*** ACCA Paper PM June 2019 Exam was.. Instant Poll and comments ***

Hi what was your calculation about

I did on the basis of actual cost 2018 than divide to no of customer in each section

And obviously zBb theory etc

My time management was way off 🙁
Section A was OK I guess, I struggled with the payoff table asking you to provide two values that would fit the grid. Section B was fine up until the concert question came up… I got a margin of safety of 85%. Things went a little worse when it was asking to give the profit figures after break even is considered whilst excluding the private booths… I knew the formulae perfectly yet I couldn’t get back to the numbers provided. I had to end up rushing because I spent just over an hour on section A. Section C was crazy, a question on Balanced Scorecard, I knew it had something to do with Kaplan and Norton’s model, sadly I couldn’t remember it with the time pressure. The 16 mark question on Non financial performance measures came as a shock. I put in 2 bullet points with the measures which I thought might be relevant and that was it! The last questions on section C related to expenditure budget (I managed to submit something whilst excluding the depreciation charges as I recalled from an old paper not to include it in expenditures… but I maybe wrong), incremental budgeting and zero based. I managed to write a paragraph under each of the discussion parts but it may not be enough to get a good mark. I was hoping for more calculations but alas the worst came to pass…I put in one disadvantage for incremental budgeting, in that it builds upon past inefficiencies and then I moved onto suggesting using a zero based approach for arriving at better costs, this might have not been in the scope of the question. The last part on zero based budgeting, I could just about describe it but I’m not sure if was enough. Well I’ve learnt a lot from the experience. It would have been easier if they gave me a question on ABC costing or Lifecyle or the topics that I focused my revision on! Even a EMA question would have been a blessing… They should give us noise cancelling headphones, I hated the keyboard bashing noises… kept getting distracted. Oh well, you live and learn, sure I’ll pass it on my next attempt!

@tudd94 said:
My time management was way off 🙁
Section A was OK I guess, I struggled with the payoff table asking you to provide two values that would fit the grid. Section B was fine up until the concert question came up… I got a margin of safety of 85%. Things went a little worse when it was asking to give the profit figures after break even is considered whilst excluding the private booths… I knew the formulae perfectly yet I couldn’t get back to the numbers provided. I had to end up rushing because I spent just over an hour on section A. Section C was crazy, a question on Balanced Scorecard, I knew it had something to do with Kaplan and Norton’s model, sadly I couldn’t remember it with the time pressure. The 16 mark question on Non financial performance measures came as a shock. I put in 2 bullet points with the measures which I thought might be relevant and that was it! The last questions on section C related to expenditure budget (I managed to submit something whilst excluding the depreciation charges as I recalled from an old paper not to include it in expenditures… but I maybe wrong), incremental budgeting and zero based. I managed to write a paragraph under each of the discussion parts but it may not be enough to get a good mark. I was hoping for more calculations but alas the worst came to pass…I put in one disadvantage for incremental budgeting, in that it builds upon past inefficiencies and then I moved onto suggesting using a zero based approach for arriving at better costs, this might have not been in the scope of the question. The last part on zero based budgeting, I could just about describe it but I’m not sure if was enough. Well I’ve learnt a lot from the experience. It would have been easier if they gave me a question on ABC costing or Lifecyle or the topics that I focused my revision on! Even a EMA question would have been a blessing… They should give us noise cancelling headphones, I hated the keyboard bashing noises… kept getting distracted. Oh well, you live and learn, sure I’ll pass it on my next attempt!

If it’s any sympathy, I had the same section C questions as you and struggled with them. I also would have preferred more calculations. I wrote very similar answers for the disadvantage of incremental and for the benefits of ZBB.
I guess i’ll find out in 6 weeks how well I did.

I also had the balance scorecard and the incremental vs ZBB budgeting. But I struggled with that question too, tbh I don’t think I did well on section A and B.

One Otq was based on absorption costing + ABC costing + Environmental Costing.
second Otq was based on variances and last OTq was based on Risk and Uncertainty.Whereas first CRQ was on the topic of tranfer Pricing and Second was based on incremental budgeting + Zero Based Budgeting. Overall the paper was fine but it was my first CBE attempt and the typing noise was a concentration distraction. I guess high low method was required in the transfer pricing calculations for both Divisons as the selling and admin costs icnluded both fixed and variable.Let’s wait for the results and hope for best Insha Allah.

any one else had the material yield/mix question and performance based on variances?, i had it too section c but it was a weak area of mine. i feel this exam was tougher than expected as i scored a solid 70% over the whole bpp revision kit so i feel they arent really adequate to prepare for this 1.also time pressure was an issue for me too i had to guess 1 in section a at the end and got cut off trying to write a bit more in section c, maybe i dwelled too much on some 2 mark questions but some were numerous calculation types

Idk I found the paper okayy, not that bad, I had alot of theory in my section C, I got ZBB and zero based budgeting and a 20marks question for assessing financial and non financial performance.

Hello
can you please tell me a more about the incremental budgeting question

I mean like how was it ?
and 20 marks allocated for it ?

It shouldn’t have been too bad. Always a few tricky questions, but if you read the examiners article, one of my questions came from it, exactly (hint! Always read the examiners articles)
Sec B scenario based question for concert tickets on CVP analysis threw me off and got so mixed up
Section C was writing only, minimal calculations, on incremental budgeting vs ZBB and balance scorecard. 15 mins to go and I realised I needed to explain why I chose the specific performance measures.
All in all, not as disastrous as expected, but will see what the results come back with.

@fahad198803 said:
Exam was easy. Time managment was an issue but I think a little practice would have resolved it. What I think is open tuition notes are relevant, for exams, students should also other books as well for better results.

We do make it very clear that the notes are just lecture notes and that there is no point in using them unless you also watch the lectures that work through the notes.
We also stress that it essential to buy a Revision Kit from one of the ACCA approved publishers because practice at past exam and other exam-standard questions is vital to passing the exam.

Well, I did all 4 mock tests ( 2 from BPP and 2 Kaplan, free with ACCA passwords). can tell you that it depends, what is in the test. I finished one on time, two half an hour faster and one couldn’t finish on time.
In real test I was short of time. I guess if I had one calculation and one blarb (balance scorecard, ZBB) I would finish on time. With two calculation tasks in part C it is just not doable, hopefully, this still be enough to pass. I didn’t attempt question worth 9 marks, and half finished calculation in b). So, one 20 mark question would bring me 4-7 marks at the best(part a)). The second hopefully 15-20.

@khikmatullo said:
There was a question on ABC costing in OTQ section where it said to calculate by ABC and there was written that there were environmental costs as well. Do we include environmental cost when calculating ABC?
Thanks !

Can anyone share his opinion on the weather the environmental cost must be excluded from the calculation of ABC for the two materials ?

@faeqquadri said:
The exam was relatively good for me, but take what I have to say with a grain of salt as I got really lucky.

It started off with surprisingly difficult sec-a and sec-b questions, and this is coming from someone who did every MCQ question out there. Still, I managed to pull through somehow and throughout the entire time I kept telling myself that there has to be a trade-off because of how hard these MCQ’s were.

And sure enough, come sec-c, and I was almost angry at how simple and straight forward the questions were. The first question asked me to explain what mix and yield variances were, solve them for a question, then end by analyzing a few variances that were caused in a month due to changes in the company policy, suppliers of good, etc. It was a straight-forward process and connecting the dots was simple.

The second question was like a dream, giving me 4 marks for just briefly explaining the 4 core aspects of a balanced scorecard, then the remaining 16 were for analyzing the case study, associating them with each of the aspects, citing goals from the case study and giving two performance measurements for each of those qualitative values.

All in all, to all those writing the exam next, I’d strongly ask you to work on as many transfer pricing questions as they can be the most challenging in sec-c (if that wasn’t already apparent by the ominous replies of many here who’ve fallen prey to them) and keeping a cool head and asking yourself to believe in the work you’ve put in, will go a long way.

Oh, and of course, thank you, John Moffat, you absolute cutie.

i had the same exam. can you remember what you wrote for the balanced scorecard goals,how u calc the yield and also what points u made for the performance due to variances?