What's your role at Emma like?
So, my employer “Emma Sleep Company” is engaged in innovating sleep products (Mattresses, Pillows, and etc) to a whole new level by utilizing different technology that can help us sleep better. As for the area of my responsibility here in Emma, I was tasked to handle our daily supplier communication with regards to their accounts, contributing to the enhancement of our workflow system, and etc. About my daily tasks here in Emma, most of the day we are just assessing and processing the payments to our supplier, reconciling of balances and most importantly communicating to these suppliers to further discuss all the things they should know. But if you ask me what really drives me here in Emma, are my projects to further improve their processes, they will let you share your ideas and if you can prove that it is significant, they will let you lead this improvement on a company-wide basis. I think most of the teenagers will understand what I am doing, that feeling that you have contributed something significant to a particular thing and the freedom to share your ideas.
What's your background?
For a quick background information, I grew up in the city of Cavite even though my parents are Ilocana and Bicolano, they choose to settle here. Then I took up my primary education at a public school near our home, so less hassle, but upon entering high school I was transferred to a Catholic School. So, upon entering the high school during my stay. I really considered becoming a priest because I thought I have this calling from above, but it didn’t push through because I said to myself, God has other plans for me. So I studied Accountancy at Far Eastern University, then afterwards become a Certified Public Accountant, served as a public accountant for 1 year in an auditing firm, and then I said to myself, I want to test all my knowledge as an accounting graduate and help a starting company to build their processes, so that’s where I found Emma.
What's the coolest thing about your role?
If you will ask me, what is the coolest thing about my role here in Emma, is you are free like a bird by sharing your ideas, and ownership of the projects. Because as a person I really love to become a “Bida bida” in good terms and to see these projects of mine to be really in use in our daily task.
What can you say you are proud of accomplishing at Emma?
In my 5 months stay here in Emma, I have already a lot of projects that help our entities all over the world, my recent accomplishment is related to the credit card expenses in DE entities that was not used because it was not properly substantiated, so I handle this matter to finally close these expenses and to finally to be accounted in our financial reporting. I can also share the introduction of Spendesk in Emma Manila, where I shared with the whole of Manila on how to use it and what are the things they should remember and submit using this new expense app.
What’s the toughest part of your role?
So what are the difficulties that I encountered so far in my role, so as far as we know when it comes to financing, it is all about documentation, paper works, and lots of transactions, due to these there are instances that we are experiencing lack on man power, so we have learned how to prioritize, to weigh the degree of effect to the company and lastly your professional judgement will be tested in this type of situation.
A piece of advice for yourself when you were a student...
Be confident, never stop dreaming and keep pushing. We should accept the reality that there is no such thing as an easy way, in every path we take it is a gamble if we will succeed or not, but we should persevere to achieve those dreams that we have.
My journey as a CPA was not easy, I was a conditional examiner but was able to pass it afterwards, but the time between those two events I know I became stronger because I believe that failure into something makes a person grow and better.