Vaughn Olson - Audit Intern

The first week of my internship was training. I was not able to make it in the first day due to a school conflict and they had no problem working with it, which was great. Training was very close and there was a lot of interaction between the interns. The group was small so it was really comfortable and our trainer was very intelligent and eager to answer all of our questions. All questions were answered respectfully, there were no stupid questions as far as the trainer was concerned. Wednesday we were taken out to watch the Atlanta Braves and view the game from really good seats. The employees at PKM are always up for a good time.

The second week started off with a field trip to the Managing Partner’s lake house on Lake Oconee. This was a good opportunity to see what the people running the firm are doing to plan for the future. The rest of the week I went to Carrollton and took part in a 401k audit. I was able to work on projects to see if the employees are getting what they should have been from their employers and from what their deductions stated. The work papers that I did were on Excel and all I had to do was ask for help when I got stuck. All of the employees are eager to help because everyone was in this situation when they were finishing up or done with school.

The third week was in Buckhead, right down the street from me. I worked on an outsourced internal audit for the bank’s main location. I was able to count the cash at the bank in the vault. I had over 250,000 dollars go through my hands before lunch. I got to use one of those automatic counters that you see in movies like bad boys 2. It was very interesting to see all that cash in real life. I was able to see what it is like to have a client nearby which can be pretty irregular in the world of auditing. Tim Messman, a manager, invited me out to Lake Lanier to go waterskiing on Wednesday.

The fourth week I spent in Gainesville. I had hoped that, during my internship, I would learn more about where things are located in the state of Georgia and that is definitely proving true. I worked on an outsourced internal audit for the Bank’s only location. This week solidified my thinking that as an auditor in the Atlanta area you would definitely want to live inside the 285 Perimeter. Every day that I would go home to Buckhead I would wonder why these people would subject themselves to dead stopped traffic everyday while I would fly home.

The fifth week was pretty short. We had vacation on Monday and Tuesday due to the holiday weekend. When we came back on Wednesday we went on a tour of the Federal Reserve. We were able to see where the southeast’s financial influence goes to work. Thursday I worked on a GAAP Disclosure checklist to see if companies were reporting in their financials all the information they were supposed to be reporting on. It was a lengthy and difficult assignment because so much of it is new. It was a great opportunity to get more used to the technical writing that will be very common in this field. We went to UGA Thursday afternoon and watched a group of PKM employees help put together a fraud discussion video. Who knew that accountants were so Hollywood?