We're taking a little breather from the heavy topics such as cyber security and legal implications for today. In this episode we are sitting down with Kim Moore, Chasity Price and Lauren Van Wyngarden from our 401K Audit Team to talk about their experience working and interning at Summit CPA Group.
Summit CPA Group has merged with Anders CPAs + Advisors! Visit our website to learn more about our 401(k) process and pricing: https://anderscpa.com/401k-audits/
“It has been a challenge for me, with making sure I'm tying my numbers back and forth, navigating through our online system. We did use Advance Flow at my old job but it wasn't as detail-oriented as Summit is.” - Chasity Price
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Episode resources
Jamie Nau: Hello, everybody, welcome to today's podcast. I'm really excited about today's podcast because we have a couple of additional 401(k) auditors on here. We thought it'd be important for our listeners. You know, oftentimes you're getting audited and you're not really sure who the people are that are auditing you, what their backgrounds are. If you listen to this podcast, you've become fairly comfortable with Kim, and you know her really well. But we thought it'd be good just to bring on some of our newer team members. So, Kim, I'm going to let you introduce both of your team members and then we'll get into the conversation.
Kim Moore: Thanks, Jamie. Yeah, we have to two new faces here, so you don't just get to hear from me like you've been hearing in previous podcasts. Today we have Chasity Price with us. Chasity joined us a couple of months ago. She's our newest full-time member on the team. We also have Lauren Van Wyngarden. Lauren has been working with us, I think probably about the same amount of time. She's an intern. She's actually working from home, but she's going to school at Indiana University School of Business. We're glad to have her for about another month. Lauren is obviously still in school, so she has not graduated. This is just an internship for her. But we thought Lauren would be able to bring some great insights because she is brand new to everything.
Jamie Nau: Yeah. With that said, I love to start with you for the first question, Lauren. So, I was an accounting major as well. I started my world in audit, and I felt like the transition from audit classes to the actual audit world is probably one of the most different in any career. So, talk about that a little bit and what you found doing your own first couple of audits?
Lauren Van Wyngarden: Definitely. This internship is the first glimpse that I've ever had into auditing. At Indiana University, I won't even take an audit specific class until I think my senior year. And so just from going from, like, the basics of accounting, doing like, you know, different transactions I'm in the real world getting to see audit in action, I really had no expectations. I didn't know what it was going to be like. So pretty much anything I know about auditing has come from somewhere. So, it's been quite a learning experience this summer. I'm very thankful for it.
Jamie Nau: Yeah, so Chasity, do you want to explain a little bit the difference? Have you done different audits other than 401(k) audits?
Chasity Price: So, before I started working here, I had experience in the governmental nonprofit industry and then also in the low-income housing industry. So that was my job before I actually started working for Summit. So, it's completely different. The only thing that I would say is about the same is just the compliance aspect of it. So just the actual looking at the guidelines set forth by the government regulators and just making sure that each client is in compliance with those guidelines. I can say that the 401(k) audits are a lot more complex than what I am used to working on. They would take three or four hours depending on if they did have just like a compliance aspect to it, and if it didn't, it went by really, really fast. So, I would say that even though I do have experience in auditing, it still has been completely new.
Jamie Nau: So, you mention the word compliance audit. I want Kim to go into that a little bit more. You know, I've done both financial and compliance audits. So, you want to talk about the difference?
Kim Moore: Yeah, these audits are very different. I mean, Chasity hit the nail right on the head. Most audits are financial statement audits almost exclusively. So, you know whether that's a company audit or even a not-for-profit audit, you're you know, whatever the entity is, they had money coming in. They had money going out, they made profit or in the case, enough profit. Maybe they broke even. Those are the elements that you're looking at. So, you know, you've got a general ledger and you've got transactions, you're testing transactions. You're testing different types of the flows on the balance sheet or the income statement, pretty straightforward. I mean, obviously, different industries have different issues that you encounter, but the basics of it are all the same. When you get into things like 401(k) audit or, as Chasity mentioned, other governmental type audits, you have both elements. So, you still have financial statements, even if your own plan has its own financial statements that look a little different. But the same basic concept. You have to have statements, you're going to have footnotes, you're issuing an opinion on those in there. So that part's the same. But there's this added complexity of the compliance elements. And so there you have specific regulations, laws that pertain to whatever it is. And in this case, it's the 401(k)-plan world. In our world, the major governing body is a congressional act that was passed back in the 70s titled ERISSA, and it governs all benefit plans that are managed for the benefit of employees that are sponsored by an employer. It governs all of those plans, not just for one page. And there's a lot of very specific rules that come out of a ERISSA that are there to protect the employees, to make sure the employer is not taking advantage of them, not taking their money and not using it for the best interest of the employee. There's also Internal Revenue Service rules because, of course, most 401(k) plans have pretax dollars. So, employees are putting money out of their paycheck into their plan and they're not paying tax on that money. They'll pay the tax later on when they retire, and they take the money out. So, of course, the IRS is all concerned about the pretax elements of it to make sure that no one is taking advantage of the tax code. There are other rules too. Other government bodies get involved in this. Congress passes acts all the time, changing things. And so those are the rules that we have to make sure that the plan is following along with a plan document itself. Most people don't understand that a 401(k) plan is an illegal entity onto itself, and it has a plan document that governs how it's supposed to work. And if you don't follow that plan document, then you can get in all kinds of trouble, both from those same governmental agencies, but also it could become a legal issue. So, a lot of different elements. I always say it's your standard traditional financial statement audit. And then last it's got this other big, huge section to it. I think both Lauren and Chasity can attest to this, that from the auditor standpoint, the bulk of the time is actually spent on those compliance elements, not on the financial piece. For most of our audits it is pretty straightforward. They're really not that complicated. It's the compliance part. That's the tricky part.
Jamie Nau: Yeah, the way I've always described it, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here is the question you're asking is yes or no. Are we compliant here?
Kim Moore: Yeah, and those questions relate together, too, because if the answer to the compliance question is no, you didn't do it correctly, then that can impact, you know, the numbers. You may have one hundred dollars, but it should have been five hundred dollars. And so that's where that element comes in, becomes very important.
Jamie Nau: Great. I'm going I'm going to change gears here a little bit. So as everybody knows, we are a remote firm. So, we're going to talk a little bit about what that's like for you guys. So once again, let's start with Lauren. Explain what it's like working remote.
Lauren Van Wyngarden: I would say something I love about working from home versus the efficiency and convenience of it. You know, it's so easy just to get out of bed and go to the next room where for me, I'm just working on a desk in my room. So, the commute, you know, is seconds. But just getting on meetings and connecting with coworkers just feels so quick and easy. You know, I can just knock on anyone's door. So you are saving yourself a lot of time meeting virtually with no commute. It definitely feels more flexible working from home. I can imagine when you have a family and kids, it is something that's super helpful. However, a challenge I would say is the self-motivation aspect. You know, you don't have somebody in the cubicle next to you telling you to get busy. And so, as my first real world experience, like I said earlier, it's been good to kind of navigate that and really test my own self-motivation and continue to work hard from 8 to 5 every day.
Jamie Nau: Has that still been a challenge for you, or do you feel like you've it figured it out and you are pretty self-motivated?
Lauren Van Wyngarden: Oh, at first, I was exhausted by the end of the week, even with remote, you know, I'm still in the comfort of my own home. I was like, what is this, 40 hours? It's a lot. But, you know, you get used to it and it definitely helps being home because I can take, you know, instead of like an hour-long lunch break, I can do mini breaks throughout the day just to kind of break it up and give myself my brain a little relaxation. But I definitely love it. It's tempting not to get too comfortable because, you know, I'll probably be in an office someday, but I definitely am really loving this remote work experience.
Kim Moore: Yeah. I think it's a great experience for you because I know probably your next internship, you're going to be probably going to clients’ offices. So, you're probably traveling a lot, whether that's just in the same city or it might actually physically I mean, I know I did jobs, I was traveling internationally so that is very different, you know, work life balance and just work experience difference. There's good and bad with both. You know, I enjoyed what I did before but it’s definitely different. There are definitely adaptations needed on both sides. I think you phrased it very well. Working from home sounds very attractive to almost everybody for a lot of reasons, a lot of which you mentioned. But it's not as easy as you might think. I mean, there are challenges to it, and it doesn't work well for everybody. That self-motivation thing that you mentioned is real. I mean it and it's not just well; I just need to tell myself to get up in the morning. I mean it for some people, it's very difficult. There's a lot of distractions at home for a lot of people. So, it's not as easy as I think what people imagine it would be like if they've never actually done it.
Jamie Nau: Yeah, it's something we definitely screen for when we interview. Especially when we're talking to someone that has 10 – 15 years’ experience in an office setting. We have to ask those questions of, you know, what is it going to be like for you working from home? What are you excited about? And if people you know, the first answer is, oh, I really want the flexibility and I'm looking for this. That’s not always the right answer. There are lots of reasons to work from home. But I think your point about being self-motivated is a big one. On the accounting side, it's been a challenge in the interviewing side to really screen that through the process.
Kim Moore: Yeah. I think it's a challenge, too, for people just depending on what your home setup is. If you have a lot of people at home and, you know, we've just gone through a pandemic where it wasn't normal, you know, you might have had both spouses home, working from home, kids home. Those kind of things present extra challenges. And so, as we move forward and into whatever the new normal is going to look like, I think those are all things people are going to have to think about because you may have more people working from home, maybe more schooling from home, too. Those are going to be real life challenges.
Jamie Nau: So, what about you Chasity? Is this your first time working for a virtual company?
Chasity Price: Yeah, this is my first full time job working from home. When the pandemic hit last year, at my previous job, we were a very small firm and kind of everyone had their own offices. So, we were actually still going in the office to work when the pandemic hit. We were just alternating days that that we went in. So, I was kind of used to it having like my work papers in a file on my desk, something tangible to touch. So, it has been a challenge for me with making sure I'm tying my numbers back and forth, navigating through our online, digital system. We did use like advanced flow at my old job, but it wasn't as detailed. So, I guess that has been a challenge for me. Just making sure that I'm tying my numbers back, making sure that everything is flowing in digital sense. As for what Lauren said with the convenience of kind of moving from one virtual office to another in Sococo, I like that. I do miss being in the office setting and walking to my next-door neighbors cubical. But as far as like Sococo, I like that I can knock on someone's door and do a video chat. So, I think there are pros and cons. Once I feel I am used to working fully remote, I probably wouldn't want to ever go back to an office.
All: Laughing [in audible]
Kim Moore: I think Chasity brings up a good point. The social element is different. It's not as natural as it would be in an office. I mean, I think when you're in an office you know when everybody's going to get up and go to the break room to get something to drink or go to lunch or just go to the restroom sometimes and you'll run into people in the hall. And it's very natural to just have conversations about nothing. I mean, things that you did over the weekend or things your kids are doing or, you know, how's work going? Or, you know, for us auditors, we vent a lot to each other about, you know, problem clients, problem situations. It's not that you can't do it in a remote setting, but it's just not as natural. You have to kind of force it to happen a little bit more, which we try to do at Summit. We you know, we have events during the week. We have meetings where everybody in the company is there and we're not actually talking most of that meeting about anything firm or work related. It's more, you know, just kind of lighthearted and getting to know people. And then we also do retreats where we actually physically are getting together. You know, Jamie just got back from a CFO retreat where all the CFOs got together. And, you know, part of that they're talking goals and things that they want to work on and things they need to improve. But the majority of that time is just getting to know each other and just talking to each other and spending time together, eating together.
Jamie Nau: Yeah, to piggyback off what you said, I think the most important thing to me that I learned when I was moving to working from home was, you know, you do miss a little bit of a social aspect. So, I make it a point when I interview people and also when I talk about working from home is, make sure you get that elsewhere. You know, like, again, I love my coworkers. But there's also people that are my true friends that I hang out with outside of work. And I make sure that I make time to hang out with them during the week. I tell people to find an organization to volunteer with on Fridays. That way you're still getting that social aspect because a lot of people, they work from home, staying home way too much and they're there all the time. So, I think that's really important. That way you have that social aspect.
Kim Moore: I totally agree. You need to make time for it. That’s another thing we really didn't talk about with working from home. It is nice that you can just almost jump out of bed and go right to work. But it also can be very addicting. I mean, you know, there's always too much to do and you can always stay five more minutes doing work. And that would be true in an office. But you physically leave to go home. When you're working from home, it's like, oh I can work one more hour and get this done. Then it's 11:00 at night and you've worked all day, taking no breaks. It can be very, very addictive. So, you do have to be careful. So very good point Jamie. One of the things I wanted to ask Lauren, I know you're in school and in case we've got any listeners that are in school and they're thinking about audit. I know you haven't had your class yet, but is there anything from your work here with Summit that you think is really helpful in your learning at school? Or anything you really want to focus on as you choose classes?
Lauren Van Wyngarden: Yeah, I think just exposure and like learning the common terminology has definitely helped furthering my knowledge of accounting. But I think something that I will really translate into my next job and post college life are these soft skills. I mean, we touched on this but being really adaptable. I think that is going to be really beneficial going back to IU.
Kim Moore: Yeah, very good point. I know people always ask whether you're in audit or accounting, they're always thinking when you're interviewing people, you're focused all about how good you are at math and how do you know that is a credit, and all that kind of stuff. I've always said the things I look for are good communicators, people that are very adaptable. I mean, you hit on all of the key aspects that I really look at when we're looking for team members, the technical stuff you can teach people and, you know, you're going to school to learn the debits and the credits and those pieces. So, you tend to get that. But it's the other parts that are, to me, more important. They're what's going to determine your success over your career versus just all that technical stuff. It's important. Don't get me wrong, you need it to pass your CPA exam and all of that. But it's the soft skill piece and that emotional intelligence piece that are going to determine your overall long-term success. So, I'm glad we're helping with that. I think, you know, that's going to serve you well as you go back to school, then, you know, moving forward in whatever job you end up with out of school.
Jamie Nau: Especially in the audit world too. No one loves being audited. So, I think if you can develop those soft skills where you can make an audit less painless for people and make the conversations, you know, like you really are just curious about the business and trying to learn things and help them get through the audit you can make it a little more comfortable for everyone.
Kim Moore: I was just going to ask Chasity, how about you? Is there anything that you think if someone was considering going into auditing or thinking about a remote job, things that they should think about?
Chasity Price: I mean, it is very analytical, so you have to be able to understand what the objective of what you're looking at it. So, if you have a list of rules, you have to be able to understand that list of rules in order to be able to know if the client is abiding by those rules. For me, I didn't think that I would go into audit right out of school. I thought that I would do more on the accounting side, more bookkeeping, just like a staff accounting accountant role where you work on the other side of the financials. I love auditing. I love being a little nosy. My mom always says that I was very inquisitive as a child. So, for me, it fits my personality, my thought process. So, I think you have to be able to know you're not going to know right out of school what it is you want to go into. So, I think, like, if you could get a lot of different experience in industries to find what fits you. For me, I love auditing. Another thing that drew me Summit was that remote aspect. But whenever I went through my interview process, I was able to actually meet the team. And for me, that was something I've never done before. Meeting the whole team, I would be working with. That made me think okay. They actually care about camaraderie within the team. For me, that was huge. Like I said, I've never met coworkers that I would have been working with beforehand just to kind of see what it is like on their end. And they were able to give me more feedback on questions I had in the interviewing process.
Jamie Nau: That’s great. I am glad it worked out. So really quick I'm going to throw our email address out there. We are always looking for topics and guests. If anyone ever wants to be a guest on the show or has a topic for us to talk about, we'd love to hear from you. Our email address is: audit@summitcpa.net. We are right up again the clock here so let’s get in final thoughts. Chasity, in 20 seconds, what are your final thoughts for our listeners on the audit world?
Chasity Price: I would say it is very challenging, but very rewarding. Getting to work from home is a plus
Jamie Nau: All right, Lauren, you're up.
Lauren Van Wyngarden: I have to say, I'm so thankful for the experience it's given me and like I said, just the exposure and getting to, you know, put those problem-solving skills to the test and getting to look at a variety of different clients. It's been fun.
Kim Moore: I just want to say thanks to Lauren and Chasity for joining us today. It's nice to have some other folks on the podcast and hopefully they provided some information, whether you're a person in school thinking about career choice or maybe you're an auditor thinking about working from home or your plan sponsor, thinking I wonder what all those auditors are really like. You've got to hear from a few other faces. So, thank you both.
Jamie Nau: Yeah, great. Lauren and Chasity, you both did a great job. Thanks for joining.