CPA Prof 2's

Shurwhynot

Anyone else sitting these in a couple of weeks?

I have 3 left...SLKM, ACR and Tax.

ACR is the one that's really scaring me...just wondering how everyone else is approaching their study of this? I presume it will a consolidated question this year so just been practising them and trying to get my head around them

Nini123

I'm sitting 4 of them in April. I think consol income statement and bal sheet will come as well. I think IAS 36 will be examined along with the changes to IFRS3. I also think that there may be a question on EPS.

How are you fixed for strategy?? Do you think it will be easy enough to scrape a pass?

Shurwhynot

Nini123 wrote: »

I'm sitting 4 of them in April. I think consol income statement and bal sheet will come as well. I think IAS 36 will be examined along with the changes to IFRS3. I also think that there may be a question on EPS.

How are you fixed for strategy?? Do you think it will be easy enough to scrape a pass?

Yeah Strategy should be ok hopefully. The only part i'd be a bit worried about would be the Part B - do 2 out of 3 questions. Any idea what these will centre on?

As far as ACR goes, well to be honest i'm having doubts about whether i will attempt it and just concentrate on passing Tax and Strategy. I can gear everything i have towards ACR then in August. I just feel that there is so much in it, and seeing as i'm doing my study with BPP i haven't had the benefit of lectures since last September.

There is a consolidated question in the pilot paper and the Additional Info has stuff i've never even seen in any past papers so in my mind it would be very hard for me to pass it at this stage

Nini123

Think it might be something to do with innovation from part B as there is an article on that on the CPA website.

What type of business do you think the case study will be based on?

Are you going to sit the ACR? If I was you I'd give it a bash cos you'd never know it might be do-able! ( I live in hope!).

Shurwhynot

I decided that i'm just going to sit Tax and Strategy. Hopefully by just concentrating on both, i'll pass both and just be able to focus everything on ACR in August then.

I haven't a clue really what industry the case will be from. Doesn't really matter i suppose as you'd still be approaching it the same way. Can't find anything in the BPP book in relation to teamwork...do you know what area this entails? Hopefully with the open book anyway the Part B can be researched. Some questions ask to apply certain things to "a case you are familiar with". Any idea where these cases come from or are we meant to bring in seperate cases?

Hoping for a decent Tax paper too. Hopefully a nice VAT, CAT and Income Tax questions comes up in part B. Part A seems to normally entail CT and CGT...can be tricky enough

val10

i am sitting 2.acr and tax.i reckon acr will be the hardest as that examiner could ask anything.as regards tax hopefully it i should be ok.i think termination payments,close companys and r&d tax credit will all appear on the paper.

Shurwhynot

Yeah termination payments would be handy if it came up. Close company wouldn't be too bad either. R & D was one of the recommended readings so this will probably pop up in Q1 i'd imagine. CGT is, IMO, the hardest section of the course anyway so hopefully won't feature too prominently

Nini123

I don't think the ACR will be as bad as April 09 though, well I hope not anyway!

Teamwork is about all that forming, storming, norming crap and things like Groupthink (where people who work in a team are so used to the status quo that they don't want to rock the boat if they see something is going wrong e.g. the problems at Toyota).

Shurwhynot

Ah right i must find that in my book somewhere so! In relation to applying to other cases, were these cases given to ye in class or are we just expected to know our own examples?

EM2008

I'm sitting ACR thankfully I chanced my way through the other 3 in August... All I can say is I will be praying to every God out there that its nothing like April 2009.. If it is I'll be the one crying in the corner of the exam hall.
Best of luck everyone

Nini123

No we weren't given any other companies in class. Our lecturer said we could use the company we worked for or any other company we were familiar with!!

Best of luck with the exams everyone. The nerves are kicking in now!! :eek:

Shurwhynot

Any tips for Strategy or Tax Em??

Thankfully i don't get too nervous...hopefully strategy will ease everyone into the week!

EM2008

Well for strategy I went in having templates ready for each question and under each section be it a swot analysis or whatever I had a pile of generic things written up for various types of industry that I could use as padding and then it was easier for me to link the points I'd done up back to the question as my answer was planned out for me.

Theory has always been my weakest subject and it was great for me to have these things prepared going in.

As for tax I can honestly say I have prob forgotten most of what I did last year I just practiced and practiced and had my notes clearly marked and knew where everything was if I need to look something up.
I wasted a lot of time flicking through notes looking to get more info down on the page with tax.

Best of luck to everyone and sure hopefully we'll be trying to guess who each other is when we graduate

Stems

Hey. Im sitting 2 - ACR and Strategy. Surewhynot - we were told the other 3 questions will be on Marketing, Teamwork and Corporate Culture. Havent even looked at them yet as im spending all my time on ACR - god hope this paper is easier than some of the past ones. TG we will be all done this time next week

Nini123

Hi Stems, did your lecturer say anything about the examiner's article on innovation? I thought that might come up in part B!

brucy9

for sklm paper is question one always the same. as in april and august it was case study and u were asked to Analyse the company’s current position and reccommended action for the future.
is question one this year likely to be the same this year?

Stems

Hey Nini, Yea he said to bring this article in as a question will come up on it - I think he said it will be part of the Marketing question.
Brucy - Question 1 will def be a case study for 50 marks.
Any of you guys doing ACR and any ideas what may come up. Reckon Cons I/S and B/S but not sure about other questions. Examiner mentions Financial Instruments alot in his briefing. Do u think this will come up as theory question ???

sma2008

ugh.. this is my second time doing ACR. Left it out in the April 09 exams to concentrate on the others i was doing at the time, got 47% in Aug 09, was gutted as i dont think they'll set a paper as handy as that again...and here i am on boards.ie looking for inspiration with 5 days to exam!!!
i expect a consolidated IS/BS or whatever they have decided to call them now, maybe EPS qs(hopefully!) and i have a funny feeling that financial instruments may been thrown in somewhere too!!not happy about this as finding it hard to get my head around it. Our lecturer in CIT highlighted Employee benefits as a possible exam qs because of relevance in current climate but this was on Aug09 so not sure how accurate a prediction that is..

Stems

Yea have a feeling employee benefits might come up too although we didnt look at this at all in any class. Our lecturer said the IFRS Share Based Payments for employees should come up as this is the first year that its examinable and i am getting confused with the two of them to be honest. Fin Instruments is a bit of a nightmare , i have just written out lots of theory on it but havent done any computations on it. Seriously is the worse subject and cant imagine i will pass it. Hopefully u will have better luck this time around. Did you find the open book handy last year - I am kinda of relying on notes for some stuff and hope i have time to use them

sma2008

yea it's impossible to know enough about everything for it.. i relied a lot on my notes last time..i have them all typed up really concisely on about 5 pages..think i went to the book for one theory qs..there isnt a whole lot of time to be going thro a book/folder tho so just make sure you're really organised!!

Nini123

Employee share based scheme? How do you account for that? :eek:

I think Consl I/S and Bal sheet will come up with the new method for calculating goodwill. Also maybe a discontinued ops held for resale or Intangibles and maybe a foreign sudsidiary?

Stems

Havent really looked at it yet so not entirely sure but its something to do with FV of grant dates over vesting periods and exercise dates - Its IFRS2. There is a copy of an examiners article on it (not sure from what year) in our manual so if u look through CPA website u should find it - Just called IFRS2 and it has examples of how to calculate.
Its not mentionned in briefing so it might not come up , just our lecture mentioned it might as its new this year.

Shurwhynot

In relation to SLKM, I honestly can't find anything in my BPP notes to do with Teamwork. A marketing question hopefully would be reasonably broad, so the Innovation will be brought into that. Corporate culture - i'm wondering will this be in relation to corporate governance and ethics issues?

Stems

There was nothing on Teamwork in our manuals either so we just got some hand outs on it. Least there is a choice so u can do the other two if u havent found any info on it. Good luck tomorrow

Shurwhynot

Well what did everyone think of SLKM today?

I'm not the happiest after it to be honest. My Question One i was pleased with. In the BPP practice and revision manual there was a health and fitness club question so frankly i copied a lot out of that into the exam question, and was generally quite happy with it.

As for Section 2, first of all i've never heard of a market positioning statement so didn't know how to lay it out. There wasn't a whole pile of info in my book so i wrote an answer that brought in the marketing mix etc.

I didn't know anything about the teamwork question so had to leave it, so that left me with the innovation question. It asked us to construct a value curve, but i presume we weren't actually supposed to draw one similar to the handout?? Again i just waffled on and linked up the company to the "6 points to construct a value curve" but as my time was short, so were my answers to this question.

All in all i just hope my Question 1 gets me by

Fishyfreak

I thought SLKM was nothing short of horrific!!

I'm still shocked at it. Hopefully my teamwork and Q1 answers get me by. Terrible start to the exams.:(

Stems

Yea i thought Q1 and the teamwork one were fine and hopefully enough to scrap a pass. Didnt have a clue of question 4 so had to attempt the value innovation one but thought it was the hardest question and you would have needed alot of time to answer it properly, time which i didnt have.

Nini123

I thought Q1 was ok. Did ye follow the exact same layout as the solutions last year? I didn't have enough notes for teamwork so I had to do Q2 and Q4. Hadn't a clue what a market positioning statment was and for Q2 I just tried to bring in some of the article. I'm not sure I did it correctly though. Does anyone know what the pass rate was?

Shurwhynot

I'd say the pass rate is fairly high...if it's marked tough this year though i can see it being a lot lower!

Question one was the same layout yeah, i just said that they should concentrate on the corporate sector as the niche market for the time being, and to research the video game technology so it might be a viable future option. As i said i filled it up with a very similar sample answer that was in my BPP notebook so was happy enough.

I realistically think i need at least 33 or 34 from my question one because i'm not confident about my Question 2 or 4 at all. The teamwork question looked ok but i had literally no notes on it so couldnt even attempt it

new2this

I found yesterday horrible...Question 1 ok but the others a nightmare!!

Anyone any tips or thoughts for Auditing?

Shurwhynot

What's everyones thoughts on Tax tomorrow? The examiner has said that the new Vat rules are very important so i'd imagine there will be a full question based on that. Termination payments seem topical...am hoping there will be a question on this. R & D will pop up somewhere too, just hope it won't be too complicated.

The examiner also says we should be aware of the different structures companies may use to hold assets. Anyone have any idea what he means by this?

Fishyfreak

Any thoughts on Corp Reporting? I didn't do well.

Made a half decent attempt at Q1 (a), some of the property adjustments threw me completely.
Q1 (b) I didn't have a clue so thats 15 marks gone.
Q2 Made a few points but not nearly enough to get the marks.

Overall i reckon I got about 40/100, so it looks like a repeat for me. Very annoyed at myself!!:(:(:mad::mad:

On tax I reckon Close Company,CAT/CGT, VAT & Property, possibly Termination payments. Hope its better than today.

Stems

Thought ACR was a horrible paper.
Q1a - Completly messed up all the property adjustments - didnt have a clue what he was asking for in these - Thought some of the other adjustments werent great either.
b) Stupid question - just waffled on about how i came to the calculations when doing FX in part a
Q2) Nightmare - Didnt really write anything on this at all as never came across anything like this when revising.
Def a fail - wouldnt even say i got 40.....

Nini123

I thought it was very hard. I'm hoping there will be at least 10 marks for translating the balance sheet and income statement to Euro. Wasn't too sure about how to account for the disposal of an associate so I just did it the way you would for the disposal of a subsidiary. There were way too many notes on IAS 40. I got all confused. I could do the deferred tax and the depreciation.

For part B I wasn't too sure but I made a stab at something.

For Q2 I think I made about 3 or 4 points for and against.

Only made about 2 points for the part B of that, I ran out of time.

I really hope I did enough to pass. I forgot to do the revaluation reserve!! I'm such a dumbass sometimes!

Nini123

Has anyone been on the exam view??

brutusthebarber

How's everyone set for Auditing (P2) tomorrow?

To be honest I havent a clue what type of stuff will come up. I'm just going through the past exam papers and making sure I have everything marked..

Yesterday's ACR was very tough. I got through it all and made adjustments for each note but havent a notion whether it was the right way of going about things. As with Nini I'm hoping a decent few marks are for dealing with the Fx sub. I'm hoping I put enough down for the theory Q2. Had to rush through it, kinda stuck for time at the end.

Fishyfreak

Tax was so bad today that i'm not even annoyed with myself because there is no way I could have been prepared for that Q1!!

Did ok in the optional parts but without the bulk of marks from the 40 in q1 it's a sure fire FAIL!!!

I think we all need to get on Examview and run amok!!!

Shocking Tax Paper :eek::eek:

val10

ye examview is the best bet.exams have being a joke so far this year.impossible.i reckon cpa are using it as a money spinner so people will have to pay for repeats again.i have failed both papers.

new2this

Yep agree... It was awful!! Dreading tomorrow.. The way the papers have been so far, it's bound to be terrible!!!

Shurwhynot

Actually thought Tax was ok. Didn't even look at the Question 2 cos there was so much info in it. Question 1 part a i just took a stab at, but the rest of it wasn't too bad. The part b and c had come up in older papers...i think they would be taxed at the Irish CT rate with a tax credit for the Cyprus tax rate?

Was able to attempt everything else, but when i saw it first i thought i was definately gona fail. Just out the head down and got on with it. Wasn't 100% sure how to deal with the artists exepmtion and patent income in that question but i thought i worked out her remuneration fairly well. Anyways i'm not gona get my hopes up but was genuinely happy coming out of it

Shurwhynot

So it's squeaky bum time lads! Anyone know if the results definately come out friday or is there a chance that they could be tomorrow? What's people's expectations?? I'm just hoping i passed Tax...i wouldn't mind too much having to repeat SLKM

Fishyfreak

I normally get my results in the post on the Thursday.

I did all 4. Would be happy to get SLKM/Audit passed and then concentrate on repeating the others in August, God I feel sick.

Wouldn't be suprised if I bombed in all 4 though.......:(

Good luck folks.

EM2008

good luck everyone,

I'm sitting here waiting for the postman fully convinced he's got my letter with him today

Had a dream last night I got 96!!!! only it was out of 200 so I still failed.

Fingers crossed everyone passes and cpa get no more money from us

Shurwhynot

Mixed emotions here

52 in SLKM
36 in Tax

Actually gutted with Tax cos i thought i did a decent paper. Thought i might have failed marginally at the most...makes you wonder how ****ing hard they are marked!

Ah well onwards and upwards i guess...Tax and Corp Reporting in August now

EM2008

hard luck on the tax surewhynot but at least you can still celebrate with the other one and its one less to do

Shurwhynot

Cheers Em. I'm trying to take the positives out of it, actually thought i had failed SLKM! Looking forward to getting a breakdown of my Tax marks though...it's criminal that we don't get the papers back to see where exactly we went wrong.

Best of luck with yours anyways

EM2008

i agree, it would be great to see if the same mistake is repeating itself and how minor or big the mistakes are.
Your right to look on the positive side its not like its all carried over till next year you were going to sit exams in august anyway (trying to be positive for you)
my stupid postman isn't here yet I'll have to go work and wait till tonight:( feckin postmen!

Shurwhynot

Ah yeah, tax will be very fresh in my head too so that's another positive i guess. 2 exams left to do sounds like nothing, but my god is it easier said than done!

Fishyfreak

I passed all 4. Cannot believe it, especially after reading through my thoughts I posted on this thread after each exam. Still don't know what Q1 in tax was all about!!!

ACR 50
Audit 57
Tax 52.5
SLKM 50

Best of luck to everyone else.

Shurwhynot

That's brilliant well done Fishy. I still can't fathom how i only got 36 in Tax...really baffling me. If i had got 47 or 48 or something i think i could accept it but to fail by so much is whats baffling me!

Stems

One out of two here as well

75 - SLKM
46.5 - ACR

Didnt expect to pass ACR but still get disappointed when you see it in writing. Anyone have any experience of getting exams rechecked. Im just wondering if there is any point ??
Good luck everyone else