SBR*** P2 December 2011 Exam was: Post your comments and vote in Instant Poll ***

- Questions like 3(c) should be banned because we are not supposed to know how all these transfers of players are dealt with. If I cannot understand the scenario how can I apply the standard?
- In some questions I think that there is a big gap between the book and the exams.
- PPE included as part of the consideration, I have recognised a gain of 8 and I have derecognised 56 from PPE because that item has been given away.
- This exam should be based in many short questions involving, each, one standard and in normal scenarios, it's not fair that candidates fail because they know the standards but do not understand what the examiner is saying.

question 3 is very practical i can say..

The paper is OK, but I wish I studied more :)

Mr holt likes football..i remember there is another football club question. if i remember correctly the name of the club is Seejoy! question relating to transfer of players and stuff like that...

anyway do we capitalise agent fee and registration fee? i think we should expense it instead?

from a computer design company to football industry..what is he thinking..

It was ridiculous, because we couldn't understand the questions. I'm very happy that our examiner likes football but as for me I'm dummy at football and didn't understand the question 4 at all, there were other questions like about football (pension plan, strange numbers of goodwill impairment at the reporting date and etc.)

I studied hard for this paper. Hoping for a pass.

was ok, bit of a random one

Thought it was a tough paper - but they always are!
Hopefully, I did enough to pass.

Did anyone actually answer question 2?!

Q1 was easy, but the Employee Benefits paragraph was a bit hard. Q2 I skipped, I didn't want to risk losing a chunk of my marks. Q3 was not very easy but I think I did Ok. Q4 was not too bad, revenue is one of the basic standards and was in F7 as well. So over all I'd say my exam was average. Hoping for a pass!!

Lucky for me I read the Opentuition article on intangibles just before leaving for the exams, it helped me a great deal in attempting Q3.

Obsolete stuff- Partial goodwill, corridor!

It was a beast of a paper! Q1 defined benefit was a nightmare, hadn't a clue. The roof situation I think should have been depreciated separately due to the useful lives being different? I was overall $550K out on the balance so fingers crossed. I agree with the randomness of Q3 - nightmare central. Q4 made up things about the ED on Revenue. Hoping I scraped a pass, but the future looks bleak. :(( I do not know what Mr Holt was trying to acheive with that one!

really think p2 is a joke, u can study and study, and 10 marks will be then on one page in your book which you didnt study as its impossible to study the whole of the syllabus. can anyone remember what the impairment on the bond was in q1, was it around $7.3m

I have tried my best, I really studied for this exam, many late nights.

Q1
The adjustments in the consoldation were a bit tricky for me, but I calculated good will on Beta correctly i think (Purchase consideration + Fv of NCI(given) less Net asets given, so NCI and Parent had their portion in this good will. On the adjustment to equity, I used the portion of the NCI goodwill in addition to NCI percentage on Net Asset as date of extra 20% acquisition)

Q2, I just used common sense, it was very tricky, too much confusing information to think of the additions and deduction under that exam tension and limited time. I hope I did my best here too. The parts (ii) and B, Im not sure but I wrote something.

Q3 - Totally consufsing but I used previous knowledgde of F7, so hopefully I score good marks

I hope to pass this diet, God help me. No more P2 again, enuf!!!

Hard paper...
From the 3 chapters that i didn't revise, EPS, restructuring and operating segment, question came from two of them....So Unlucky...Hoping for a pass..finger crossed;)

think we should use the original effective rate, well thats what i did, could be way wrong

i feel so much better after reading everyones comments!! i was dreading this paper and i was right! At first when i looked at it, i was, wow that looks pretty easy even for me, wee little did i know at the time.... Confusion, confusion. the amount of adjustments i calculated but forgot to put on balance sheet! and i got confused calculating the simplest things! and on the other questiona, i chose 3 and 4 cause i could face another set of calculations- and i though intagibles, revenue is pretty easy! well i didnt find it easy- i wrote so much crap that i wanted to laugh at myself! what a horrible exam this one is!!!

This is finally it with the ACCA for me. I have decided to quit. P5 exam last week was a total joke and now this P2 exam! The text books and preparation material for these exams are far, far too inadequate for what is now thrown at us in these exams. I have no confidence in passing any future ACCA exams as it is now become a bit of a lottery. You might be lucky to win with a question on a subject that you know enough about to answer, but the broad range of accountancy knowledge that we have all gained from our studies is simply not tested. I have more confidence in winning in a casino than passing another ACCA exam. The ACCA examiners seem to test just a small part of the syllabus, sometimes even an obscure element without contentrating on the broader aspects that we are all prepared for. I feel they do not test us for being future accountants. Surely that what the exams should be about?

Perhaps the ACCA is getting short of cash so they screw the students by making the exams ridiculously hard for the vast majority of students so we have to retake, and then retake again ...which mean more cash for the hard-up ACCA coffers.

What has really got me about today's P2 exam was that the examiner is a football fan and asked us a 9 mark question about football players transfer and agents fees and other issues relating to football. I HATE FOOTBALL and I do not even know what the question was taking about. What is a transfer fee? There was simply not enough information there for people like me to understand the question. 9 marks about transfer fees!!! That was 9 potential marks gone. Its a joke.

Q4 . Revenue - I do not remember reading about these conceptual issues of time value and risk in any study material of mine and I simply could not come up with anything like 25 marks of written response. This exam was yet another clear fail for me.

To make the ACCA exam more credible in the future I feel they need to offer the student a broader range of say 6 questions to answer over 3 hours out of say 9 options presented, not just like the present 3Qs from a vast syllabus.

Anyway, good luck to everyone - its what we all need these days with the ACCA.

Please where can we leave our comments on ACCA website, they need to listen to us.

The joy of students that adequately prepared is not to be dribbled arouund by "Almighty" ACCA in the exams, but to pass. ACCA shoulld be testing the value of its brand for impairment as people are quiting and this is not good!!!.

Wow...some people are getting really hung up on the football player question, no knowledge of football was needed! Do you know what TRANSFER means...yes...Do you know what FEE means...yes....Jebus

I feel I put in lots of effort revising and practising questions to be left feeling pretty deflated. Time spent on this revision would of been better spent eating mince pies and getting ready for xmas..Complete waste of time..I went into the exam feeling well prepared as had learnt all key issues and topics and had read around obscure bits..wasn't expecting 2 whole questions to be sooooo strange and alien to me!!

Q3 was hard, wasn't it? I have to chew every word on that three parts, it just became disheartening as I went further, god I had so much to say but didn't know how to put down in words. Nothing much about the figures, it just becomes a pure discusiive question. And yes I agree, who knows about those football shxt ! I might as well become a lawyer.

Question 1 on Pension, I read it a couple of times and finally got the merit of what Mr Holt was trying to test us, then I realise that time was running short.... Giving me 30 more minutes, I could do a proper adjustment on that,
Think back,
2m was adjusted into OCI as it's a balancing figure for acturial gain, the other 55m net cost would be a P&L adjustment. Was I right? That'd earn me 2 marks maximum but I spent probably 10 mins on that!

why are people so angry? They can test any area of the SYLLABUS, not the books you've been reading. Once you've been through your text books, it helps to look at what the ACCA is actually testing.

Q2 was just DRs and CRs

Q3 was about the specialised entity but like the ACCA have said, we don't need specialised knowledge, but just an understanding of the framework

Q4 I knew I wasn't going to do two months before today!

It's absolute truth. It's a lottery. I know a lot of people who left ACCA because they think it's unfair. We shouldn't know how football business works, they think football agents are taking ACCA exams. We don't want to play these games, we need real testing of our knowledge.

You might be lucky to win with a question on a subject that you know enough about to answer, but the broad range of accountancy knowledge that we have all gained from our studies is simply not tested.

Agree!!!Tonnes of materials to study but they ask about exception of the exception in last paragraph of a standard.

Time spent on this revision would of been better spent eating mince pies and getting ready for xmas..Complete waste of time..I went into the exam feeling well prepared as had learnt all key issues and topics

.wasn’t expecting 2 whole questions to be sooooo strange and alien to me!!

+1 It is crazy to learn all details of all rules! In real life the understanding is much more important! anyone can then open the standard and look for detailed application.

@jmcgacca said:
really think p2 is a joke, u can study and study, and 10 marks will be then on one page in your book which you didnt study as its impossible to study the whole of the syllabus. can anyone remember what the impairment on the bond was in q1, was it around $7.3m

yes i got something like $7.3..

On the football thing, I recall from earlier studies that football clubs are special circumstances, however, that might be UK & Irl GAAP. Im not sure about IFRS

So I wrote a sentence saying I was aware of this, but I shall treat it like a normal company intangible asset, and carried on from there.

Im probably wrong, but I said the initial agents fees were capitalised(cost of bringing the asset to full working order kind of thing), but the extension fees were not.

Regarding the Q1 $5M repairs. What were we meant to do with this. I thought about a few methods, discounting etc & then guessed that it was repairs, and should be expensed when applicable, but im fairly sure thats not correct.

Anyway, I dropped a few marks here and there, if I pass, ill probably be a straight 50.

This was my first professional paper exam and I found it very hard. I thought i was well prepared, lots of question practice, felt I knew the paper, but when I delved into it my mind went blank. Q1 was ok. Segmentation I put the definition down for IFRS 8 and the nature of when segments can be used together. For Q4 I waffled, I listed the current IAS and listed the 5 elements for the new ones, and tried to compare and match back to the framework and its elements. The issue for me was Q3 using the companies own WACC and risk on return as their own discount rate was a little confusing, I knew it was incorrect but did not know how to articulate this. Also the registration costs threw me, I was trying to match it in my head to the PIRATE mnemonic but it did not match so I said to disallow it. I pray for the marks. I feel sad as I missed out on many hours with my daughter for these exams. I know it will be worth it in the end and this feeling will pass. I will just have to resit.

I capitalised the roof repairs as enhancement expenditure and made a provision for it under IAS37. The cost was so material and regular (every 5 yrs), it didn't suggest "expense". Re football Q, wasn't there a similiar Q a few years back and printed in the Kaplan and BPP books. The football players are effectively "licenced" I think and covered under IAS38 as intangible. Treated the matter of "fees" as potential agency income for which under IAS18 they could only recognise "commission" element thereon. I left Q1 til end and did so unnecessarily goofy stuff there in the rush. A lot of theory on this paper, no?

Hope you pass! Know what it's like with children. Making dinner, cooking up an SOFP, doing the hoovering, then throwing in some IAS with the washing up. Please God, we all did better than anticipated.