Pre-Internship Reflection
My hopes, dreams, and fears for internship are as follows. My hope is that I will become a better person after this experience and I will have more clarity on what I want to do with my life. my dream is that I will learn how to make money for myself and for my future family. I fear that I may not be entirely prepared for internship and I fear that I may mess up, but I will push through that fear and continue to do my absolute best.
Week 1
I am most looking forward to learning ways to become successful through real company examples from my mentor. The main reason I wanted to do my internship with a CFO is so I could learn more about the money management and how to gain as much money as I can so I can support my future family. I believe that the most important thing is to live in the moment but plan for the future, and I believe that is exactly what this internship will do for me, it will not only help me find out what I want to do with my life, but it will also potentially help me secure a career idea that I may enjoy. My favorite subject in school is math, and being a CFO has a lot to do with numbers, so I know that I can succeed in this field. My first task has been to read the book The Richest Man In Babylon and then report to my mentor what I have learned, he says that this book applies to what we will focus on later with the company as a whole. So far the book has had great insight into money making, planning a future, protecting your savings, and making your money work for you, I will let you know how it goes in my week 2 reflection blog.
Week 2
Week 2 was by far my most productive and challenging week. At the start of the week I learned about how they pay for their product and how they get paid by their customers shown in the image on the left. Following that I opened, sorted, scanned, and electronically filed the company's weekly checks. This showed me how a company can keep a record of all the papers they have by making them into electronic files and recycling the discarded paper. I also worked on matching the names for their vendors, which was essentially a data cleanup on the new system being implemented for the whole company. for that project I used excel and google sheets to sort the names with a table and a function that compared the old list on the previous system to the new list on the current system, they are still in the transitional stage so I helped move the slow process a little faster. I was surprised by how quickly I learned how to use netsuite, wuickbooks, and excel sheets and I am excited to see how I can use this in the future. At the end of the week, I scanned more checks, manually entered the amounts into quickbooks, and deposited them to chase. this is essentially my project, being able to understand and complete a task, and then I will write a paper that will be used to train future employees to show my understanding of receiving customer payment. This paper is an important piece of my project and I will add it to my site When I'm finished, my project is essentially helping the company in any way that I can, whether it be training future employees, assisting to move information from quickbooks to netsuite, receiving customer payment, etc.
Week 3
this week was similar to the last, but I had much more work to do. I was given the checks and an account to use in Quickbooks, I had full access to the whole company system which showed me how much my mentor trusts me and shows me that he knows I'm capable of doing work on my own. The process was opening the checks, receiving the payment in Quickbooks by matching the invoice number, if the prices didn't match I would go to each individual invoice that didn't match and alter the late fees, then after I have received all the payments I would scan them for documentation, remove the remittance and endorse the checks in the printer, then I would deposit them with a bank scanner to put the money in the bank. I felt very accomplished when the number in the bank matched the math I did in the system. I also learned about tax returns and the 1099-NEC witch I found interesting, another idea my mentor had was to make me explain all of the steps to making and put it in a document, because one way to show you have learned something is by explaining it to others so I will link that doc at the end of the last week once it is completed, this is a major part of my project. I know that this will benefit the company in the long run for the training of the future employees, but it also helps me understand how to do the task I previously described much better as I had to write it out to show and grow my understanding. I would definitely say that HTHMA has prepared me for this internship by giving me project work that almost directly relates to what I have been doing in my Internship, I want to thank all of my teachers, past and current for preparing me to do great work.
Week 4
Another great week of work for me, I am becoming more and more independent and have been able to continue my work despite my computer breaking. My mentor luckily had another one on hand that he said I could use so I'm very glad about that. but essentially it has been similar to last week, I received more customer payment, and I feel like I've been getting much better at it, at the beginning of my internship for like the first 2 weeks I was always just watching and learning, but now that I not only understand how to enter checks in quickbooks but also netsuite, the amount of work I have been able to tackle has grown immensely. My role has gone from a complete outsider to a beginner because, I know a lot more than I did about accounting and the CFO position than I ever did which previously was nothing. If I were to give any advice for this internship I would say to just be open minded, take in all of the information given to you and try to retain it, If you have any questions ask them, there is no amount of curiosity towards your future job that can harm you. If you need clarification, ask for it because that is what your mentor is there for, they are there to help you and to make sure that you grow. On Friday I joined a company meeting and watched my mentor train some of the employees on how to use the new system.
Week 5, Final Week!
I am most grateful in my internship for my mentor, I have learned so many important lessons over the time that I've been here and I am grateful that he spent the time with me to help me understand all the tasks, the skills that I've learned have been something I could see myself doing in the future, and they have opened new avenues for me. I've always been confused with what I plan on doing in life because I always thought I just couldn't find something that I'm good at, but all I really needed to do was have the right teacher show me how to actually do the things that I'm interested in. Having my internship with a CFO that has a lot of knowledge has really shown me that example, at the beginning of the internship, I knew nothing of accounting, payroll, checks, etc, but with only a month of learning, I have been able to understand and even perform some of these tasks. My biggest takeaway from this internship is that I can learn anything that I want to achieve as long as I have a good teacher and an open mind. Following my internship I'm excited to come back to school and see my friends, but I will miss the work that I do here very much and hope that I can return to help out some more.