Audit Assistant - Jen Simmons

Well, it turns out that accounting isn’t that boring after all. Although those considering audit might want to take a careful look at what’s involved.

Accountancy was cited by almost everyone as a brilliant place to get a solid understanding of business and many people exploit the training as a springboard into other careers both within finance and more broadly (such as management consultancy). This makes it a pretty good option for those who aren’t entirely sure which direction to take but who want a solid qualification from which to build.

The exact qualification you sign-up to will depend on what interests you and what slant you want your training to have. Typically at the big 4 you’ll be going for the ACA, which probably has the edge in terms of prestige. If you’re interested in being an accountant within a business then you’ll be heading in the direction of CIMA. Public service has its own specialised training and that’s CIPFA.

Something that may seem a little counter intuitive is that you don’t actually have to be a math geek to be successful in this industry. Whilst it might help for more specialized areas such as tax and actuarial work, most people we spoke to didn’t have a clue what the whole top row of a calculator does!

Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Jen Simmons and an audit assistant at BDO.

What is Accountancy?

Accountancy basically is the maintaining of financial records so throughout the year on a day to day basis, all transactions will be recorded in the books and people know it as. For every transaction there are two entries, a debit and a credit which are two words very associated with accountancy. At the end of the year all the transactions are added up and a trial balance created which is basically the total of all your sales and expenses and from the trial balance reports are created, so the financial reports are balance sheet and profit and loss which shows how much money the company has made and how many assets it holds at that point in time at the year end. For audit, we come in and check that these financial statements are true and accurate. We can't test everything so its basic assurance is what we gain and we think the accounts are true and fair. This is only done for larger businesses; over a certain threshold is when you require an audit. Once that's done your accounts can be published and signed.

What attracted you to this career?

At university I studied finance, accounting and management so it was a natural progression but it's just something I felt I could use my numerical skills, logical skills as well as my communication skills because as well as working with numbers I wanted to work with people as well and accountancy gave me that way to do both of those and also I wanted to gain my ACA qualification which is what I'm working towards.

What different accounting qualifications are there?

ACA is the Association of Chartered Accountants qualification whereas ACCA is the Association of Certified Chartered Accountants. There's not much difference between them these days. Historically the ACA was something you studied for when you worked in practice at an accountancy firm and the ACCA was something you studied for when you worked in industry such as the finance department of a company but nowadays you can do ACCA in practice as well but you can't do ACA in industry. Historically ACA was always seen as a bit more prestigious, so my grandpa who was an accountant always said which is why I wanted to do it, but nowadays really there's not much difference. CIMA is management accountancy which is done again in industry within the finance department of a company. With ACA you can work in practice or in industry whereas with CIMA you are bound to industry so I felt it was the better qualification to go for to be a chartered accountant.

What does your job involve?

Audit basically is going in and checking through the accounts before they are published to check they are true and fair so it's a protection for investors and shareholders to check that what the company is saying in their accounts is actually true and it's also fraud prevention and detection.

What do you do on a typical day?

Half our time is spent in the office and half our time is spent doing audit work on site at the clients so it's quite varied in that sense. When you are out at audit you are working with a team of about 3 or 4 different people and so it's always different people at different clients. We start 9.30 to 5.30, when I'm in the office I stick to those hours, if I'm with a client and I'm a bit pushed for time I might work a bit of overtime, but specific to my company we get paid overtime. We have our own laptops which we bring to the office or client and when we're in the office we hot-desk which means we just grab a free desk anywhere and set up our laptops there. Most of the work is done using excel so going over spreadsheets. There's not much on the phone but when you're with the clients your conversing face to face rather than on the phone.

Describe the process of your work?

Normally a bid is placed and once you win a client that's when you start planning the audit. There is a team assigned with a manager and supervisor and they will book on an audit team with people such as myself. A lot of planning work is done in the office, and then you go out and visit the client. At higher levels of the supervisors it's really about building up a relationship with the client. Once the planning work is done a couple of weeks are allocated to go out on site to do most of the actual conduct of audit work. Once we are out there we go through every element of the balance sheet and profit and loss and check through. Probably the simplest thing to do is check the cash which is something you do in first year quite often. You go in. This is what they're stating is their cash, you'd have to obtain their bank balances, obtain their bank statement at year end, check what they're saying is true. We write to the bank and obtain confirmation from them. It's all about obtaining external confirmation of the balances the clients say is in the accounts. Then we do all sorts of analysis on their figures because obviously we can't test everything. Looking at the cash again we'd do, this is how much money they've got, this is how much interest they're saying, do a basic calculation on the interest rate and, yes, it looks about right, that's fine. So there's lots of other analysis that goes into it a lot more high level at different areas, profit and loss, debtor balances and balance sheet. It's basically going through all the elements of the profit and loss, balance sheet, conducting tests to gain assurance that nothing is, we use the term, materially misstated. We prepare all our reports and then they are reviewed by the managers and the partner. We propose any journals for anything we think isn't in quite the right place, they're agreed with the clients, and the accounts are drawn up, either by them or internally depending if they have the facilities or not. There are juniors in the offices who go through and call and cast the accounts, they have to read it and check it all adds up because everything has to add up to the penny. Once we're all happy, the clients are happy the audit report which we produce is signed off by the us, the partner and the company sign off the accounts.

What are the speicialisms within your industry?

In accountancy, if you're in practice, which I am, there is business assurance which is audit, there's tax, forensic, business restructuring, corporate finance, lots of different areas within practice or there is accountancy within industry, working in the finance departments of companies. There are so many different areas of accountancy; it's not just preparing accounts for a person which is what you traditionally think. There are some elements where small accountancy practices will prepare accounts for small companies but there are so many different areas. Typically in your first year you will be doing the easier elements such as cash in bank or fixed assets and then when you move up to the second year you move onto the more difficult areas. When you move on to your third year you're really planning the audit, you are dishing out work to everybody else and you're the one who has to be very organised, you're organising the main onsite work when you're a senior so there is extra responsibility with every level. Lots of clients have lots of small companies operating offshore so I'm in my first year and this week I've done about 6 different whole companies just because they are very small companies created to hold land and offshore for tax purposes. There is a real variety depending on what your client does so sometimes it's just a cash in bank section, sometimes it's a whole company.

What are the best bits about your job?

The best bit is the team environment we work in because when you're in the office there is a team of young trainees, we have our intake where we all socialise. When you're at a client you're working with a different team of 3 or 4 people and always different people so you're always working together so it's a real social atmosphere and everyone is so young because everyone is training as well. Also the variety, you are at different places, different clients constantly. One week I'll be in central London, next week I'll be in the office and the week after that I'll be in Heathrow or Oxford so there's a real variety of work.

What are the worst bits about your job?

I suppose there is an element of mundane work which you just, as an auditor have to do, especially as a first year which is what I am, because you are the cheapest so people give you the worst jobs. There's an element of ticking and bashing as people call it but it's just something which has to be done so you get over that and you get the more interesting work.

What has been your greatest achievement?

It's difficult because I've worked here only 8 months now. I think in this industry getting the job is my main achievement. It's very competitive to be able to go on a graduate scheme, going through the recruitment process. I think when I qualify that will be my main achievement and I'm very excited about that.

Any regrets?

After I left university I took a year out to travel and I really took time to decide what job I wanted to go into so I'm really pleased I did that, so I'd tell myself, definitely do that. I might do a different degree; I really loved maths at school so I wish I'd gone on to do maths at university but I went and did accountancy because I thought it would lead me into a career which it did and it's great but I could have done any degree and then gone into accountancy which is something I didn't realise at the time. People come into accountancy from any disciplines of degrees so that's some advice I would give myself.

What is the pay like and are there any perks?

The pay scheme in the first three years (it takes 3 years to qualify) is fairly average in the mid to high 20's. Once you qualify pay jumps so it's all about getting the qualification at the end of the three years. At the moment our company pays overtime which is a big bonus and we have a "flexell" scheme where 1% of our salary can be used to buy things such as pension, extra holidays, numerous different options, I can't think of all of them. It's all about getting qualified and then the pay rises.

How long is a working day and do you have to work out of hours?

It's not about being on call for the client. We are there to do a job and client has to work around us in a way. It's very much 9 to 5.30, you might get in at 9 and leave at 6 but that's not an issue. Sometimes we have to do stock takes which might get done a Saturday morning because that's when it's available, when the stock take is taking place but that's paid overtime, double time on a Saturday so it's not much of an issue, you just get somebody to volunteer for it who's not doing much that weekend and wants to earn a bit of extra cash. Sometimes we have jobs where you work away and have to stay in a hotel for a couple of weeks and my experience of it is if you have to stay in a hotel 5 minutes down the road you're more inclined to work slightly longer hours because there is no travel but if you are travelling for an hour around London then people are pretty flexible with that.

What is the working environment like?

It's quite a young industry because lots of people are training so that's really nice. There are obviously the managers and the partners so there are senior people where the ages increase but there is a real young element to it because we take on so many trainees to qualify as ACA accountants. When in the office the dress code is business casual, which basically means for men, no tie. When we go to a client, it's formal, it's suit and tie for men. For me, myself I don't dress any different from the office to the client, it's so different for women, subjective but personally I like that, I just dress how I like, which is smart.

Do you have to be based anywhere in particular?

You can definitely be regional with accountancy. You can study for your ACA qualification anywhere in England and Wales because you are studying with the ICAEW which is the Institute Chartered Accountants England & Wales. We've got offices all over the country where you can study and qualify. Our main office is in London - about have half our employees are based in London but there are plenty of trainees all over the country so you don't necessarily have to be here. The main thing before I came into accountancy is I didn't realise how much of our work is conducted onsite at the client but so much of our work is done out and about at clients. I thought I would be based in the office 90% of the time, just going out to visit clients. I didn't realise that actually we take our laptops to our clients; they allocate a boardroom where three of us will set up our laptops and work there for a week. Sometimes you will go there in the morning and leave in the evening; you don't come into the office for maybe two weeks on end which makes it nice when you're in the office because you see everyone but sometimes you feel you're working with different people, you don't see the same faces every day which some people like, whereas with us you might lose touch, but there's always emails going round and when you come into the office, it's great to see every so I didn't realise how much work is actually conducted out of the office, but I like that, I think it's a bonus.

Is there much in the way of travel?

There's so much in the way of travel, especially in this company, I can't say for others. One of our main sectors of clients is natural resources so obviously most of the clients are based out in the Middle East. We have people out in Abu Dhabi at the moment; they've been there 4 weeks. There are lots of opportunities for away jobs abroad. There are away jobs in England, I went to Oxford for a couple of weeks, there's anywhere over the country. There are jobs in outer London, where you probably have to travel, at the moment I'm working at Heathrow so I have to travel there and there are jobs on Oxford Street. Because you're working at different clients all the time it's completely different places so there is quite an element of travel. Personally I really enjoy the away jobs and I hope I get a job abroad soon so I think it's a good variety of different places you go to.

What's the application process like?

I applied the normal way which is on the internet. There is an online application; you have to fill out a few different competency questions like, why BDO, why accountancy, things like that. Once they have received your application if you've got the pre-requisites which is a 2:1 degree and 280 UCAS points, after the application you get sent two online tests which you have to do which is verbal reasoning and numerical reasoning. Then you get invited in for an interview which is a one hour interview with a manager which is a competency based interview. The final round is a full day at an assessment where you come in at 9.30/10 in the morning and involves a group exercise, more logical testing, a presentation and an interview with a partner and if you're successful throughout the day you get made an offer. So it's quite a long process but worth it in the end.

Are there other routes into the industry?

We have one scheme which is after A-levels where people can come in and work for a year which is called the CTS scheme, Commercial Training Scheme, so you can work for the year and join the graduate programme so if you didn't want to go to university it's a quicker route to being qualified as an accountant. It takes 4 years rather than 3 years at university and 3 years studying at a firm. If you can get in for work experience, you need to be doing the training for the qualification so you're going to want to be on some sort of scheme, the graduate scheme is an ideal thing to be on, but if you can come in for an internship and you like then you'll be able to join the scheme hopefully.

What are the key skills required for your job?

There's definitely a numerical and you have to have a logical look on life, to be able to grasp the fundamentals of accountancy, the double entry the debits and credits. To pass the exams you have to be decent with numbers. Other skills are that you have to be able to communicate with people which is maybe not something people associate with accountancy but we are dealing with clients so often in my job and you have to get the information out of clients so you really have to get the information out of the clients so you really need to be able to talk to people. Also the other elements like working in a team. It's one of the vital things on an assessment day in the group exercise to see how you are working with people.

What's your top tip for breaking into your industry?

I think work experience is a really good idea. In my second year of university I went to an accountancy company in my home town of Peterborough and spent 8 weeks working there. Most of the top accountancy firms now offer internships which are quite structured but these are quite limited so there are only a few places. It's not necessary that you get one of those - ideally an accountancy firm but at least in an office environment. I learnt so much temping which just helped me out so much for coming into an office because at university you don't get taught any of those skills. So personally I think any work experience, accountancy or not is really beneficial.

What's the career progress and how quickly can you move up the career ladder?

I think there is quite a rigid structure. For the first three years you are training so you can't really move or progress much in the first three years because you are not qualified. Every year you move up one level with the rest of your intake. We do have constant appraisals going on all the time so there is the opportunity to shine. We have things where you are numerically rated 1 to 5. Everyone starts off on 3 and if you move up the scale you get a slight pay rise. There is a little opportunity in the first three years, but not so much, it's really once you qualify. Once you qualify then you move onto senior supervisor, manager, director, and partner. So there is all the levels which usually you go through each level rather than tending to skip. If you are good you can move up the career pretty quickly, there is every opportunity and once you qualify the world is your oyster but you have to get over that hurdle first.

Where do you see the industry going?

At my level the main ones have always been audit and tax which is where we take most of our graduates. If you are looking for a higher level there are the other departments such as forensics, business restructuring and corporate finance but most of the graduate training is done within audit and tax. There are opportunities in the other departments but a lot less graduates there. The normal entry in is via business assurance which is audit or tax.

What are the industry resources that someone interested in joining must know about?

There is the Accountancy Age magazine which we all get sent as soon as you sign up, there are the ICAEW magazines and that sort of thing is good to read, there is the FT but I wouldn't say all of it is essential. Accountancy is always changing, all the rules and legislation - a couple of years ago they brought in IFRS which are international standards so these are the things that people are looking into and should have knowledge of.

Is there scope for movement during or after this career?

There is so much opportunity to move around. Once you are qualified you are a desired commodity, people want you, you are a qualified accountant. BDO will want to retain you, they've spent the money, and they've invested the money in training you. So once you qualify there is the opportunity to move to different departments, there are international secondments, they run all sorts of schemes where you can go to different departments for 6 months then come back to audit if you want to or stay there, so you can get a grasp of what area you want to be in. The ACA qualification is world renowned; you can use it in industry anywhere. Most of the people on financial boards are ACA qualified, it's such a good qualification to have, you can use it anywhere.

If you weren't in this career, what would you be doing?

Realistically I would still be in the financial industry and would probably have gone into banking. My father is a banker so I would probably have followed in his footsteps although he put me off a little bit. At one point when I was doing my A-levels I had studied communication studies and I was thinking about going down that route, so you never know, maybe I would have ended up in media. I like to think it would be something glamorous but I think really it would probably be something financial.