FAE Auditing Exam 2008

TheMac2008

Anyone out there do FAE Auditing exam this year? What did u think? Thought it was quite tough myself. Time was a big issue.

djdeclan

Thought it went quite well myself, time is always an issue with this one, I think i nailed the SFQs and made a good effort at the audit report and systems and controls questions, The audit risk question was grand too, question 4 was a bit iffy, i struggled to identify what further work we could do on some of the issues, i was tight for time too but i had left it to the end knowing that it would be my weakest answer..
Hopefully thats the hardest one out of the way though, tomorrow is gonna be a very tough day from a tiredness perspective.

applehunter

After 2 good days.

Management was a nail in the coffin today.

Will struggle to get even 20%.:(

Worst exam ive ever done.

chump

2 good days?

Audit - mucked it up, hoping for 40
FA - grand
Tax - fkk, it was a ridiculous paper, possible fail
MABF - joke of a paper

Feck.

I'm amazed at how difficult it's been. Whatever about Audit (my own fault), Tax paper was unfair and MABF paper was verging on unfair.

back next year. and big money down, plus humiliation!!! Noooooooo

djdeclan

Personally i thought they have been fair enough so far, all the tax questions could be answered straight from the book and MABF, while tricky, was do-able.. A LOT of people complaining about both of them though so perhaps they will be marked somewhat less stringently..
I think the problem for most people was the fact that none of the obvious/popular topics such as retirement relief in tax or foreign currency risk protection in MABF came up, most of the questions took a lot of research before putting pen to paper to write the answer..
And did anybody notice that the MABF paper was nearly all business finance??
The leasing question in financial threw me completely though!

applehunter

Part d. in MABF was cruel. Bull**** Question.

Also the €5 selling charge in the Transfer Pricing Q wasn't clear.

got bogged down in Q1 and Transfer Pricing.

Give us a bone. Even the WACC was tricky.

Looking at my answer book in the end was a joke. barely wrote a thing.:(

Newaglish

I found MABF very difficult this year myself, and it's always been my strongest subject.

The WACC was unusual (what were the market values of debt and equity??) and the transfer pricing was very unclear.

Other than that, the first two days have been very do-able, audit is never going to be a walk in the park but there weren't any real killer questions. FA/Tax as well were pretty reasonable, though there were a lot of adjustments required in the (tax) transfer of a business to a company question (stock write downs etc) that I ignored because they would have been too difficult and time consuming. The last question in tax was odd also -there didn't seem to be any tax efficient way of transferring that bloody house!

I think a lot of people struggled with MABF this year and I suspect as with last year, the marking scheme will be altered in our favour.

Cyrus

i did the faes two years ago folks and tax was the one everyone found tough, i even thought if i was going to fail anything (altho i was pretty confident i had done ok) that would be it.

i ended up getting over 80% in the FA/Tax paper

ye will be fine

daraghmack

Lads Im shattered, whoever said that FAE week was easy!!

Audit I thought was grand to be honest, maybe question 4 was a bit dodge alright but other than that Im hoping to do ok.

Financial was very disappointing for me, I got really confused in the first section because they were asking how to consolidate the associate and JV into the financial statements of the ultimate parent when they were associate and JV of a subsidiary of the parent, the extra layer confused me and I went down the wrong road, the leases question threw me too but if I can pick up around 8 attempt marks from 28 in that first section I should be ok cos the rest of the paper was fine.

Tax I found tough, it was very prof 3 based and not the kind of thing you would have expected, still I hope I scraped by and with a few extra marks in audit I will get tax and FA.

MABF.... to be honest I don't know what to think. They say if you do past papers for this subject you will be fine, I did about 14 years of past papers and to be honest today's exam wasn't anything like I have seen before, the questions were so vague and they were asking things in a format that we don't usually see. Saying that I'm glad I didn't panic like I did yesterday and I wrote from beginning to end. Things like the interest rate swap I learned how to do for the first time in the exam and I hope I did enough to scrape by (Im consoling myself with the fact that I passed this in the mock with zero study done!!) and hopefully have a few spare marks from multi D to compensate for it.

Worrying few months ahead though!!

my_wee_honey

Hey...

Not long in from the FAE MABF paper - cried the whole way home! NEVER have i done an exam like that - a complete waste of time. I struggled to write anything. Nothin had ever been taught in the way the questions were asked. In fact Im that cross about the paper that I emailed Paul to ask how I could complain about it. I reckon if enough people complain, then we have a case!! So get to it ppl!!

applehunter

Thats what they did last year.

Won't get me a pass.

my_wee_honey

Snap... Im so disappointed. Im just hopin that everyone did equally as bad and they will have to do somethin! No reply from paul yet tho...

Just have no motivation now to study for tomorrow....:rolleyes:

Newcarneeded

I searched the FAE business finance manual for the return on equity ratio formula and couldn't find it anywhere and i'd nothing else to refer to on ratios so I was badly caught out there.

Then I focused solely on profit and return in my narrative answer because the question said "performance" and i neglected the balance sheet ratios as a result wheras i'm sure had i put in CA/CL acid test ratios etc there would have been a few more marks to pick up. I'm looking at 5 out of 20 there if i'm lucky.

I think they're getting a day ahead of themselves on a lot of the papers. I wasn't expecting to need discount factors on Wednesday only today and I was expecting the financial analysis question tomorrow.

I was also thrown by the transfer pricing question because I simply didn't have time to spend figuring out how the varying levels of market demand at different sales prices would affect overall profits. I tried to work out how many units Alpha was buying, or was it Omega, based on the std materials cost and the cost of sales materials costs but I was getting an answer to decimal points so figured that couldn't be right, and the sales over selling price gave a totally different number so i reckoned i must have been barking up the wrong tree there so i just lashed down general points and moved on.

I got the swap and the Swiss franc Q pretty much spot on i'd say, but I don't know if i can recover from what went before that. And i can fully appreciate where people simply had to write off that part of the Q. I know it's on the syllabus but I didn't expect to see it and only I covered that as part of my primary degree I also probably wouldn't have gotten much from it.

I'd be interested to hear what Paul Monahan thinks of the paper alright.

You can never tell with Institute exams how you've done, but I know for sure that I was much more confident coming out of every Prof II and Prof III exam than I was coming out of MABF today.

As regards the rest of the exams I didn't do well on audit but that was basically down to my own time management, and on financial I blanked when finance leases came up and didn't have the prof III notes to refer to. The remainder of the paper i thought was ok.

I was a bit put out by Tax because firstly I found the income tax cessation provisisions Q really long as it asked for a calculation, then I really didn't think it was fair to ask, was it for 8 marks, on the associate of a participator close company rules relating to Martins interest. I didn't have the Prof III notes with me anyway which would have covered that, and i'm fairly sure that's not in the FAE tax manual.

I certainly found prof III easier than i've found FAE's.

Disappointingly I think i'll have done better in my mock FAE MABF than what i did today, and I didn't pass the mock.

Newcarneeded

I searched the FAE business finance manual for the return on equity ratio formula and couldn't find it anywhere and i'd nothing else to refer to on ratios so I was badly caught out there.

Then I focused solely on profit and return in my narrative answer because the question said "performance" wheras i'm sure had i put in CA/CL acid test ratios etc there would have been a few more marks to pick up.

I'm looking at 5 out of 20 there if i'm lucky.

I was also thrown by the transfer pricing question because I simply didn't have time to spend figuring out how the varying levels of market demand at different sales prices would affect overall profits. I tried to work out how many units Alpha was buying, or was it Omega, based on the std materials cost and the cost of sales materials costs but I was getting an answer to decimal points so figured that couldn't be right, and the sales over selling price gave a totally different number so i reckoned i must have been barking up the wrong tree there so i just lashed down general points and moved on.

I got the swap and the Swiss franc Q pretty much spot on i'd say, but I don't know if i can recover from what went before that. And i can fully appreciate where people simply had to write off that part of the Q. I know it's on the syllabus but I didn't expect to see it and only I covered that as part of my primary degree I also probably wouldn't have gotten much from it.

I'd be interested to hear what Paul Monahan thinks of the paper alright.

You can never tell with Institute exams how you've done, but I know for sure that I was much more confident coming out of every Prof II and Prof III exam than I was coming out of MABF today.

As regards the rest of the exams I didn't do well on audit but that was basically down to my own time management, and on financial I blanked when finance leases came up and didn't have the prof III notes to refer to. The remainder of the paper i thought was ok.

I was a bit put out by Tax because firstly I found the income tax cessation provisisions Q really long as it asked for a calculation, then I really didn't think it was fair to ask, was it for 8 marks, on the associate of a participator close company rules relating to Martins interest. I didn't have the Prof III notes with me anyway which would have covered that, and i'm fairly sure that's not in the FAE tax manual.

I certainly found prof III easier than i've found FAE's.

Disappointingly I think i'll have done better in my mock FAE MABF than what i did today, and I didn't pass the mock.

my_wee_honey

Youre right... the ratio wasnt in the business finance manual!!! Cant believe it - surely thats unfair!

Got an email back from Paul- he says he wants ammunition for the meeting of the board, so email him with your thoughts!! paul.monahan@ie.pwc.com and also he said to complain to david.byrne@icai.ie who is the examinations officer... maybe if we all do it, it will have an impact!

SIBHCHEVIE

Thanks I have done that and I have texted a few friends to make sure they e mail. I need all the help that I can get in passing the bloody thing.

Swap rates I have never seen before in life, I made up some babble about what i thought it meant and made a poor effort in trying to do some calculation. So much for just doing exam papers I felt like getting up and walking out after i did the first question. I spent ages trying to find a formula to calculate the return on equity which i think the examiner just made up at this stage to mess with our heads.

Tax was a bit of a joke as well, I knew Income tax was examinable but I didn't realise it was going to be to that extent for question one, I actually copied the example straight from the tax manual and I still don't think i got it right. I think they were constantly trying to catch you out on that paper as well because as far as I could see he could qualify for BES provided he held onto them for 5 years and he couldn't qualify for anything else which they were hoping you would hang yourself by saying there was. The same was true for the transfer of the house I couldn't think of any other way they could've made the transfer and i had to say that it was the most efficient because of CGT credits, higher CAT thresholds and 50% relief from stamp duty but i don't think that this was right.

Oh well I guess at least my contract finishes in March 2010 so i do have next september but I still aint impressed. They probably will go the whole way now and make the multi D a B***h of a paper as well. :mad:

JohnnyGolf

Just after giving MABF a second bash.......following last years problems and outcry, you'd think they would have presented a somewhat decent paper...

Apparently, the examiner got a telling off from the Institute last year for setting a bad paper, what the hell happenend this year, how did all that paper get through the exams board without changes?

I'm not looking forward to having to do this a third time....anyway, why we doing it?.......I don't ever use these skills in work!!:)

chump

JohnnyGolf wrote: »

Just after giving MABF a second bash.......following last years problems and outcry, you'd think they would have presented a somewhat decent paper...

Apparently, the examiner got a telling off from the Institute last year for setting a bad paper, what the hell happenend this year, how did all that paper get through the exams board without changes?

I'm not looking forward to having to do this a third time....anyway, why we doing it?.......I don't ever use these skills in work!!:)

Apparently the paper this year was peer reviewed by 2 people.

Anyway I dunno.

I passed MABF in mock with flying colours.
I died in there today.

I was so thrown off I missed the basics and totally messed up.

I cannot see how I can get 40% never mind 50%. I didn't get anything close to correct and am very disappointed.

Move on though.
Have to hope they throw 40% at us and tomorrow's paper allows for a 60-70% mark.

I hope that tax is marked straightforwardly, as it was a very difficult paper, so hoping they throw 40% at us.

And audit was a fair paper, but will likely still need comp. marks!

Disaster.
Goodluck tomorrow

SIBHCHEVIE

They were obviously given a quota for more failures this year, and I can safely say that they will exceed it.

dimple

I was repeating Auditing and MABF this year - i feel like i've no chance of getting 100 from the two of them. I was lucky enough to have the ROE formula in another book i had from my uni days but that was about the only thing that went my way!


Not looking forward to November when the sh*t hits the fan again

I still reckon we'll see 80% of people pass overall so its just a case of where you fall in the distribution of marks. I feel like its harder when repeating cos you don't have your better subjects to help you compensate.

Jpers

Got to agree with the majority of feelings here already.

Audit was relatively straightforward, but very tight on time - you didn't have even a spare few seconds to gather your thoughts, and so were just writing and writing....
Plus with audit, you are never sure if you are actually hitting the points that they are looking for - what you think is a good answer can be totally off the suggested solution.

Fin Reporting has been the best of them so far for me - still very tight on time though, but all pretty reasonable scenarios, despite the typical confusions thrown in to make you doubt your answer.

They would have to bring in the new condition this year on getting 40% on tax and fin reporting separately - just our luck!!!

Tax, as others have said was totally off what was expected. No sign of the major areas - nothing of note on CAT or the other reliables for at least 1 or 2 of the sections for a few safe marks. With another hour you may have had a reasonable chance at it - but there was far too much required time wise for so few marks on offer. The content requested didn't match the time allowed I thought. Pretty much a disaster really, will be a case of crawling to the 20 marks line like one of those guys lost in the desert heading for the imaginary oasis.........

MABF, again rather obscure topics and a total backwards way of asking what would normally be straightforward areas to answer on. They seemed determined to live up to the "every section of the syllabus is examinable" this year. On top of that, the total ridiculous storyline of heading to the coffee shop to buy a cappuccino - who gives a flying you know what about that - far too much padding for an MABF paper - they should forget the fairytales and just give the relevant details and spare you wasting time having to read so much...


Here's hoping the Multi-D will buck the trend of rotten papers tomorrow - the way they are going it’s hard to presume though, but we need that 60% on one paper to compensate!

Best of luck to all - and fingers crossed it all works out on November 14th.......

Dan Chipowski

They really have arsed this up, i sat the md in waterford today and apparently we did a different paper to the one in dublin, who got the reserve paper?

The week was a bit of a shambles but hopefully they will mark them easy.

Auditing was ok, but didnt have enough time and made one silly error in the audit report question, might be looking at 40ish, 50 if they mark it ok.

Fin Acc was grand, made one or two silly errors but should have passed.

Tax was far too long for the time and that loan this from yer man to the company was a load of absolute SH*TE. Still, id be hoping for 50ish. The Bes part was ok, and the first few parts, while very long, i made a decent fist of. If they mark it hard id be below 50 probably.

MABF was a nightmare, but one thing i did was write plenty so if they mark it fairly, id say i have a shout. If they mark the transfer pricing theory and the interest swaps ok, then i should have a fair chance of squeezing 50. The paper itself was very unfair, all year we've been told it would be a nice paper after last years debacle, and yet i was getting calls from people in tears after it. How that paper was approved is anyones guess.

The md today was fine, very tight time wise, but i wrote far too much for the first part. My own fault.

walshy123

the ROE and ROCE forumla's were in the financial management book. chapter four i think. the problem i had was that i started looking at ROCE for investments (ARR). this forumla is completely different to the one for and P&L and B/S. i spent 45 min on the question before i realised this. started the paper again with 3.25 hours to go. absolute nightmare. then when i went to list disadvantges of ROCE i realised i didnt do the revaluations. i just left it and wrote a note saying i didnt have time to correct it. then got to WACC q where they asked to compare it to ROCE and ROE, so had to go back and correct it. nightmare. i felt like leaving after an hour

LOVED todays paper, well not loved, its an accounting exam, but u know what i mean. thought it was very doable. KPI and corporate gov were lifted straight from past papers!

audit was ok, as good as i could expect, financial went very well, but tax wasnt good.

mabf is my main problem, followed by tax

@dan, im in waterford too. when that fire alarm went off, i was like u can take this paper and mark it out of 80%, no way am i doing it again!!!!

walshy123

@ dan, im just off the phone from a few lads off work.... dublin did get the same paper........

applehunter

The ICAI circus came to Cork as well.

Short 50 paper when he opened the box.

The supervisor had us waiting 3/4 while he photopied 50 copies using a fax/printer machine.

We finished at 3pm.

All done now.

Just after a few pints.

Off to bed.

Dan Chipowski

applehunter wrote: »

The ICAI circus came to Cork as well.

Short 50 paper when he opened the box.

The supervisor had us waiting 3/4 while he photopied 50 copies using a fax/printer machine.

We finished at 3pm.

All done now.

Just after a few pints.

Off to bed.

A bit farcical that, and unfair to people as well.

Dan Chipowski

walshy123 wrote: »

@ dan, im just off the phone from a few lads off work.... dublin did get the same paper........

ah right, duff info as usual.

my_wee_honey

Wat in this world are they doing?! Im from Belfast and everyone I spoke to has the same thoughts on the MABF paper. We WERE NOT TAUGHT in the manner that enabled us to answer that exam AT ALL! I kept thinking for each question "i dont have a clue ill move on to the next one" this seemed to follow though till I got to the end of the paper when I thought... O dear, looks like I havent a clue about any of it. Thing was, I was studying MABF FLAT OUT cause it was my poorest subject. Anyway... time to kick back and relax!! :-)

Make sure you all get ur complaints in!!!

Enjoy your weekend.... and work on Monday :-|

smiley85

Apparently everyone is to mail paul monahan as he is going to the board about the MABF paper. Auditing i just wrote bull**** trying to take stuff from past exam papers.Financial accounting was good enough if tha f'n finance lease hadnt been on it that **** is prof 3 type wuestion.everyone seemed to be in good spirits till we went into tax god i failed that paper.a loan to a company i wrote nothing, cessation rules i didnt cop that,BES relief my mind was gone mad by that stage i didnt even know my own name got that all wrong aw it was horrible i had an urge to get up and run out of the exam hall.mabf was horrible like i couldnt understand what they were asking let alone answer it.wrote a lot of bull**** for interest rate swaps as i found it in the book and wrote it straight.sat for 20 minutes looking at the first question thinkin what are they askin should i be calculating wacc or something or something.i brought a new meaning to transfer pricing and skipped a feckin question in the middle of the paper.multi d today went grand when i say grand at least i understood the question to me i felt like the mabf and tax paper the questions may as well of been wrote in irish.im so glad other people found these exams tough as when i be sitting in the exam i do think that everyone else knows this **** and im just a loser whose gona fail them all and i might aswell go get a job in mc donalds and stop kiddin myself

JohnnyGolf

To be honest, the ICAI qualification is getting to be a bit of a farse, our employers pay huge fees (and students for repeats) for total incompentency, for example;

1) In FAE 2007, a girl fainted on receipt of the MABF paper, she actaully fainted at the desk. None of the exam co-ordinaters came to her rescue, when she came around, she was weak and unable to stand up. How much are these co-ordinaters getting? One of the Co-ordinaters in Dublin centre was walking around listening to his ipod. I take my job seriously, they should too.
2) The ID requirement is 10 years too late, I've often thought of paying a mate to sit my exams and I know I would easily get away with it (particularly in MABF!) The ICAI should issue all students with proper ID cards like many firms do and other accounting bodies.
3) Some idiot in Galway gave out the MD paper on Thurs!! Madness
4) Not enough papers in Cork, that is not acceptable. We are stressed enough with these exams to have this done to us. Mistakes like this should not happen. The ICAI have had 12 months to prepare for this exam. Something similar like this happended to me in College and a letter of apology was issued all students by the College...do u think the ICAI will do this?
5) Also, why aren't we better prepared for the MABF exam? This subject is now becoming the most difficult subject to pass, more so than auditing. Any of the lectures and grinds I did (at my own expense) did not prepare us for this exam. The MABF paper has no proper structure to it like all the other papers.

I'm not having a rant here but its time the ICAI should be brought to heel, the behaviour over this week has been totally unacceptable in respect of condition of some of the papers and how students were treated.

On a plus note, I thought extra time in the Dublin centres on account of the rain was decent enough.

Badboy21

I just did my fae's there, they were extremely easy, The MABF was so straightforward, the auditing basic and the financial accounting no harder than college accounting, I have come to the conclusion that either I am super smart or the people on this thread are super stupid. I’m not super smart so I must agree that’s it’s the latter of the two options.

I'm not being cocky but, come on 12 weeks study leave, open book, compensation; it can’t really be that hard.

Suppose I did get over 500 points in my leaving certificate with very little study

LightningBolt

Badboy21 wrote: »

I just did my fae's there, they were extremely easy, The MABF was so straightforward, the auditing basic and the financial accounting no harder than college accounting, I have come to the conclusion that either I am super smart or the people on this thread are super stupid. I’m not super smart so I must agree that’s it’s the latter of the two options.

I'm not being cocky but, come on 12 weeks study leave, open book, compensation; it can’t really be that hard.

Suppose I did get over 500 points in my leaving certificate with very little study

Badboy21 wrote:

I am doing my FAE's in September 09, i passed my Prof threes first time, that was nice . But there were hard as nails literally i spend the last 4 weeks studying twelve hrs days, they were the hardest exams i had evr done in my whole life. MABF was the worst i studies this subject four weeks straight but still failed it and had to compensate. What a nightmare subject. As for the FAE's i think it will be easier the prof three pass rates last year was around 66% . That means 1 in 3 people didnt mange to pass them all.

Can we just ban this clown?

Superdub2

Badboy21 wrote: »

I just did my fae's there, they were extremely easy, The MABF was so straightforward, the auditing basic and the financial accounting no harder than college accounting, I have come to the conclusion that either I am super smart or the people on this thread are super stupid. I’m not super smart so I must agree that’s it’s the latter of the two options.

I'm not being cocky but, come on 12 weeks study leave, open book, compensation; it can’t really be that hard.

Suppose I did get over 500 points in my leaving certificate with very little study

Are you looking for people to bite?? Best of luck on November 14th

On another note, for anybody who doesnt know you do not have to get a minimum of 40 amymore in the tax exam, rather a minimum of 40 on average between the financial and tax papers

Lurker1977

Badboy21 wrote: »

Why would i be banned from this boards, all im saying is that... those people who went to prep school and say how good they are because they got a good elaving cert should remmeber that u got the best teachers, best grinds and best everything, your 500 + is a result of your affluence and not how clever you are. I went to a dive of a school ahd bad teachers my whole life and i got 510, that means that im a lot clever than you... thats all im saying, im doing law in ucd.... which is full of people,liek yourselfves who arent that clever

Stop trolling! You also cant remember if you got 600 points or 510.