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

Parts A and B were testing but straightforward - part C was tough with both Transfer pricing and incremental costing questions containing a lot of info to digest is the time available -did anyone else get the same questions??

I found section a & b to be pretty tough. Was left with 6 questions which required a lot of time and I sort of got to answers each but wasn’t overly confident. I had a lot of budgeting questions there. Section c was amazing imo. I had transfer pricing for bed & mattresses as well as variance questions for manager or train engineer. I’m pretty confident with section C, hope I’ve done enough in section A & B really .

Doesn’t everyone get the same questions? I got Best Night Hotel Co and the variances and assessing train engineer’s performance in section C.

Under CBE every exam can be different. I also had the bed and mattresses question but I wasn’t confident with it - what was your conclusion in the end?

Mine wasn’t beds & mattresses but comparing Best Night Hotel Co’s financial and non-financial performance 20X6 vs. 20X7.

I’d have preferred that question!

Section A was a little bit tricky with most of it Section B was tough for me specially throughput question and rolling budget. Section C was good for me specially the variance analysis. Time was not enough for me to blink a second but I managed to finish it all I got variance analysis and best night hotel questions in section C Let me know how was your section B questions!! Overall was ok until seeing my results ?

Sections A and B were quite easy I thought - mybsection C questions were transfer pricing for Beds/mattresses and a relevant costs question which had loads of info to take in during the time available. I think it will depend on how many marks I picked up in sect C?

Who else got the question with the Hotel and Water Park? What conclusion did you arrived to? I closed the Hotel and kept the Water park open.... Second question on part C with Beds and Mattress, transfering price...buying from external supplier was improving company's profits according to my results... I think Section B was quite okay, but I did spend too much time...

It was somewhere between 'ok' and 'hard'. It was hard enough, but if someone had practiced a little more than the kits, it would be okay for them. Unfortunately i was on the wrong side of practice. I should have done practice of performance assessment 10 times more. Section A was relatively straightforward. Lots of calculation based MCQs, which were easier than previous sittings. Section B was relatively tough in comparison with Section A. There was an MTQ on CVP analysis, which troubled me and took a lot of time. Section C was a mess for me. 1 question on Variance analysis, where 8 marks for calculations while 10 marks for performance assessment. The analysis part has always been a pain for me, so i was nervous already. It even got worse in the other question, which was Night Hotel Co. 20 straight marks for performance assessment with only 5 marks for calculation. These 30 marks went terribly, otherwise the exam was manageable. Time management really is an important area for passing. I need to work on that in next exams.

Run out of time went blank and panicked. Wil b harder if had to go through all these again. A lot of costings and wished acca had a clearer language in the scenarios

Wow I had no idea people got different questions until I saw the comments here! Freaked out thinking I’ve misread questions or missed something completely haha! I had the variance analysis for the Engineering manager and Best Night Hotel. Found section B quite hard and particularly lengthy! Hopefully should be enough for a pass! Good luck everyone!

@shreyasanyal1991 said: Wow I had no idea people got different questions until I saw the comments here! Freaked out thinking I’ve misread questions or missed something completely haha! I had the variance analysis for the Engineering manager and Best Night Hotel. Found section B quite hard and particularly lengthy! Hopefully should be enough for a pass! Good luck everyone!

Same questions, got troubled due to lack of proper plan in answering plus time management.

I think I passed this exam with around 70% :) This exam tested a wide breadth of areas. I spent around 40 minutes answering the hotel question which was worth 20 marks. Afterward I was tight on time for the remaining questions. So had to half answer the remaining questions. But overall I believe I have done enough to pass. Though there was this rolling budget question on revenue and labour cost for q2 of 20x8 which I changed my answer three times. Did anyone factor in a 4% revenue increase from actual q1 revenue and add on 2% for inflation? This one I'm unsure as the commentary part stated that there was no growth for the q1 actual, but only 2% for inflation as opposed to 1% as budgeted. For labour did anyone only budgeted an increase of 2% for inflation based on actual q1 cost?

I had no clue either that the questions will be different on section C and I was asking loads of questions one of the girls after the exam... and her answers were making no sense to me..hahaha...best of luck anyway...hoping for the 50 marks nothing more..

I'm so happy I finally passed this exam! I'll be taking F4 next hopefully sometime next month. Then F7 in June. What really helped me was to learn and understand the formulaes and calculations, rather than trying to remember them...there is a difference!

If any one could confirm the below answers make sense. Bed & Mattress I worked out that the manager of bed division would see his profit reduced if he ended up going for going for the new supplier where as the manager or mattress division his profit would increase however the manager of bed division was approached with offer and as such he would not want to accept the offer as the revenue & costs are in the hands of each manager due to the full autonomy for each manager. I also noted that overall profitability would increase for Sneeze Co as they would be able to sell more beds/mattresses to external market at a higher price. Again I further explained that due to the manner at which the bonuses are provided on ROCE basis the individual manager will look to increase their own profits I.e short termism. Train Engineer Market conditions has changed for the price of coal to $45 and the budgeted price per tonne of coal was $40 so there is going to be adverse planing variance for price. However the engineer was able to obtain an average of $43 per tonne of coal and there for has a favourable price variance. On usage basis, the actual usage of coal was 355 tonnes, with the budgeted amount being (hard time remembering) 300 tonnes? However as the managment for June decided to increase the amount of journeys from 150 to 170 13.33% increase therefore the average usage would also increase and the budgeted usage should have been revised to 340. Both of the variances were adverse, however within the question it was mentioned that the trains frequently break down and therefore there are inefficiencies in the engine and as the number of journies have increase the adverse variance for operational variance were overly poor.

@tyjac said: I'm so happy I finally passed this exam! I'll be taking F4 next hopefully sometime next month. Then F7 in June. What really helped me was to learn and understand the formulaes and calculations, rather than trying to remember them...there is a difference!

How are you so sure you’ve passed?

Took the CBE exam this morning. Sections A and B were quite fair in my opinion. Had a variance question in section C that was also fair (about coal for a train service company). The other (Teeland) was a nightmare. Anybody else thinks that?

Hi Alina - I had the same section C Qs. I Got really confused with water park/Hotel one so I’m sure i will have only picked up a few marks for method/the easier revenue/cost lines. For transfer pricing I reached a different conclusion - that both managers would prefer to trade externally to benefit their divisions revenue but marginal cost for the company to produce mattresses was lower that the external purchase price so that both managers would benefit but the company was worse off ? Not sure if I misunderstood the scenario or not?

Yes I got the same. How did you approach the incremental costing question on the Hotel & Water Park?

I got this question to... I totally made it up - not sure what i did was correct. What i did was for each (hotel and water park) i listed out the revenue less relevant costs to come to a total net figure??? Is this how it was supposed to be done?

Section A and B were fair to me. Section C the last question on variances was doale, however I had spent most of the time trying to navigate the question on Interpal which was a total disaster for me. If I do not make it the great lesson learnt is time Management. I hope I picked enough questions under Sections A and B to get me a pass mark. Worried coz I studied and prepared hard for this exam and would hae wanted to pass it on one sitting... Is Mr John Moffat the examiner, coz of references of similar surnames in the questions?

@robertroddy said: Parts A and B were testing but straightforward - part C was tough with both Transfer pricing and incremental costing questions containing a lot of info to digest is the time available -did anyone else get the same questions??

I had the same questions. There was just too much to read!! I didn't like the mix of multiple choice q's either. Definite fail!!

I got to the point where I was obviously just making things up. Would've preferred budgeting and variances.

@nisathepizza said: Yes I got the same. How did you approach the incremental costing question on the Hotel & Water Park?

Hotel and Water Park.............Anyone can suggest how the marking break up would be

In the MCQ Section A - there was a question on what protection can the company put in place to prevent employee gainig unauthrosied access to it... What was the answer??? I put encryption and firewall - Not spyware... This is bugging me

Hi - you never know you may pick up enough marks. I think it’s silly that the question wording is designed to confuse - I recognise its to challenge candidates but one question was more about trying to understand what was being said rather than testing application of skill.

@kariw said: I got to the point where I was obviously just making things up. Would've preferred budgeting and variances.

This was section c in a nutshell for me (bed and mattresses and the resort questions). Had no idea as to how to go about answering them and just froze, so I'd say I'm looking at 5 marks out of the 40. Fairly confident that if variance or financial/non-financial performance came up I'd be getting close to 50% in that section. They're the breaks you get I guess.

@robertroddy said: Hi Alina - I had the same section C Qs. I Got really confused with water park/Hotel one so I’m sure i will have only picked up a few marks for method/the easier revenue/cost lines. For transfer pricing I reached a different conclusion - that both managers would prefer to trade externally to benefit their divisions revenue but marginal cost for the company to produce mattresses was lower that the external purchase price so that both managers would benefit but the company was worse off ? Not sure if I misunderstood the scenario or not?

Robert, I think I had about 5 minutes of only thinking from where to start on the hotel question, is done anyway, hopefully we will get some marks. I stated to close the Hotel for the January and keep the water park open as the overall loss according to my calculations was the less than having them both closed or both open... Q2 I think we have the similar answer as the profit was higher for the company if was to buy the mattress from the external supplier... this was my first attempt, tomorrow I'll have a second try on F7....