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REPORT OF INTERNSHIP ACTIVITIES

at

Talal Abu-Ghazaleh

Presented to

THE COLLEGE OF BUSINESS ADMINSTRATION

AL AIN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

In partial fulfillment

of the requirements for a 3 credit hour Internship course

Academic ADVISOR: Shoruoq Fathi Eletter

Prepared By

Khulood Khalil Madi #201410637

(1st Semester 2016/2017)

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TABLE OF CONTENT

PAGE NR

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 3

ABSTRACT 4

INTRODUCTION 5

BODY 6

2.1 SECTION 1 6

2.2 SETTION2 8

2.3 SECTION 3 10

CONCLUSION 13

REFERENCES 14
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AKNOWLEDGEMENTS

At the begging I thank god for everything. I would like to start by showing my

appreciation to my family for all of what they’ve done for me whether by affording my

courses or by encouraging me to do my best in studying.

This is my internship training report after completion of internship training at Talal

Abu- Ghazaleh, from 4/Sep/2016 to 13/Oct/2016. I wish to express my sincere thanks to

Dr Shoruoq Fathi Eletter, who is my academic supervisor for the internship training.

I also extend my thanks to Mr. Ziad Ghanayem, the manager of Talal Abu-

Ghazaleh who is my field supervisor and in charge of the internship training, staff of the

company, Lecturers, Department of Accounting and all the Lecturers of Faculty of

business administration, of Al Ain University. Who gave to me a golden opportunity to

follow the particular practical internship training in the accounting and been guidance,

necessary support, cooperation, encouragement, fullest effort by them to the success of

this opportunity, all are grateful and unforgettable. My special thanks are due to the Chief

Executive Officer of Talal Abu- Ghazaleh Mr. Haitham Dabour and the company’s staffs

for their fullest support which contributed immensely for successful completion of this

internship training. I wish to express my profound gratitude to all of them.

Thank you
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ABSTRACT

Increasingly, the internship has become an essential component of the undergraduate

program. It provides students with a smooth transition from the on-campus environment

to the working environment. It is often viewed as a ‘win-win’ situation for both the intern

and the intern’s employers. Students are able to learn about the profession and gain

practical experience while simultaneously being able to reflect on what they have learned

in the classroom. Employers benefit from internships as interns are sources of future

employees. This paper examines whether the expected benefits of internships, as

perceived by interns before going for their internship, are actually achieved. It will cover

a brief history about the company, the internship experience and what was learned in

details and my evaluation of this new experience.

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1. Introduction

The company I took my internship in is Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization (TAG-

org) which was founded in 1972 by Dr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh. The company main services

are auditing and financial services to the business. The accounting as a whole witness

some serious changes during that time and the changing of the standards board’s so it was

really unstable plus there was a huge development in the Arab countries since the oil

discovery so business rise.

The company now has over 2000 professional employees that provide the service for

all types of business and all types of services. They are dominating the Arabian

Peninsula, the Arab world and North Africa. The company operates with over 85 offices.

I chose this company because it’s the biggest auditing company in the middle east

and they provide confidential services with great quality and accuracy, and it will really

benefit my CV since they have an amazing goodwill. To add, one of the reasons that I

chose it is that their office in AlAin is close by and they are known for their training, an

accounting student having an internship in auditing is a great thing since most of the

account certificate like CPA, CMA and CIA has to do with editing, so the internship

would give an overview about the job.

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2. Internship Experience

I will divide my internship experience into three sections or periods according to

the activities I was assigned to do. The first section was one week, which is the first week

of training (from 4/Sep to 8/Sep) when I was required to read a book called principles of

auditing for Dr Talal Abu-Ghazaleh plus introducing me to the green file. The second

section which held place for the second week and the third week (from 18/Sep to 29/Sep)

when I was told to read and analyses the green files for several companies in different

industries or line of business. The third section was two parts which held a place in the

last two weeks of training (from 2/Oct to13/Oct) and it was all about reading audit reports

and using the auditing program the case ware to transfer the information from the

documents to the computer.

2.1 Section 1

The first section was one week, which is the first week of training (from 4/Sep to

8/Sep) when I was required to read a book called principles of auditing for Dr Talal Abu-

Ghazaleh plus introducing me to the green file. The basic information I got to be very

valuable and comprehensive since reading the book gave an overview of the working

system and the steps that the employees follow to finish their auditing. The books

chapters talks about different things for example the first chapter talks about the main

goals of auditing which is mainly about answering the question “ is the financial position

is fairly represented to the users?”, it also talks about the auditing plan which is four

main parts “sitting goals, looking into the activity and the trading nature, internal control

system, evaluation) and since internal control is very important to auditing so they set a
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whole chapter talk a about it and t concentrate about organization of the company,

procedure and IT and a good IT system is that one that is clear and contributes to the

company. The second chapter mainly talks about some examples in auditing. The third

chapter is about having a flexible auditing program because everything is uncertain and

nothing can go exactly as predicted especially that auditing period is not infinite, auditors

most of the time have three months after the publishing of the statements to finish their

auditing so they must be ready for any unexpected events. The fourth chapter is about the

different responsibilities of the audit team, the main responsibility is on the manager, the

manger assistant or the senior auditor is considered as the representative of the office and

has great responsibility, employees are responsible for the work they are assigned to. This

chapter also mentions some time saving methods by letting the clients employees do as

many reports as possible like the tax documents and the trail balance, and to not repeat

the work and try to do as much as possible in the clients office from the first time so they

don’t have to keep going back to the client’s office. There are many more chapters but

these chapters had the new information that I was supposed to know before but since I

topic in collage operational auditing so this information were included. After reading this

book they introduced me to the green file, it’s named like that because that is it’s color

and it’s the file where they document every little step they did after finishing the auditing

and it had to have a certain structure which called the index system which they told that I

have to know for example using A-1 A-2 A-3….. refers to all of the papers of the client

like cases in the court or the planning to the auditing itself and a copy of the financial

statements and the most important paper in this section are the suspended issues and

those are the things that the auditing company could=not get and were asked from the
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client and not yet given, the B section is the internal control section were include all the

paper work for the auditing of the internal control system which has to with paper that

describe the restrings on the computers, the flaws of the system assessment of danger and

the auditing strategy… etc. From C tell J is associated with the assists and their auditing

papers and the most important thing is the cash in bank and the ban reconciliation paper

which is the paper the bank sends to confirm the clients bank account and so on, short

term loans are represented by the letter L and account payable by letter M, K is for the

related parties, Q is for the owners’ equity and capital accounts, Q3 is for retained

earnings, R is for the income statement items like revenue or cost and expense and

payroll.

2.2 Section 2

The second section that was the second week and the third week (from 18/Sep

to 29/Sep). I was told to read and analyses the green files for several companies in

different industries or line of business. Some of the companies I deal with and read their

files were: UAE internal contracting company, Noor AlAin cleaning company, Al Hewar

contracting company, Al Mashreq S.M.K, Mubarak Pharmacy and Green Oasis company

2014 and 2015 “ two files”. What I have noticed from reading these files is that auditing

the service companies is easier, but the contracting companies are difficult to deal with

since their revenue from year to year has to be recognized even if one project is not

completely done, they call it partial revenue and they have to check the years before to

check the consistency in case it’s a new company. As a whole, reading the files was

interesting because I did the auditing by myself; I use to follow the documents backwards

by checking the balance and checking if the numbers are correctly calculated. I had some
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problems with names sometimes I couldn’t know if the item or the name of the account

represents an asset, liability or even an equity because the names are not representative

and of course the field supervisor used to clear this to me because I used to ask him if I

faced any problem like this. Some of the things I didn’t understand are the way they do

the depreciation because I have noticed that some companies change the method and the

auditing company mention that to the person who is working on the files wouldn’t use the

normal calculations. Sometimes there is no balance between the Dr and Cr on the clients'

records and basically that's what we like to discover. Some of the issues that are auditing

take into account is the existence because they need to see for example, if this was

actually sold to a real client so the take things backward by taking the account until they

get to the sail vouchers and that is seen in the green files but with a sample, the thing that

I didn’t take is the sampling method more in the training or in collage. Another thing they

take into consideration is the completeness and sometimes it’s there, it’s when the

number of the transaction is not correctly recorded and most of the times it’s an innocent

mistake that comes from the typing of the numbers by the accountant, so they usually

make sure that, for example items were sold for 50000 are recorded that way not 5000 or

500000 because these mistakes happens since they are dealing with humans. Another

thing they do is that they contact the vendors or the customers to confirm their balance,

for example, if I’m the customer they tell do the company X owe you a certain amount of

money so I give either the confirmation or that numbers wring so I correct them and

usually it’s done from the company itself by a document called remittance advice.

In this section. I stopped reading books and I went to seeing and observing the real

world and the real application of auditing and auditing trial, this was different for me and
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it was a nice thing to have a change from all of the theoretical things I took in college,

looking at the real files of clients and looking how different accountants in different

companies and how their processing is efferent shows that there is no right answer and

that you can’t get a perfect system from the first hit. A person thinks that after finishing

more than a hundred credited hours in college that you will ready for the real world,

especially if the GPA s high, but it’s different, the application is different, but I’m not

saying the things I took in the collage are not useful, they gave me the basics, while the

internship helped me put the dots on the letters. The thing that I was really happy about is

that the CPA exam has four papers and one of them is about auditing, especially the

application of auditing, but I really wanted to deal with taxation since one of the paper

exams is about it and it’s also not taught at the college because there is no taxation on the

UAE and that would really benefit me.

2.3 Section 3

The third section was two parts which held a place in the last two weeks of

training (from 2/Oct to13/Oct) and it was all about reading audit reports and using the

auditing program the case ware to transfer the information from the documents to the

computer. The audit report, which is the bottom line of the auditing procedure where they

say it fairly represent or the way around in which they say that it doesn’t represent which

is fraud or where they don’t give an opinion because of lack of documents that gives

them the ability to give an opinion because it has to be based on a solid evidence. Some

of the audit reports I read were for several companies like: AL Mallah cafeteria and

restaurant, Ben Fadel Al Mazroei and Ben Ham Group. These readings showed what the

audit report includes and it includes the audited and the modified financial statements and
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the audit statement which I mentioned before. It showed me the difference between the

audited and the un audited statement and what I learned is that auditing id one only for

numbers it also has to do with the words of the financial statements, the auditors give the

client a better expressions and proficiently words for the financials statement, they also

give them notes on some elements for example this asset need more explanation because

they see it as fugue so more disclosure is required, because at the end the auditing

company is considered as a party that is represented for the stakeholders to give them an

opinion about this company wither it’s trusted or not so they concede them as a trusted

unbiased third party that represent their opinion or the financial statements liability.

After reading the audit reports, I was represented to the auditing software that is

called CaseWare, most of the auditing companies use this software for the accumulation

of data on the client and saving them for the next processing CaseWare Working Papers

is highly flexible engagement software that provides you with everything you would

expect from an assurance and reporting tool. Engagements are planned, performed and

reviewed entirely on screen, completely eliminating paper. It helps the auditing company

to Work more efficiently and effectively with powerful document management, real-time

collaboration, direct scanning, online review, efficient cleanup, sophisticated lockdown

and advanced roll-forward. Another benefit is that it Produce next-generation of financial

reports by Turn any document, including financial statements, into a cost-effective,

client-ready report that automatically links to your client data using either the built-in

report writer or by linking information to Microsoft Word and Excel. Plus Easily

integrate with other software. The only thing was required from me is to input the data

and to input the budgeting transaction and it’s not as simple as looks because the balance
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has to be zero and the first file I took to apply was Al Mashreq file and it didn’t balance

because of a lot of things, first I’m not used for entering numbers and I was doing

mistakes so rechecked the whole numbers entered, the second thing is that there used to

be for example one item but the name of this item is not in the software so I had to dig

deeper in the documents to get this item I detail which for example was consist of 4 items

so that was new to me, and fourth thing is that the adjusting entries are not mentioned for

me clearly I had to look for them in the working documents and I had to know this item is

adjusted with which item because it’s a double entry system but at the end I got it and the

supervisor really helped me out but I tried my best to figure all this by self since they are

really busy at the office but the end it balanced. Then I worked on other file which is

Circle cafe and restaurant and was much smoother since now I know the mechanism.
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3. Conclusion

It was a useful experience for me and I gained some skills in training and

verification of the accounting as a specialization and I gained experience in the practical

application and meeting new people and achieved goals, including learning how to audit

and how to collect financial information and thanks to the training which helped me to

know what the strengths and weaknesses that I have, it also helped me to improve my

skills and speed performance of the development part of the language level and talk after

this could start my career in business and I can work on the same rules of procedure

practiced during training and I have confidence in the completion of any action required

by me to any official and training gave me a new vision and motivation. I hope to get a

job fits a specialized school which is accounting and be in a company that has a value in

the arena of local and international to gain more experience and provide economic

activities.
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REFERENCES

- About as. (n.d.). Retrieved November 9, 2016, from

http://www.tagi.com/page.aspx?page_key=historical_glance

- Arens, A. A., Elder, R. J., & Beasley, M. S. (2006). Auditing and assurance

services: An integrated approach (11th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson

Prentice Hall.

- Bawley, D. (1999). Corporate governance and accountability: What role for the

regulator, director, and auditor? Retrieved November 9, 2016, from

https://www.questia.com/library/117384692/corporate-governance-and-

accountability-what-role

- Cosserat, G. W., & Rodda, N. (2009). Modern auditing (3rd ed.). Chichester, UK:

John Wiley & Sons.

- Jabbour, M. (2014). Operational Auditing. Saarbrücken: LAP LAMBERT

Academic Publishing.

- Overview. (n.d.). Retrieved November 9, 2016, from

https://www.caseware.com/products/working-papers