I knew it was coming, but I still find it a little funny. I have survived my first busy season, so already I am a seasoned auditor, capable of performing entire jobs by myself. The idea seems a bit absurd to me, but it is standard practice for first-year staff people to perform entire benefit plan audits on their own, even though they may have only eight months of real-life experiece with auditing in the field. I have graduated to that stage in my long career, and so I find myself in Michigan to audit the 401K program of one of my regular clients.

Not only was this my first time doing a job solo, but this was also my first time doing this particular job, a 401K plan audit. Now, everyone says that these jobs are a "slam dunk" (a business term meaning that you will only have to work ten hours of overtime this week), but it can be a bit intimidating for someone with less than a year of experience. I had almost no time to prepare for this job, so I showed up at the client on Monday morning with only a general idea of what I wanted to accomplish.

Luckily there is a thing called a workprogram, which is already prepared for the average defined contribution benefit plan. All I have to do is sort of go through the thirty pages or so and check off each step. However, the key is to finish all of the important client-side testing and questioning while I am out here and to do the rest of the work back at the office in the following weeks. It sounds easy enough, but I was so freaked out that I might forget something and that I would have to have it FedExed to me later or worse yet, have to drive out to the client again in order to get what I needed.

Anyway, it seems like I spent more time on making confirmation letters than anything else. This is a rather silly practice whereby auditors test a certain process or transaction, but then also feel the need to get direct confirmation from some third-party. In this case, we have to confirm with some employees that they actually did want to take some loan from their 401K or whatever. It is a relatively usefull test when it works, but generally the third-party does not reply and then we are left to wonder whether they agree with the transaction or not.

There are some nice things about being in-charge of a job. You determine your own hours, the pace of your work, and the order in which the work is done. However, like the proverbial sole proprietor, the in-charge also has trouble getting away from a job that he/she has full responsibility for.

Next week I get to be the acting in-charge on one of my regular jobs. The senior suddenly decided to transfer to our Australia office, leaving me and the manager to do the review for this quarter. We have enlisted the help of an intern to make sure that we can get everything out on time. I am a little stressed out about that job too, because there are a ton of things that the senior generally does that I may now have to step-in on. The first day of the work, the intern and I are on our own out there, so it should be fun to try to manage our time and get some good work done. However, I made sure to inform the manager that I already feel overworked and that I prefer less challenge and less money to the life that I am currently leading. He thinks I am crazy of course...