Accounting Internship forShannon Mellgren

November 2009-May 2010

Valparaiso, IN

Linda's Story

Housing Opportunities Inc. serves the community through development and provision of safe, decent,

and affordable housing and customized support services.

Crisis Service

Home Ownership

Foreclosure prevention

Homes for homeless and low-income families

Supervisors:

Fund Developer

Kathleen McClure

Bookkeeper

Shirley Luchene

Duties

Copying invoices for grant billings

Updating Excel grant worksheets

Proofing expense reports

Creating Excel worksheets

Working with the budget

Copying A/P checks and mailing them out

Goals set by Housing Opportunities

Assist bookkeeper with various tasks and projects

Realize financial resources available to nonprofit

Become acquainted with Quickbooks

Observe the process of month-end and year-end

adjustments/closing

Observe how resources are attained and allocated to

expensesCreate more organized Excel

workbooks

Goals set for myself

Become familiarized with how a not-for-profit operatesBecome acquainted with the financial duties of the

bookkeeperApply what I learned in accounting classes

with real worldUtilization of skills with Excel and other

software

Daily Assignments

Sort/file documents that allocate

expenses to grants

Requisition and Invoice

Quickbook

Copy and sort

documents

Check run

Queries

Excel/Quickbooks Data Entry

Grant allocation

Month-end adjustments

Create new workbooks for

new grants

Clean up existing

worksheets

What it takes to provide housing for the homeless

See the great need and burden for change Equip the clients to be able to support

themselves and be financially stable State and local government support Hard work, little compensation The rewards of seeing someone or family come

off the streets!

Strengths

Devoted employees with unified vision

Work ethics Good relations within

and outside organization Provision of physical,

emotional, and spiritual needs of clients

Resources available to equip clients for success

Volunteerism

Weaknesses

• Heavy workload on employees

• Time issue in billing and receiving funds- budget variance

• Need more of an accounting position

• Lots of historical data/documents

What related to accounting?

Journal Entries

(ACC 205)

Amortization of loans

(ACC311)

Exposure to the

accounting information process (ACC 315)

Evaluating HO’s

delegation of tasks

(ACC315)

Payments to

contracted labor

(ACC316)

Discovery along the way

Reinforcement of ability to organize

Enjoyment in smaller settings Mistakes are ok.

Reality to what type of job I would consider

Intentionality of challenging of the process

The joys of working at HOConvenient

location

Humorous coworkers

Supervisor trust

Strong mission

Flexibility

Personal Development

Learning to apply information lectured and practiced in ACC class

Rechecking work

Accuracy and persistency

Excel Understanding of ACC process

What lies ahead?

Enforcement of desire to work with not-for-profit organizations

Become skilled at what I am passionate about

Consideration of MGT position