Nature of the ACCA P4 paper

　　ACCA P4 Paper – Advanced Financial Management – is concerned with managing the finances of a business, and is a continuation of Paper F9. There are a few new topics to learn, but most of the topics were introduced in Paper F9.

　　Structure of the ACCA P4 paper

　　There are two sections to the exam.

　　Section A contains ONE compulsory question of 50 marks.

　　Section B is a choice of TWO from three questions, each carrying 25 marks. There are 3 hours for the exam, plus 15 minutes of reading time.

　　Most of the questions are mainly calculation, although there are a fair number of written sections in each. One of the three choice questions is always completely written.

　　Emphasis of the ACCA P4 exam

　　Although a large part of the syllabus has already been examined in Paper F9, this examination is testing much more the application of this earlier knowledge. The compulsory question will almost certainly involve writing a report and will present you with a large amount of information. The difficulty is as much interpreting the given information, and deciding what is important, as being able to apply learned techniques.

　　How to pass ACCA P4 exam

　　Use the OpenTuition ACCA P4 lectures along with the P4 Course Notes. Make sure that you are happy with the arithmetic, but also listen carefully to the lectures and check that you really do understand the techniques and the theories.

　　It is then of vital importance that you practise as many past exam questions as you can – especially from Section A. Do not expect to get the answers completely correct! In fact more often than not there is no ‘correct’ answer. It depends on what assumptions are made, and provided you make sensible assumptions (and that you state your assumptions) you will still get the marks – even if some of your assumptions differ from those made in the model answer.