Week 2:
Teacher Created Materials

August 20, 2013

My second week at Teacher Created Materials had me heavily focused on the accounts payable aspect of the business. In order to better understand the accounting principals, I first had to learn the companies that TCM must pay in order to keep their own business functioning properly. My first task was to enter inventory invoices into the system through excel. This allowed me to become familiar with the printing companies that TCM uses to create their products and to see more financial material and transactions. The next project that they had me accomplish was going through expense reports submitted by TCM sales reps throughout the country and determining whether they qualified for expense reimbursements based on their receipts. I used a program called Expensewire to monitor and double-check these expenses. It was then my responsibility to get in touch with a particular sales rep if there were any issues.

The largest project that was given to me this week was not under accounts payable, but it was given to me by the Senior Accountant. One of TCM’s largest clients is a public school district which I cannot name. This school district falls in an area with great financial and municipal restrictions, which makes it hard for TCM to have a single sales rep in this area. Therefore, TCM hires an independent sales team which specializes in the sales for this region. A problem had arisen when paying commissions to this sales team because their accounting year began on a different date than TCM’s, and ran by different timing standards. Therefore, there was a timing difference between what commissions that they felt they needed as compared to what TCM felt they should be paying. It was my job to consolidate all of the commissions records that we had on file into one, easy to access excel spreadsheet. In order to do this, I had to go through about fifteen reports, combine like invoices, and make sure that it would be easy for this firm to be able to observe that we had been paying them all of their earned commissions in proper timing. Overall, this project took me about ten hours of focused work time, and I felt as though I had finally independently accomplished something in order to help the accounting team. In addition to this project, I also did more small tasks involving accounts payable such as organize the payments that we needed to make to the freelance writers and proofreaders that help to check the new products before they hit the shelves.

Overall, this week was a great deal of hands on learning that further prepares me to work on more independent projects in the future. I am learning a great deal of how a small business functions and what it takes in order for such a company to be successful. I had a great talk with CFO Rich Levitt over lunch last week. We discussed his pathway to becoming a CFO, along with possible career options that he sees as great stepping stones towards becoming the CFO or an executive of a business. I hope to talk with him again in the future at a time where I can prepare some questions in order to form a better business connection with him along with asking for more specific career advice. My duties in the upcoming week will shift back to the accounts receivable side, as my coworker in A/R will be taking a vacation, deferring all responsibilities to myself. I look forward to working independently, and I hope the notes that I took were good enough!