[Anonymous]

I just received my first offer from a large regional accounting firm (don’t think they have many / any public clients) my first day isn’t until July. I will be a pooled associate meaning that managers and partners will pull me into engagements as needed and I will be working on a variety of different things (audits / tax / NPO work etc). I am a little bit nervous about starting because it will be a new endeavour for me.

My question is does anyone have any advice about what I can start doing to prepare now to be better equipped when I start? Are there particular excel functions I should brush up on? Certain parts of the IRC I should know? Or just other standard things that everyone learns across the industry when they first start?

Any advice anyone has will certainly be appreciated!

[Anonymous]

Anything that will relate to your job is worth learning. For the most part, they won't expect a brand-new, first-year employee to know everything; however, anything you can learn will help. Given that you'll be partially working in tax, I would suggest seeing if you can volunteer through VITA for awhile this tax season. Aside from that, any volunteer opportunities to get hands-on experience would be useful. Maybe review some CPA prep materials to refresh your knowledge. As far as Excel, especially with how varied your duties will be, I'd just play around with it and get more and more comfortable in it. If you're comfortable poking around Excel and Googling for answers, you can learn anything else you need on the job.

[mt3130]

As mentioned, the expectations for your will be reasonable based on the fact that you have no prior experience. Brushing up on your Excel is something that can only help you. If you have access to a program like RIA Checkpoint, there's tons of information you can learn through their practice manuals. I had access through my college, and now through work, and I've learned a ton by reading information on that site and Accounting Research Manager.

REG - 90 (08/2014) - Study Time = 6 days
FAR - 89 (10/2014) - Study Time = 9 days
BEC - 83 (11/2014) - Study Time = 4 days
AUD - 89 (01/2015) - Study Time = 2 days

Final score released - 2/4/15
Application mailed - 2/5/15
Licensed CPA - 2/12/15

[havefish007]

I agree to the posts above – so I'll just add some of my own experience here:

Assuming that large firms get to work on more corporate tax returns rather than individual ones, I think that you should familiarize yourself with the corp/s-corp/partnership/estate&gifts/non-profit tax forms, particularly on the sections where you don't often find on the individual returns (such as schedule M1, M2, M3, etc.of corp tax return). VITA only let you practice with individual ones, and I'm afraid that's not enough.

Regarding audit, I think that you may want to go back to your auditing textbook and review the considerations that auditors consider when performing assurance engagements, and refresh yourself about the common audit procedures.

It's the same for the NPO – review your textbooks/FAR review books – just familiarize yourself with fund accounting topics. Since you're not doing bookkepping work, it's not necessary to memorize all the entries. However, you will need to know the basic theories.

Excel – I believe you can find a lot of instructions online, just practice using those examples will do fine. Specific functions that I use the most are vlookup, pivot table, match, sumif, etc.

AUD - passed 8/29/2013
BEC - passed 12/5/2013
FAR - passed 12/6/2013
REG - passed 10/4/2013

[Java230]

As others have said, they know you are new and won't expect much except a willing attitude. At my work the first thing I have new employees do is read reports and look at work papers. ALSO, my work makes new employees take accounting tests, if you fail any 3 times, you basically lose your job, so for the most part new employees are studying hard and being actively engaged on audits.

For now, I would pick up a grammer /writing book, I didn't do that when I started and it hurt me. I highly recommend that, alot of audit is written communication, it's critical to be able to communicate effectively!

I am not saying your grammar is bad or anything, it's just something I have noticed accountants could use refreshing on since we are so focused on numbers.

Licensed WA CPA 2/2015
Government Auditor Since 2007

[Author]

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