Topsy Turvy it was, my first week as a trainee!! Every morning this week I cursed myself for joining this Financial Advisory company. All day I would think I wasn't good enough for the tasks they gave me. The training won't count as articleship (3 and a half yr training period required for CA students) and I won't be getting paid, so all the more reason to stay home and wait for the ICAP result, but every night I would go through my day and think I was learning something new each day so I had to hang in there, at least, for a couple of weeks And here I am, richer by one week of experience (and what an experience it has been!).
My friend Ahmer told me about the vacancies available at the place he was working. I thought it would be a good opportunity to fill the Experience column of my CV, although it was probably going to be for 2 weeks only, and so I went for the interview along with Farid and Aadil. More than an interview, it was sort of a debate about why I should work there for more than just two weeks. The next day we got phone calls that they had found some short term assignments for us and we could start from Monday, 9.30am. Overruling the voice in my head telling me I wouldn't be able to sleep till noon, play cricket in the evenings (forget night matches) and read the vampire lore I had intended to finish by mid-May, I accepted the offer.
1st day, we were at the office by 9.15am, the rest of the staff showed up after 10am, (point of note: no punctuality!). Rehan (don't know whether I should call him Rehan Sahab or just Rehan :p), the Taxation and Assurance Manager sent me, Farid and Hassan (another new trainee) for the Stock Audit of a pharmaceutical company. Ahmer was to lead us. Although it took me hours to understand the process, the whole thing wasn't as hard as I had thought, especially the physical stock taking. The best part was the fact that the staff of the company was calling us Auditors (as if we were CAs already), and as Ahmer said, the in-charge of the stock was actually afraid of us (his job depends on how many flaws we can find during our audit :p). I had nearly started on the most boring job in auditing i.e. comparing GRNs and DCs when we heard news about an MQM leader having been shot and haalaat being kharaab, and so finished my first day on job.
The next day, Farid and I were at the client's office well before 9.30am and cursing ourselves. Ahmer wasn't picking up the phone so we knew that we were the only fools to come to work that day (not counting the other fool, Aadil, who was working at the head office). Rehan came well after 11 o' clock and put us to work on the company's accounts.I was to find exceptions in the sales related accounts, Farid was to try and make sense of the company's leasing agreements. We met the CFO of the company as well, who tried to explain the Entries to us. Thus ended our second day, in the small office of the finance department, working over papers and applying the Understanding the Entity procedures of auditing. I went home thinking auditing wasn't that hard after all!
3rd Day: Stock audit again, this time of a different pharmaceutical company. We spent nearly 3 hours in the 2 Degree Centigrade chillers of the warehouse, the chillers were turned off (but you already knew that!) It was a lot easier this time (if counting 43,000 packs of Ceron can ever be easy, we even found some expired stuff mixed with the other packs!) and we finished earlier than expected. As I was filling in the stock report (Farid was working on another report in the head office, Ahmer and Hassan were sent to deal with another client), Rehan briefed me about the internal audit of the company we were going to work on from the next day and introduced me to the Branch CFO. I had planned to review my books at home so I could do the work properly, but ended up eating karahi with my school friends, planning for the alumni event we're going to arrange in June.
The fourth day was definitely going to be a bad one. I hadn't slept enough for days, I hadn't studied anything, and I was supposed to meet the Branch CFO alone (of a pharma company that wasn't as small as I had pictured, they have dealings with some really big hospitals and healthcare institutions in the country)!! This is what happened: I went to the receptionist, she called the CFO and said: "Sir, Mr. Shayan aye hain!" I was immediately called into his office, sat down and didn't say a word for 5 minutes, it was clear why I was there, so he said "Trial Balance chahiye na?" I mumbled a faint "Han ", took the papers, went back to the room assigned to us (it was actually their competitors' office, the one we were helping with the stock audit), and started trying to make sense of what I was supposed to do. It all sounds pretty ordinary but that was the moment I felt proud of having chosen this field of work. Farid joined me 2 hours later, together we worked out a list of the sales of one product with the delivery challans (D.C.). I went back to the CFO's office, this time with a lot more confidence, introduced Farid just as Rehan had introduced me (like a kid who's smart beyond his years :p) and got the ledgers and bank statements from him. What we had worked out after more than an hour of maghaz-mari was already present in the ledgers. After luch, Rehan popped in and took me to another client, this time it was a company making corporate gift packs. They hadn't maintained their accounts till then and I was supposed to gather all the info I could get from their records and then make their accounts from scratch with that info. I thought it was a simple case of single entry, wouldn't be difficult, but when I met the owner/partner of the company I had this sinking feeling that this task was going to be significant. I was told that Aadil had been doing the same work with a shop, so I thought I could do it too, but seeing that it was a company dealing with some of the biggest brands like Unilever, Coca Cola, Nestle, etc, and once having branches in three cities took a big chunk off my confidence. The partner wasn't happy: "Rehan Sahab, He's too young, how can you expect him to work us out of this mess!?" I heard myself telling him I could do it, but deep down I was looking for a chance to tell Rehan to get someone else for this project. Rehan just put in some basic formats in an Excel workbook and told me to use the hundreds of scanned documents, bank statements, and used cheque books to find data and fill up the trail balance. Before he went, he said: "Aik parhay likhay aur un-parh mai yehi farq hota hai k wo challenges accept krta hai", and so I resolved to give it a go.
The next day, I started working on this project all by myself. Rehan had said he would join me later in the day but that never happened. In all, I only managed to enter 37 entries in the General Journal that day and put every thing that looked vague into the suspense account.. I went home thinking this was going to be a disaster. I was too slow, and whatever I had done was probably wrong. I planned to ask Rehan to get me working elsewhere or at least have someone experienced helping me if he couldn't do it himself.
The next day, being Saturday, was a half day. I was at the door promptly at 9.30am, the office opened up at 10.15am and I was cursing myself again for this punctuality thing that had gotten in my head (from what I've heard, except for the financial year end days, accountants and auditors are not punctual about their office timings). I added 5 Entries in about an hour. Finally Rehan came and I immediately told him Mjhe nhe lgta k mai sahi kr raha hu but he replied: koi maraiga thori agr ghalat hua! mai check krunga! And then he checked my work, said I had done nearly everything correctly, and I could go with the pace that suited me. That made my day, and the week!!
[This post is for those students who are about to start their professional careers and feel they would be out-of-place in an office. I don't know what would happen in the next week, but what I learned from this one is that there is no good brooding over what would happen, it's far better to live in the present and do the work as it comes.]
My friend Ahmer told me about the vacancies available at the place he was working. I thought it would be a good opportunity to fill the Experience column of my CV, although it was probably going to be for 2 weeks only, and so I went for the interview along with Farid and Aadil. More than an interview, it was sort of a debate about why I should work there for more than just two weeks. The next day we got phone calls that they had found some short term assignments for us and we could start from Monday, 9.30am. Overruling the voice in my head telling me I wouldn't be able to sleep till noon, play cricket in the evenings (forget night matches) and read the vampire lore I had intended to finish by mid-May, I accepted the offer.
1st day, we were at the office by 9.15am, the rest of the staff showed up after 10am, (point of note: no punctuality!). Rehan (don't know whether I should call him Rehan Sahab or just Rehan :p), the Taxation and Assurance Manager sent me, Farid and Hassan (another new trainee) for the Stock Audit of a pharmaceutical company. Ahmer was to lead us. Although it took me hours to understand the process, the whole thing wasn't as hard as I had thought, especially the physical stock taking. The best part was the fact that the staff of the company was calling us Auditors (as if we were CAs already), and as Ahmer said, the in-charge of the stock was actually afraid of us (his job depends on how many flaws we can find during our audit :p). I had nearly started on the most boring job in auditing i.e. comparing GRNs and DCs when we heard news about an MQM leader having been shot and haalaat being kharaab, and so finished my first day on job.
The next day, Farid and I were at the client's office well before 9.30am and cursing ourselves. Ahmer wasn't picking up the phone so we knew that we were the only fools to come to work that day (not counting the other fool, Aadil, who was working at the head office). Rehan came well after 11 o' clock and put us to work on the company's accounts.I was to find exceptions in the sales related accounts, Farid was to try and make sense of the company's leasing agreements. We met the CFO of the company as well, who tried to explain the Entries to us. Thus ended our second day, in the small office of the finance department, working over papers and applying the Understanding the Entity procedures of auditing. I went home thinking auditing wasn't that hard after all!
3rd Day: Stock audit again, this time of a different pharmaceutical company. We spent nearly 3 hours in the 2 Degree Centigrade chillers of the warehouse, the chillers were turned off (but you already knew that!) It was a lot easier this time (if counting 43,000 packs of Ceron can ever be easy, we even found some expired stuff mixed with the other packs!) and we finished earlier than expected. As I was filling in the stock report (Farid was working on another report in the head office, Ahmer and Hassan were sent to deal with another client), Rehan briefed me about the internal audit of the company we were going to work on from the next day and introduced me to the Branch CFO. I had planned to review my books at home so I could do the work properly, but ended up eating karahi with my school friends, planning for the alumni event we're going to arrange in June.
The fourth day was definitely going to be a bad one. I hadn't slept enough for days, I hadn't studied anything, and I was supposed to meet the Branch CFO alone (of a pharma company that wasn't as small as I had pictured, they have dealings with some really big hospitals and healthcare institutions in the country)!! This is what happened: I went to the receptionist, she called the CFO and said: "Sir, Mr. Shayan aye hain!" I was immediately called into his office, sat down and didn't say a word for 5 minutes, it was clear why I was there, so he said "Trial Balance chahiye na?" I mumbled a faint "Han ", took the papers, went back to the room assigned to us (it was actually their competitors' office, the one we were helping with the stock audit), and started trying to make sense of what I was supposed to do. It all sounds pretty ordinary but that was the moment I felt proud of having chosen this field of work. Farid joined me 2 hours later, together we worked out a list of the sales of one product with the delivery challans (D.C.). I went back to the CFO's office, this time with a lot more confidence, introduced Farid just as Rehan had introduced me (like a kid who's smart beyond his years :p) and got the ledgers and bank statements from him. What we had worked out after more than an hour of maghaz-mari was already present in the ledgers. After luch, Rehan popped in and took me to another client, this time it was a company making corporate gift packs. They hadn't maintained their accounts till then and I was supposed to gather all the info I could get from their records and then make their accounts from scratch with that info. I thought it was a simple case of single entry, wouldn't be difficult, but when I met the owner/partner of the company I had this sinking feeling that this task was going to be significant. I was told that Aadil had been doing the same work with a shop, so I thought I could do it too, but seeing that it was a company dealing with some of the biggest brands like Unilever, Coca Cola, Nestle, etc, and once having branches in three cities took a big chunk off my confidence. The partner wasn't happy: "Rehan Sahab, He's too young, how can you expect him to work us out of this mess!?" I heard myself telling him I could do it, but deep down I was looking for a chance to tell Rehan to get someone else for this project. Rehan just put in some basic formats in an Excel workbook and told me to use the hundreds of scanned documents, bank statements, and used cheque books to find data and fill up the trail balance. Before he went, he said: "Aik parhay likhay aur un-parh mai yehi farq hota hai k wo challenges accept krta hai", and so I resolved to give it a go.
The next day, I started working on this project all by myself. Rehan had said he would join me later in the day but that never happened. In all, I only managed to enter 37 entries in the General Journal that day and put every thing that looked vague into the suspense account.. I went home thinking this was going to be a disaster. I was too slow, and whatever I had done was probably wrong. I planned to ask Rehan to get me working elsewhere or at least have someone experienced helping me if he couldn't do it himself.
The next day, being Saturday, was a half day. I was at the door promptly at 9.30am, the office opened up at 10.15am and I was cursing myself again for this punctuality thing that had gotten in my head (from what I've heard, except for the financial year end days, accountants and auditors are not punctual about their office timings). I added 5 Entries in about an hour. Finally Rehan came and I immediately told him Mjhe nhe lgta k mai sahi kr raha hu but he replied: koi maraiga thori agr ghalat hua! mai check krunga! And then he checked my work, said I had done nearly everything correctly, and I could go with the pace that suited me. That made my day, and the week!!
[This post is for those students who are about to start their professional careers and feel they would be out-of-place in an office. I don't know what would happen in the next week, but what I learned from this one is that there is no good brooding over what would happen, it's far better to live in the present and do the work as it comes.]
Great post bro.Keep up the good work.You'll be very successful one day IA:)
ReplyDeleteKafi interesting story hai...
ReplyDeletedo update about the next week...