*** ACCA Paper PM December 2018 Exam was.. Instant Poll and comments ***

Overall I think the exam was a disaster for me. Don’t particularly believe it was that difficult but run out of time in the end. The budgetary control I didn’t have time to finish it as I left it for last. I basically amended the 12 month budget period to compare it to the Actual 6 months, which I thought was the correct way. I now believe it was not. Think it was a way by the ACCA to trick us into believing that that was the correct way of doing it.

For the ROI and RI I believe I knew the knowledge to what was controllable and what was not. My revised ROI included also amending the Capital employed, deducting the head office control figures. I know that this is not the correct way, as only Controllable Profit should have been amended, but it made sense to me to also adjust the capital employed. Perhaps someone can shed light into the correct way it should have been calculated.

Investment was given right for the calculation of RI & ROI?

..

@koindoresq1982 said:
That appeared to me like a flexed budget statement they were asking for. I I had to flexed the 12 months budget by calculating the cost per unit of the various items and suing that figure and multiply by the actual units ie 950 units to get my revised budget. I compared this to the six months actual and did the variance. That was my approach but don not know whether that was what the examiner wanted.

I did the same. Another C section question for me is police force. It was disgusting.

Why was it disgusting?

kikikiki I hear you on the variances, what I noticed was each was supposed to take 2 hours as per budget so though not stated , budgeted hours were 80 hours, just a guess, anyone with an idea on the pricing question? MR =MC? it really ;left me blank like i knew what was required but were to start from. Anyway first time writing computer based exams so time was not on my side.

bea1991 it seems like we had exactly the same issues.
I was prepared for all difficult calculations and got stuck on MR.
I also felt that there wasn’t enough information to calculate labour rate V. Couldnt calculate any of the options provided, just guessed.

@darciecoco said:
I seemed to get quite different questions…!

I got a variance one but not about bikes, but it was really hard (and I was fairly confident with variances). 2nd one was about musical instruments costings / mark ups. 3rd one was about a florist using minimax regret and decision trees. Haven’t seen anyone with these questions…!

C questions were optimal pricing / marginal revenue and marginal costing and about three EE’s.

@darciecoco said:
I seemed to get quite different questions…!

I got a variance one but not about bikes, but it was really hard (and I was fairly confident with variances). 2nd one was about musical instruments costings / mark ups. 3rd one was about a florist using minimax regret and decision trees. Haven’t seen anyone with these questions…!

C questions were optimal pricing / marginal revenue and marginal costing and about three EE’s.

@darciecoco said:
I seemed to get quite different questions…!

I got a variance one but not about bikes, but it was really hard (and I was fairly confident with variances). 2nd one was about musical instruments costings / mark ups. 3rd one was about a florist using minimax regret and decision trees. Haven’t seen anyone with these questions…!

C questions were optimal pricing / marginal revenue and marginal costing and about three EE’s.

I got the same questions as you, when I saw the question on value of perfect information my mind just went blank! I think I put 1000 which was the difference between the worse and best profit of EV. I complemtely blanked on how to calculate Marginal revenue in the section C question which I am now kicking myself about!!

@koindoresq1982 said:
That appeared to me like a flexed budget statement they were asking for. I I had to flexed the 12 months budget by calculating the cost per unit of the various items and suing that figure and multiply by the actual units ie 950 units to get my revised budget. I compared this to the six months actual and did the variance. That was my approach but don not know whether that was what the examiner wanted.

I did the same thing as you did. The only mistake I made which I realized that it was stated to make a revised Budgetary CONTROL STATEMENT and i didnt show the variances, hopefully i might get scores for the flexed portion. Funny thing is that I mentioned the variances in the next part b that with revised we can see this is the variances.
Oh well hopefully they do reward marks for this.

For my section C, the very last question was to do with pricing. It was a discussion question on price skimming, complementary pricing, price discrimination. They were 4 marks each, based on engines.

I actually flagged the questions on labour planning variance and material operational variance as I completely forgot how to work it out based on the information given. I know how to calculate it, but must be pressure which led to my mind going blank. I went back later and did manage to calculate the correct answer for the material operational variance! Was super happy!

For the ROI/RI question – I wrote about how a large percentages of IB College’s cost are non-controllable by the management team, as a result they would feel demotivated and discouraged, as the target is not achievable, as such will make decisions which are not goal congruence.

This may sound silly, but for one of the question related to this scenario, asking for an alternative metric to RI, I wrote ROI, was going to write ROCE, but I remember John.Moffot in his lecture saying that ROCE is the same as ROI but depends on the situation.

I think that the questions that vary from one to another are the 10 marks which doesn’t count…just a wild guess. I do hope that the questions I didn’t answer are the ones that doesn’t count.

Overall the paper was not bad as questions were drawn from different area of the syllabus.

Section A was a bit straightforward except for few objectives that were tricky like the question on the quick/acid test ratio and RI.

Section B again was appreciable looking at LCC, advanced variances and linear programming. I think the challenging aspect was with the variance calculation. But again it was not that difficult. The linear programing question was a give away provided you understand the principles behind it. The LCC question was a good one with some tricks more so in calculating the LCC per unit. Most students must have left out the time period for the two stations.

Section C examined budgeting and divisional transfer pricing. The RI and ROI was really simply and straightforward. The challenging part for some students would have been the discussion element. Accountants must provide meaning to their calculations. The budgeting question again was not really bad as students were asked to revised the budget for the six months period taking into account the changes that took place within the budget period. Beyond budget was a shock for some student but with only two marks which was just a token.

As I conclude, we must study very hard, covering the entire syllabus and practice a lot of exam style questions and don’t forget to expect the unexpected as the examiner is not restricted to draw questions.

@dipatil said:
guys anyone remember exactly what was the b part of 2nd question of CBE it was sth about give comments on the budgetary ctrl but I want to remember what was exactly asked.

It was why the revised budgetary control statement calculated in part (a) important for the (whatever the name was of the company)?

Beyond Budget was a surprise! I was expecting to see ABC Budget, Incremental and Zero-based budgeting. Anyway, revise budget statement would make an impact.