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In addition to this go to the ACCA website and read all the technical articles. There are some fantastic articles on accounting standards which is a better way of learning than the textbook. I wouldn’t recommend you read the textbook cover to cover as the textbook goes above and beyond what you need for the exam.
From someone that has passed P7 and is an ACCA member, I would recommend doing section B FIRST and then doing the section A Q1 LAST. This will stop you from spending too much time on Q1 and then worrying about answering the other 3 questions in very little time. Remember Q1 is only 35 marks whereas the other 3 are worth a total of 65 marks. I was taught at a well known school in London for P7 and was taught this method of answering P7.
Getting 47 means it’s your exam technique that is the problem rather than your knowledge as this is classed as a marginal fail. You are probably spending too much time on a question. What order did you do the questions in? I would recommend doing section B FIRST and then doing the section A Q1 LAST. This will stop you from spending too much time on Q1 and then worrying about answering the other 3 questions in very little time. Remember Q1 is only 35 marks whereas the other 3 are worth a total of 65 marks.
In addition to the above, I can’t stress this enough, you need to know the accounting standards inside out. Once you know each accounting standard in the syllabus you will be able to answer any questions they throw at you by applying the principle of the accounting standard being tested. At first it seems scary given the number of standards they are but when you actually get down to it they are not that bad. The easiest way i found to do this was to take each accounting standard and write a short paragraph on it on a blank A4 page of paper using diagrams where appropriate. You’ll find that you only need a small section on the page for each standard and will be able to cover a few standards per page. Write or draw in whatever way you like the principles of each standard. I then used to take a picture of this on my phone and each day on my way to work on the train and back i used to read them on my phone and before you know it you will begin to learn them and be able to apply them to the point where in the P2 exam when you see a question you’ll immediately know what standard it relates too. One final point, in which order did you attempt the questions in? I was taught at a well known college in london for P2 and we were taught to answer section B FIRST and then Question 1 in section A. I passed P2 first time using this approach and it stops you from spending too much time on question 1 and then worrying about the other 2 questions which are shorter.
You don’t need to quote the actual ISA name and number in P7. You can discuss without naming it. However don’t quote an ISA name or number if you are not sure whether it is correct or only do so if you want to, once you are 100% certain it is correct.
If it helps in the March 2017 sitting which i sat Q1 was Balance Sheet with a subsidiary in a foreign currency, so i would say you could get either cash flow or P&L or even B/S again.
The key to passing P6 is to know the tax rules inside out and upside down! Doing questions again and again is key as you will get to see how the tax rules are applied. I suggest getting a revision kit from a leading provider from a bookshop and working through their revision plans making sure you do the questions. Those kits have updated questions which reflect the current tax rules being examined. I also suggest getting the pocket notes which are very useful in jogging your memory for tax rules.
Time management is key in P7. It is very easy to get bogged down with Q1 and write for hours! I would suggest that anyone retaking thinks about doing section B questions first and then attempting section A. I used this approach for P2 where i was told by my lecturer to do Section B FIRST and then go to Section A and it worked quite well.
I think they are having an issue. My name was appearing yesterday when i checked but now when i go to check a bar comes up at the top of the page with a cross. Seems like its a tech issue.
Past exam questions are the key to passing P6 and knowing your tax rules. Do as many as you can. The Kaplan P6 exam kit is very very good. They have a detailed revision plan in there which covers alot of very good questions which are updated for the FA which is being examined.
P6 is not easy to pass so please don’t be under any illusion. It is a very challenging paper which requires you to know alot of the tax rules inside out and upside down! The text book is scary! Just look at the ACCA pass rates for P6 and you will see the average pass rate in lower 30’s. The good thing about P6 however is it’s very black and white, it’s either right or its wrong, there is no in between like say P7 where you could spend the whole exam time talking about one area waffling away. If you are good with figures and are good at learning factual things then i would recommend P6. I did both P6 and P7 and I passed P6 first time and P7 on my third attempt because i am more suited to figures and facts than writing essays. Some people are the opposite so it depends on what you like. Personally i found P6 very enjoyable as alot of what i learnt i could use in my day to day life (tax rules etc) so i was more interested in this subject than my other ACCA modules which really helped me grasp P6. In regards to F6 i did F6 but i took P6 then a long time after F6 so i don’t think it is relevant as you will be taught the stuff again. I certainly didn’t remember anything from F6 and it wasn’t a problem.
Passed first time 🙂
The key to passing is question practice, question practice. I must have done 35 questions over and over again. You also need to know your tax rules inside out. Sounds knowledge of tax rules is paramount.Q2 the boat was a wasting chattel so no cgt so i said gift it now as the value of it was increasing so for IHT (not that i mentioned that as it was asking for CGT only) purposes it would mean more IHT if left in will. That was my thought process for that.
Also for the first part i talked about the annual exemption of 3k and how its better to gift now as you lock in the value of assets that might increase later and also Fall in value relief is available if on death the value falls of the asset gifted. For Angie i said further information required is: does her husband own any part of the other 30% as if he does this will effect the value of transfer as she will be connected person to her husband so a combined shareholding needs to be calculated, for BPR we needed to know how long she had the shares in the company as you need to hold them for 2 yrs but the question never told you when she bought the shares or when the company was formed.
Q3 a) what was the base cost of the building? I used the new value as at 1st oct (date of transfer to the new company) because the old value would only have been used if the company was still with its old parent. As the company had bought the building of its parent it would have had to pay a degrouping charge as it left within 6 yrs so then you couldn’t possibly use the old base cost as cost? I was very disappointed as i had studied groups at length and was expecting a 35 or 25 mark question rather than this silly little 20 mark question.
For the loss relief i said the loss from the building can be used now against its trading loss but for the pre entry cap loss that has to be offset against its gains on assets sold. was that right?
Q1 part a was a disaster for me. Hopefully i will score method marks for calculating IT and NIC contributions but i won’t be getting any more marks for anything else.
R&D part i thought was quite a lot of marks for what they were asking. I just explained the rules regarding the additional 130% as just because you get the 100% R&D relief to get the additional 130 % additional rules apply, for example on rent you get 100% but you wouldn’t get the additional 130% and same for computer hardware equipment. Also for subcontractor expenses you would get 100% but then only 65% would qualify for the additional 130%. Then i just worked out the 130% on the 12k and 20% and said his post tax income would increase by this amount.
Cap allowance part not a clue, VAT part: has to be transferred as a going concern, the purchaser has to be VAT registered or will become VAT registered and assets transferred have to be used in the same or similar trade that they were being used in before the transfer.
Stupidly i decided to do Q5 and got confused on part a) accommodation allowance even though i had revised it the night before. The bit about Jake not being entitled to it threw me so i missed that part out 🙁 i was kicking myself after the exam as i knew how to work it out.
I would say a hot topic would be the new audit report format / KAM’s. This was touched upon very slightly in the Sept 16 exam when it first became examinable but i would say it is very likely to come up in depth in one of the forthcoming exam sessions and it was also the subject of the most recent P7 technical article so watch out for this. The P7 technical article on it is very good.
Go to the ACCA website and under P7 look up the examiners report for the 4 sessions. In the examiner’s reports the examiner will talk about each question and you will be able to work out what the question was from that. Apart from that you can look on this forum as certainly for the Sep 16 exam there was a very in-depth discussion about the paper and what the questions were including mark allocations.
Make sure you know the P2 stuff inside out, look at the P7 ACCA syllabus and there is a list there of the P2 stuff you need to know. Make sure you know how to account for those items fully. It is not unusual in P7 for Q2 to be based fully on these items as was the case in both the March and September 16 exams. Q1 will most definitely feature P2 items.
Here is an ACCA article on P7 which really helped me pass P7 this time round.
For those that are scoring 46-49 this is classed as a marginal fail and is most likely due to exam technique rather than knowledge. I was in this boat twice with P7 and then finally passed this time. There are 4 very easy professional marks available in Q1 which can make the difference between a pass and a fail. Please see below article.
Passed with 60. Mike’s exam technique guide along with ACCA’s own P7 exam technique guide did it for me.
I thought it was very time pessuried. Q1 took a lot of time.It also threw me a bit as to only 8 months worth of data was given for the current year. Some of the audit risks i found which may or may not be correct were:
-The license had not been amortised the previous year when it probably should have meaning last year’s FS contained a material misstatement which would need to be corrected in this years FS by amending comparatives and retsating retained earnings.
-Again amortisation of the license but this time for the current year. It was still shown at cost when it had a 10 year life.
– Listed company looking to expand in future so risk of management bias to make the company look better to get access to credit and for the shareholders. Risk of profit overstatement
– IFRS 15 so need to apply the 5 step model in order to recognise revenue, as this was the first time they were applying IFRS 15 they may not do it properly and recognise revenue incorrectly.
– Joint Ventue, needed to prove that this classficiation was correct and that it wasn’t an associate or subsidiary.
– IT controls were poor as payroll fraud had taken place so need to be bear that in mind and find out more information about it and carry ou substantive procedures
-Keep an eye on expenses as some of then had not been authroised, potential money laundering.
For the above two i also mentioned we only have 8 months worth of data for the current year so those figures may actually get worse by the year end.
1 b was a standard internal audit question but i said reliance couldn’t be placed on them and they couldn’t be used due to the fact they had discovered the 2 issues which meant now that the auditor would have to work on those themselves due to the high risk involved.
Q2 was a bit tricky there was a site bought and was classified under investment property on which they were building a new hq on part of it. 1/3 of that was incorrectly classified as you cannot use investment property for owner occupation, the other was internally generated asset which threw me as i kept thinking of internally generated brand and the third one was defined benefit plan.
Q4 was Quality control, for this i missed out part a as didn’t have time to answer it. Part b revenue should not have been given to a trainee because it is high risk and previous controls should not be relied upon for revenue. Substantive procedures should have been carried out as revenue should always be approached with fraud in mind. The other one was the final review which i got a bit confused with as they were calling it something else. I just wrote that there wasn’t sufficient people fo the audit as they all were saying they didnt have time and had to go to work on the other audit.
Q5 was ethics and audit report. I missed out the part about governance as i didn’t have time to answer. For the ethics i said advice can be given to recruit someone as long as the final decision is made by management but to say no to giving them the audit partner for 6 months as that would create advocacy threat. The seconds part audit report the first was a qualified opinion as expenses were material and there wasn’t sufficient appropriate evidence and the second fire relating to going concern was a KAM.
Hi Mike,
My understanding of the structure of the new audit report is this which is taken from PWC appendix 1:
https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/services/audit-assurance/publications/new-auditor-reporting-standard-iaasb-2015.html1. Opinion
2. Basis for Opinion
3. Material uncertainty regarding Going Concern (if applicable)
4. Emphasis of matter paragraph (if applicable)
5. KAM
6. Other matter paragraph (if applicable)
7. Other information (the auditors responsibilities in regards to other info are described here)
8. Management’s responsibilities
9. Auditors responsibilities
10. Date, Address and signatureAlso, KAM cannot be used if a disclaimer of opinion is issued, but must be used if a qualified or adverse opinion is given.