Main Responsibilities of an Audit Associate at a Big 4 Accounting Firm
Zachary's role as an audit associate at a Big 4 firm involves significant "legwork," verifying the accuracy of financial information, such as "iPhone sales," and ensuring proper financial statement representation. A key aspect of the role also includes team management and proactive follow-up with supervisors to ensure timely progress on tasks.
Auditing, Financial Statement Analysis, Teamwork, Project Management, Client Interaction
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Zachary Milano
Audit associate
Big 4 Accounting Firm
Cal Poly
None
Economics
Finance (Banking, Fintech, Investing)
Finance
Greek Life Member
Video Highlights
1. The day-to-day tasks involve a lot of detailed work, verifying the accuracy of financial information, which is a fundamental aspect of auditing.
2. The role includes managing a team, coordinating tasks with international colleagues, and ensuring the quality of their work.
3. A significant part of the job is proactive communication and follow-up with managers to ensure timely feedback and progression of work, highlighting the importance of self-management and initiative in a busy professional environment.
Transcript
What are your main responsibilities within your current role?
Currently, I do a lot of the legwork for auditing. I'm not making as many high-level decisions, like which parts of a business to focus on.
For example, if we were auditing Apple and could only choose, we'd have to decide whether to focus on auditing the iPhone sector or their case-making sector. It's clear they get more sales from iPhones than cases, so that's where we'd focus.
I don't get to make those kinds of decisions. My role involves talking to them about the numbers and verifying the accuracy of their claimed iPhone sales, ensuring it's properly shown on financial statements. There's a lot of legwork involved just with the revenue side of the business.
There are also other complicated parts of the business that are a bit tricky to explain. But those are the areas I work on.
I also spend a lot of time managing my team. We work with people overseas, so we have to assign them tasks and ensure their work is up to standard.
Additionally, I spend a lot of time staying on top of my managers. While they know much more than I do, they are also swamped. So I make sure I'm following up on my own work. If I finish something and need feedback from them, I make sure to get it so they can move my work further up the chain.
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