Hi All,

I’m currently doing to my RAP on Topic 8 Business and Financial Performance of an org over a 3 year period and find myself struggling a bit. Any tips or book suggestions would be great.
Thanks.

Try books on financial analysis. I am also following a CMA book on financial analysis. It does help alot.

Regards

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@leemce said:
thanks for your replies. I bought a book yesterday on analysis and interpretation of Financial Statements so hopefully this will point me in the right direction.
I have been reading loads of infomation about my choosen company and I think I just had a infomation overload and felt a bit overwhelmed.
I need to sit down and understand every item in the accounts before I being analysing them I think.

Yeah it happened with me too….got a lot of data..and am trying to structure my report now..
Can anyone tell me where i can get such a book?

Sn0b01 -I had a quick look on Amazon and book depository online. Just did a search for analysing financial statement etc.. then went to a bookshop to have a better look before I bought anything. Paid more by going to the bookshop but at least I have it now.

@sn0b01 Can you telL me the name of the book you are using?
nd move over m struggling with which co. should I select nd wht sort of info wilL i require from them apart from Annual repots nd from whom should I get that info. finance director or sum1 else?
Plz help me out with this
Thankx =))

Thankx so muchfor your Reply.I’am definately planning to use alL this stuff but As I’am going to perform SWOT analysis nd Porter’s 5 forces as welL so the information required for it; wilL that be publicially available or I’ll need to meet them in person?

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Hi guys, I just did Topic 8 and was very surprised to get an A…thanks to a lot of good tips on Opentuition.
amnatariq – what leemce wrote was quite correct….you do not need to have any contact directly with the company in order to do Topic 8 RAP on them….provided you can get all their financial results/annual statements for the 3 year period, and have sufficient news reports etc to be able to analyse their business performance, then you can successfully complete the Topic 8 RAP (this is in fact the reason why so many people choose topic 8).

I didn’t use any books on financial analysis other than my old ACCA textbooks for past papers, in order to get the formulas correct and refresh my memory as to how to interpret the different ratios.

However, what I did find really useful was the technical articles on the ACCA website…there were loads of really good articles on different business models to use…and they went into just enough depth for me to be able to understand the different models without geting too bogged down (especially as in the end the word count means you can only write a limited amount on a couple of models…there just aren’t enough words available to do loads of indepth business models, especially as you have to also do a decent amount of key financial ratios. So you have to be selective about which models you use…pick the ones that help your RAP the most, and just mention/refer to some of the others, rather than trying to apply them all in full).

Also, there is tonnes of information on the internet on financial analysis and on different business models…

One top tip which was always emphasised to me though was to remember to include in your reference list every website you use in your final RAP, and any books that you draw information from for the RAP (ACCA state that one of the top 4 reasons for why people fail the RAP is lack of proper referencing…so they obviously regard it as very important).

Hope that’s helpful.
Good luck!