Workday (WD) -2
8:50
Find a seat within the designated Finance area (not sure why we have the “flexible seating arrangement”, but anyhow). Open my work laptop and plug it in to the PC and start my morning with lovely End Of Day (EOD) check. “EOD check” pretty much checks: periods, posted journals, FX rates, Residual Internal Funding Overnight Rates (RIFOR - things like this reminds me that I work at a bank), etc. from WD-1 (i.e. the previous workday).
Check the folder to see if we received all data, and click on that macro button to run the check. Uhh portfolio check seems a bit off so I need to investigate. But tbh, if it seems minor and looks like something that can be dealt with later and does not really concern other Finance teams, then just send out an email to the whole Finance and IT&S teams to let them know that EOD check is done and you can start posting manual journals.
9:30
Start preparing monthly Key Performance Indicator (KPI) report for my team. So, download some stats from the Global dashboard and analyse system delays and targets (with all dem tables, graphs, colours).
11:00
Every Wednesday one of my colleagues from Accounts Payable (AP) drops off Vendor List for me to do weekly vendor check, which is just reconciling vendor details between two software. So I just follow the template and check for any changed vendor data. Then get this signed by the manager from the Data Quality team.
12:00
Sneak out and have some free peppermint tea and Arnott's biscuit.
12:30
If you want to die less during the month-end, start preparing a Balance Sheet certification and Key Control Indicator (KCI) pack. Both require signatures from all Finance teams (i,e. Tax, Financial Reporting, Product Control (PC) and Business Control (BC) teams), and I did not know how hard it is to get signatures from certain people. This pack has to be sent to the Executive Assistant (EA) before the deadline, for a CFO Management Team meeting, so better get things done before getting your ass whooped.
The harder one is the Balance Sheet certification. The objective is to find any outstanding suspense items in Balance Sheet accounts and try to clear them ASAP. So first, I need to reconcile data (as always) and allocate balance sheet accounts to correct owners in both Finance and HR. Then send out (another) email to responsible owners for confirmations, and if there is any unexplained ageing balance then get explanations and signatures.
13:00
Depending on my mood that day, I may go out for a walk in the Sun or catch up with any colleague or if my friend at KPMG is free then I walk over there to have lunch together.
14:00
Continue hustling.
*Disclaimer: this may not be 100% accurate as it's been over half a year since I worked as an Assistant Systems Accountant.
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