My Reflection -- Week 1 & 2

No doubt, in these two weeks times, I was trying hard to adapt the office working culture and have learnt all aspects of accounting work with Grace before her leaving.

Messy table when working

The first official task that I have been given was recording the daily sales of retail outlets, namely Asian Secrets Sdn Bhd and Fine Batik Sdn Bhd.  For your information, company’s outlet sales are conducted by cash, debit card or credit card. Those payment transactions will be listed down on a slip which is called Z-report. Firstly, I need to be attentive to check the figures on Z-report if it matches with the original transaction slips. Then, Grace guides me on how to record the sales amount into different folders based on the payment transactions methods. For example, Fine Batik Sdn Bhd has two bank accounts which are CIMB Bank and AmBank respectively in order to save the revenue of retail outlets. Whenever customers made payment by cash, the figures need to be recorded in the CIMB Bank file whereas AmBank folder is used to write down the transaction when those buying products using credit or debit card. In order to complete whole process, it needs to complete four steps which are bank in verification, bank records, weekly sales records and issuing cash sales voucher. It actually is not difficult to understand the whole procedures, but it is probably I have not familiar with the task yet, so I take longer time to complete it. I believe all things are difficult before they become easy. Therefore, I believe I can do the job more efficiently once I fully understand its operations.

I am preparing payment schedule

Besides the daily sales records, cash flow management is the most challenging task that I found within first two weeks.  As an AFI member, I need to prepare a statement which is called payment schedule in order to understand clearly how the monetary transaction of each company has occurred for making payments. The payment schedule is needed to be ready twice in a month which is by 7^th and 21^st of the month. For the date of 7^th, it is mainly involved the regular salary payment and employees’ share of contribution such as EPF and SOSOC while the latter date includes the payment for utilities and also suppliers or vendors. I was responsible to plug in the figures on the payment schedule after ensuring the invoice received has been matched with company’s purchase order or receiving report and then issue payment voucher as well as prepare cheque. I was told that all the transaction must be stated clearly on the payment schedule and send to Mr Victor to review it one week in advance before the dateline as he wants to understand how was the cash flow in every company, to check if money saved in every company’s bank accounts could afford the monthly payment. However, I face problem in preparing the payment schedule for January. I do not know what action I can take in the situation where my department has not received invoices from Telekom yet even if it is a compulsory monthly payment. It makes me panic as it may cut off the line of company if passed the due date. With the help of Grace, my problem is solved! She explained to me that this situation happens as dateline is probably not around and we can also make a phone call to their office in order to confirm the amount and due date.

Cheque Books of Various Companies

As I mentioned before, one of my expectations during my internship is to have the chance of exposing into multiple experiences.  Within these two weeks, I really gained a lot of knowledge of involving the accounting tasks especially preparing the payment schedule.  For example, I was able to issue the payment voucher using the QnE accounting software and have a chance to print cheque using cheque writer machine in order to eliminate of human errors. These kinds of things amaze me as I never have such experiences before. It gave me a strong sense of accomplishment what I have achieved and work for. In fact, it sharps my technical skill towards the future career.

The key learning I have explored during placement in company is we must be pro-active and willing to take responsible to learn all aspects of work. From my point of view, note taking is one of the characteristics showing he or she is committed to work. As I did not have a photographic memory, I spent much more effort to write down all the steps and details that I have learnt within these two weeks to remind me all the steps. Moreover, nothing can faster than keep repeatedly asking how something works. Since I was assigned a mentor to teach me all the tasks, I took this advantage of opportunities to ask all the doubts I faced. I believe such behaviour will lead me to work upon to become successful.