THE MOST MEMORABLE APPRENTICESHIP EXPERIENCE
By Maria Guzman, Business Financial Insights, Heartbeat
From the beginning of the Year Up Professional Resources program (YUPRO), I had goals to grow as a professional, expand my skill set, and learn more in-depth about the differences and similarities between Finance and Accounting. As an intern within the Business Financial Insights (BFI) and Client Finance teams, I was able to learn how the agency as a whole overlaps with the Finance team’s responsibilities.
During my internship experience with Heartbeat, I was able to develop my analysis, technical, and financial and accounting reporting skills. I particularly found updating the expenses every week to be useful in improving my data analysis skill for financial and reporting reports. During month-end close, which is generally the last and first week of the upcoming month, we make sure we prepare and submit different types of journal entries such as reclasses, recharges and accruals.
The monthly expense summary report is helpful during month-end close because it shows expenses that need to be reclassed to the correct general ledger (GL) expense account. By creating these reports, I learned the data that needs to be reviewed in the GL to verify if any costs need to be reclassed or recharged to another agency.
One specific challenge I had was with the Heartbeat intercompany tracker to keep track of jobs for any changes to support future anticipated spending also known as forecasting. When I first began independently working on this task, I struggled with how to forecast the charges for each intercompany job. Although I found forecasting (and being able to differentiate debits and credits) to be challenging, I found it to be valuable in developing my reporting and analysis skills and understanding the reasoning behind the process of each task given.
A recurring theme I saw through my network was the often usage of data analysis on various teams within different departments. I learned that behind the data, there is a story behind the data that needs to be found and the importance of understanding the data to be able to present the overall story. I found the attention to detail and being able to find discrepancies can often be patterns that many teams in the company come to experience.
While I had many useful experiences at Heartbeat, I feel that I still need to develop my confidence level when I complete a task. There were times when I felt I may have been doing a task incorrectly, but after having a conversation with the team and asking questions I was able to become more confident in the projects I’ve completed. With the Finance team and their guidance, I was able to gain more insights into the Finance department and how important it is to keep our reports up to date. I look forward to being of further help to the team and advancing my career. I am so grateful for this opportunity and was so fortunate to have interned with such an amazing company!
