Interview

                I decided to interview my performance coach at Wipfli LLP.  Her name is Kelly Annen.  She is currently a senior associate at Wipfli.  I am very interested in the progressing in the accounting industry and wanted to get the opinion of someone who is close to my age it.  I created my own questions to ask her that I wanted to know the answer to.  I first wanted to know why she chose accounting in general.  I feel like this is a common question accounting majors are asked because some people think it would be a bore.  She said “I took an accounting course in high school and really enjoyed it.  When I got to college, I had enough credits to start taking business courses early on.  That allowed me to continue to take the accounting courses right out of high school.  After hearing about all of the opportunities that a career in accounting offered, I decided that it was the right path to start my career with.”  I totally agree with what she said.  There are so many things that you can do with an accounting degree after school.  It really opens up a lot of doors for you. 

                Taking your CPA after college though is very controversial.  Some people will tell you that you have to.  Why would you get an accounting degree and then not take it they say.  Then others say you are just fine without it.  It is just another title.  So I wanted to know what Kelly’s opinion was on the subject.  She said, “I knew I wanted to go into public accounting after my internship with Wipfli.  In order to be promoted past the manager position, you are required to have your CPA license.  I took the exam while still finishing grad school and working part-time at Wipfli.  Becker offered a "Fast Pass" study course on campus at UW-Whitewater.  That allowed me to study and complete the exam in an accelerated time frame.”  I never knew that you needed it to be promoted.  I found this very interesting.  I knew then that I would want to take it because I want to be able to have the opportunity to advance in my career.  So she helped me decide that it would be a good idea for me to take the CPA after college.  She also said to take it right away when you are still in a studying mode.  If you wait too long it becomes very difficult.

                Then I just had some more general questions for her.  I know being an accountant you have to work a lot.  I asked her what advice she had about balancing your family and being a CPA.  She responded with, “Develop good working habits early on and find a personal passion outside of work/family.”  I was totally not expecting this as an answer.  I am very focused on family and I didn’t think she would say find a personal passion outside of them.  This was really interesting to me, but was a good point.  Sometimes you just need some sort of a stress-reliever and you can’t have it be your family every time.  I then asked what the best part of her job was and she said, “The people I work with.”  This did not surprise me one bit.  I have realized through this internship that the people at Wipfli LLP are great people.  Everyone is willing to help and is very friendly.  I did not feel like an intern there, I felt like an actual employee. 

                The last question I asked her is a question that I am struggling with.  I asked her what the deciding factor between tax and audit was for her.  She said, “I enjoyed traveling for audit at the beginning, but it quickly got to be too much.  Tax allowed me to have more structure and routine outside of work.  I also enjoy the routine of the tax projects I work on in the financial institutions area.”  Right now I feel like tax is not for me.  I think it is a little boring.  I think traveling for audit would be awesome.  I mean who wouldn’t want to travel for free, but she really got me thinking.  Audit would be fun for a while, but if I ever wanted to have a family and a life outside of work it would be really difficult.  Audit is so sporadic that it is hard to plan.  You might be in Milwaukee one week, but then be in Alabama the next.  I am really struggling with what direction I want to go in.  It was very beneficial doing an interview with Kelly because now I have the input of someone who can relate to me.  She is recently out of college and wants to be successful in her career.  This is exactly what I want in my future.  I learned a lot from her.

News Article Week 3

http://www.accountingtoday.com/news/Tax-Fraud-Promoter-Convicted-69383-1.html

                The article I found this week was from Accounting Today.  This article is about a real estate agent in Southern California who was promoting a tax fraud scheme.  She was convicted on Wednesday of filing false claims against the U.S.  She would submit false 1099-OID for clients.  This would result in a larger tax return.  She would charge each client $1,000 and then take a percentage of the return too.  The fake returns that she filed totaled to $1,331,576 in refunds.  After there was investigation she also went and told her clients to lie about the entire situation to the grand jury.  She is now being charged for this too.  In the end this whole scheme could result in up to 15 years in prison for her.

                This is heavily connected to accounting because one of the main purposes of accountants is to do taxes for either individuals or for businesses.  There are many opportunities for accountants to be deceiving, and it is a question of ethics.  We learn a lot about ethical decision making during accounting courses.  This is a situation where someone did not make an ethical decision and now she could face prison time for it.  Accounting is one industry where the people who are involved need to be honest.  Even though some of the results of your job may not make people very happy like having to pay a large sum into the government, but we still have to do that.  That is something that we sign-up for when we choose this career path.  Some people forget that after working in the field for a while and it could result like this situation.  Accountants really have to think and analyze information and their decisions before committing to them.

Overview Week 3

                This week I focused a lot on my project.  My project was comparing the effectiveness and efficiency of doing a tax return at a client vs going to the client, getting all of their information, then coming to the office and preparing it.  I went out to two clients this week and got to prepare their returns in the field.  I got a better grasp of what I thought was better.  It was a lot of fun being able to go out to clients because I felt like an actual associate at Wipfli LLP, not just an intern.  I have learned now this week how to do a bank return and all the parts of them.  I did not realize that most banks are made up of three parts, a holding company, the bank, and a subsidiary.  This was very interesting to me because you had to prepare separate returns for each part of the overall bank.  When you finished each part you then created a consolidated return.  This is the part that was actually reviewed and is sent to the IRS.  I also learned this week how much I enjoy the people I work with.  I had to spend a lot of time with people outside of the office and it was great to get to know them.  I think this would be a great company to work for in the future because a lot of their staff is younger.  It makes it easier for me to get to know people when they are closer to my age.  I really enjoyed this week at Wipfli LLP.

Friday Jan. 24

              Today was my final day at my internship for this J-Term class.  I got to spend it at another client.  This time it was just me and a senior manager.  We met at the office because we were leaving a little later in the morning.  So I got to do some administrative items before we left.  We left around 8:30.  This time it was a little shorter ride.  We only had about an hour to go.  This time it was a lot more casual during our ride because we had gotten to know each other better through our previous interactions with clients.  When we arrived at the client we were again escorted to our own private room and offered food and beverages.  We began working that morning on their accounting work.  This time I did more tasks on my own since I knew what I was doing better this time.  We left the client around noon for lunch and went to a café that was across the street.   The senior manager and I sat and talked over lunch about our weekend plans and just things in general.  After lunch we walked back and finished up the accounting work for the client.  We left around 4:30.  When we got back to the office everyone from my department was going to socialize at a restaurant downstairs so I went down for about an hour and got to see everyone out of a work environment.  It was a lot of fun; I really enjoy the people I get to work with.

                My name is Abby Maier and I am from Waunakee, Wisconsin.  I am currently a junior and am majoring in Marketing and Accounting.  I completed my J-Term at Wipfli LLP in Madison, Wisconsin.  Throughout my internship I learned how important work relationships are.  When you have to spend a great amount of your week with people at work you want to be able to enjoy your time.  The relationships you build during work will be the relationships that you endure doing a large part of your life.  Either you can make then enjoyable or you can be on your own throughout your career.  I also learned the importance of professionalism.  Being in an industry where you frequently see clients face to face, how you present yourself determines a lot.  Maintaining a professional manner portrays a good image for the company you are representing and for yourself.  These were the two biggest lessons I learned while interning at Wipfli LLP.  This internship will give me the experience I need to continue my career in accounting.  When applying for accounting positions after school, the first thing someone looks for is experience.  I now have that on my resume.  I have learned a lot about accounting and how a firm works.  I will be a great asset to a firm after college.

Thursday Jan. 23

                Today was just a normal day in the office for me.  I was finishing up a returning I had been working on all week.  We started off with bank returns and those are the some of the hardest ones.  We have been told by multiple people that if we can get these down any other tax will be a breeze.  There is no other Wipfli LLP location that starts their interns with these.  It is neat that they have the confidence in us though to give us such a challenge.  There is not a day I go to work and think it is going to be an easy day.  At noon I went out to lunch with my peer advisor.  Every intern gets assigned a peer advisor.  This is a staff level associate.  They are supposed to be the person you can go to with any general simple questions like what to wear to something or where paper clips are.  Just someone you should feel very comfortable with.  It was a lot of fun going to lunch with her and just talking.  We talked about how my internship was going and about life in general.  After about an hour lunch we headed back to work.  I did more returns in the afternoon.  They never get repetitive though since every client is different.  I stayed at work until about 6:30 today and then headed home.  

                I had an internship at a company called Wipfli LLP.  They are an accounting and consulting firm that is international.  They are mainly focused in the Midwest though currently.  I was at their Madison location and was an accounting intern.  I did both tax and audit while at this internship.  For the tax side I did both individual and corporate tax.  I audited nonprofit companies and manufacturing companies while there as well.  I really enjoyed my experience.  I was very focused while interning.  There were many deadlines that were required to be met during my time there.  I developed exquisite time management skills throughout the internship.  There were multiple times where I would have more than one project assigned to me at a time.  I would have to prioritize them and make sure they were all finished when they were supposed to be.  I also paid attention to detail.  Accounting is a field where flipping one number could make a huge difference.  I was very attentive and made sure my work was done to the best of my ability.  That internship prepared me to be a great accountant after school.

Tuesday Jan. 21

                Today was my first day that I actually got to go out to a client site.  I met a senior manager and managing partner at a place near my house.  This way I didn’t have to drive all the way into Madison since I was on the way to our client.  We had an hour and a half drive.  It was really cool because I got to spend time with my superiors.  When you get them out of the work environment they really open up.  When we got to the client’s office we were escorted to a back private room.  It was very nice and they offered us something to drink and eat.  We then worked at the client all day on their accounting information.  We worked for about four hours then left to get lunch.  After lunch we came back to the client and finished up the accounting work all afternoon.  I was assigned my own projects at the office and helped with as much as I could.  It was a great experience because I got to meet actual clients of the company.  At about 4:30 we packed all of our stuff up and got on the road to come back to Madison because we had over an hour drive.  We talked the whole way back and I learned more about my co-workers and Wipfli LLP itself.  Once we got back to the office I headed home for the day.

                During this project I have strengthened my communication skills and my work ethic.  This entire J-Term I have had to communicate with my co-workers.  Wipfli LLP is very team oriented and you have to be able to communicate well in these situations.  I had to use many different forms of communication.  The most obvious was simple verbal communication.  We also communicated through email.  This is how I would get a lot of my assignments during the week.  If I just had a quick question for someone I would have to use our messaging system.  There were many different instances where I had to communicate in a professional manner.  I also developed a better work ethic.  Being busy season, the hours I put in are very long.  I had to be focused and determined to finish all my projects in a timely manner.  I would still like to develop my knowledge before I enter into my career.  There are a lot of accounting classes I have not taken yet that I could benefit from greatly.  I want to expand my knowledge and learn more about what my career could revolve around.

News Article Week 2

The article that I read was from the New York Times.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/16/business/abraham-briloff-accounting-professor-dies-at-96.html?ref=accountingandaccountants&_r=0

                This article was about a man named Abraham J. Briloff.  He is an accounting expert.  He would look into companies financial records and write for Barron’s about his findings.  His findings were always very influential.  He usually caused company’s stock prices to fall.  He died this past Thursday.  With the articles that he wrote for Barron’s, he became a celebrity in the business community.  Briloff was legally blind and had to have his students or his daughter read the financial statements that he was reviewing to him.  One main article that he wrote was about Waste Management and Arthur Andersen.  He questioned their statements and the chief financial officer denied everything.  Ten years later the Securities and Exchange Commission accused them of fraud and said it started the year that Briloff wrote his article.  He was a wonderful accountant that had a huge impact on many businesses.

                This relates to my field of accounting because Briloff was a huge part of the accounting world.  He was a very influential man that could tear apart accounting firms.  It was men like these that could shut down firms.  He said that he was always making sure that companies were following the “generally accepted accounting principles.”  This is what Wipfli LLP strives to do.  This is what every accounting firm strives to do.  I am taught that we have to follow these principles because this is the way things have to be done.  During my orientation week with Wipfli LLP, we discussed these principles.  We discussed the importance of these as well.  We talked about how companies have to follow these principles to make sure that everyone is being fair and there is no fraud that is going on.  I think it is really cool that this was Briloff’s goal as well.  He wanted to make sure there was no fraud going on and that everyone was following the rules.  That is just what Wipfli LLP does when they audit companies.  They check their financial statements like Briloff, and report their findings.  Overall in the business world, it was big news that Briloff died.