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Don’t pay anyone to get exemptions for you – sounds like they would be doing this through a fraudulent method and that’s no way to start your accounting career.
You do have to pay a fee to ACCA directly for each exemption you claim but don’t pay anything to a 3rd party.
@deeptikal said:
I would like to begin ACCA next year. Please advise which textbooks are better – Kaplan or BPP. Can I study all 3 Applied Knowledge subjects together or is it best to break it down? I noticed that the textbooks are valid up to certain exam dates so I am concerned about that. I have a full time job and family responsibilities if that helps. I will not be applying for exemptions as I studied a long time ago so I would prefer to re-learn everything.Neither is objectively ‘better’. Both are ACCA platinum approved providers, so both provide high quality materials. Some students prefer one or the other but it’s just personal preference. Perhaps try one exam with each and see which you prefer. Personally I used Kaplan for my first exam and stuck with it, however some people I know preferred BPP and you can get a 20% discount with BPP through this site: https://opentuition.com/20-discount-bpp-books/
I wouldn’t recommend studying for the first 3 exams all together. They are taken as on-demand computer based exams and can therefore be sat any time. The most efficient way to study for them is to do one at a time and take the exam as soon as you feel you are ready. You will know immediately afterwards if you passed or failed – once you have passed you can move straight onto purchasing the materials and studying for the next exam.
That said I wouldn’t worry too much about the materials being only valid for exam dates. Each syllabus is only valid for a year, but for the lower exams not much tends to change year to year as the fundamentals of accounting don’t really change!
I believe you need to submit all 5 elements plus the objective itself in order to get the objective signed off. That’s what I did anyway.
You can log your previous experience even if you are no longer working, but be truthful about your current situation.
The 4 optional objectives may be from any category. It”s just 4 objectives, not all objectives from 4 categories.
I’d say it depends on what work you have done whether it’s too easy or not. If you have worked in practice then it is likely you covered a wide variety of work and will find it easy to cover 4 different objectives. I personally find the PER is quite geared towards the traditional practice work and doesn’t reflect the diversity of roles in a modern finance department.
I worked in the same company in industry in a financial accounting role for nearly 3 years, and found it impossible to cover 4 different optional objectives fully within the that role. There was quite a lot of work I did which didn’t fit into the neat little boxes prescribed by the PER framework. I ended up having to move to a management accounting role in order to finish my PER. That was before the addition of the consultancy and data objectives though, which might have helped.
As for your second question, each objective only has to be signed off once, by one supervisor. So you would only get your second supervisor to sign off objectives your first supervisor didn’t. Once you have your 5 mandatory and 4 options signed off then you’re finished with that part of PER.
If your employer is ACCA approved, has the trainee development exemption and is happy to sign off the exemption for you then you don’t need to write the statements.
Otherwise, you will need to write a statement for each objective. It is mandatory. You must write a 200-500 word statement for each objective and send it to your supervisor for review.
This topic is 7 years old and shujaattt has not posted since around that time, so I doubt you will get a response from them. However, a quick google suggests the Emile Woolf ebooks are available to purchase here, although I have not attempted to purchase them:
Yes you can. I wouldn’t say AFM is close to SBR though. There is not much overlap between them, they are very different areas of accounting.
I used the Casio FX83GTPlus – this is calculator with more than enough functions to use in all exams. Not sure if this specific model is still available, but there are similar Casio models available for approximately £10 online.
Hi chenyin,
Please take a look at the following threads where this has been discussed before:
https://opentuition.com/topic/which-f4-variant-should-i-opt-for/
https://opentuition.com/topic/difference-between-english-and-global-variant-law/
https://opentuition.com/topic/f4-self-study-which-variant-to-choose-english-or-global/Do let us know if you still have questions after reading those.
First off, remember that ACCA only allows you to sit 8 papers per year, so if you sat all the other 5 papers this year then you can only take a maximum of 3 in December.
And even if it was possible for you to sit all 4, I personally wouldn’t recommend anyone to attempt 4 papers in one sitting. You have passed F1-F5, OK, but out of those only F5 is comparable in difficulty to F6-F9. Many students attempt such things but very rarely actually pass all the papers they attempt. It is better to give a quality attempt to fewer papers than a scattergun approach like this.
What were your marks for F1-F5? If you achieved very high marks with a short period of study for each exam, and you are a full time student, you might just have a chance of passing all 4. However, it will take a combination of high talent and very hard work. You will not have a life outside studying. Are you prepared for that?
I’m not a tutor (to ask questions to the tutor, you must use the Ask A Tutor forum here: https://opentuition.com/forum/ask-acca-tutor-forums/ask-the-tutor-acca-financial-reporting-fr-exams/)
However, I can answer your question. There have been only very minor changes to the syllabus from 17/18 to the current 19/20 version. You can see the changes in the very last section of the 18/19 and 19/20 syllabuses:
As you will see, there have been 2 things removed from the syllabus: cash flow statement preparation by the direct method, and valuing an asset using the PV of future cash flows method. There are no additions to the syllabus.
So just bear in mind that you don’t need to practice these 2 areas when using your kit, other than that you will be fine. I’d also recommend making sure you download all the recent past papers and answers as the questions from those won’t be in your kit.
No you don’t, you only need to complete the relevant exams. PER is only needed for the full ACCA qualification, not the BSc.
You must get 9 objectives signed off otherwise you cannot qualify. But you don’t need every employer/supervisor to sign off every objective. You could claim your 1 years experience but no objectives from your old firm, and then the remaining 2 years experience plus the 9 objectives in your next firm for example.
However the objectives can be tricky to complete as they require you to complete a wide variety of tasks. If you think you have done enough to complete an objective at your old firm and manage to contact someone willing to sign it off, it’s worth taking the time to get that done now.
The person who signs off your PER must be a full member of an IFAC organization. As ICAI is part of IFAC, a CA from ICAI can sign off your PER and the process will be exactly the same as if an ACCA qualified accountant did it.
Are you asking them to sign off your time, or some objectives as well? The time is easy enough, they will just need to verify that you worked there in x role for y dates. But the objectives are a little more in depth and require them to check your statement and confirm that you met the objective.
See this thread:
I’d say if you’re planning to do the whole ACCA qualification then just start ACCA. It takes a long time and a lot of exams to pass AAT level 4, and it only gets you 3 exemptions for ACCA. You could instead start ACCA and pass those exams in a few months.
I started ACCA with no prior knowledge or study of accounting and I was fine. I took 10 months to pass the first 3 exams, but my marks were very high and I could have done it a lot quicker if I had to give the pass mark is only 50%.
The one situation where it might be better to do AAT first is to help you get a job in finance/accounting, but you have already done that.
You’re getting confused between total assets and net assets. Total assets is the total of all assets on the balance sheet without taking liabilities into account. Net assets is total assets minus total liabilities, which is equal to shareholder’s equity.
So the total assets at 30th June 2013 is $34,000, but the net assets is $34,000 – $8,000 = $26,000.
F7+F8 and F5+F9.
F7 and F8 because in F7 you learn the various IFRS standards and how to apply them, and in F8 you learn how to audit that they have been followed correctly. So there’s quite a bit of overlap.
F5 and F9 because they are both more in the management accounting space, there’s not a lot of direct overlap between them but the mindset is a bit more similar – how to measure and improve the performance of a company without going into debits and credits but using other techniques and theories.
@cyen said:
what is BPP textbook?
I have failed my June exam and need to retake in September. Currently I take FR and AA at the same time. I think I am stressed. Please help!!BPP and Kaplan are learning providers who produce books for ACCA study. They produce 2 books for each exam: the textbook, which contains the knowledge needed to pass, and the exam kit, which contains questions to practice.
The notes and lectures on this site can be used instead of a textbook, and many prefer the notes and lectures as the textbooks are quite long and sometimes contain too much detail. It takes a long time to read through them fully, whereas the OpenTuition notes and lectures are more focused. Personally I mostly used Kaplan textbooks, because my employer paid for my studies. However if I was paying for it myself, I would have used OpenTuition notes and lectures for sure.
The exam kit however, is considered an essential purchase for each exam as question practice is vital. The exam kit contains many questions for you to practice, and the learning providers will use real questions from old exams but update them so they are relevant to the current syllabus, as well as creating their own questions. There are some practice questions available on this site, as well as past papers from ACCA, but there is no substitute for the exam kit.
You say you failed your June exam – did you practice many questions? Did you have an exam kit?
There are a few minor changes to the syllabus – see the end of this document:
However I’m sure you’d be fine using the previous book as it will be 99% relevant to the new exam. Just familiarise yourself with the changes.