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Hi All,
I am due to do the AFM CBE exam in Sep’20 and have started to use the test module on the ACCA website and wondered what other peoples thoughts are on its uses and functionality.
I have heard the Mar’20 Exam was a bit of a mess but I wonder was that down to the exam or the use of the CBE functionality itself.
My view after using this Practice tool for the first time:
1) On Q1 Mar/Jun’19 up to 9 screens to navigate between Exhibits, Requirements, Formulae/Help, Excel and Word.
For me this is not easy to manage and even if you take each exhibit at a time you may miss the elements of the exam where they want you to link your solutions to details from other exhibits.
2) The Excel tool itself I have found extremely basic and many tools that we all probably use in our work excel do not exist, Issues I found:
– Can’t Copy/Paste Cells as the formula doesn’t change from the previous cell to where you want it to go
– Similarly you cant copy/paste a group of cells containing formula’s as the spreadsheet is not intuitive so doesn’t move the formula to the cells you are moving it to so you have to be very concise with the location your workings and tables.
– If you use a formula on a formula the answer does not come out accurately and for example of you were doing a NPV cal as you do in Q1 Mar/Jun’19 you would not get the negative $6m per the solution and may be a point lost because of it?
– You cant use a keyboard to enter $ or € e.t.c you have to right click/format cells/Currency/Choose from drop down list to get the CCY you want. way to time consuming in an exam that is already way to time pressured as it is so making it harder to locate basic currency like this is poor.
The above are just a few of the Issues I am facing already and that was only my first attempt at using it.
Way more practice required just to find the most efficient way of navigating the whole exam and using what I feel is a sub standard excel tool thrown together.
It feels like whoever created or tested the excel tool doesn’t use it in real life.
If there are people out there who done the Mar’20 CBE for AFM or any other option level exam I would like to hear your thoughts on the navigation of it and possible approach to attempting the questions?
Thanks
Hi, yes the system is really bad. I took the AFM July remote exam and literally run out of time. The formulas on the spreadsheet don’t work. I left my feedback with ACCA, they know the spreadsheet doesn’t work properly. They said they are working on it but majority of students don’t have the problem. I can’t understand why they implemented something which is not ready!!! The exam itself is so time pressured and now you need to worry about simple formulas retyping many times with no luck. So frustrating!!
Thank you for leaving this information.
As for me, I am not sure i have the time to cram functionalities as it may be time consuming and i fear that I may not present a layout to earn me enough marks. I am trying to focus on lay out rather than relying on formulas.Its best to work as though you are doing a paper exam however, presenting same in Excel. This may help. As for the Word document, hopefully, it should be easier than the exam paper. Trade off.
I pray that we do well. AFM is not for the faint hearted.
And how do you plan to present the calculations in the spreadsheet?
Are you going to put first all known data and then put the formula for the wanted value that will refer to the above cells? It is quite time consuming to enter everything in the spreadsheet and make the calculation clear enough.
Another way I see: to add comment on what exactly is being calculated (like in paper version) and then just work on the numbers?
Any ideas will be more than welcome:)Another weak point: when you want to copy table from word processor into a spreadsheet, everything is pasted into one cell.
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