ACCA F8 Exam Tips September 2016:

Kaplan

Part A: MCQ’s will be from any syllabus area.

Part B: Some of the frequently tested areas in the past were

Ethics / Conflict of Interest / Confidentiality / Audit committees

VFM, Outsourcing,

Audit risks and responses

Cash, inventory, purchases (including tests of control)

Purchases, revenue, Payroll

Written representations

Auditor’s reports

Limited assurance engagements

Expectation gap

Auditor rights and duties

Engagement letters

Fraud and error

Components of an internal control system

Inherent limitations of internal control

Risk assessment procedures

Financial statement assertions (Ratios)

You must learn the ISAs – not the numbers, but the objectives and key provisions of each ISA. Nearly 30% of the last exam was testing pure rote-learned knowledge.

The examiner wants QUALITY not QUANTITY – sometimes gives 1.5 marks for a well-explained point.

Look at the past exams – many of the model answers were in columnar format. Long windy paragraphs are not an option. Stay to the point and straightforward.

Time allocation is as important in this exam as it is in the others – 1.8 minutes per mark.

Bpp

ACCA F8 has a new exam format from the September 2016 exam sitting.

Section A:

Three mini-case style scenario based questions each with five 2 mark questions based on the scenario (total 30 marks). Each mini-case question will test single topic areas of the syllabus and so will either test syllabus area A, B, C, D or E. We would particularly expect questions in Section A to focus on syllabus areas A and E.

Section B:

Q16: One 30 mark question.

Q17, Q18: Two 20 mark questions.

All three questions in Section B will be broken down into sub requirements and be scenario based. The majority of marks in each question will test syllabus areas B, C and/ or D.

Areas expected to be tested in questions 16 to 18 include:

audit planning

audit risk (identification and explanation of audit risks from a scenario and explanation of the auditor’s response to each risk)

internal audit

internal controls (identification and explanation of deficiencies in internal control and the recommendation of suitable internal controls or description of tests of controls); and audit procedures (both substantive procedures and tests of controls).

F8 has the following syllabus areas:

A Audit framework and regulation

B Planning and risk assessment

C Internal control

D Audit evidence

E Review and reporting

General advice

Where questions are based on a scenario it is essential that you use the information in the scenario to make your answers relevant. You should also think about how you will present your answer – try to use a tabular format in your solutions where relevant as the examining team have stated that candidates who do this score better.

Finally pay attention to the verbs used in question requirements as these indicate the number of marks available. For example, the verb "explain" requires a sentence and will score one mark if properly explained whereas the verb "list" simply requires you to list out information with no further explanation and this will score ½ mark per point.