*** ACCA P5 March 2017 Exam was.. Instant Poll and comments ***

Question 4 I adjusted revenue for exchange rate movement (down by 7.5%). Removed head office allocation, bad debt expense (noted I was assuming this is finance’s fault) and depreciation as they are not controllable by the manager. That gave a controllable margin of 11%

Hi guys,

I did questions 1, 3 & 4. I generally found I struggled to have enough points for most of the questions to go with the mark allocation.

Q1) part i – I think was to comment on the kpi’s and did they fit with the mission statement. I think I picked up 3 parts to mission statement a) profit b) staff training c) to be the best (my memory is a bit hazy now). I didn’t think any kpi’s measured the first part. Manager retention sort of for the middle part and there were some that did measure the first part.

ii – can’t remember this part

iii – I pointed out points about the dashboard eg.no nfpi, no narrative,

iv – I remembered the building block parts but struggled to link it to the question

v – I said scheme 2 was best couldn’t find many positives about scheme 1

Q4) I said she deserved the bonus. I said she was right as npm should not include head office costs struggled to say much else so said roi and right should be used for the import division – don’t know if this was going off track

b – I calculated npm adding back head office costs, calculated the wacc but can’t remember why now, calculated roce. Said she deserved the bonus but felt I was clutching at straws to make valid points

c – I said Eva should be used in import division not export tho. I listed some Eva adv and disadv not sure if this is what was wanted???

Q3 came up with some random kpi’s for part course struggled with the q

I did question 1 3 and 4. Question 1 was fairly easy but lengthy.
3 was easy too but i got stuck in the last requirement of 12 marks which had part of KPIs of political situation of Jayland.

In the q 1, I used the reward management system (strategic focus, reward objective, reward options, reward techniques and reward competitiveness) for the analysis of scheme 1 and 2.

Did anyone else do this? Pleaasee tell me! 🙂

Q1 reward system appraisal I did this badly but I tried to relate the two bonus schemes to the building block model described in the previous part of the question.

Basically scheme 1 was had no clarity and appeared to be unfair and uncontrollable so would not motivate employees. Only good thing was it involved shares

Scheme 2 involved employee participation so was more motivating and basically agreed with all other points of the building block model

Also the 50% bonus size should be a sensible amount to align the risk attitudes of the employees with the owners who wanted to see growth

I think it said the domestic currency had weakened and hence the revenue in the overseas currency would translate to a larger amount of domestic currency.

Therefore we need to reduce the revenue figure to get a fair comparable

A bit baffled by the EVA part of q4. It gave most indicators for an EVA calc, but then specifically said not to calculate it.

the price (and the FX rate) was set at the beginning of the year for one year therefore the Export division is taking advantage of this for the second half of the year. The turnover should have been 7400

Same thoughts. Q2 was the easiest, so am wondering why many did not attempt it.

For Q1 (b), a Q worth 12 marks asking to assess the assumption and description of the KPI – well I was struggling with this question. Can anyone help here?

For Q3,I was struggling in answering the questions relating to technological factors and the other one regarding political factors on Jayland compared to G..land. Any ideas regarding the answers?

@Tommy. Thanks, thats clear. I was not sure. For the profit margin, guess I will score. I also said that the basis for calculating capital employed was correct. Same for management retention (it excludes contract employees, so it is good).

@Chullbulla. That was an easy one. Most of the criteria in the mission could not be linked to the indicators as indicators was mostly financial. The mission says something about staff development and being able to offer world class service: those were not reflected in the KPI. If I am right.

Hello guys!
I also choosed Quesion #2. I am not surprized by fact that it was not so popular question as it needs to have quite deep knowledge about target and kaizen costing.. usually these topics are not on first place when you are in your preparation study.

Anyways, I would like to know, how did you structure your answer in part b, about implementaton of target costing? It is worth about 12 marks.. Too much! Did you provided real ways of problem decision like: decrease number of suppliers in order to get volume discount for price of sub-components? Or to introduce training for workers in order to improve quality of assembly work, as a result quality cost (cost of non-conformance) will be reduced? Just my examples..
Tell me please your way to this question.

I said calculating Eva for the export division might not be worth it as it was a profit centre not an investment centre and it was a complicated calculation so only the import division should use it as they are an investment centre.

I don’t know if that was right.

I feel like it wasn’t really a hard exam but I didn’t answer the questions enough. I made no adjustments for fx in part b. It never even crossed my mind to 🙁

Im getting confused over what the otherbpart to question 4 was.. One of part a or b was the bonus and part c was the eva.. Can anyone remember what thebother part was whether it was a or b? Thin a was 7 marks, b 8 and c 10?