Plan your ACCA Exam Journey

Kim Smith FCCA explains the factors you should consider when planning your ACCA exam journey.

I have been looking after OpenTuition’s General ACCA Forum for more than three years, and the most frequently asked questions concern exam progression – e.g. which exam(s) can be done when – choosing a next exam or exam combination – and other related questions, such as when to complete the Ethics and Professions Skills Module (EPSM). 

It is important to remember when reading this article, which covers a wide range of related issues, that every student faces a unique set of circumstances; there is no “one size fits all” pathway to exam success and you should be best placed to decide on your next course of action. 

Plan your ACCA Exam Journey

Download Plan your ACCA Exam Journey (PDF Article)

When to Plan 

Ideally, you will have planned your progression from the outset of your ACCA journey.  Setting the milestone for which exam(s) you will sit at each exam session will help you measure your progress in achieving the target of ACCA Affiliate status. If you have not, then now is the time to make a plan for the exams you have remaining.

Getting Started

Let us start by considering a student with NO exemptions who will have to sit the following:

* Although LW is an Applied Skills exam, it is only of two hours duration (i.e. the same as the Applied Knowledge exams) as shown in the following relationship diagram (Figure 1). 

Exam progression rules: Exams must be taken in modular order; however, you can attempt the exams within each module in any order.  If you wish to enter to sit exams in the next module, you must also enter for all outstanding exams in your current module.

Exam format: ALL ACCA exams are computer-based exams – “CBE”.  It is important, however, to distinguish between:

“On-demand” CBE – BT, FA, MA and LW-GLO and LW-ENG only

“Session” CBE – everything else in the “exam sessions” – i.e. according to the published timetable ACCA Exam Timetables 

Implications of the Relational Diagram for Exam Order

Two-hour Computer-Based Exams

BT For a student with no exemptions, BT introduces a wide range of topics which “set the scene” for understanding businesses and a lot of the terminology that will feature in the other Applied Skills exams.  It also underpins SBL.

FA Although FA requires no underpinning knowledge, some terms will have been introduced in BT. It is important to note that FA underpins not only FR, but also AA. 

MA Unless students have knowledge of basic bookkeeping from prior learning, it will be preferable to study FA before or alongside MA. MA underpins BOTH PM and FM.

LW LW does not directly underpin any exam and requires no prior knowledge. As LW is an Applied Skills exam, if you have any outstanding exams in the Applied Knowledge module, you would have to enter for them also.  As it is only a two-hour exam, of which 70% of the marks are for objective test questions, it makes sense to pass this exam before embarking on the three-hour Applied Skills exams. 

A note about LW variants: As well as English (ENG) and Global (GLO), ACCA currently offers 12 regional versions of the LW exam.  However, only ENG and GLO exams are available on-demand.  Therefore, unless a regional variant is preferable for employment prospects, students may prefer to choose ENG or GLO for the additional flexibility it offers in choosing when to sit it.  

Three-hour Applied Skills Exams

In one sense, as long as all the Applied Knowledge exams have been passed or you are exempted, the order in which to sit the Applied Skills exams does not matter. However, there are some points to note:

TX-UK The “exam year” for TX-UK runs from the June session to the following March (i.e. it is an exception to the “1 September to 31 August” exam year that applies to all the other syllabuses.  Therefore, as each year’s Finance Act(s) always bring changes to rules and tax rates and allowances, it is preferable to avoid sitting TX-UK for the first time at a March sitting, unless confident of passing.

Notes about TX variants:  There are currently 20 variant TX exams but only eight variant ATX exams.  Therefore, unless a regional variant is required or otherwise preferable, choosing a variant for which there is an ATX exam also will, literally, keep your options open. Also, variant TX/ATX exams are available only in December and June exam sessions, so there is less flexibility in sitting them.

AA It is a common misconception that AA assumes FR knowledge.  This is incorrect; AA assumes a good understanding of bookkeeping topics (FA) and the examinable documents of FA, excluding group accounting topics.

FM As FM introduces the tax implications of techniques introduced in MA, a basic grasp of taxation (especially capital allowances) is useful, though not vital.

One of the factors that is particularly relevant to the Applied Skills exam order should be your choice of two Options, as all build on the assumed knowledge of the corresponding Applied Skills exam.  Of course you may want to keep your options open for as long as possible – and you should also be prepared to change your planned choice if your circumstances change – but, ideally, you should aim to have as short a gap as possible between studying for an Option and sitting the relevant Applied Skills exam(s).  Otherwise, you should expect to have to refer back to and revise, as necessary, underpinning skills. 

See the ACCA article Making the best Options choices for other factors relevant to your choice of Options. 

See later for further considerations about sitting more than one exam. 

Strategic Professional

In accordance with the exam progression rules, if you wish to enter to sit a Strategic Professional exam but have not completed the Applied Skills module, you must also enter for all outstanding exams in the Applied Skills module.

The EPSM can be started any time from when you become eligible to enter for Strategic Professional exams (i.e. toward the end of completing the Applied Skills exams). ACCA strongly recommends that students complete the EPSM before attempting any of the Strategic Professional exams.

If there is such a thing as an optimal order in which to sit the Strategic Professional exams, it really depends on whether you plan to sit AAA – if yes, then you need to studying (if not sitting and passing) SBR before AAA.  Only if you are on a career path to becoming a registered auditor in the UK and/or Ireland should you consider sitting SBR-UK rather than SBR-INT (as the scope of examinable documents for the UK syllabus is more extensive). 

If not choosing AAA, you can reduce the gap between sitting Options and the underpinning Applied Skills exams by planning to sit both SBL and SBR after Options.   If choosing ATX, then unless TX was one of your last Applied Skills exams, you will most likely be looking at a new Finance Act (or equivalent for variant exams).  Remember that only ATX-UK is available in every exam session; variant ATX exams are only available in December and June.

The main benefit of planning to sit SBL as your last exam is that you can study for Options and SBR closer to sitting Applied Skills exams.  Although SBL is the only four-hour exam and, arguably, requires different skills, it should not be a difficult exam for someone who has already passed their chosen Options.

Sitting More than One Exam

As the Applied Knowledge exams are available on demand, the question of planning to sitting more than one exam at a time is relevant only to the Applied Skills and Strategic Professional session exams.

Before you Book

Students are advised to think very carefully before entering for more than one exam in a session – especially for first exams.  As professional exams are likely to be very different to anything you have encountered before, it is important to familiarise yourself with what you are letting yourself in for – before you register for exams – as follows:

Bookmark this page ACCA Study support resources and select an exam from the ACCA Qualification drop down menu, for example, Performance Management (PM).  As a minimum you should look at the links to the following:

• Introduction to …. 
• Planning your study – see Download the ACCA study planner template (PDF) in section 5. Ensure you have a study plan.  

Bear in mind that only YOU can plan how you will use your time and therefore know if you really have time to prepare for more than one exam in the same exam session.  Even our prize-winning students have commented how tough they found studying for two exams.

Also, and especially if you have an exemption from an underpinning exam (as shown in Figure 1 above) you should attempt the “Self-check quizzes to get you ready”, which have been tailored to relevant assumed knowledge.  The fresher your memory of assumed knowledge, the more quickly you might expect to be able to grasp the new topics.

If you have time to prepare for more than one exam, what is the best combination?

“Best Combination”

After the September 2021 exam session, OpenTuition conducted a survey to explore the “best” combination. 

In summary, the Survey-results-best-combination  shows:

At Applied Skills Level:

At Strategic Professional Level, a majority of students for all exams except AAA responded that they are better taken “standalone”. For AAA, 42% responded standalone and 30% for combination with SBR.  However, with pass rates for AAA around 32% and as a former AAA examiner I suggest that even this combination is not to be recommended.  It is all too easy, especially at the revision phase, to devote more time to SBR “computations” than to practise preparing full answers to AAA “narrative”.

Conclusion

As one student commented “ACCA exams are a marathon, not a sprint”.  The best way in which you can “fast track” yourself to success is not to overreach by, for example, sitting more than one exam in a session, but rather plan a sure and steady route to your goal of Affiliate status.