What I Learned as an Intern at Bond Andiola & Company, a Tech-Enabled Accounting Firm

Have you ever wondered how technology is currently changing the way businesses operate? Well, I have had the opportunity to experience this first-hand during my internship at Bond Andiola & Company (Flemington),  a tech-enabled accounting firm that beats ordinary traditional accounting firms when it comes to bookkeeping, invoicing, etc.

My name is Osric Sears, and I am a student at Montclair State University, majoring in finance. I expect to graduate in May 2018. I chose to intern at Bond Andiola & Company because I knew that working at a technology-based consulting/accounting firm would help me to gain a unique experience.

At Bond Andiola, I was introduced to software that makes the bookkeeping and invoicing process much quicker/easier than the traditional way. What Bond Andiola and Company has done is to create a single platform that accounting firms can use to connect their clients’ “legacy” industry-specific software to their accounting software. Xero Accounting is live today, and the platform will be connecting with Quick Books online in the future.

A major example of how the software is used is a platform-based app that was developed for Etsy store owners. Until now, there was no way for them to automate the accounting of their sales transactions in a manner that properly records each aspect of the sale. Yet now, through the Bond Andiola platform, the accountant can now record the Etsy transactions in the proper Xero accounts en masse.

Working Remotely

My internship experience was different because I worked as a remote intern. When I walked into the offices on day one, I knew that this would be a very different type of internship. A remote internship has its positives and negatives. The positives are that I  can work from home while attending school. I have the luxury of being as flexible as I want when putting in the hours for my internship each week. Since my physical job is more than an hour’s drive from my school, I realized that, without the option to work remotely, I couldn’t have made it to work every day.

The negative aspect of a remote internship is not being able to communicate very much with your supervisor. While I was still able to connect with my supervisor, I was not able to create a strong connection that other interns would form with their supervisors during a regular non-remote internship. At first, I was only connecting with my supervisor once a week. However, he realized that once a week was not enough, so we agreed to have one-on-one calls three times a week. This helped me to be more on task with my job assignments.

What to Expect

I had the opportunity to be the first individual that Bond Andiola hired under their internship program. Most of the tasks that I was assigned involved trial and error. Also, each day was never the same as the previous one.

Students interning at Bond Andiola should expect to run into times when they might need help or even mess up on an assignment. If that happens, know that your supervisors are always there to guide you on the right path to completing assignments at the highest quality level possible. I remember working on various projects, such as creating a Bond Andiola & Company storyboard video that showed one of the company’s clients, Farah Landscaping Design , which deals with designing and maintaining landscapes, talk about how Bond Andiola had helped their company manage its finances. I was able to put this video together myself. I liked how my supervisor gave me the opportunity to create, edit and change the video as much as I wanted.

I have learned many things about the importance of gaining experience while being in school. Many concepts that I learned in many of my business classes are now being shown to me up close, in person, while I am working at my internship. I also saw first-hand how technology can make a company become more advanced.

I am very excited that I received the opportunity to work for Bond Andiola & Company as an intern during this academic year, while learning many tools and gaining experience that will help me to build my knowledge of this field.

I found that interning with Bond Andiola has helped me narrow down the kinds of jobs I would apply for in the future. I always wanted to see what the accounting side of things looked like in a day-to-day environment, and I was able to see that during this internship. Working with the Bond Andiola team made me realize that old school traditional accounting wasn’t where I wanted to end up, and so it was a great experience for me because it helped me make that discovery.

My advice to future interns in remote or non-remote internships is that your internship will help you gain experience in the business world, so learn as much as you can while you have that opportunity. It is also important to stay connected with everyone you meet through your internship because networking and having connections can take you a long way in the business world.

If you know any New Jersey students interested in a virtual internship, tell them to email their resume to Dharabin@bac-cpa.com, and put “#njinternship” in the subject line.