AAA*** ACCA Paper AAA September 2018 Exam was.. Instant Poll and comments ***

I feel absolutely miserable after that attempt. Question 1 took me 2hrs15mins, it was bloody long and exhausting. By the time I got to the other questions I was drained and couldn’t finish. Praying and hoping for a miracle. I knew how to answer all the questions just that time screwed me over

I agree with the other 2 comments. Time was just such a problem that my exam technique went out of the window and it was a scramble for survival. I don't think the questions were that much harder than what I has seen in previous papers it was just time. There was so much to do just for Q1 alone.....

One other thought....i think the 15m reading time is misleading as the examiner's just seem to make the exam longer nowadays so you are no better off!

Was under the impression that doing three questions was going to be and improvement to the old exams of four questions. Unfortunately they were just as lengthy and involved a lot of reading and calculations. Fingers crossed for a pass.

Actually so annoyed after that exam. Absolutely ridiculous the amount of information in question 1. Totally unfair paper. Questions were not difficult but time and to actually read the information nearly took 45mins. I've got 3 p's first attempt actually feel like lodging a complaint about this. expectations of students was not achievable. Also inconsistency was it a first engagement ? Information not clear.

can anyone confirm me the Q1a Audit marks?And also if it was on ROMM.

Totally agree. It was a very lengthy paper. But do anyone of you remember the audit report in Q2? I dint have time to read the full question. Just read it in parts and wrote the answer. I got the Leases one as a Qualified Opinion, the second one was Emphasis of matter paragraph and the 3rd one again being Qualified Opinion. Anybody?

IT WAS A VERY LENGTHY PAPER HOPE EXAMINER GIVES SOME COMPENSATIONS

I AGREE WITH YOU

Question 1 took too much time. Question 2 and 3 was ok but I could not think well to analyse due to time pressure. All these time pressure did not allow me to apply all what i revised well.

18% discount rate cause concern Operating expenses fall by 92% Other income reversal of entries Finance/interest New client therefore understanding entity Fourth division Share capital not evident 100m expenditure 12 m uplift Ethical issues in part d anyone

Q2 1. Lease: Qualified Opinion as it is material misstatement but not pervasive 2. Provision: also Qualified Opinion as it is highly material to SOPL but not pervasive. We can nor offet provision and contingent assets confirmed by insurance company, IAS37. 3. Impairment: not material, so opinion is not modified.

I spent two hours on question 1 and had to scramble for time, on questions 2 and 3. Not confident on my stated audit risks, hope I made up the marks on procedures and ethics in question 1. Leases, impairment and provisions for question 2 matters and report was OK. I blacked out on the last question as my hand was moving faster than my brain, I felt I made some fair points. Overall, there were too many requirements for a three hour 15 minutes paper.

Same as that. Any insight Billy to question 1

Q1 I also mentioned about - Detection risk as it is new client, - opening balance could be misstated, - R&D cost could be mixed up, - Tax rate is lower so could understate liability and expenses. - OPM increased but revenue decreased so understate expenses. - exachange difference on subsi should go to OCI.

There are not 15 mins of reading time. Haven't been for years. By the time 15 mins were up, you should have had 6 ratios calculated for 2 years and Briefing notes set up and have 9 marks minimum in the bank :)

THE EXAM WAS SO FRIKIN LONG OMG . Took me 2hours just to finish q1 even though I thought I would start with the other 2 ques after an hour and half , but alas. Knew how to answer q2 and q3 but couldn't answer or write them down properly because I was panicking due to lack of time, hope I've managed to get enough points across to get the 50. I had only 15 minutes to answer q3 , did requirement c first of quality control issues, then rushed to part a and didn't get time to do part b at all :( I feel like we should start a petition to get through acca to let the students slide through for not completing the paper on time due to it being extremely long .

It was a new client as the question said “was assigned to the audit “ - apart from this it wasn’t very clear. Audit risks for Q1 were as follows ; - Listed Entity - risk of management bias I.e reversal of provisions - New client - risk if misstated opening balanced - Reliance on component auditor - risk of reduced audit quality - Intangible Assets - included research costs, overstating assets and profit. - finance costs not in line with increase in borrowing - PPE increased with no sign of capex or depreciation - goodwill increased by 130, 30 being unaccounted for. Risk of overstatement - decline in revenue and Increased competition could merit impairment. Ethical issues in Q1 - Integrated Report ; Management responsibility + Self review threat. Mgt responsibility cannot be mitigated, decline request. Self review can be mitigated by use of different teams, howerver listed status would require to decline. Q2 - Uncorrected Statements Brief intro talking about how misstatements should be discussed with management and those charged with governance before modifying report. Leases - Qualified - Not pervasive Claims - Adverse - Material to both profit and assets. Aggregate impact of leases and claims - Adverse opinion Assets - Not material- Unmodofied This is all I remember. Please feel free to add on to this,

Q1 was unfairly long and time consuming with all the exhibits it might as well should have been q1 only for the whole paper. Was so rushed for my last question q2 didn’t even notice it was the audit opinion/report

I feel like most of you..spent 2 hours on question 1, so rushed through the other 2..

Does anyone know what the split of 50 marks would have been for Q1?

Did anyone else put component auditor and segmental reporting due to being listed as audit risks for Q1? I think I only put about 6 audit risks but calculated materiality on a couple of mentioned professional scepticism so hoping I’ll get a few extra marks here. Didn’t calculate any financial ratios or trends though! I did the UK variant - what did others put for question 3 part b regarding the implications for the directors of Krupt’s actions on the going concern review? I believe this was a different question to the international paper.

Exam was very similar to the pilot paper on the website as you’d expect but my goodness it was longer.... Examiner must think it is a four hour exam with the amount of read time required. I don’t understand, ACCA are looking for professional people giving professional answers but then you’re expected to respond well to that, it’s just incredible. Where was the mark allocation for question 1. Was it just make it up as you go along. Wow, wow, wow

@zubairhira said: can anyone confirm me the Q1a Audit marks?And also if it was on ROMM.

24 marks RoMM + Detection Risk I think it was audit risk.

most exchange differences on retranslating a sub go to P or L, not OCI. But these harder accounting issues are not what fails people so are best not worrying about. The moment you see a new sub acquired, that is overseas, even if story says same year end, they use IFRS and have same acc policies, and even with story saying ignore disclosure risks (I did not do the exam but am told it said that?), you have at least 4 audit risks (initial GW, impaired GW at y/e, forex retranslation, pre v post acqn reserves calc). That is 8 marks if well explained. Add on 6 for ratios, 3 for Prof Marks, and surely there are 4 standard goodwill tests on any company and you have 21 already having barely touched the scenario (if at all). No controls testing, and use of IA staff, must be worth at least 2 easy marks? That's 23 and still haven't read the story that everyone will always say is too long. Pass the question on easy to get marks first. Read 3-4 paragraphs of scenario to find another 3-4 accounting areas for audit risks, then ditch Q1 completely, or alternatively tell yourself you are safe, stop Q1 after 97.5 mins, and job done. But if you have fallen foul to overrunning due to a failure to do the above, worry not (well not too much). So many people will have done the same, and surely ACCA want a pass rate no worse than 30%? If you have written answers in a decent technique then even if you haven't finished I am sure you will be safely through :)

This is my second attempt after failing with 48% last time. I find the time pressure really hard and trying to get what’s in my head into paper in a methodical articulate way seems to be my greatest challenge ! I spent far too long on question 1. Answered most of the other questions other than the integrated report question in section 1 which I’ve just remembered I missed completely ! Happy with the fraudulent and wrongful trading question. Not that confident that I answered with the detail required for the professional papers. Happy that I put some decent points about ethics and professionalism but got in a muddle when thinking about audit risk in question 1. Carried out some ratio calcs but the main issues all seemed to be relating to the goodwill issue/acquisition of lynx .

"It was ridiculous that they didn’t break down the marks. The sample paper would suggest 20 marks, but thagcould have been gained from analytical procedures alone. Far too much info to digest" Presumably you are doing UK, where they have not broken down the marks for about several years. I am concerned if that was a surprise! Fact is that whenever analytical comes up it tends to be worth about 6 marks of calcs, so if UK students practice using INT stream forms of the questions they will know that. Pick six calcs and leave the rest alone as there are no marks for going overboard. Likewise risks. If you can see 20 risks, pick around 9-10 and ignore the rest. The key is to provide 18 marks of answer, not answer the entire scenario (where she provides too many risks so that everyone will find some, not to overload you). As I said to one of my class, if you think you have too many risks be happy. Shows you know what you are doing. Just go with those you are most comfortable explaining and ditch the rest. Has always been like this, and I don't understand why so many students think they have to cover every available point (instead of 24 marks worth)...

too long and time pressured only able to do 70%... I was writing more or thinking more don't know what went wrong... maybe examiner put overloaded info.. 24 marks Q1a that was really bad.. at least breakdown into more requirements like Q2 n Q3.... Q1a) was just disaster never seen in past exams a question worth of 24 marks.

Question 1 was a bit evil. So much flicking back and forth between pages! I answered every part to every question and stuck to my game plan, did not overrun anything, applied the best technique I could. Used the words ‘to verify’ a lot and the word because a fair bit to help remind myself to explain every point as much as possible. Q2 I got Qualified ‘except for’ for opinion on the leases, adverse opinion on the claim because it was more than half of profit and affected more than one FS item (Assets, expenses and disclosers). Then the impairment was immaterial but I mentioned ISA 450 were you have to weight up the total misstatements except for trivial items. Q3 I had fun plucking up loads of thing on part B’s scenario. The lack of qualification for the supervisor, the fact a cash settled scheme was treated as an equity one and the journal to reverse it, the poor planning to only arrange a meeting with the sick audit manager at the last minute, the fact that checking a expert website is not enough to be reassured of their competence, the fact the supervisor could use a lot more training and so on. Q3 Part A was okay and similar enough to previous PFI questions. Hoping I done enough to pass now. We shall see.

This is the first sitting of the new syllabus. The question was very long especially the q1 which contain about 5 exhibits. Those who had worked the sample pilot paper from ACCA wont have any issues because the reasoning are same. The q3 on forecasted pnl was almost a copy cut version from the pilot paper. But it was extremely time constraint..... expert are telling to plan your time well. Even through proper planning, time run out without being able to complete all questions. And also elimination of choice question had made the exam a little more harder. Anyone agree with me.