*** March 2023 ACCA AAA exam – Instant Poll and comments ***

Not sure how it went but it was the toughest I have seen for AAA to be honest, c´mon 24 Mark audit risk!! 20 Marks quality management

One of the toughest AAA paper i have seen, it was like the examiner was given the task to come up with the most difficult paper possible. Booking June exams for sure. I dont know if it was my combination of questions or is it for everyone, but the exams was very tough. Even the style of question in Section B was not anything like the pre mock, or specimen papers. This is my last ACCA paper and during my whole acca journey, this was the most difficult paper i have been through.

Brand impairment and CGUs impairment
Evaluation of a subsequent event
Assurance over budgeted CFs – critical assessment of assumptions and quality management of the engagement
Issues with planning stage of a Group audit (parent plus subsidiaries)

We did not have the same questions. 🙁

It wasnt too bad, but I thought that the last time. Question B was probably the worst part and I feel I threw away a good amount of marks here. Lets hope I done enough.

Section A
Fairly decent question I thought.
Significant audit risks (24 marks)
Audit procedures on impairement of EU (8 marks)
Development of finance system for client (8 marks)

Section B
Quality review of planning and performance (16 marks)
A) Cant remember this one
B) discontinued operations
C) subsequent event liability

Section C
A) to discuss if he was liable for wrongful something (7ish marks?)
B) Integrity and ethical matters to consider of Aarron (5 marks)
C) cash flow forecast. (8 marks)

international version
Question 1
Audit risk 25 marks
Ethical issue of providing internal control services 7 marks
Corporare governence arrangment 8 marks

Question 2
Quality issues in the form of analytical procedures outcomes 14 markes(i guess)
Discussion related to goodwill impairment+ preferred shares

Questions 3
Materiality 7 marks
Communications to those charged with governance 8 marks
Using audit expert 5 marks

I thought it was ok but its impossible to be completed in 3 hours 15,tutors keep advising we should read the requirements properly but what actually happens with aaa specially is that we do not have the time to go through the scenario more than once specially in Q1 were the information is spread through the exhibits

Thanks akamal84! I had the same papier and totally agree that time pressure was unreasonably high…:/

I sat the UK exam.

Section A was:
– 24 Marks on Signifiacnt audit risks (It didn’t say significant risk of material misstatements so talking about inherent risk, control risk, detection risk seemed fine here?)
– Heavy emphasis on CGU’s and brand impairment

This question also wanted us to use analytical procedures but you can’t really calculate any liquidity ratios because of no financial statement extracts.

I assume it was fine to calculate differents and percentages in revenue from one year to the other?

Section B:

– Related to “Renley Group”
– 2 Significant components with one being foreign – asked to assess implications about a component’s subsequent events etc.
– Planning quality talks (correct me if I’m wrong but I talked about how certain procedures needed to be done as they did not do them and talked about why it had to be done).

Section C-

– Aaron Sladiart(?) Ltd – director of company where the company was facing heavy going concern issues and we had to assess if he was doing WRONGFUL AND FRAUDLENT trading.

– Cashflow assurance engagement needed to talk about the assumptions used and why it’s important to exercise professional judgement.

(Here I basically said that management are looking to obtain funding and so therefore would produce results that are overly better to paint a better picture so as to be accepted for it)

Overall, pretty annoying exam – I wanted some business risks to be asked and ideally on appraising the audit report.

Not the worst, but 24 markers on risks and 16/20 marks on quality management. Ffs

Yes I agree, analytical procedures – you couldn’t calculate any profit margins or current or quick ratios or any of the sort.

Just had to compare revenue and differences in assets I suppose.

As far as I know it’s the same paper, just different thresholds for certain things. There are always different papers in every exam depending on whether you do it in the morning or afternoon.

This one was my exam but I sat the International variant

Yeh I sat INT variant and it was as someone explained the UK paper

So much info and difficult to understand/paint a picture in your head.

I found sec an audit risks ok but on the whole sec b was just a bit random! 16 marks on quality planning after acceptance, I related alot to the scenario because how much could you realistically write for 16 marks?

Shame the audit report question was so small 4 marks

The Aaron question and the group questions were hard.

Did anyone question why they were planning on restructuring the european segment when the revenues were projected to be good?

No I was concentrated on the pension and dividend thing (if I remember correctly the question)

Yeah, 16 marks out of 20 in Question B was ridiculous.

Luckily, you could structure your answer in relation to each of the subsidiaries from the extract.

For example where they were like “The FD thinks it’s immaterial to the subsidiary so why include it in the group if need not include in the subsidiary”.

Not sure it was frustrating so many marks and its like well what do you want me to talk about lol