Half the day consisted of meetings and office clean up, then we went to The ESPN Zone.  We were provided with free drinks, food, and games.  It was really fun day.  I never imagined accountants could be so fun.  Other than that, I've really enjoyed getting some practical experience in the field of accounting.  I've worked on tax returns and helped with audit planning.  Next week I get to actually go out to a client for an audit.  I'm very excited about the prospects of interacting with clients and getting a better understanding of auditing fieldwork.  Other than that, I'm just really enjoying my time living in the city.  I'm really starting to like D.C. and the surrounding areas.  The Tate & Tryon softball team starts up next week so that should be a ton of fun.  But now, I have to get back to work.  I hope to write another one of these in the near future.

Sincerely,

Andrew Miller

Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University