Saturday 13 February 2016

How to prepare for CA FINAL exams - Financial Reporting - Series 1

Hi Friends,

I would like to give a brief on how to prepare for CA FINAL Paper 1 - Financial Reporting

Disclaimer: The following are my personal views. They will not guarantee your success.


The syllabus can be bifurcated into three major areas:


1. Accounting Standards (AS/Ind AS) 30-35 marks
2. Major Topics - Amalgamation, Valuation and Consolidation 48 marks
3. Other miscellaneous topics - 25-30 marks.


Accounting Standards:

AS is definitely a scoring area. The compulsory question and the last question (question 7) are generally from AS. Students need to use a standard book for Accounting Standards. In case you find it difficult to read and understand from the bare standard, you may buy a third party book. Nevertheless you must read the appendix (especially AS 9 and AS 25) and illustrations forming part of the AS. Apart from that all the illustrations in SM and PM must be practiced.

AS exam questions are usually based on past exam questions. Therefore, last 5 attempt AS questions must be read once or twice for clarity.


Major Topics:

We all know three 16 marks questions come from the major topics.

  1. Amalgamation - Moderate difficulty - Reasonable time required to answer question
  2. Consolidation - Template Approach - 40 minutes minimum required -
  3. Valuation- Tricky- Take comparatively less time


Based on the above, you make decide which areas to focus on. Some might feel consolidation problems are very lengthy. Yes, it is true. You may spend 40 minutes on it  and still end up going wrong. However once you practice a lot of problems, your analytical skills increase and you will be able to read and interpret the question quickly.

Valuation problems are unique and involve a lot of assumptions. Always make suitbable assumtions and make appropriate disclosure.

Amalgamation questions are quite straight forward. Students need to caterful while calculating purchase consideration and deciding on nature of amalgamation,

Miscellaneous Topics:

For lack of better word, I use miscellaneous topics. They include VAS, EVA, HR Accounting, Financial Instruments, etc. These topics are easy to understand and take less than 10-15 minutes solve. They are again considered to be scoring areas. The level of complexity is moderate so cracking the problems is not going to be difficult. 

Topics like EVA are covered in SFM also. So reading it here will ensure that you are able to attend the question in SFM also.

Where does the exam problem come from?

The following are the sources:

90% of the exam problems come from the following:
  • Study material illustrations
  • PM problems
  • Past exam questions


The questions need not be the same as asked earlier, but the concepts test and the manner of testing will be the same. The questions will be heavily inspired from the above.


Time Management:

FR being the first paper, students generally find it difficult to finish the paper. The only way to overcome that is to practice more problems and gain speed. Take up a few mock tests or solve past exam papers under simulated exam conditions. In case you get stuck at one of the problems, be  bold and move on. You can always come and revisit it.


Leave your queries as comments. 


Regards,

James John Britto R

4 comments:

  1. Thank You thank you..waiting for more!

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  2. And please guide regarding how to go about revision one day before exam for theory as well.

    And is it true that during preparation time the rankholders just keep studying and studying like no break, less sleep?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Not necessarily. I slept for not less than 8 hours everyday.

      Delete
  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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