substantive procedure

Delighted to see you have read the article – if you have any further questions about it you should be able to post a comment on the sticky post (it should be an open post) – and it will help me respond if you reference the script (candidate one or two), Q (17 or 18) and note # so I can see exactly what you are referring to.

I believe you are looking at Q18 – Candidate one notes 3 & 9.
“[Obtain a schedule of … and compare xxx with prior year xxx and investigate any variance”] – fill in xxx is a good example of a rote-learnt point.
Writing such points without giving any thought to them will not earn marks if it is not relevant to the Q scenario.

So re note 3 – the scenario states that $1.9m was spent during the year and the costs are capitalised when IAS 38 criteria are met – so a big Q is how much of this has been expensed and how much has been capitalised? (and another issue is amortisation). To suggest “investigate [how?] any difference [just between an opening and closing balance?]” is far too vague a point.

And re note 9 – the matter identified in the requirement and scenario is specifically deprecation. Again “investigate [how?] any differences on [there would presumably be a lot – acquisitions/disposals/deprecation]” simply doesn’t address the question.

That these points are not worthy of marks is not to say that analytical procedures will not be given credit – if relevant, they would of course be awarded marks.