An auditor, especially someone belonging in the Big Four Audit Firms (EY, KPMG, PWC and Deloitte), would have clients all over a certain country, which in my case the Philippines, or even globally. Although we have other branches in other parts of the country, traveling to a client or a warehouse is an indispensible part of my job as an auditor. We usually visit clients for the following reasons, but certainly not limited to:

• Interview about the company

• Inspection of voluminous documents

• Plant visits 

• Physical Inventory Counts

As you can see fieldworks are basically a huge part of what I do, I usually hop in from one place to another. Most of the time, I just stay in the house over the weekend and leave again to another city, when Monday comes. 

The best part is… ALL OF OUR EXPENSES ARE REIMBURSABLE. Yes, you heard it, right! We travel almost everywhere, sometimes even through planes, and all of our transportation is free. We are also given some allowances for food and other expenses. 

It sounds so amazing, right? Especially for a traveler and extrovert like me, but be weary, nothing comes without a price. I think the hardest part of fieldwork is that sometimes, it’s just so spontaneous, like I mean, SO SPONTANEOUS! There are days where on the way home from a fieldwork, around 10 pm, someone would call that I have a flight tomorrow at 5 am or a field in a far city and I have to leave around 4 am to get to the client on time.

This caused me to be always prepared. I always had this “fieldwork bag” where everything I need is already there and I am just always ready to leave in a moment’s notice.

It’s quite funny because, if I remember correctly, I had only been in our main office for just a week and not in consecutive days. I would just visit the office to sign something or to reimburse my expenses and never come back for a long time again. I never stepped in the office since the pandemic began. I was actually in a fieldwork in Laguna when the community quarantine was announced. 

Fieldwork is one of the main reasons why I stay in my job and honestly speaking I was supposed to fly in the UK for a secondment opportunity for 3 months starting next week, but it got cancelled because of the pandemic. I’m a bit salty about it so instead let me just reminisce on some of the best fieldworks I have been to, to try and wash away my salt.

1. Subic Bay Metropolitan Area (SBMA)

All of us are required to take a minimum of 2-week training before we are deployed in our company and this fieldwork… Immediately after stepping out of the training room, I was informed that my client was located in SBMA and we have to conduct the audit there. I stayed there for almost a month and a half, just barely going home every weekend. This was a major shocker for me because it’s the first time I’ve been away from my family for so long and I haven’t met anyone that I will be going with so it was so nerve-wrecking. 

The client was a manufacturing company which produces door knobs and I was so amazed because we got to see how the door knobs were made. We got to tour the whole plant but on most days, we were stuck in a conference room.The client also provided us with good food and even treated us once to some lunch which costs around P3,000 per meal.

I also remember always visiting the puregold store before I go home which was tax-free because it’s located in an export zone and prices are in USD. Chocolates were way cheaper there so my siblings would always be excited with the chocolates I bring home.

2. Roxas City

This was one of my most exciting yet tiring fieldwork. I live in Manila so I had to fly to Roxas City. I was with my team members but we didn’t check in at the same time so we had different seats. It was my first time riding a plane and I was doing it alone, good thing I picked a window seat. 

We had this count scheduled on January 1st to January 6th, so I had to be away during the holidays which wasn’t a new thing for most of us. We had to count a grocery store there, the whole selling area and warehouses too! 

The thing about inventory counts is not stocks or inventories are not allowed to move during a count. So if you have to receive or to deliver stocks, we need to move the count on a time when there is no movement or stop the movement for a while.

This client is a grocery store so when it’s open, there will surely be movement. We had to wait when the store was closed before we could count so we were counting grocery items from 8pm - 5am, for almost a week because the grocery store there is quite huge.

The best thing about this fieldwork is that we were supposed to go home on a Sunday but our flight got cancelled and we were rebooked on Monday. Our first instinct was to tour around Roxas City, we were asking locals what’s the best place to go to, but one suggested we go to Iloilo which was only around 2 hours away. 

We searched for tourists spots in Iloilo and we stumbled upon a day trip in Islas de Gigantes, which includes 6 islands and a full seafood lunch for only P1,000 or around $20 only. Sick, right? This was one of the most spontaneous trips I’ve ever been but also one which I’m really grateful we partake in.

3. Bonifacio Global City (BGC)

This is one of my city life fieldwork which was one of the “why did I do that?” moments. So to give you a background we usually perform a bank confirmation as one of our procedures in audit. A bank needs to confirm how much money a company deposits in their bank, of course with the permission of the client. 

We do this procedure by sending letters to the bank, pre-covid times, and using a messenger or even a courier before takes a lot of time so sometimes we would go directly to all the banks of the clients located in one place. 

And ta-daaaa, I was assigned to deliver bank confirmation letters in all of the banks located in BGC. This made me realize how little BGC is because I literally walked around it and another realization is that Waze is better than Google Maps in this kind of situation.

This was really, really tiring. I was allowed to take a Grab from one place to another but upon booking I realized that it’s only a few minutes walk and the fare is not worth it. And as we all know, I get to explore even more and maybe visit a few stores here and there before going to the other bank, so I just decided to walk and roam around. 

Now, will I repeat this experience? Probably not, if my time walking around was spent on doing additional audit procedures, I could’ve done more. HAHAHAHA, but this was an experience that every auditor should experience.

These are some of my interesting and favorite fieldworks when the world wasn’t shut down yet and we can freely go out. It was nostalgic trying to remember it and fetching pictures of it, maybe this gives you more understanding on why I made an article of my struggles of being locked in the four corners of my house. 

I made some fieldworks during the pandemic too and I will write them in part 2 of this mini article series, a pandemic version. I thought that fieldworks during the pandemic would disappoint but I had some cool and recent experiences too that I think would be lovely to share with you!

I hope you had a fun time joining me in my past travels!

See you around! 🌤

If you want to know what an auditor do, you can visit here:

• Life of an Auditor: Doctors of Corporate World