ACCA Paper AAA exam was – June 2021 Exam – Instant Poll and comments

In Q1 there was a question about ethical and professional implications..what did y’all put for that?

I think that the approach in this paper was different than the past exam papers, for example in audit risk question there was a disposal and not much else, what does the examiner expect, a different phrase on every possible aspect of a disposal? This seems to be milking 1 issue for 20 marks which felt to me the unethical thing to do as i felt that in previous attempts such an approach would have been frowned upon (at least based on my understanding). I am looking forward to examiner report.
From the start 3 possible risks were crossed out by the examiner (all companies in the group have the same year end, same currency and report according to IFRS) so you would have to go ahead and make up something else for some marks I guess.
Although I am pretty good with the computer, I found myself struggling in question 2 going back and forth trough 3-4 exibits to calculate materiality and at some point i knew i saw more info somewhere but no time to go trough 3 exibits again (which would again make me struggle to return to the more relevant ones while time is running out) so nevermind…
I would also like to add that many of us do not work on small screens or only with 1 screen anymore in the REAL WORLD (i have not worked on a screen this size since 2010) so if ACCA knows we will be sitting exams on 1 small screen to cut cost, then reduce exibit number. If you do not want to reduce the number of exibits, then less questions would be fine as well.

thirthy wrote:I think that the approach in this paper was different than the past exam papers, for example in audit risk question there was a disposal and not much else, what does the examiner expect, a different phrase on every possible aspect of a disposal? This seems to be milking 1 issue for 20 marks which felt to me the unethical thing to do as i felt that in previous attempts such an approach would have been frowned upon (at least based on my understanding). I am looking forward to examiner report.
From the start 3 possible risks were crossed out by the examiner (all companies in the group have the same year end, same currency and report according to IFRS) so you would have to go ahead and make up something else for some marks I guess.<br>Although I am pretty good with the computer, I found myself struggling in question 2 going back and forth trough 3-4 exibits to calculate materiality and at some point i knew i saw more info somewhere but no time to go trough 3 exibits again (which would again make me struggle to return to the more relevant ones while time is running out) so nevermind…<br>I would also like to add that many of us do not work on small screens or only with 1 screen anymore in the REAL WORLD (i have not worked on a screen this size since 2010) so if ACCA knows we will be sitting exams on 1 small screen to cut cost, then reduce exibit number. If you do not want to reduce the number of exibits, then less questions would be fine as well.

I found I couldn’t get any audit risks other than new audit client and asset to be held for sale if it doesn’t sell by august as anticipated. Then small bit about the fine provision.
Awful exam, ACCA seems really unfair lately.

@emwitton I would not know what to prepare better for a re-sit (except the accounting standards) as if the exam is like this it feels like a lottery with 150 pounds entrance ticket. You could enter the exam few times and hope for a lucky hand :)))

that’s correct! 🙁 even for business risk you can’t say new client

I don’t think so – the detection risk for a new client is a separate risk as the firm is not so familiar with the client business and the client’s environment. Opening balances and comparatives are RoMM as they might indeed be misstated since they were not audited by the current auditor

The same paper I had. But mostly question (company named) Dolphin seemingly was given to other students.
In general was not an OK paper but not very hard either.
The tricky parts were that some of the questions already beforehand indicated that for instance in audit risk, the group has the same currency, the same reporting period and etc. by this way limiting your choices to write about IAS 21, and or requirement for consolidation.
Again in other questions the same approach was applied i.e. they know that students already accustomed to some sort of answers during past papers revision and in the beginning they start indicating and eliminating those items by saying all of them already checked by auditors and are ok, so regular parts where students could get some easy marks based on their experience with past papers were tried to be eliminated by examiner and trying to focus on more difficult items.

Exactly, I thought there had to be missing information- certainly was not worth 24marks!

Agreed, but was tricky I guess, the examiner should just write audit risk and thats it,

Anyone did ROMM – risk of management bias?

Since company was listed, and was not doing well I think , no amortization and impairment was taken, so I suppose there is this general risk?

Also non disclosure of related party transactions, would that be a risk?

Lola wrote:Exactly, I thought there had to be missing information- certainly was not worth 24marks!

emwitton wrote:thirthy wrote:I think that the approach in this paper was different than the past exam papers, for example in audit risk question there was a disposal and not much else, what does the examiner expect, a different phrase on every possible aspect of a disposal? This seems to be milking 1 issue for 20 marks which felt to me the unethical thing to do as i felt that in previous attempts such an approach would have been frowned upon (at least based on my understanding). I am looking forward to examiner report.
From the start 3 possible risks were crossed out by the examiner (all companies in the group have the same year end, same currency and report according to IFRS) so you would have to go ahead and make up something else for some marks I guess.<br>Although I am pretty good with the computer, I found myself struggling in question 2 going back and forth trough 3-4 exibits to calculate materiality and at some point i knew i saw more info somewhere but no time to go trough 3 exibits again (which would again make me struggle to return to the more relevant ones while time is running out) so nevermind…<br>I would also like to add that many of us do not work on small screens or only with 1 screen anymore in the REAL WORLD (i have not worked on a screen this size since 2010) so if ACCA knows we will be sitting exams on 1 small screen to cut cost, then reduce exibit number. If you do not want to reduce the number of exibits, then less questions would be fine as well.

The scenario and the exhibit hints you what the risks are. Generally every single line of the exhibit could reveal a ROMM however the question asked for significant risks. So the first thing is to calculate materiality. However the period covered was for 10 months so this needed to be extrapolated. Control risk would be Sig as it is a 1st year audit. And so on

emwitton wrote:

Chris777 wrote:

Lola wrote:Exactly, I thought there had to be missing information- certainly was not worth 24marks!

yes i got the Dolphin question. Sorry, I should have mentioned it.

Also anyone remember procedures on due diligence for the employee redundancy provision and reduction in production costs – Q3?

Omg yes!! I was stressing out about this on the way home that I didn’t put enough materiality calcs in my answer ? but it was so hard to do because also the revenue and assets given were for 10months?! Literally hadn’t come across this in any past papers! ?