P2 practice questions

Any and all from a revision kit by one of the reputable publishers?

As many consolidation questions that you can bring yourself to attempt?

As many questions about IAS and IFRS as you can

They are all very difficult and there are not really any that are more difficult than the others – they are ALL horrible

But now’s the time to start!

Ok, but remember, whoever you come across something that you don’t understand, post your question on the ask the tutor page and I’ll get back to you – I aim to reply within 48 hours but, as you may have noticed, most questions get answered within 12 hours

Hi cej

Deferred tax is a very rare visitor to P2 these days

Share based payments – analyse the answers to questions. (Number of people, number of shares, value of shares) / number of years

So……. (A x B x C) / Y = this year’s charge

If either of those is incorrect, you still score 3 marks out of the 4 available

If I offered you 75%, would you accept it?

You’re right, of course. P2 is a tough exam and you’re likely to go into that exam room “knowing nothing” and you’re even more likely to come out of that exam room convinced that you “know even less than nothing” and yet students pass. Thousands of them!

And they write their comments on this site like “I have no idea how I could have passed – I estimated that I would score 30+% but I scored 67%!! How can that be?”

And it happens session after session!

“Intimidating” is the perfect description for these exams but for P2 particularly. Keep working through past exams and following the logic of where respective figures have come from (and ask me when you come to one where you simply cannot see the logic)

The more you practice now, the easier those questions become

And finally, stop beating yourself up! You’re not going to score 100% in the exam so just accept that you WILL make mistakes. The technique you now need to think about applying is “I’ll pick up the easy marks (and there are loads of them – enough for you to pass with >50%) and then, if I’m still within time allocation, then I’ll write something (anything!) down on those areas that I don’t feel confident about. But I DO know that I should be able to collect lots of easy(ish) marks from the ethics and the corporate governance elements of question 1”

If you can write for 20 minutes having spent 9 minutes reading, thinking and planning, you should be capable of collecting a good score on parts (b) and (c) – say 11, 12 or 13 out of the 15 available. To score a pass on question 1 requires you to get only 12, 13 or 14 more out of 35 in the numbers part.

There could well be a bit about pensions, a bit about valuing financial instruments at fair value, a bit about impairing goodwill, a bit about share based payment for directors and some F7 bits like in-transit items, pups, and of course there’s the goodwill calculation on acquisition to do.

You could find yourself faced with a currency translation and / or piecemeal acquisition and / or disposal

But when you break it down like that, maybe “intimidating” isn’t the appropriate word. Maybe better would be “long” and, when all added together, it seems “intimidating”. Like Christmas dinner! Nibble away at it, bit at a time, piece by piece and, before you know it, you can see the bottom of your plate / the last tricky point in the question.

And NEVER give up!

You can rely on it!