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@chuebapu said:
How did you calculate OAR figure for the two profits?If you are talking about the vacuum cleaner question, I just added up the budgeted units of production for both types of vacuum cleaner and apportioned out the rent, rates and depreciation costs that way.
For the final part of question 31, for 9 marks I calculated the sales price and sales volume variances for D6 and D7, and also looked at the 10% increase in market size for D7 and so calculated a revised budget for that one and computed planning and operational variances for it and then just made some comments about what I calculated.
Hopefully that was a reasonable thing to do and that the marking guides are open ended enough to allow credit for doing that, as I must admit I was a bit lost as to what to do exactly.
@heychi said:
I do think its more terrifying when you can only take the 1 exam every 3 months.. 🙁
You can take two exams every three months if you like, but it is hard work.
I sat my last two F papers this time round, hopefully trying to avoid being forced to take the CBE versions next year as I don’t like the idea of having to do calculations using a computer when you spend your study time doing it on paper.
Like many, I didn’t have a clue about the Life Cycle costing one, I’m guessing that most thought it was simply:
122,000 / 150 = 813.33
But then that wasn’t one of the four answers and so as a result I spent way too long looking at this question trying to work it out when I should have just shrugged my shoulders and moved on.
Someone above mentioned that the table was done in a way where it was easy to double-count the number of customers so I guess that was the trick to this question.
For the Sales Mix and Sales Quantity variances, I got that both of D6’s sub-variances were adverse, and one of D7’s was adverse with the other being favourable. Overall both were adverse.
One of them was something like 1,911,545 A. The numbers I got were not nice and round in any way shape or form, if that helps others. I used £301 and £449 for the Standard Margin as the question was about an Absorption Costing organisation rather than a Marginal Costing organisation.
In the last 20 mark question I forgot to calculate the Interest Cover like other people did, so that was a mistake. I thought from the top of my head that only GP Margin and NP Margin could be calculated from the P+L alone, but the Interest Cover could also be calculated.
I did some adhoc, bespoke calculations like working through what I would expect the Admin Expenses to be if the computerised billing system really had saved 50% of expenses. Namely from the 20X6 figure of 14,000 I did:
14,000 x (9/12) + 14,000 x (3/12) x 50% = 12,250
12,250 was in the ballpark of the actual 12,600 20X7 figure, and so the machine was indeed helping to save roughly 50% of costs.
So yeah, I’m not sure if random calculations like these are acceptable, even if they aren’t official ratios if you see what I mean!
For the planning variance MCQ I got my answer as 1,000 F which I think was choice A.
This one threw me at first, as normally we are given the raw data, (e.g. number of units, prices, actual quantities etc.), and we use these to compute the variances. However for this one they gave us the variance totals but not the raw data.
I spent the first 15 minutes of the exam writing down all the variance formulae, throughput formulae etc. on the blank page of the question paper as I was worried about it all ‘falling out of my head’ so-to-speak.
From these formulae I plugged in the numbers that we were given in the question and used simultaneous equations to eliminate the unknown ‘raw data’ parts of the formulae. So that I could get the last remaining variance.
I got $890,000 for the rolling budget question, I hope I solved it right but not 100% sure.
Here is my method:
I got that initially 850,000 = X + (X + 10,000) + (X + 20,000) + (X + 30,000)
So 850,000 = 4X + 60,000
This means that X = 197,500
Now for the next quarter we lose the quarter for ‘X’ and gain the quarter for ‘X + 40,000’ so we have the new budget as:
New Budget = (X + 10,000) + (X + 20,000) + (X + 30,000) + (X + 40,000)
New Budget = 4X + 100,000
New Budget = 4 x 197,500 + 100,000
New Budget = 890,000
The learning rate question was almost certainly 81%.
I always solve these learning rate questions where you have to find the learning rate, the same way.
Y = A x X^B
If we know Y, A and X, but we don’t know B, (as in this MCQ), then I use this method:
Take logs of both sides of the equation:
Log(Y) = Log(A) + B x Log(X)
Then rearrange to get B:
B = (Log(Y) – Log(A)) / Log(X)
Then plug in the numbers of Y, A and X to get what B is. Say in this case we get B = 5
Then now we know that 5 = Log(R)/Log(2)
Then Log(R) = 5 x Log(2)
Then Log(R) = 1.505
Then use the ’10^X’ button on your calculator to find the inverse log and this will get you what R is, in this example of mine R = 32.
This method works for computing any learning rate so I always used it, and in the exam I got 81% for the learning rate.