*** F5 December 2015 Exam was.. Instant Poll and comments ***

MCQ – seemed fair, came back to a few as I got brain freeze and found them easier when I came back. Hope the rest were ok.

Question 1 – Practised long and hard for this question 😀

Question 2 – I can’t even remember this question

Question 3 – seemed very subjective. There were many things to comment upon, but the lead partners statement was where they were asking you to comment… I fear I ended up rambling. It seemed odd to me also, that part b was for 3 marks, considering it was asking for three points. I either aced this or disgraced it :-/

Question 4 – Seemed odd to be calculating bonuses, but it felt like common sense. I almost forgot one of the first things I ever learnt; capital = assets – liabilities. spent 2 minutes trying to figure out one of the principle accounting equations lol.

Ugh, question 5! – What a nightmare! I actually came back to part b of this question at the end of the exam as interrupting it was giving me a headache the first time that I attempted it. This was supposed to be one of my ‘favourite questions’, but the comment about limiting factors got me confused, as it looked like a ‘linear programming’ question to me.
Hopefully aced part a and c though. mentioned the learning curve, sourcing from different suppliers etc

All in all – I felt that Q3 was vague and Q5 b was horrible, I’ve studied so hard for this only to find that Q3 and Q4 could have been attempted by most people with a common sense. I feel confident I will be happy on results day, but I wouldn’t make a bet on it.

I get the favourable yield also?but most of friends get it adverse.and Q1b asking the reason for adverse yield?this make me worried that the answer could be adverse yield

Got a bonus of 32.5 or 34.5% for division f – Capped at 30%
Division N as 11.7% minus the 10 and the point 7 (had to be a whole number). Total bonus of 2%

:-/

@lesbella said:
I use net profit /ta-cl

I think either will be acceptable as long as you explained why you used it as it asked.
I used controllable as I didn’t think they had control over the apportioned overheads.

hey did anyone get mat. mix as $16.54 and yield as $82??
this was the only question that i was confident about!!! Also, the
RoI question did we have to reduce 6.8 mill(value of the investment) from the capital employed??

what was question 2.. did it require payoff tables.. or was it simple throughput investment option..

@benson1 said:
hey did anyone get mat. mix as $16.54 and yield as $82??
this was the only question that i was confident about!!! Also, the
RoI question did we have to reduce 6.8 mill(value of the investment) from the capital employed??</blockquote

I think my mix was 16.51 adverse and my yield was 19 something favourable totals was 3.3f which I matched back to the material usage variance not sure it’s correct though.

@saed said:
Hello guys

regarding question 5 the maximum demand requires less than the level of Kgs of Material A and Material B that are available. therefore, the company should manufacture the maximum demand to maximize its contribution.

Thanks

Saed

so produce everything in-house is what you’re saying?

Producing everything in house required 12600 kg of material a and there was only 12400 kg available.

If we produced all 800 units of X in house we would have to make less L or M

We could produce 600 units of X in house without breaching any constraints, the question was whether it was better to produce the last 200 of X in house or buy it in.

@chris165 said:
Producing everything in house required 12600 kg of material a and there was only 12400 kg available.

If we produced all 800 units of X in house we would have to make less L or M

We could produce 600 units of X in house without breaching any constraints, the question was whether it was better to produce the last 200 of X in house or buy it in.

the available materials were more than the required A or B. the maximum demand is the limit and the contribution is maximized at this level i think

Q1 – Mix & yield variance: I converted the grams in kg, worked out Mix variance A, yield variance F. Discussion part was me rambling about the yield variance: it occurs when the output is lower than the materials used for the actual quantity produced, due to: human error factor in making the loafs, poor quality of materials, human error in weighting the materials, more breads rejected by the inspector.

Q2 – weird approach to decision making with bottleneck resource, worked out the net profit by using the throughput vs the costs of investment. Option 1 was the only one covering the costs of investments. My interpretation of the table was that it was showing how the bottleneck is elevated at different options of investments.

Q3 – Incremental & participative budgets. Clearly incremental budgets, false impression of participative budgets. Suggested other types of budgets the JT & CT division could use. Commented on the veto decision of the AT senior manager, Mr. Molar (seriously? – cracked me up a lill bit :P). The managers are unmotivated, goal congruence is not achieved, missing on potential new clients due to old technology…stated some of the disadvantaged of incremental budgeting. Hope they make sense.

Q4 – worked out the ROI using both the profit before the head office costs and after, commented on the uncontrollable aspect of their apportionment and that division N’s manager could have gotten his commission if ROI is calculated before the HO cost allocation.Did not understand why they are asking me to discuss about my choice of the figures in calculating ROI…don’t remember the rest of the Q.

Q5 – got $23 as the cost of X, part b) did not understand how they want me to calculate the limiting factor. I took into consideration the making of all the products: L M LX and MX, their demand, the materials used, got Material A as limited…deleted my answer :)) , then i got stuck, i tried working the contribution per limited factor, ranked them, again i used ALL the products, got weird result, even more stuck, moved to c) can’t properly recall what they were asking but wrote general things (like the quality of X might not be the same, loosing clients due to not meeting the demand…etc)

I hope for the best and expect the worst… fingers crossed i will pass…

Also the MCQ, some of them were soooo long, took me two minutes to read and properly understand some of them. Compared to what Q they used to give in previous exams (I have done all the BPP revision kit Q, all the Q in the book, studied all material, studied via opentuition, done all the past papers from 2009) this exam’s questions were vague, weirdly formulated, long MCQ, but all in all, if you payed more attention (but one just simply can’t focus during an ACCA exam due to the time pressure) it was a passable exam…

Best of luck to us all.

For question 2, I calculated the additional contribution of $2420 per additional unit and also the $12,000 (cant remember exactly) per additional unit and subtracted the investment cost. I really hope I don’t have to resit this, but by the looks of it, I think i’m going to have to 🙁

this paper was outrageous. i worked out so many past papers i cud nt see even a paper so tough. Question 5 the limiting factor till last time i kept thinking how to work this out but cudnt figure out