ACCA - Self study

Pippa!

Hi All!

I posted this in the Accountancy forum already but didn't have much luck so thought I'd try here instead...

Sat my final Accounting Technician exams last year and am looking to start on the ACCA ones soon(ish). I've had a look at the past papers for F5-F9 and I've pretty much covered most of it with the ATI already, so I'm looking to do those on my own and not bother with lectures.

What I'm wondering is:

1. Can anyone recommend a nice forum where one can chat with other ACCA self-studying people? Can't find one on Boards.ie (maybe I wasn't looking hard enough?) and I had a bit of a look around but the only one I came across was opentuition.com and there didn't seem to be that much Irish activity on it.

2. Books! I'm hoping to buy them second hand, but the Irish variants, F6 for example, seem to be tricky to get hold of, any suggestions? And how much does the syllabus change in a year? I'm hoping to do 2 exams in the December sitting (haven't decided which two yet!) Will 2015 or 2016 books be any good to me?

3. What's the story with exams anyway? I read somewhere ACCA now does 4 sittings a year? And by when does one have to register etc?

4. Oh and what's the story with memberships etc? How much is it going to cost me?

5. If anyone should happen to have a reasonably recent copy of the Irish F6 manual I'd be very interested in buying it. (I'm up to my eyes in tax in work day out and day in anyway, might be able to squeeze in enough study to sit it in July)

And if anyone should have any general advice at all it'd be most welcome.

Cheers,
P :pac:

Brolly

Hi Pippa

I am currently completing the P papers (P1, P3 & P6 done) and I am self studying for them all.

1. Open Tuition is great for chatting to fellow ACCA folk - for the standard variant papers also, they have materials and question banks.

2. Irish materials and questions are hard to get for tax in particular. I sat the P6 tax exam in December - I used the Irish Tax Institute book - it cost €40 and came with a tax questions book. I think it is worthy of buying for the F6 paper also - study the areas in the book that are relevant to the syllabus set out by the ACCA. The other option for questions to practice would be to ask someone studying Chartered to give you a lend of their CAP 1 & CAP 2 tax books to copy. You can buy them, but Chartered charge a fortune for them.

3. You register via MyACCA for each exam - 4 sittings per year, but note that some Irish variant papers are only June and December i.e. P6 Tax.

4. You need to register a good bit in advance of starting to sit the exams as it can take a while if you want to claim any exemptions etc. It is £89 sterling - all ACCA fees are billed in sterling.

5. I have some materials that may be of some use to you - the 2017 Tax Institute book and questions and I think I have the last version of the BPP F6 book and question book - it is a year outdated, but the only real changes are USC rates and SRCOP etc since 2015!

Overall, the ACCA exams offer good flexibility - I would recommend that once you start, try to do one exam every 3 months and keep at them until you have all F and P papers done and qualify! It is possible - I started the P papers last summer and hopefully if I pass the March P2 paper and June P7 paper, I'll be done!

Pippa!

Brolly!

So sorry for the tardy reply! (I will say nothing but "kids & bugs")

What a great answer, thank you so much! Everything I wanted to know :-)

And, glad to hear you're doing all the p papers self studying too, nice to know it can be done!

Re books, think we have all the 2017 tax manuals here at work but I'd be very interested in the BPP F6 book if you still have it?

GuitarDave1

Hi Brolly,

It's been a few months since there was a post here but hopefully you'll get the notification.

Just wondering what specific tax book it was that you used for p6? I note they publish quite a few of them...is it the "Law and Practice" book can you remember?

Cheers