Graduate Blog

Kate - Assurance Cork

Hey everyone,

It’s been a while since my last blog as we have been pretty busy this busy season! The past few weeks have just flown by; I have been working in both asset management (funds) and on non-financial services jobs. I’m currently on my second funds job but I was booked on my first funds job in the middle of February. It was a great experience as the audit itself is totally different to anything I’d worked on before. Although it was a bit daunting as everything was so unfamiliar, it was a good experience in the end and it will all be relevant to the exams in June!

Speaking of exams, I’ve sat two continuous assessments since my last blog, one in SFMA and the other in auditing. I was happy with both as I thought the papers were fair and luckily I had not been too hectic in work in the run up to them so as I was prepared! Our auditing exam just took place Saturday gone and the examinable area was that of trade receivables. I have worked in this area quite a bit lately and I couldn’t believe how much it stood to me for the exam!

Now the countdown is on for study leave and to get folders and notes sorted!

Talk soon,

Kate

Sarah – Consulting Dublin

Hi everyone,

Apologies, it has been a while since my last blog! Since I last wrote, I have been working on a new aspect of the project I have been on since August of last year – it involves designing the organisation structure of a department within our client’s organisation. My colleague and I designed three high level organisation design options and recently presented these to our client. The meeting went really well and we are now delving into more detail based on the feedback we received in order to present our options to the CEO. We are also beginning to create a training strategy which we will soon propose to our client, and in the next couple of weeks we will begin work on defining high level job specifications. I’ll let you know how this goes over the coming weeks.

On the social side of things, there have been a number of events since my last blog. A big group of us – about 28 – went on a ski trip to Mont Blanc at the end of January for a long weekend. It was a great trip and there were not too many injuries despite the thick fog which lasted for two whole days...already looking forward to next years! As well as this, the annual pool competition was held last Thursday – unfortunately I couldn’t make it but I heard it was a great night...and the next upcoming event will be taking place two weekends from now – early each year the associates organise a weekend away, so no doubt it will be a success yet again!

Bye for now...

Aoife – Tax Dublin

Hi all,

Now that January has passed, I wanted to give you a quick overview on what I have been working on over the past few weeks and a general update on what has been going on in the tax practice recently.

As I mentioned in my last blog, January is a very busy month for us as we carry out several corporation tax sign-offs. This tasks involves reviewing or providing the corporation tax figure for inclusion in a company's financial statements. I visited a client based in Maynooth at the end of January in order to carry out such a review at the client premises. I was accompanied by an Assistant and Specialist 2 and we spent the day running through the information provided by the client and drafting the corporation tax computations for the group companies. Face to face meetings are always very beneficial and definitely help to strengthen the relationship between PwC and our client contact. We continued our work from the office the following week and completed the assignment recently. The next step in the process will be a review of the signed financial statements so that we can finalise our computations and prepare the corporation tax return "Form CT1", for submission to Revenue.

I am currently preparing for assisting in an internal training session on stamp duty which is due to take place next week. Three members of the stamp duty team will be delivering the training session to those at Manager and above levels. We will be providing an update on recent proposed changes to the stamp duty legislation and giving an overview recent stamp duty work carried out across the firm. The entire tax practice will be attending a training session this afternoon on the Finance Bill 2012. This is an annual event which is hosted away from the Spencer Dock office. It is a session which provides a good overview on the various changes proposed in the recently issued Finance Bill. As the training covers all tax heads affected by the changes, it is a good way for us in corporation tax, for example, to hear about amendments to the VAT or personal tax legislation.

Finally, PwC is involved in an initiative called the "People Giving Scheme" which provides an opportunity for employees to donate a sum to five chosen charities through their payroll every month. The five charities who benefit change every year. We elect five new charities at the end of each year who will benefit from the People Giving Scheme the following year. Every year a substantial sum is collected and divided between the five very worthy causes. Representatives from the five chosen charities from 2011 will be visiting the office tomorrow and receiving the proceeds of last year's donations. I have been asked, along with some other PwC representatives to meet with the charities tomorrow so I am very much looking forward to this.

Bye for now,

Aoife

Catherine – Assurance South East

Hi all,

Apologies it’s been soo long since my last blog, January has been a very busy month in work. I spent the last four weeks on the audit of an Irish subsidiary of a French group. It was quite a large audit as the company had two trades which meant that we had to do everything twice in order to get comfort over both trades. A lot of the company’s customers and suppliers were also located outside of Ireland so it was a bit of a challenge when we sent letters to confirm amounts owing at the year end, there were times when I had to use some of my leaving certificate French! This makes the job interesting however as you face new challenges every day, and getting over these challenges is very satisfying.

I’m currently back in the office and I’ll be here for the next few weeks working on some small audits and preparing accounts for one of our clients. I enjoy this side of the work because when you are preparing accounts for a client you usually take a folder of bank statements and invoices for example and after a few days you end up with a set of accounts! I better get back to the work now as we’re still all very busy so until the next time, thanks for reading my blog!

Adam – Consulting Dublin

Hi everyone,

Really sorry it’s been so long since my last post but I can’t believe how quickly the time has gone after Christmas! Since I spoke with you last I spent two weeks back in the office working on a proposal and I have just started a new secondment with one of the mobile networks in Ireland!

The proposal work was really interesting and it was a completely different experience to working on site with a client. Basically if an organisation needs some work completed or have a particular project that they do not have the skills or resources to complete themselves they will put the job out to tender and it will be up to firms like ourselves to put together a proposal document that outlines how we can help them and answering any specific requests the company may have. It really brought back memories of college assignments except instead of the lecturer setting the guidelines this time it’s a real life organisation!

After Christmas I was seconded to a major mobile network in Ireland. I joined their financial planning and control team as a revenue analyst. This is a great opportunity to gain some first hand experience in a finance function and it’s also great to get some experience within a new industry. On top of that I am actually starting to apply some knowledge from my CIMA exams to my day to day role.

Speaking of exams, I started my first lectures last week as the next set of exams are in May. If I get these I will only have one exam left so I intend putting the head down over the next few weeks to try and get them out of the way…….although I wont know what to be doing with my evenings after that!

Anyway, I hope your all well and we shall catch up soon!

Cheers,

Adam

Brian – Tax Dublin

Hi all,

Just back from Rome - you have to make the most of your free weekends since a lot of the time they are taken up with lectures!

Since my last update I have been engaged in a lot of employment related tax work. You may have seen a lot of Revenue advertisements on TV over the last few weeks reminding employers about the upcoming P35 filing deadline of 15 February (23 February if filing through Revenue’s Online System (ROS)), so I have been busy doing Payroll calculations and helping to prepare P35 Returns for clients.

Our colleagues in the PwC Poland firm have updated their annual ‘Personal Tax in the European Union’ report which details the average net incomes for employees across Europe so I was engaged to complete a survey detailing the personal income tax and social security burdens for employees in Ireland for 2011 which was interesting. The results which are published annually, make for interesting reading.

The final period CGT payments deadline was 31 January last so I was busy doing CGT calculations in respect of individuals who had made disposals of assets both in Ireland and abroad which brought them within the remit of Irish CGT. I had a lot of face to face meetings with individuals in order to get details of their asset disposals and also try as best as possible to reduce their CGT liabilities by offsetting losses on capital disposals against gains since everyone wants to try and minimise their tax liabilities!

A large amount of my department will be going on study leave for the Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 exams with the Irish Taxation Institute soon and as a result the workload for those remaining will be increased! I have FAE block release lectures starting in 3 weeks so it will be nice to get out of the office for a while.

We also had two new Co-Op students join our department recently and they will be with us for 9 months – there’s a constant flow of people joining the firm at present as the firm continues its recruitment drive for both graduate and experienced hires!

So until my next update – take care!

Kate - Assurance Cork

Hi Everyone,

Apologies I haven’t been in touch sooner! The last fortnight has been super busy as I was working in Dublin and studying for the CAP2 SFMA Continuous Assessment that we sat last Saturday. The exam itself went ok, as always with the exams it was pretty tight for time but luckily I think everyone was pretty prepared going in to it!

I am only back in Cork today for the first time since before Christmas as I took the first week in January off and then went straight to Dublin. It was great getting to work away for a while as I had never been on a Dublin job before nor had I spent that much time in the City. Although we were pretty busy it was nice to get to meet people from the Dublin office and work for the different managers.

Now I’m back in Cork I’m looking forward to getting back into the office to catch up with everyone again but that’ll have to wait until next week as I’m out on site this week again down in Cobh, Co. Cork!

Talk soon,

Kate

Aoife – Tax Dublin

Hi All

It has been a while since I updated my blog so I wanted to give you a taste of what has been happening in the tax department of PwC over the past few weeks.

Firstly, the Budget took place in early December. This was a great opportunity to get in touch with our clients and keep them up to date on the changes that would affect them. PwC had a large media presence on Budget night and the following days whereby we explained to clients and the public what the budget changes would mean for them. The tax department of PwC hosts a Budget Breakfast Briefing in the Four Seasons on the morning after the Budget which clients are invited to attend. This was the first year that I was involved in the Budget Briefing and it was a great way to meet clients face to face and chat informally about the Budget and how business is going for them generally.

We have had some more interesting training sessions recently including a session on Intellectual Property. Such sessions give us a good overview of an area so that we are in a position to have initial discussions with clients about a topic that may be relevant to them. We have a number of training sessions scheduled for the coming weeks also.

The run-up to Christmas is always a very enjoyable few weeks in PwC. The atmosphere is lively and the decorations around the office really add to the festive season. Our DIO Christmas party was a thoroughly enjoyable day. Our department went for a delicious lunch followed by a karaoke session! The karaoke machine didn't get a rest all night! There were many surprise performances on the night and lots of hidden talent emerged!! Next stop will be the X Factor!!

I am involved in a Corporate Social Responsibility project whereby I am part of a team that helps a wonderful school on Pearse Street called The Life Centre. This small school caters for teenagers preparing for the Junior Cert. We organise some projects for the teenagers which are fun yet challenging. This year, we are facilitating a Dragon's Den-style project whereby the students prepare a proposal for a business idea. We assist the students in preparing their pitches to potential investors. It is very encouraging to see their confidence increase over the weeks of practice. In May each year, we invite the students to our office in Spencer Dock to present their proposal for four "Dragons" who are PwC colleagues that the students have not met before. The Life Centre collaboration has been running for a number of years now and it is a very rewarding experience for both students, teachers and those of us involved from PwC.

January is quite a busy month here in the tax practice. We are currently carrying out tax reviews which involves reviewing or providing the corporation tax figure for inclusion in a company's financial statements. I have been involved in some small tax reviews carried out from the office over the past 2 weeks. Next week, I will be visiting a client in Maynooth for an all-day onsite tax review. I will be accompanied by an Assistant and a Specialist 2. We intend to spend the day analysing the information provided and continue our review from the office the following week before producing a draft corporation tax computation for audit of tax sign-off purposes. This is the first year that I will be co-ordinating this review. I will be working directly with the Director and delegating to and assisting the Junior staff-I am looking forward to the challenge.

Bye for now

Aoife

Maura – Assurance Dublin

Hi,

Again, apologies for the delay in entries. I seem to have had a very busy period now that I'm taking the time to reflect. I completed my training of the Associates and found the second week was even more enjoyable than the first. In the second week there was a definite shift in the dynamic of the Associate group as people adapted to their new environment and became more familiar with their new colleagues. The social night at the end of the course was Casino themed, it was a great night but alas I was better at losing chips than winning them!

After the training course, I returned to work on a client that I had done some interim work on earlier in the year. I was assigned to this job for five weeks. I was given responsibility for multiple sections of the file including Research, deferred income, journals testing and review of the financial statements to name but a few. I gained some great experience on this job including assisting the Senior Manager with the preparation of the board reports and I gained some experience with US GAAP financial accounting treatments. This was my fourth year to work on this client and I really felt that as a more senior member of the team, I had great insight into the client's operations. It was a large team so there were plenty of opportunities to coach and be coached. Toward the end of the job there were some late nights so we would be able to sign the accounts on time but thankfully I was able to put some of the overtime toward my three weeks off at Christmas!

I came back after Christmas feeling totally refreshed and eagerly anticipating the busy season ahead. For my first week, I was located in the office which gave me a nice chance to catch up on my emails and voicemails. I also used the opportunity to document some planning work for a job I will be working on later in the year.

I am now working on the largest client that I work on during the year. It is a PLC client and this is my second year to work on the job. There is a team of 7 people continuously on site and the managers and partner regularly join us on site to perform their reviews and engage in meetings with the client as necessary. The audit is very much at its early stages and I am gathering information so that I am fully conversant with the client's Revenue operations as I am auditing this section. I have been setting up meetings with various client staff so I can begin documenting my testing. I will keep you posted on how the rest of the job goes.

Bye for now,
Maura

Brian – Tax Dublin

Happy New Year everyone and I hope the holidays were fun! 2011 flew by and was, fortunately, a great year! I’m now back in the office after what felt like the shortest break ever.

It was very busy in the weeks leading up to the holidays since we are in the middle of the Capital Gains Tax compliance season – ensuring that individuals remain tax compliant and advising people on how to dispose of their assets in a tax efficient manner. In general our department was much busier last year than previous years which reflects how the firm is holding up against external market pressures.

The recent 2012 budget ensured that we were also busy writing reports for many of the national newspapers as well as preparing budget calculators for PwC’s website which has been very popular. Many of the senior members of my department were also out and about discussing the impacts of Budget 2012.

There will be some new Co-Ops starting in our department soon who remain with us for much of the year.

My lectures will recommence this week and will run right through to the beginning of July. I will also have two weeks off work to attend Block Release lectures so it will be nice/ not so nice to have a week off from work to attend all day lectures. It’s a tough balance but since there are so many others in the same position it’s not as bad! The firm has been preparing us well for the FAE exams at the beginning of September with lots of advice, guidance and tips on how to be successful, so fingers crossed!

Chat again soon!