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i thought reversal of goodwill impairment was not allowed, or the subsequent increase?
To the poster who ‘dared’ me to give a real life example of TQM – look up the Deming prize you schmuck. If you can’t see how it is applied in a practical environment you might aswell give up now. As for the service vs manufacturing difference – do I really need to answer how that might be relevant in an increasingly service driven world? The module is called Performance Management – hence understanding the nuances of business setups andthe differences between sectors is essential in fairly analysing performancem
To the poster who has already qualified – he is not obnoxious just stating the obvious. It may be hard work but to cover the whole text book is more than achievale. There are no overly difficult topics just a reasonable degree of volume – compare this with studying to be a doctor, the CFA etc the ACCA is a doddle. You’d be stupid to think that the qualification would be easy – how else can you justify being able to command a higher wage, applying for better jobs etc??Ignoring time constraints, if we were allowed our text books in the exam then every one of us would have been able pass. Not everyone would get 100% as not everyone understands all the topics but you could certainly get 50% easy – therefore had we all covered the entire textbook in our revision we’d have been fine.
I relaise the reality is somewhat different, hence why we pay good money to go on courses and order practice papers etc but this means the blame should be put on our tutors for not doing their job and teaching us to pass – the examiner is doing her jobs – setting a hard examIts nothing to do with insulting people and having no respect for my fellow candidates. I’m simply pointing out that had any of us covered the entire sylabus then the exam would have been quite reasonable. Yes, there were a few bits to catch us out but that’s the same with any exam – on a whole nothing in F5 is difficult, there’s just a lot to learn, which had adequate preparation time be given for revision of the whole course noone would havve any worries.
I’ve seen several people on here say they barely knew what TQM even was yet it is covered in both the text book and the course notes (of BPP) – for you to say it isn’t relevant is beyond me. It is very relevant, as is the differences between smanufacturing andd services, target costing in the NHS – all examples of how we should think about practical application of management accounting techniques.
I agree on the time constraints and the question format but had less emphasis been put on what might come up (laregely driven by our tutors) and instead a focus on the whole textbook people would be more comfortable. I don’t think it matters if you struggle to complete it all in the time (stupid as that is) providing you can write things for everythijg else. However, the consensus here seems to be that people sturggled with most time and the content and therefore have likely dropped a lot of marks.
I don’t work in the ‘the industry’ – whatever that is, although I suspect you mean you’re a regular accountant as opposed to a management accountant in which case I’m not surprised that it woudnt apply to your everyday job. If I’m wrong then surely CIMA is the more appropriate? ACCA is for regular practicing accountants but by throwing in F2 and F5 it gives us a wider knowledge base making us more employable in other areas. It is one of the best qualifications to have as it is a very useful tool in business and management – clearly not because we know how to do book keeping.
I think you’ve missed my point anyway – I’m just saying that any frustration should be pointed towards the tutors for misleading us as I suspect those that studied just from the textbook will have done wellI must say I’m leaning toward Ted Baker who thinks it was quite easy. By no means do I think I did well but that’s solely down to a lack of preparation and leaving it till the last day to hit the books. I understood all the questions and with a bit more time I would have made sure the things I knew I got right to pick up as many marks as possible but instead I rushed and made silly mistakes. I really can’t believe so many people who claim to have spent hours revising struggled and surely after all these years you’d be stupid to think you could spot pick the topics?
As much as I’d like to have passed to save me the hassle of retakes, if I fail and get 30% plus ill be happy knowing that next time ill just cover the topics I didnnt focus on this time and ill have everything covered.
Also, these forums are meant for people who either want to complain or want confirmation when they’re not sure if they did something right or not – how many people that pass bother to come on here ansd rub everyones noses in it?@angleo86 said:
But the product that took 0.5 hours incurred the most cost for the company. The question asked us to minimize the cost didn’t it? So you would produce the cheaper product first using the 75,000 hours (100,000 / 0.75) leaving 25,000 hours left for the other product. This meant you could only produce 50,000 and would have to outsource the other 50,000. That’s the way I interpreted it.Yep, it was more expensive but by the hour it was cheaper as it took less time – or at least that’s the way I took it to mean
I think my answer had 100,000 of the 0.75hrs product = 75,000 leaving 25,000 remaining. This equates to 50,0000 inhouse, 50000 outsourced of the 0.5hrs product – so yes, quite possible – although probably not correct.
When I said hard to qualify I meant I couldn’t remember the exact terms ie. SHIP – which now you say is very easy to remember. I was able to describe them in a roundabout way bbut without the corrects terms o I’d assume I’d drop a few marks. Hardly the easiest 4 makkrs though giving that this was covered in the home study chapter of standard costing – the one that I and I guess others skipped over.I actually ordered the revision kit but never got round to looking through it which was obviously a stupid move. My point is that BPP should cover these in the main course but instead it seems like they rely on revision kits, revision classes as an extension of the time they have to teach. I understand time is limited and they can not cover everything but I think an extra week or two of teaching would allow for a more comprehensive schedule. The course is very expensive and so I question how much value there is if you need to do lots of extra study off your own back.
Just my 2c worth but I think everyones efforts are being focused on the wrong people here. The examiners job is to make it difficult and to throw some curve balls… I am fairly confident I failed or if not only narrowly passed but there was nothing in the exam that I didn’t understand. The problem was the topics I was lead to believe will come up and where I should focus my efforts. For example, standard costing played a major part in question 2? Yet this was a topic that was left for home study through BPP. As a result I skimmed through it and gave it no weight. I only knew what TQM was from opening the page by chance the day before. Whilst I understood the concepts putting these into meaningful precise points was difficult so I will only have picked up a few marks. The whole healthcare scenario was quite confusing and hard to apply theory to though but I think the emphasis was on the six differences about a service industry – again very hard to qualify having spent no time on the subject.
Questioon 1 was going well – separate fixed and variable costs to find the cost per product. From memory I had one as cheaper to outsource the other to make in house. Then came the limiting factor – labour hours. This threw me completely as normally I’d look to find contribution per bottleneck factor and rank. However, there was no SP so contributin could not be calculated. I simply worked out the cost per bottleneck hour by dividing cost by hours taken and ranked the cheaper product as 1st. I suspect there was more to it – maybbe work out variable contribution by producing in house and using this – if this works? In the end I had the two products switch in terms of lower cost so made 100000 of 1 and 50k of the other – I forget which way round it was.
The discussion was then on the potential flaws of outsourcing – reliability, quality control, stability of the supplier, proximity to supplier, incentives to produce at quality if contracts were fixed for 2 years etc.
The point I maker is that whilst this question had a nasty surprise it should have been taught to us – I’m sure the correct way of ranking by contribution is simple and our tutors should have the foresight to think of ways the exxaminer might trick us.
Seasonal variations – luckily I looked over this so had a good crack. I think the trend was 43.25 increasing, then add this to the previous moving average to get the next quarters, times by the SV etc. I’m not sure but suspect the ‘average’ sv bit meant we needed to consider the previous quarters sv also??
I don’t belive the discussion was so much about flexible budgeting as to how the poor forecast models were affecting morale. They were obviously drivign budgets making excess wastage leading to reduced profitability etc.
The variance question should have been simple but I messed up somewhere as my total variances didn’t match exactly everything was provided. My profits did add up though so I know I got something right but definitely missed the planning variance bit. Given there werw only 10 marks I think surely this level of detail was not needed although if it mentioned market share then I’m sure they wanted us to use it.
Finally, the last question was quite simple in terms of ROI and RI. Profit after fixed costs apportionment * 12 / the bottom capital figure. The impact of the fixed costs creeated a drop in the ROI – outside of the control of the divisional manager. Both were still above the 10% cost of capital though so were worthy. I also mentioned that the machinery was a relatively expensive and depreciated heavily so was possibly a risky use of company funds. I completely missed the controllable versus net profit point they mentioned so waffled on without answering the question.
Looking back I know I could have done better but the pressure and time constraints made it hard to focus. I don’t think anything was unanswerable, merely not expected therefore not revised in detail which I blame more on the tutors that the examiner. More marks were available for discussions that I’d expect so I know I fell down here as I didn’t much too much focus on this in my revision – if these were covewred in lectures with more emphasis I’m sure we’d remember without needing to revise over and over again. Its much harder reading from the text book and trying to take it in.
My main problem was lack of preparation – starting to revise 2 days before and expecting to cover the entire course plus the areas of ‘home study’ was unrealistic. Providing I can get close to 40% ill be relatively happy in the knowledge that at the retake with a little more work Ill be okay.
If/when I fail I’m going to be on to the tutor to complain as I really can’t see what my money has gone to. Paying for course only to be advised of ‘home study’ chapters makes little sense to me and if anything is detrimental in giving the wrong idea about which topics to focus on