PM*** F5 June 2014 Exam was.. Instant Poll and comments ***

I think so. I only calculated for demand though

Right! I totally messed up the variances and transfer pricing questions still hopeful of passing though

Anil, i thought to do it but i didn't ...:( i hope i dont loose all marks cos i have done everyhting right...except from that...the techinique i mean

i hate it when the question you get completely messed up turns out the easiest one for vast majority. Linear programming yes i am talking about it….i spent at least 10 minutes wondering limited hours are the only scarce resource …..whats the second one ? and thats it ….ten minutes lost….confidence lost and panicked now my third attempt on this paper in december…i truly hate performance management coz it looks so simple …..but just confuses hell out of me in the exam…..god help me

What was the question re budget uncertainty in q4?

i dont know it was something that discuss the factors that give rise to uncertainty in budgeting. I just wrote anything that came to my mind like weather, political conditions etc dont know if it is correct

I got y=66000, x= 42000 :/

Uhm, i guess those were material prices may not be as budgeted and market research might be imperfect, etc..not sure though

Is anybody able to switch off since the exam? Hours later and my head is still racing! :)

for abc, product x, both are 70 sth. a 3% difference

So generous. Q1, Q2 and Q3. Thank you Open Tuition. You make ACCA so easy!

Yeah my head is racing too, just calculating again and again can i get 50 marks atleast :P

Q1 - I thought was ok but I think I messed up on traditional costing. I just blanked out. Abc seemed ok although number of batches got me confused. Q2 - Most perfect question ever. I completely ignored fixed costs because we were looking for contribution, not profit. The optimal solution was at point B or C. Cant remember. But it was for Build stage and demand (y=66,000). At the end, x=20,000 and y=66,000. Contribution was 1,360,000 or smthn like that. Build stage was the only scarce resource Test and Program stages had slacks which were pretty easy to calculate. I even calculated shadow price of Build which wasnt asked for. My dream question! Q3. Given that I'm writing f9 as well, I cant believe I forgot what to do with Asset Turnover. I did ROCE and Operating Profit Margin. Transfer pricing did not exist to me because I didn't revise the topic. Painful, I know! Q4. I spent atleast 10 mins staring at this question and was dumbfounded I did not know what to do at all! Still a mystery. I eventually managed to explain what maximin is and also give factors that give rise to uncertainty in budget preparation - Economic stability, Competition and Customers Q5. I astonishingly blanked on variances. I only managed to discuss sales performance of Valet Co in part b I'm wishing and praying to get atleast 50

What i did for asset turnover was Sales/Capital Employed

It was overall fair/doable. I think LP, variance analysis, absorption & ABC costing were fine. But the question on transfer price was really disaster for me. And how is 3 hours that small time!!? :) . It was indeed tight time for me, will definitely miss many marks due to that. Will wait finger crossed for z result! Uffffff...

Looking back at everyone's answers on Linear Programming I must have used a wrong figure for demand for Y. I wrote down 90000, everyone seems to be saying 66000 ???? should still get half marks for technique ????????

Only another 9.5 weeks to wait :)

How u find out contribution per product for ques 5? Kos it was a contribution variance

Linear programming I got x 20000 N y 66000

In one of the notes it gave the C/S Ratio for each product. So for the each product you multiplied the Total Sales x C/S Ratio to get Total Contribution, then divide by no. of units to get the Contribution per unit

Nyc

Q1 was fine, the last part of the abc question was hinting at the price elasticity of each product. If price changed, how would demand react. (Sales volume and profit) The last product increased a lot switching from traditional to abc. But that was in elastic Q2 Firstly it didn't matter if you did it in minutes or hours. It's all relative to each other (divide and multiple by 60) it's just a further administration which could carry errors forward. End of the day, the x and y axis just show how much of each product is required for the optimum mix. I got x 20000 and y 66000 Slack in the last two phases of production. Can't remember the names. Q3 I got 35 dollars for each EV and maximin. Not sure if this was right but I got confused because the calculations seemed too simple. Q4 TP - wtf My ratio analysis was a bit lame and dry. Did anyone make comments or adjust the ratios to take out the effect of the transfered goods? I thought about it but decided against to. Q5 I practised material variances. I winged the sales one. The logic made sense in my head, hopefully I displayed that clearly on the paper. I completely missed the c/a ratio at the bottom above the question. You were able to figure out the contribution per unit (standard) which were plugged into the variance analysis. The last part of the question was straight forward. Even if you got the wrong calculations, there was enough information in the text and the numbers to evaluate the performance. It helps if the numbers work in favour with your bull..

I went a little blank on linear programming but got x=20,000 and y=66,0000. i had both the program stage and test stage as the slack resources. Not sure how I did with transfer pricing although I thought I studied pretty well for it. I was in the middle of doing the sales quantity contribution variance when we told to stop writing. With that being said, I still believe that I did enough to pass!

To find the contribution in Q5 I am pretty sure taking the total sales and multiplying buy the C/S ratio and then dividing by number of products was an unnecessary step as it gave you the sales price per item, which it also stated never changed. So you could just multiply the individual selling price of each item by the c/s ratio to give the same result.

Daniel – wow it was that obvious? I completely missed that!

Overall it was not a bad paper. not sure if I passed cause i didnt conplete the Linear programming.

I hope so, fingers crossed! There was only 4 marks for each variance which suggests there wasn't too much extra working required apart from the variances themselves which needed a reasonable amount of working. For mix I compared actual quantity/mix against actual quantity/standard mix. Then for Quantity compared actual quantity/standard mix to budgeted quantity/ budgeted mix.

I agree. I absolutely hate this paper!

Daniel, I did exactly as you say to calculate the contribution. I was affraid when I was reading diffrent versions here, more complicated. 1. Long, long calculations, I hope I managed with those batches, they were tricky. 2. Linear programing: x= 20.000 y=66.000 3. only a), transfer price was difficult and I didn't have enough time to think more about it. 4. With EV of profit I choose the price 30, with maximin, 35. 5.Mix variance, I compared Standard mix of actual volume with actual volume and using contribution to give them a monetary value. Total mix variance : 6554 - adverse. Quantity variance, I compared Standard mix of actual volume with standard mix standard volume. Total quantity variance : 48.144 - favorable.