Accounting Training & Internship (Sydney & Brisbane)

Of course. I’ll be happy to help you out. You can either email me or come to my office.

Dear Coco,

I was interviewed by a recruitment agent about a role Internal Auditor in xxx yesterday. It is about 15 mins interview with a lot of questions have been asked. Fortunately, all the questions were covered by the interview course so that I could answer them easily without any pause or hesitation. They were quite happy about my answers.

Here is the list of some important questions:

1. Telling me about your internship experience at Florian?
2. What are your strengths and weaknesses?
3. With the job description, How are you going to prove your best fit to that position?
4. Why would you leave Florian?
5. What would you look into your future?
6. How you priortise your work?

Dear Coco, Jeff, and Harini,

It's Betty. I am writing to let you know that I got an offer XXX - Australia's largest cash logistics business. The position is AR Officer, which is 6-month contract role and may become permanent as the business is expanding very quickly. They use SAP, which is a good learning opportunity for me. The base salary is $50,000, a bit lower than my current job, but I am very happy to start from the bottom. I started on May 30th.

I really want to express my deep appreciation to you people especially Jeff. He leads me to the right way to get a job that I want.

I have seen other trainees shared their job hunting experience. I hope my experience can also help somehow.

Telephone interview (about 20 mins) 10 sec summary is very helpful. But I make a little change based on the position and that’s always what I do.

1st face to face interview (HR person, about 45 mins) All questions are in my expectation. (But all the hands on accounting knowledge is definitely from Florian) Examples are definitely useful. But as Jeff said, every answer and story should be tailored based on the particular question. Make it simple but attractive. It needs us keep practicing again and again.

2nd face to face interview (FC, Financial Accountant, about 30 mins) I prepared possible technical questions including the mock AR follow-up calls. But they didn’t ask me too many technical questions as AR is a quite basic role. This interview was more like a chat. As Jeff said, active eye contact and positive feedback when necessary and suitable are important. I can feel they like talking with me and I am the person that they want.

Then the following are pre-employment medical and 2 reference check.

It has been 4 weeks since I started job searching till I got this offer.  I went to 3 company interviews and 3 agent interviews in total. After I got the offer, I still received 1 company and 2 agent calls. And one agent keeps calling me to see how is my job hunting. To be honest, I don’t think the agent can help us too much to find the entry level job. And cold calls seems don’t work as well. But if you aim at the AA role in the big company, agent plays an important role.

Besides the XXX interview, the other 2 company interviews are Spotless and CBA respectively.

It is a 10 month contract AP role in Spotless. I failed after the final interview as they want someone who is more specialized in AP with big company working experience background. The whole process is pretty much as above.

The other one is 3 month internal auditing role in CBA. I went through the agent interview and CBA’s interview. But after consideration, I chose the role in XXX.

Anyway, firstly, I don’t think I need to mention any interview questions or techniques, as they are all summarized by Coco and Jeff. The resume after revised by Jeff will be fine. But homework is very important after interview class. Secondly, make a target for yourself, AP or AR or AA, big company or small to medium company, then work hard on it. Thirdly, be confident, but be ready.  Everything will be paid off.

Thanks again, Coco and Jeff, keep in touch.

Betty

Hi Coco,

Long time no see! How is it going!

Thank you again for all your help when I was at Florian. I always miss that time very much.

To tell you about my job hunting,I have accepted the offer from xxx to be an auditor.Training will commence at the start of the job.Hope everything is ok.

Anyway, wish you all the best and good luck.

Many thanks,
Tim

Hi Coco

About my experience, I had a lot of interviews so far, some interviewers are very prepared and some dont ask too many questions so it is important to make as many questions yourself

There is a few behavioral questions that I had quite a few times on interviews
Tell me about a time when you:
-Improved efficiency in your work
-Had a problem to meet a deadline
-Solved a problem

Answering this question with a specific examples and with confidence is important.  

I hired a professional to remake my resume, and later on, i had some assistance in how to perform better in interviews.  It cost a little bit of money but it did help me in getting more calls, and to be more prepared for job interviews so I think it was a good investment.

I think the program was very useful and Kydie have been always very helpfull to answer any questions I may have and provide support on the internship.

I hope I had some good news about the job very soon.  Thanks Coco.

Regards,

Gonzalo

Bad debts are a reversal of the original sale, but the transaction is allocated to a bad debts expense account.

Setting up your Accounts List to record a bad debt

Creating a Bad Debts expense account is the only preparation needed for recording bad debts.

To do this:

1.Go to the Accounts command centre and click Account List.

2.Click the Expense tab then click New.

3.Give the account a unique number that suits your account list.

4.Name the account Bad Debts.

5.Click OK.




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How is a bad debt applied to a customer?

A bad debt is applied to a customer's account by first creating a credit note (GST Adjustment Note).  This bad debt Adjustment Note is then applied to the outstanding invoice(s).

Step 1 - Creating the bad debt Adjustment Note

1.Go to the Sales command centre and click Enter Sales. In BusinessBasics go to the Command Centres menu and choose Sales then choose Enter Invoices.

2.Select the Customer and enter the transaction details including the Invoice Number, Date and Memo.  Use the Memo field to record the purpose of the transaction.

3.Click the Layout button along the bottom of the sales entry screen. Choose the Service layout and click OK.

4.Enter an appropriate description such as Bad debt.

5.Select the Bad Debts expense account in the Acct# field. When you do, you will receive a warning message that says that the account used to allocate a sale is usually an income account. Disregard this message and click OK.

6.In the Amount field, enter a negative value equal to the bad debt amount.

7.Apply the relevant tax code. You may need to reference the original invoice(s) to determine which tax code to use.

8.Click Record.

Note: As this will affect your GST reporting, you may need to forward a copy of this Adjustment Note to the customer.

Step 2 - Applying the bad debt Adjustment Note

The bad debt Adjustment Note is applied to the customer's account by using the Returns & Credits tab of the Sales Register.

1.Go to the Sales command centre, click Sales Register and click the Returns and Credits tab.

2.Highlight the bad debt Adjustment Note then click the Apply to Sale button.

3.In the Settle Returns and Credits window, in the Amount Applied column enter the amount for you want to apply (write-off) for each invoice listed.

4.Click Record.




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How does a bad debt affect the GST and BAS?
Cash reporting
Using the method described above, a bad debt won't affect the GST where the GST is reported on a cash basis. This is because GST collected is only reported once the payment has been received from the customer. Since the customer never paid the invoice, no GST would have been reported.

Accrual reporting
Using the method described above, the Adjustment Note will be included in your BAS for this period at G1.

Dear Coco,

Hope you reached Sydney safely.
I want to thank you for going through all that trouble to teach us during the last week end.
I must tell you that 90% of what I learnt was fairly new to me and I found  it quite challenging to stay in the same page as you during the training as I do not have any accounting background. (Even the idiots guide to accounting is too complicated for me!)
(You may have already noticed me, I was the one looking totally lost during the exercises, I did my best to understand the fundamentals though.. Ha ha ha)

But this training made me understand the level of knowledge required by the accounting field and I must tell you as challanging as it may seem, I am all motivated to push my capabilities to the limit and accquire as much knowlede and practice to become one of your best trainees. With the blessings of God and the help of Kydie and you , I am confident I will achive it.
I am writing to you just after completing my pracrice on your session on prepaynents.

I wish you all the best and please do keep in touch.

Kind regards,
Debbie

p.s I will have to practice realy hard before I come in for my Internship.