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Passed first time with 75%! I found preparing for this paper so challenging and couldn’t have done it without OpenTuition and their wonderful resources
To the people who have asked for advice on how to pass this exam, I did English at university so I definitely don’t have a “numbers brain.”
My advice to pass this exam is as follows: start early. This syllabus isn’t as long as some others, but the content can often be quite tricky, like CVP analysis and learning curves. The amount of time you spend going over it will improve your understanding. I don’t think I understood some topics until I’d gone over them two or three times.
Question practice is so important for every exam, but particularly this one. Section C can be really time pressured in the exam so it’s best if you can go into it with an understanding of how to approach the questions to get maximum marks. BPP or Kaplan workbooks will have lots of questions. I studied with BPP but also made use of free resources like the wonderful OpenTuition. If I hadn’t done as many questions and mocks, I don’t think I would have passed. Application is trickier in this exam than most of the others I’ve taken.
Finally – use different resources! I had BPP online classes to teach me the main course, but found OpenTuition’s videos so useful as they broke down the topics into relevant sections. I made notes for myself and went over videos whenever I didn’t understand. There are also technical articles and YouTube videos on the ACCA website.
Passed first time with 63%! Found the paper really tough so delighted to not have to retake. Thank you John Moffat and the OpenTuition team – I couldn’t do it without you.
please don’t think you’ve done badly based on what I said! I have never done a question like that before, i have never even seen one in my revision guide or anywhere, so I could have approached it incorrectly (I wasn’t sure what to do so I just guessed)
No sorry that’s not what I meant, what I did was x total customers by 2 and 1 respectively for extra VC and then add that back onto the total amount I’d already calculated previously, so I think we did the same thing
Yeah I only took 40 too, I missed that at first so had to go back and redo it ???? but I think (my memory is hazy now) I did 40 for the three days it was at 100% capacity and 70% for the other four, and then for calculating how much they spent I just split those numbers in half, so for the full occupancy days i did (20*however much set menu food cost) + (20*however much a la carte cost) and the same for the drinks.
For variable cost I already had the amount I’d calculated and then just worked out the number of customers a week and x that by $2 for the food and $1 for the drink to get the increase. and the fixed was just adding $600 or whatever the figure was.
I have never seen a question like that though so I have no idea if I approached it the right way, I just hope to get some marks for method!
On the second point with the Faros restaurant q (the financial viability), I concluded that it wasn’t viable because the restaurant was making a loss rather than a profit. I can’t remember how many marks it was worth but I know that my proforma was really basic, I just had total sales with workings for the extra variable costs, the increased fixed costs and then the profit/loss. Would be interested to hear how anyone else approached it 🙂
That is also what I did, because if you sub the 35% back into the gross profit margin equation for food you will get the 65% they’ve calculated in the question so I think that’s correct
I had no idea how to do this! They really didn’t give us much info did they? I know the gross profit margin is calculated as (sales – cost of sales)/sales so I just moved the equation around, but I think they only penalise for a wrong number once, not when you include it again in a calculation! So it should be okay
I also did breakeven revenue, I think it should have been fixed costs/whatever you calculated c/s ratio as
That CVP question in section C about the hotel was tough! I wasn’t used to calculating variable costs from the gross profit margin, whenever I’ve done those kinds of qs in the past, contribution has been pretty easy to figure out. I really liked the other section C about the trust, though.
