My current temporary assignment

I am currently working a temporary job at an accounting firm. This is amusing for three reasons; 1) I have never worked in accounting; 2) Attention to detail is not always my strong point; and 3) the reason I got this position was because of my knowledge of PeopleSoft software – which I have yet to use for this assignment. The job was originally supposed to last for approximate 2 weeks. I started on a Thursday and am now entering my third full week. I am working on fixed asset accounts from 2006 and just yesterday finished the 1st quarter. I was ill last week and missed a couple days of work. I made the mistake of telling the temporary agency that I would be there for certain on the second day. When I called the recruiter from the agency on the second day, she asked if I could go in for at least a few hours. I went in at 1 that day and worked for four hours. The next day I worked for four hours in the morning and started to feel bad again, so I went home at lunch for the day.

Today I had a dental appointment and had to leave early. In an effort to be conscientious I went in at 7:30 so that I could work 6 hours. Since I had finished Q1 yesterday, I needed some new reports to continue with the Q2 reconciliation. I asked when I came in for the reports, and was told that they only took a few minutes to run. The person I am helping with the project said he had to finish the task he was working on and would then run the reports. At 9:30 I finally got some work to do – nothing to do with the other project I have been working on. In the time I was waiting for reports, I talked to the woman at my temporary agency. I asked if she knew when the assignment was scheduled to end. She said she would have to check. I told her that my last day at the assignment would be Thursday, February 15th because I am having dental surgery on the 16th. She is going to find a replacement for me and I will cross train that individual for 2-3 days.

It is an interesting place to work, and the people are not organized. The guy that I am helping first explained the project/process piecemeal. I was given two Excel reports – one for the General Ledger (GL) entries and one for the AM account. I was to compare the two accounts and find the matching entries. The AM report has department numbers, asset numbers and invoice numbers, the GL report had only department numbers to match up the AM entries against. At one point, it was mentioned that a GL report with invoices could be run. This was after a few days of trying to match up the accounts with no real cross reference numbers. I finally asked for a revised GL report and was eventually also given the corresponding invoices for the entries. This helped a great deal. It is very hard to match information when you are not given all the tools or pieces needed to get to the final result.

I am hoping that I will have the reports I need to start Q2 when I go in to work tomorrow. I have an interview tomorrow afternoon for a 3 month temporary job as an Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS) Analyst with a possibility of a permanent position. I will write tomorrow about the interview…so stay tuned.