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I would recommend against the admin review @vidhi05255 🙁
I had a marginal fail for PM in the past, applied for the review and nothing got changed – had to retake the exam.It was only after the fact that I realised, the review is not for remarking purposes, it’s literally for re-counting your marks.
But because there’s two people marking each paper all the time, it’s very unlikely that they have counted the marks wrong.A lot of people say the admin review is most probably a waste of money 🙁
Cleared a pass first time with just 50% o_o
I am SO relieved.
I was a bit on edge about this one to be completely honest. I knew it would be tough and I didn’t help myself because I did around 73 hours of focused study & question practice which is considerably less than when I prepared for SBR (and by contrast I scraped that one with 53% after around 110 focused study hours)
@suzcooney – as a bit of advice, what did it for me I think, was prior knowledge of TX. And to whoever reads this and wants to know how I’ve done it, is MAKE SURE YOU UNDERPIN TX before you do anything. That cleared the path straight into question practice, it’s pretty much all I did.Secondly, my answers were always planned with the professional marks in mind.
The fact that they introduced 10 free marks just for that, must have been a God sent for me and it is probably what made the difference (e.g. you best bet I made my answer look like a memorandum and another one like a pretty email. You best bet I was looking around for opportunities to bag a skepticism mark because I was questioning everything I was reading).Lastly, also keep in mind that every single sentence you write, if it is a good point and it makes sense, the examiner WILL give you a mark. Do not write long essays, stick to writing very well structured bulletpoint style phrases, whilst offering explanations & reasons of course, and you are on the money. That’s how I saved time and managed to attempt every single part of the exam.
Please don’t give up and do lots and lots of question practice!
Q3 – very heavy on IFRS 15 revenue from contracts with customers, I think more than half of the marks were about this which I was very very pleased indeed.
– also on Q3 FRS 102 a few issues on deferred tax and calculating the deferred tax assetQ4 – Financial instruments (yeah this was nasty.) I didn’t attempt all of it so it’s played on my confidence a lot. But it was basically about methods of accounting for financial instruments and how investors might find all these different ways confusing
Overall, I think some parts were easy and some parts were ew. I think it’s a pass but if I’m lucky. And it will be by a whisker haha. (First attempt)
I agree with you guys, I also had the same version and that first question seemed a bit easy.
Q1 – explain why the entity was a subsidiary (5 marks)
– then explain why the entity was an associate (6 marks)
– then adjust the prepulated sheet (it was CSFP and you needed to derecognise the subsidiary and account for it as an associate instead (thank the heavens it wasn’t cash flows cause I would have cried) (12 marks)
– explain how can an entity account for impairment of investment in subsidiary (7 marks) (not gonna lie I did not bother with this one, I moved on)Q2 – nice lovely question on ethics
– generous 10+2 mark to start off with, about an FD that was trading with the company of his family in another country (loads of self interest threat evidence, objectivity, all that jazz)
– then the question on how to account for the three manufacturing firms (8 marks) I actually REALLY loved. I talked about the abandonment prospect and how that would exempt them from falling under the scope of IFRS 5, I talked about the probability threshold of the temporary business disruption through the eyes of IAS37, then I also talked about the impairment of assets due to extreme weather conditions, I used the scenario for evidence.Passed first time with 61 marks, hard work paid off 🙂
Onto the professional papers now!!I also had the P&L & Other Comprehensive Income (12 marks), SOCIE (5 marks) and cash flows from investing activities and financing activities (3 marks) question.
The second question was: Calculate Goodwill upon acquisition, (7 marks), calculate 4 ratios for 2014 and 2015 (4 marks) and lastly.. typical question on comparative performance of the group after acquisition (9 marks). This last one was fun (even though I may have scrambled goodwill a little bit but I’m sure it’s still fine)
I’m not gonna lie, don’t know how this is possible but I found the actual exam itself a bit easier than the two practice versions and easier than the specimen?
Anyone else think this?
I think sections A and B being less dreadful than what I’d seen and practiced in the exam kit lead me into a false sense of security? This is ACCA we’re talking about so I’m a bit suspicious. ?I would say it’s pretty normal 🙂 The good news is, you still have 6 weeks left until the exam and continuing to practice and reviewing the wrong answers is DEFINITELY going to get you in the habit of flying through the questions by the time you sit the actual paper.
I’m only a third into the syllabus myself and haven’t even started the question practice but I plan to ramp it up. 🙂 So technically you’re further in than me.
Don’t stress! And keep putting in the practice and the work, you’ll be fine.Hey,
1. I think if you start today, no later, it is definitely doable. However slow consistency is key so, make sure you bag at least an hour or two after work each day, and around 4-5 hours per weekend day.
I’d worked out that for PM I’d cumulatively put in around 110 hours on this last attempt. It was the most I’d done for sure, and I think maybe that’s why it showed on the exam day and I passed.2. When it comes to the strategy: if you have 7 weeks left, I would only spend around two or three weeks on the syllabus, no more than that. Go over everything and write down the biggest takeaways from each topic, all the formulas nicely highlighted because you will need them, and the exam only provides you with a small handful.
Then the last 4 weeks you have left, focus on question practice. The below exam kit is going to be your best friend so I’d recommend getting it if you haven’t already:https://kaplanpublishing.co.uk/acca/applied-skills/performance-management
I believe the Open Tuition lecture notes available here will be comprehensive enough for the theory, so I’d recommend only getting the Exam kit on its own to go alongside it (£25 +£6 UK delivery). If you are not based in the UK, I’m sure that a similar style exam kit might be available from learning providers in your country. This exam is VERY technical so sections A and B I have gone over again and again (and again) to get in the habit of knowing exactly how to tackle a multiple choice question.
Ideally, you need to be able to fly through the first 30 questions in an hour. And practice REALLY helps you do that.
Each time I was left with about 2 hours remaining for section C which gave me time to reading, taking notes and planning my answer. I don’t think section C is doable in the time advised by random youtubers or tutors. They “recommend” you only spend around 1.8 minutes per mark or something like that. I think for me personally, leaving a LOT of time for section C meant that I had attempted every single question and I wasn’t going to scramble & lose out on easy marks due to running out of time.That worked for me and I hope it will for you. Best of luck!! 🙂
Out of all my exam attempts so far, (PM is the 8th topic I’ve attempted) never have I failed an exam so many times. First time a couple of years ago with 37%, last year on my second attempt – 48% and only JUST managed to scrape a 53% and pass it in this session.
I am unsure if the “third time lucky” charm worked for me because the amount of work that has gone into this, and STILL only managed to scrape it, was ridiculous. I’d changed my study strategy so many times, syllabus wise never left a stone unturned, and spent weeks each time on just mock exams, essay style question technique and ploughed through all of the MCQ in the Kaplan exam kit multiple times.
Boy, am I happy to see the back of this one! It literally has been my nemesis (LOL) considering that I’d gotten first time passes for all the previous ones. If it wasn’t for this one I would say my ACCA journey had been quite enjoyable really (absolutely not though).
There is absolutely NO WAY I will be picking APM for my optional haha.5 exams left and I have a good feeling about them. I’m over the moon today 🙂
My advice to whoever is / has been in the same situation as me, seemingly unable to crack this one, is – do not give up. The reason why this is so prestigious is because of how challenging and technical they are. And once you have it under your belt, no one will take that away from you 🙂
Always interesting to see what other people had in their section C, and I’m writing a decent detailed impression of mine here below cause I for one really find it useful when others do so.
I also had transfer pricing, calculating the revised profits of the two divisions (10 marks) then asked to comment on how would the transfer price change if one division has doubling demand in the next years (like another 6 marks maybe), and then finally to discuss three benefits of transfer pricing (4 marks). Here on the last one I got completely flustered and went, “for the purpose of goal congruence when it comes to maximising profits of the parent company” and also “for taking advantage of price discounts or other brand deals that a division would not normally achieve elsewhere on the market” (sounds like complete Waffle to me and I couldn’t come up with a third)
Then my second question was on activity based budgeting. The reading and planning part of this exam took me SOOO long because it was not in the usual layout (when it comes to the cost pools and the cost drivers). Very confusing and it had a couple of sub sections on it with extra bitty calculations, probably like 16 marks altogether I’d say. Then finally the 4 marker was to discuss ways that companies deal with risk and uncertainty so I chatted a little about attitudes to risk, expected values, perfect information, trying to tie it back to the study case.
I reckon having seen what some of you guys had in the other version of the questions, (with ROI and ROCE) I’m considering myself a little lucky today. Praying for a pass!
Also section A and B were SOLID. I think I was only absolutely sure on the answer on 15 or 16 questions… x_x
BTW. This is a resit for me. I genuinely genuinely am starting to believe that’s its all down to luck of the draw. (Which is a really sad realisation lol)Hey Vicosta,
In my reply to this thread, (I think it might be the 5th one from the top on page 1) I wrote down all my impressions about that question and how I tackled it.
Hope it helps?I had the same paper as Zak97…
Section C was:
1. (i) Work out if the company should take the bulk purchase discount and comment on its financial acceptability.(This was a classic – Work out EOQ, Work out total working capital costs, work out the new number of orders and the purchase price at the discount provided, before working out new total working capital costs, + give a comment if its worth it – this was 6 marks)
(ii) Work out the net benefit of the company changing its working capital financing policy, as well as the risks involved.
(Here you got presented with basically what looked like details that the company was using a Conservative approach. Then, the company decided to change how it funds its permanent and fluctuating assets, so that they were moving onto what looked like a more aggressive policy, and I worked it out that the net benefit was that aggressive was cheaper.
This is to be expected because aggressive policies are good for profitability but quite risky. So then that tied me in into the last part of the question where I commented on the risks presented by overdrafts- this was 4 marks)(iii) Advise on two reasons (other than the financial ones previously analysed) that the company needs to consider before deciding if to take the discount.
(Unsure if this was correct, but I commented on the storage facilities becoming a problem if part of the deal is to order more units at a time, and how this could lead to increased costs if they will have to outsource storage potentially.
Second reason was, to assess whether the demand is going to change because if it will, unfavourably, the company will be left with surplus units from their increased order quantities that the discount deal demands – this was 4 marks, presumably 2 per reason)Question 2.
(i) Calculate the equivalent annual costs of two machines and comment on which one the company should go for.This was 14 marks!!
And, it was everything to do with NPV. You had to inflate operating costs and maintenance costs per each year the machine was running and then at the end, once NPV is calculated, it needed dividing by the annuity factor to get EAC.
(ii) Discuss why discounted cash flows are more superior than non discounted cash flows. This was 6 marks.
(And I ran out of time – but I was happy with the rest I’d done until here)I was hoping for something like this to come up as I had seen them before in the Section C exam Kit from Kaplan so that was so, so, so useful.
HOWEVER!
Section A and B were both brutal.
In these exams, I sit and I read these multiple choice questions, and I can’t help but think: who on earth thinks up such Mad convoluted questions to make you question even the reason of your existence, NOT JUST question what they mean by the question. (?) Just crazy.I absolutely despise how ACCA assess you in those sections. Full of traps and mind games, nothing else. Can’t wait to get to the strategics, where it is all written, where no one can rob me of marks.
I’d be interested to hear what the other paper was like, if anyone can share? Thanks guys and best of luck!Passed with 70%, buzzing is an understatement, won’t be able to go to sleep now XD
I cannot remember for the life of me any of the multiple choice questions.
I found that they were formulated in such a ridiculous way, they were hard to even comprehend before you even thought about the answers?
Absolute joke 🙁Thankfully section C was manageable and I started with that and gave it all my focus.
Otherwise this would be a straight fail.
They don’t give you much of a chance do they? X_X