PMACCA Paper PM September 2020 Exam was.. Instant Poll and comments

Haha, the minimum quantity level question threw me. I just assumed it was the number of units to cover fixed costs according to the VC per unit. But yeah, no sign of cont/unit anywhere. Who knows... Section C therapists was, as agreed with the rest of the comments here, chaos.

I ignored the conversion cost..i just focused on selling price ,material cost and the hours per unit for the ranking

Yes I agree with you when I tried to build up the profit statement I was totally lost

yes I had that one too I was like going bonkers I though I was missing something from the question geez !

you were told the price that the supermarket wants to sell the veggie pot for, and you know what their cost plus mark-up is (20%), so dividing that price by 1.2, then dividing by the mark up the producer requires gives you the target cost of the product

Did anyone get the question on ROI for the two hotels? Did any of the managers have a bonus?

i got that question, and i found out that neither manager gets a bonus, not sure if that's right though.

I got that question too! I think one of them had a bonus and the other didn’t!! I’m not sure if the answer is correct

I did get that one of them had a £15,000 bonus but i think i have just remembered that i didn't add the tax back on to calculate it as the profit figure was after tax! I think I will be resitting

i may or may not lose marks for the calculations i have made in this question, but if i have made sensible comments on my figures, i will not lose marks twice because of ACCA's own figure rule.

Exactly! I believe it was 3M+5O <12000 6M +10O <27000 I can't simplify that because whatever you multiple the numbers with, it cancels it. Very annoying considering I spent alot of time on this question for revision and i bottled it in the exam cause of the complication

Hi all, may I kindly ask you how much scores were you obtaining during your revision papers? I was obtaining between 50s and 70s but when I was at the actual exam yesterday, I had that gut feeling that I won't pass, this is my second attempt ...

why do you think so?

knowing my luck yes …

Yes I feel the same! I did a mock test the day before and I scored around 70! But after yesterday, I’m not sure if I will pass! I know I completely messed in one of the questions in section C so that’s 20 marks gone!! I’m not sure if I will get 50 out of the remaining 80!! I have F9 exam tomorrow but I somehow feel demotivated after yesterday and I’m struggling to revise as I keep thinking about yesterday’s exam :(

Hello everyone! I sat the afternoon paper and was give the dreadful veggie pot question. This truly was a terrible exam. I have been averaging 70 in all my practice papers and still felt this exam went poorly. I recommend that everyone takes the ACCA survey that they have emailed out. Voice the issues you had with the exam otherwise they may do it again in December!

I agree with you all. It feels like they made it more difficult on purpose? Very tricky sentences, badly worded, too many questions where we had to type in the answer as opposed to choosing a b c or d. Too long questions for the time allocated. I studied like never before. run out of past papers and technical articles and I had never seen an exam as complicated as this.

I am concerned that if I take the survey and complain that sone of their questions were not clear it will affect my exam result somehow. yes I know they say it wont.. do not know whether to believe them or not.

I thought Sec A and B was quite fair although the learning curve questions about the Ties. etc in Sec B was poorly worded and quite confusing and time consuming to start getting your head around what they wanted. Some multiple choice tougher than others, as always. Section C, which is usually where I can pick up marks, was quite hard. I also got the Health Nuts, the Yuri and Lux hotels and another one which I cannot remember. All of the Section C were probably ok(ish) if we had more time but there were so many little snippets of information, spread out throughout the whole text, that I have no idea if the figures I got were correct or not. And, I am always to the last second, so, no time for checking whatsoever. I did have a question asking for the ROCE, Rec Days and OPM which on first glance I thought was absolutely lovely.....BUT, the way the question was worded and the information throughout the text, I had no idea how to get the actual required figures to be able to calculate the 100% correct ratio! This was section C though so some marks should kick in at least. I found for the amount of hours I spent studying, it was tough but do-able for a pass. I will see in 6 weeks though. The most frustrating aspect was that there was nothing on: Different types of budgets market skimming, etc NO Variance questions whatsoever! No building blocks, etc questions No ABC questions apart from a multiple choice wordy one I got quite a lot of breakeven, the maximax stuff and learning effects and curves. The amount of hours I spent mastering variances and not once did it show up! No transfer pricing for me which was a blessing!

I got the therapist question too where they had to bring two extra therapists for the full available 250 days to meet demand. I too ran out of time and will be very surprised if I pass this exam, I am so annoyed that I understood the concepts of the exam questions that came up but three hours just was not enough time to take in so much overcomplicated information and actually answer them well

it was current ratio, rec days and op. profit margin

Same here. Tried to solve the equations but they cancelled each other out?

How did you find the health nuts question ?

quite hard to get my head around it. at most i'll get 8, or max 10 marks for that question, if i'm lucky enough.

I got the same thing! I only had 15mins to answer though. Can't even remember what it asked now. was break-even analysis I think which was the one area in the whole entire syllabus I didn't get time to perfect. so that's a strike off. Hoping my understanding of ROI and RI for the other big c gets me through. I was a little confused which figures to use in the financials they gave to use for the capital employed though, wasn't clear what was the liability as I knew it definitely wasn't going to be the equity + long term debts as those weren't featured at all! I hate this exam. third time sitting since march. I have perfected everything, even optimal pricing algebra which I struggled with at first-- everything except CVP and that had to be featured everywhere this time round-- feel disheartened and disappointing but my friend told me to buck up because the best drivers never pass first time! Hopefully everything is so ingrained that the higher exams will be easier -- hoping I passed this time...

I just had a look at the comments in other chats about other exams but they are OK. It seems that we were the lucky ones.. I bet it was a new person who designed our PM exams, or as someone said they did it in a rush. It would be devastating having to re-sit because of their mistakes. The least they can do when they make a mistake in one question (I.e. the simultaneous equations that could not be solved ) is to give us those 2 points for the damage caused.

Omg @amariag1982 - think I got exactly the same paper. I found all the health nuts Q rubbish.Hated it. thought it was also very wordy for what needed doing and I ran out of time to do it. I quite like the learning curve stuff. In the yuri Lux Q,I thought the ROI figures weren't clear enough particularly in figuring out what I needed for the capital employed figure...maybe not understanding it properly maybe but I do think it was a bit harsh. I found that I could identify what should be the liability. Although understood they expected you to know that the controllable profit is before tax. .

Yep, totally get you! Exactly what I meant. Given more time I'm sure it would seem easier. The Health Nuts had information all over the bleeding place.

I calculated that the Yuri manager gets bonus...

I got this question and also calculated that neither of the managers got bonus this year as it was below target(i think in the question it said to calculate bonus ''if any'')