Our Interns Have Our Hearts!

Hi y’all! My name is Morgan Zebley and I was an Intern at Breakwater Accounting + Advisory for 14 months ranging from the beginning of summer 2020 until present day at the end of summer 2021. I am originally from the Wilmington, Delaware area and I attend the University of South Carolina with a major in Accounting and Marketing. 

I have been blessed to work at Breakwater throughout the pandemic as well as now as we are getting back into normal times. I was lucky enough to have an internship here when times were tough and when many people my age have not been able to find jobs or internships. During the pandemic, I was able to work remotely from home like most people but was also able to spend some of my time in the office with other Breakwater employees. It was great to have this opportunity to meet the other interns and employees of Breakwater that were able to come into the office as well to foster an in-person work environment and help me to make better relationships with the people there, since many other jobs at this time were not able to do this. 

Throughout the time of my internship I had the ability to work on many different projects for the different departments (For Profit and NonProfit) as well as putting my marketing skills to work by helping out there as well. I performed many basic intern activities that you would think of such as retrieving and sending mail, making client pickups and dropoffs on site, scanning and filing documents, and answering the Breakwater phones. But I was also able to work alongside different Account Associates, Specialists, and Managers to learn from them how Breakwater works, through this I ended up being able to complete my own weekly projects and jobs. 

Some of my favorite jobs that I have completed at Breakwater would be creating Breakwater’s Internal Newsletter each and every week, learning about the different types of accounting that Breakwater offers such as working with different school districts and small businesses that have never had their books online before. To expand on these, I used my marketing skills to write and edit a weekly newsletter for the company to inform employees of upcoming events, give them tips to continuously improve their skills, and introduce new and existing employees to one another who might not have had the chance to meet in person yet due to the pandemic.

For the majority of my internship I worked in the NonProfit sector alongside many different employees to learn how they performed various tasks in order to complete their bookkeeping to help the school districts accurately account for and achieve their goals. During this experience I was able to complete various certifications to further my knowledge and help me complete the work given to me. I am now certified in QuickBooks Online which is the platform that Breakwater runs their accounting through and JetPack Workflows which alerts you of various tasks that need to be completed in order to finish a specific job. I also learned how to use various platforms to help assist me in my work such as AutoEntry, MailChimp, Bill.com, OneHub, and Tax1099. Learning how to use these platforms has helped me tremendously in gaining new experiences and being able to further my professional career. 

Breakwater has given me the opportunity to learn tremendously about the industry of accounting and how to work alongside clients to complete our goals. I am grateful for the experience that I gained while working here. During my time here, I learned many things that you cannot learn in the classroom, such as working as a team to complete tasks, how to properly communicate with clients to ensure you are doing everything you can to help them, and how to balance the books of various companies and organizations.