Notes from an Internship - Week 5

The journey back home to the United States was not too bad. Dealing with my luggage drove me crazy though – I will definitely be sure not to pack so much for my next trip.

On my first day back in KPMG’s Atlanta office, I was assigned to a client right away. The client is in the industrial sector, which is a familiar territory since I worked on clients in this sector during my rotation in London. My senior, Angus, explained what I would be working on for the week. Since this would be the first time KPMG is working on this new client, the workload was a bit heavy as we did not have a prior year’s file to go off of. We had to make sure we collected all the necessary documents to test the controls required. The client’s accounting department was nice, but initially seemed reluctant at times to give us all the information we requested. Angus did a great job of explaining why we needed the documents requested and in no time we had everything we needed to complete our work. One internal accountant made a few jokes about hiding from the auditors. What’s that saying? “There’s truth in jest or something like that.” LOL

By the way, Angus is actually here on a two-year international rotation from KPMG Hong Kong. He returns home next spring. Throughout the week, during lunch, I picked his brain about what Hong Kong is like. I’ll be studying abroad there this fall so I’m sure any information I can get will be very helpful.

This week we had longer days than I’d been used to coming from London’s 35 hour standard work week. But I found time went fast when I kept busy. I had a few major tasks surrounding fixed asset depreciation analysis, cash account reconciliations, intercompany account reconciliations and preparing memos.

Friday morning I headed to the office to meet with my Performance Management Leader, or PML, for my exit interview. I lucked out because I was assigned to Brad Benton, the lead Audit partner for the Southeast region. We spoke about my time in London and changes needed to implement IFRS. Then I drove back out to the client site and put the last finishing touches on my work. It was a busy but productive week. I can’t believe I only have one week left.