Well, well its week 7 in St Petersburg Florida and this time next week I will be at home in Scotland.  The last few weeks have again disappeared but then so has the last 8 weeks so don’t know why I thought it would be any different.  Although I am now looking forward to seeing all my friends and family I am also getting increasingly worried about acclimatising back to the Scottish weather in September.  Also after having a short but sweet visit from my boyfriend and a few days away from busy Tampa with him I am ready to stay another few weeks at least. 

The last few weeks I have continued checking the account reconciliations for one of the Mexican plants and confirming there are no unusual or aged balances that have not been explained fully.  I was also trusted with the responsibility of signing off on these accounts.  Any issues that were found the senior associate checked as they were actually at the site and once she had confirmed with me that these were ok I signed off on these also.  Ultimately it will be reviewed by internal Audit managment but it was quite daunting having ultimate responsibility of confirming the items were correct and making sure nothing was missed as one small mistake can  have serious consequences to the financial statements. 

I also did some testing of bank statement balances and reconciliations for one of the Ukrainian plants and was again working closely with the European team although from a distance.  I have always worked in small offices where if you need to talk to someone you walk down a corridor and pop your head round the door but I am finally getting the hang of all contact being through email and phone.  This means that sometimes you do not get as much info as you would like on how to carry out a project and although everyone is open to answering any questions I have they are not always awake to do so!  Therefore I have had to take the initiative on a few things recently and just go with what I know and thankfully I have completed my tasks fully and correctly without being led through step by step.  I take this to mean I must be learning as I go along at least!  I have also been working on a variety of small projects such as pulling issue reports from the system and following up whether these issues have been corrected and if not why not?  Finally I have been looking into ratio analysis and the effect a change in accounting treatment of leases, which will be adopted globally in the next few years, will affect the financial statements and the analysis of these statements.

Typically I had made it 6 weeks without being sun burnt until this weekend! Far too keen not to go home the peely wally white colour I was when I arrived so unfortunately I’m a bit sensitive this week but hopefully will be able to enjoy the last few evenings of sun before the flight on Saturday!  Well I imagine the next time you hear from me I will be back in bonnie Scotland.

Hope all the other interns are still having a blast! Speak soon Luv Kirst x x x x