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

Internship Week One

Before I delve into recounting my exciting first week at T&T, I will give a little background about myself.  My name is Cara and I am going into my senior year at William and Mary.  I am majoring in Accounting with a concentration in Process Management and Consulting. I am thankful to say, that since starting the internship with T&T on Monday, I have learned more than at all of my previous summer jobs combined.  (So far I have not had to file, mail, copy or scan anything!)

On Monday I met the 4 other interns and then Kate and Erin told us some background information about the company and what we would be doing.  We got our schedules, and I was excited to see that I will be out on audits for a lot of the time even though I still am not quite sure what exactly that entails.  A highlight of the morning was realizing that although we (the four other interns and I) were all accounting students, none of us really knew how to fill out the state and federal employment tax forms.  We spent a good five minutes debating whether to claim 1 or 2 exemptions until Kate went to ask someone from the tax department.  She came back 15 minutes later and said to claim 1 and that she should have known better than to ask a tax person a question because their answers tend to take a while.   I am sure she was just kidding though. 

Later that day we took a tour around the office and met a few of the staff, including Charlie Tate, who was very friendly and has since stopped by to chat with us a couple of times.  What I didn’t while walking around and meeting some of the very friendly audit department was that the office layout is highly confusing.  This I discovered when I decided to venture out to the large kitchen during a break and ended up making a lap around every hallway on the floor.  So by the time I got there, I was so confused that I did the same thing going back.

The next day we jumped right into training on Epace, the audit software program.  During training, Jamie’s favorite phrase was something like “well not all the audits are going to be like this,” which she would say right before going to search for yet another new client to illustrate the process she was discussing.  It made me really glad that everyone I have met so far at T&T has been very willing to answer questions and offer help. Training continued until Thursday morning, and I still didn’t feel like I knew what to do when we started planning for audits that afternoon.   But after I spent some time just going through the documents, pieces started to make sense.  I felt very accomplished when I finished the first planning assignment I was given.

Overall, this has been a great first week.  What with starting at 9:30, an ice cream social, lunches on the roof top and 4 pretty cool fellow interns, how could it not be?  Most of all, I have enjoyed the happy atmosphere of T&T.  Everyone really seems to like working here, and I am excited to be here for seven more weeks.

-Cara

First Week on the Job

  After a long month off from school, I finally started my internship on Monday. I was a little nervous, but more excited to get going at Tate & Tryon. I am a rising senior at the University of Virginia and I learned about the internship at the school’s career fair. Since I’ve lived in the suburbs of New York my entire life, I was interested in getting a taste of what it would be like to work in Washington D.C. After visiting the office here and meeting the employees, Tate & Tryon seemed like a great place to intern.  

   Although I was sure I would learn a lot, I did not know it would be this soon. After hearing stereotypical internship horror stories of photocopying and coffee retrieving, I was surprised and excited to see how quickly we got to do actual work. We went through a three day training program and are now working on audit planning. Erin, Leslie and Jamie did a great job showing us the ropes on “ePace,” the firm’s primary audit program. Even after the training, I seem to still have a new issue every few minutes, but everyone has been more than helpful answering my questions.   

  Now that we’ve had our initial training, we five interns have all been doing audit work for separate clients. Yesterday I rolled forward the audit book from 2009 to 2010 and worked on the company’s trial balance. It’s amazing how applicable what I’ve learned in school is to the job. After some work the staff had an ice cream social in the afternoon. It was a great time to take a break and meet the rest of the employees.  

  I’ve had an awesome time with my fellow interns in everything from learning how to navigate through the office maze to going over how confused we are about what we’re doing. Fortunately, we’ve been assured that it will start to make sense after some practice. While the first week has been a little overwhelming, I’ve really been enjoying my experience so far. I’m excited for next week to take my first trip to a client site and to have lunch with Charlie Tate. The rest of the summer in D.C. at Tate & Tryon should be a rewarding experience. 

Until next time,

Michael Mylan

University of Virginia

Tate & Tryon Internship: Week One

The first week as a Tate & Tryon audit intern is nearly complete.  My eyelids are heavy, feet are blistered, and the Metro (though over 30 years old) still can't figure out how to run properly.  But on a positive note,  my first week interning at T & T has been enlightening.  From grueling training sessions to rooftop lunch sessions with my fellow interns.  Within just a week, I already feel like I have accomplished so much.  My relation to T & T began when my father met Charlie Tate and Michael Tryon during a  function hosted at the Natural History Museum in D.C.  My Dad mentioned me as an accounting major at Penn State and Charlie gave Kate's email address to him.  I emailed Kate and she scheduled an interview with me.  I was excited when I received the email informing me that I got the internship.   

June 14th, finally the day had come to start interning at Tate & Tryon.  I was excited to start something new, but also a bit nervous.  The first day entailed orientation, paperwork, lunch with Kate and Erin, and setting up our laptops.  The next couple days Erin, Leslie, and Jamie flooded our minds with information.  Erin taught us how to use the servers, the intranet, and ePace.  Leslie then trained us on how to plan audits using ePace.  She showed us how to find different templates on PPC and went through the general procedures of audit planning.  Jamie taught us the second half of audit planning.  This included testing different types of accounts, referencing different work papers, and analytics.  Learning about such complicated programs and procedures was overwhelming, but Erin, Leslie, and Jamie helped us out whenever we had questions.  On Thursday afternoon, the interns went their separate ways and began work.  I was given financial statements, a representation letter, and a management letter to rollover to the next year for a client.  I ended up having to change the financial statements from a single year to comparative statements.  Thankfully Jamie assisted me with the change because there are a lot of complicated and linked equations used.  Not to mention the specific formating I had to try to replicate.   Hopefully as the summer continues, I will become more efficient at a task like this. 

Overall, I am very happy to be interning at Tate & Tryon.  From the beginning T & T had a very friendly atmosphere.  The other employees have made a point not just introduce themselves, but to speak to you.  I have even spoken to Charlie Tate on a couple occasions.  Working at a large firm wouldn't share the same benefit.  Each day I meet a few more of the employees.  For the past couple days I've been working next to Nick.  He is easy to talk to and has been very helpful; even when I ask a question every 15 minutes.  I look forward to continuing the summer, going out into the field for audits, challenging myself at difficult tasks, and learning much more than an accounting course could teach me.  I also look forward to learning more about the T & T employees and my fellow interns (Mike, Tim, Cara, and, Claire).

Until next blog,

Chase Livengood   

The Pennsylvania State University

The Beginning

Week one of the summer internship is almost over (about 3 hours to go) and I've learned a lot, slept a little, and gotten used to the metro. It's been a long week, but it's made me excited for the rest of the summer. While training is not always the most fun part of work, it's necessary and everyone here has made it more than bearable. The office makes me comfortable because everyone is so nice and excited to have us here. It sounds like we have a lot of cool things planned this summer, including a special lunch with the one and only, Charlie Tate. Already, we were taken out to lunch the first day, had an ice cream social the third day, and have enjoyed our other meals from Brown Bag and Phillip's up on the roof with a wonderful breeze and an awesome view of the Washington Monument.

This week we learned to use the network binder filing system (ePace) which organizes and shares clients' information and documents. We also learned about some of the audit testwork we will be doing in the next couple of weeks. This was especially exciting because it's real, hands-on audit work. A lot of internships only involve busy work with an emphasis on copying and proofreading, but we will actually be auditing cash and searching for unrecorded liabilities, among other things. I was shocked to hear some of the terms I learned in my audit class and find out that my professor was actually teaching us something useful!

Yesterday and today have been spent practicing the planning of an audit - looking through financials, preparing documents for the client and getting the binder ready. Next week I'll be working in the office and getting ready to go out on my first audit for the American Society of International Law. I'm looking forward to that, as well as Audit Fun Day and our two full days off for the 4th of July!!

I'm pretty pumped for this busy summer in DC - only about two more hours until my first weekend!

Claire Holtzmuller

University of Virginia