As summer winds to a close and we get ready for the start of another school year, it's time to take a look at what our student-athletes have been up to with our annual Summer Check-In series.
Senior softball player Sarah Karmazyn is spending her summer at Dorney Park - but it hasn't been all about riding the rides.
I am positioned as one of two internal audit interns for Cedar Fair Entertainment at Dorney Park this summer. My role has been to perform operational audit tests, which is essentially is an independent evaluation of organizational activities.
This involves observing, analyzing and testing park procedures to make sure they are in compliance with controls. This also includes speaking with different staff and department managers and gathering data around these audits to support my conclusions. All of my findings are input into an interactive computer system that is shared with my coworker and managers. These findings are then reported to executive level management.
As for actual testing of audits, this can vary between in-the-park "undercover" audits or just collecting financial documentation on a computer. The more interactive in-the-park audits have involved testing security screening procedures, ADA procedures, access controls and beverage service procedures. This involves dressing and acting as park guests to make sure all staff and employees are taking the right procedures in each of these audit tests.
Not only have we gotten the chance to perform OPS (operational) audits, but we also have been able to touch on SOX audits. SOX audits have been required by federal law since the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX for short). These audits are essentially meant to protect investors from fraudulent accounting and are performed to make sure that a company's financial data is accurate (with a 5% variance) and adequate controls are in place to safeguard financial data. This summer, our SOX audit findings are relied upon by Deloitte to support their opinion of the operating effectiveness of internal controls over financial reporting.
Overall, this internship has given me much more than I could have asked. The experience in the audit field has really opened my eyes to different parts of accounting. The relationships I made with management and department staff have been amazing. Learning the position as an internal auditor, I was able to understand how much pressure gets put on management at Dorney Park.
I was taught that we are here to make the company better and make sure everything is in alignment, not to get anyone in "trouble." That is where it is more beneficial to create a relationship with managers first, rather than dive right into the work, so you can establish a relationship that can benefit you when you need the help.
