*** March 2025 ACCA FM exam – Instant Poll and comments ***

I have no idea what that was. Section A made me realize that ACCA is placing more emphasis on the application of the syllabus. Why was 80% of the exam theory based ?

Good Section C, NPV of Cashflows and Ratio Analysis,

Section B was tough though, a couple of questions in Mgmt of Receivables and Exchange Risk Hedging threw me..
NPV section in there as well which was ok.

As above – lots of theory questions!

it was really different from how i thought it would be like. i hav done the past papers from practise official acca platform but the questions which came was so bad. it was a really hard paper.

section A was horrible. March mock was nothing like that. I did all the mocks on acca website and all the study hub OT questions but those questions were wild card entry………….. waiting for results now.

Section C NPV question was so difficult as I struggled to understand and calculate demand with the possibility to use in NPV calculation. Could anyone have an idea?

Possibility Year 1 Year 2
0.2 200,000 300,000
0.5. 500,000 600,000
0.3. 100,000. 2,000,000

Just curious as to how to solve the ROE question for the rights issue (1) option – was expecting a 1/4, 1/5 etc. rights issue using the discounted share price to work out how many shares were issued to fund the required amount, but they just gave share capital and share premium…

Also, the 80% cash advance with 13% interest for the credit period/4% annual fee question was problematic

.
I thought I was well prepared for key areas of the syllabus but was surprised by the type of questions in the exam..

I started with section C straight away but wasted too much time on my response to that probability question.
The remaining exam A and B was under pressure due to time

Anyone else has an issue with ACCA clunky version of excel provided on the exams?
It is not a version that anyone would encounter in a work place (even if running Windows 98)

Here’s a summary of the most relevant issues I found:

– cut and paste a block of data throws away the formula. I.e. a SUM formula continues to sum to old cell location
Result: moving a block of data require formulas to be reviewed and formulas amended
– unable to lock cell references using the $ symbol (e.g., $A$1) and drag the formula across other cells. When I try to copy or drag the formula, the locked reference does not behave as expected,
Result: formulas referring to a cell (i.e. price p/u on column X) will have to be manually typed it rather than dragged across to populate the periods automatically

– when entering a formula, the opening and closing brackets (parentheses) do not automatically as they would on a normal version of excelInstead, you have to manually type them.
Result: error message appears suggesting error in syntax

– cannot add/remove a row which is further aggravated by limitations of a cut/paste a block of data described above
Result: data needs to be copy pasted to new location and formulas reviewed/redone

Using exam time to adapt to an excel version only found in acca exams is an additional and unnecessary challenge.

Not even mentioning the fact that it is displayed in fraction of a screen the size of an average phone..

I fed this back to ACCA a while back but I guess I will just have to cope with it for the remaining exams..

I found it quite annoying that unlike usual the actual exam didn’t have any similar questions to the practice exams on the platform. For this reason I have absolutely no idea how I did. Now the 6 week wait is on…and torture!! Quite convinced I didn’t pass though…sad 🙁
Oh well… on to the next until I know for sure.

Also, to Aidahbani, you can’t book June exams yet. You can check acca for the dates when you can start booking them.