Paper In My Practicum Experience

University of the Philippines in the Visayas

Tacloban College

Into the Shoes of a CPA

A 150-hour practicum experience as a requirement in

BA 123 course Ð'- Public Accounting Office

INTRODUCTION

What I expect to get from the Practicum

When Professor Bernadette Lorenzo, our BA 123 (Public Accounting Office) adviser told us to look for accounting firms for our practicum, I got excited because I never had the experience to work in an office or company before. Practicum is defined as a school or college course, especially one in a specialized field of study that is designed to give students supervised practical application of previously studied theory.

The first firm that popped into my mind was SGV. Maybe I could work in Cebu or Manila. Yet I thought I was being ambisyosa. There are many accounting firms here in Tacloban anyway, but I fear I won't learn something worthwhile. I asked some of the Management students who have undergone practicum and some of them told me that all they did was file documents, encode or even make coffees for employees! Although they have a different degree program, I feared that their experiences would be the same with what I was about to face.

But somehow, I was hoping for optimistic things in this undertaking. I was looking forward to experiencing what a CPA really does or at least a part and parcel of what they really do. According to Valix in his Financial Accounting book, Certified Public Accountants generally practice their profession in three main areas, namely Public Accounting, Private Accounting and Government Accounting.

Public Accountants usually offer three kinds of services Ð'- Auditing, Taxation, and Management Advisory Services. Ricchiute defines Auditing as a systematic process of objectively obtaining and evaluating evidence regarding assertions about economic actions and events to ascertain the degree of correspondence between those assertions and established criteria and communicating the results to interested users. Taxation services involves the preparation of tax returns and determination of tax consequences of certain proposed business endeavors, while Management Advisory Services, as defined by Roque, is the function of providing professional advisory services, the primary of which is to improve the client's use of capabilities and resources to achieve the objectives of the organization.

A CPA is practicing Private Accounting when s/he is employed in a business enterprise as an accounting staff, chief accountant, internal auditor, or controller.

Government Accounting encompasses the process of accounting transactions involving the receipt and disposition of government funds and property and interpreting the results the results thereof.

From among these three major areas of the Accountancy Profession, I was looking forward to doing public accounting, specifically auditing and taxation services. I also wanted to do bookkeeping because it is the "how" of accounting, so to speak. It is concerned with the development and maintenance of accounting records.

I was also thinking of dressing up in executive attire walking from one institution to another doing transactions for our clients. I was imagining sitting down in my office desk doing paper works and all that stuff. But the most important of all the things I was anticipating was that this experience would enhance my sense of responsibility and dedication towards work, build relationships with the people that I will work with, and boost my morale as an individual. This total package, I believe, would aid me in my endeavors as a Certified Public Accountant.

THE BODY

What I experienced and learned

About FSF Accounting FirmÐ'...

My experience in the training was far beyond from my pessimisms. I learned a lot, most especially in the field of taxation and bookkeeping where I was assigned. Thanks to FSF & company accounting firm.

FSF stands for Fua, Sales, Fabila. These are the surnames of the founders of the said firm. Its office is located in Melecio Tan Bldg, Salazar Street in the downtown area of Tacloban. It was the youngest among the accounting firms in the city. The managing partner is Sir Telesforo Sales. Most of its clients are cooperatives.

Eleven of us in our class chose FSF because one of our classmates was a friend of Mr. Sales. We started working in the last week of December and we have to complete a total of a hundred and fifty hours for the whole course of the training.

Sir Sales assigned each one of us a particular client to work on. He gave us all the necessary files and documents and gave us instructions on what to do. XMB Great foods was assigned to me together with another classmate, Kristine Pelingon. Hand In hand, we did the bookkeeping stuff and Taxation.

Working with XMB Great FoodsÐ'...

XMB Great foods is a merchandising company Ð'- both a wholesaler and a retailer of well-renowned products of processed foods. It is a single proprietorship owned and managed by Mr. Alex Belleza, located at Apitong, Tacloban. The business started in the mid 2006. Since it was just starting, it kept no books. It just filed official and delivery receipts, invoices, cash remittance reports and other source documents. With this kind of system, we needed to organize books for the firm. We had to record everything from July 2006 to January 2007. Not only that, we also needed to file income tax return for the third quarter and file percentage tax returns from July. Also, XMB had not yet applied for the renewal of business permit for the year 2007.

BookkeepingÐ'...

The first thing I did was to make a chart of accounts. A Chart of Accounts is the listing of all the accounts and their account numbers in the ledger. I followed the format of another company and an illustration in an intermediate accounting textbook. In the following days, Kristine and I worked on journalizing. Journalizing is a chronological recording of the entity's transactions. Before we did that, we first looked at discrepancies between source documents and remittance reports to ascertain accurate recording. The books that we created for the firm were the sales journal, purchases, cash receipts, cash disbursements, and the general journal.