FINANCIAL REPORTING
Cheat Sheet
FR – Cheat Sheet
Financial Reporting
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Key study techniques to passing your FR exam:
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Plan your study - make sure you have a detailed study plan and stick to it
Study regularly - 60-90 a day for 5 days is much better than one long day
Practice questions - build the knowledge and practice relevant questions as you go
Complete a mock exam - don’t let the first time you attempt the exam be the day of
your exam - no 2 subjects are the same
Examiner reports and articles - vital information and guaranteed marks available if
you take the advice on offer
Exam Tips for passing the exam
Planning
Read the question carefully. Take your time in thinking about an approach and solution. If
you start writing too quickly you will miss key points and marks. And remember, answer the
question asked and pay careful attention to the requirements, there may be more than one
action required to be completed.
Layout and Structure
The questions in Section C are constructed response questions requiring the use of a
spreadsheet or text editor. Not only is question practice important, but practice using these
formats is also key. These can be done on the learnsignal platform. It’s important to include
formulas and workings when doing calculations so that you earn marks for small mistakes.
Review our tutor solutions to see ways you could improve the layout of your calculations to
earn the marks.
Technical Knowledge
You need to cover the whole syllabus, but make sure you have a strong grasp of the
following topics, as well as recent technical articles.
Suggested areas of focus are on preparation and analysis of individual and consolidated
financial statements, including:
● Going from trial balance to set of individual financial statements
● Preparation of statement of cash flows (individual entity)
● Preparation of a set of consolidated financial statements
● Computation and analysis of ratios
● Recent technical articles:
● Revised Conceptual Framework
● FInancial Instruments
FR – Cheat Sheet
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Goodwill
Analysing a statement of cash flows
Provisions
Analysis technique
Application to the scenario (incl. Recommendations and conclusions)
The expectation at this stage is application and analysis. Make sure you are applying a
solution to the scenario. Recent examiner reports have noted that students are making
generic statements and ignoring the scenario, as well as lacking conclusions after workings you need to avoid this. A good way of doing this is making sure that each recommendation
or suggestion you make can be tied into an issue identified or highlighted in the case study.
If not, it is not relevant to the solution. Also remember you can use the “own-figure rule” to
ensure you do not get stalled by a calculation and miss out on providing analysis - use your
calculated figure for your analysis and conclusions and you can still get the marks.
Time management
FR is a 3-hour 15-min exam with all compulsory questions. Planning and time management
is vital so allocate the first 15 minutes to this without starting to write an exam answer. This
leaves 3 hours (or 180 minutes) for the remainder of the exam, as such you should allow 1.8
minutes per mark for all questions you attempt (i.e. if completing a 10-mark question, you
should spend 18 minutes). Be strict with your time and don’t allow a negative impact on one
question by spending too long on another.
Learnsignal resources available to improve exam technique
Here are some resources available for learnsignal members to help you improve your exam
technique:
Tutor Exam Report Debriefs:
Watch our tutor review of the most recent examiner report, which highlights the common
mistakes of students in the last sitting. If you can avoid these, you'll have a much higher
chance of passing your exam.
Study & Exam Support Webinars:
You can attend our weekly study webinar every Friday leading right up to the exam week,
where we provide guidance for your study and answer any questions you have. The webinar
also serves as a forum for students to talk and offer advice to each other. We also run
individual subject webinars with each of our subject tutors during our Webinar Week,
allowing you face to face time to ask technical questions and get feedback on the required
exam approach.
FR – Cheat Sheet
5 Minutes to Pass videos:
Watch our 5-minute to pass video which covers the key topics and required exam approach
for the subject. This video provides concise guidance you should follow to ensure you get
over 50% in the exam.
Exam Bootcamp
It’s never too late to try our Exam Bootcamp, which is a 21-day program for each subject
leading up to exam week, providing you daily with a topic to study, an exam standard
question, a time limit to complete this in, and our tutor solution. This allows you to cover a
large range of exam standard questions to perfect your exam technique before the real
thing.