Matthew Bestwick, Mazars LLP, Huddersfield
Matthew Bestwick from Mazars LLP chose the graduate route to becoming a chartered accountant.
ACA life for me
Being with the audit department means there is no typical day. The audit team have the opportunity to escape the office more than most!
With a diversity of clients in a variety of locations a typical day would change week by week. However this week a typical day would be as follows:
- 7.20 Travel over the Pennines to our client located in Manchester
- 9.00 After connecting to my colleague’s laptop to share the audit data and chatting about the plan for the day the real work can commence. This work could include checking values on invoices, ticking back payments, reconciling outstanding supplier amounts and chatting to the client about their strategies to detect fraud within the company
- 11.00 At some point during the morning coffee will be brought round. More often than not clients will make the auditors very welcome and by the end of the week you’ll almost feel like one of the team
- 12.30 Lunch! – Usually an hour
- 13.30 A round-up of the mornings work
- 17.15 A typical day will finish
Don’t crack under the pressure
At Mazars the ACA programme has ‘early hurdle’ exams. With no accountancy experience prior to my employment with Mazars LLP, to have two exams at the end of the first two weeks at college was very challenging.
It does make you stop and think "What have I done? Is accountancy for me?" However, this feeling does subside and the pass rate for the ACA is over 75 per cent so stick with it!
