How to pass ICAN Public Sector Accounting
ATSWA Part II level. The syllabus has 5 areas and they are not worth the same — 80% of the marks sit in just three of them. Knowing which three changes what you do tonight.
Start here, in this order
- 1
Public sector accounting and financial reporting 45% of the paper
Public sector accounting processes, cash books, transcripts and vouchers · Educational institution accounts: domestic and boarding · Stores and inventories classification and accounting procedures · Board of survey and board of enquiry · Managing the finances of government and the government committees · Interpretation of public sector financial statements · Methods of project appraisal in the public sector · FAAC, SJLAAC and RMAFC · Types of revenue and the revenue collection agencies · Revenue and charges to the Consolidated Revenue Fund · Statutory financial statements under cash basis IPSAS · Statutory financial statements under accrual basis IPSAS · IPSAS 33 First-time Adoption of Accrual Basis IPSAS · Books of account and registers under accrual IPSAS · Government Business Entities
- 2
Planning and budgeting in public sector 20% of the paper
Objectives and uses of the annual budget in the public sector · Types of budget and budgeting systems · Stages in the budget cycle and budgetary control · Expenditure control in government · Vote book, fund accounting and revenue control procedures · IPSAS 24 Presentation of Budget Information in Financial Statements
- 3
Public sector accounting framework and concepts 15% of the paper
Constitutional, legal and administrative framework of public sector accounting (Nigeria) · Nature of accounting units · The Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2007 and the medium-term expenditure framework · The Public Procurement Act, 2007 · Constitutional and legal framework of government accounting (Ghana) · Public sector accounting theory, concepts, bases and the fund concept · Pensions: the Armed Forces Pension Act and the Pension Reform Act, 2014 · Professional pronouncements and international and local standard-setting bodies · Reporting formats, appropriation Acts, treasury circulars and public service rules · Constitutional and financial responsibilities of principal officers of government
The remaining 2 areas share 20% between them. Worth knowing. Not worth the weeks that the three above deserve. Full weightings for this paper.
Then drill for speed
Public Sector Accounting is examined by objective questions answered on screen, so recall speed matters more than written argument. Drill until recognition is immediate, then work on the areas above where hesitation costs you time.
The part nobody does
Almost every candidate writes practice answers. Almost none of them ever find out whether those answers would have scored. You write, you feel it went reasonably, you move on — and the first real feedback you receive is the result, months later, when the diet is gone.
That gap is the whole reason preparation fails for people who worked hard. Not knowledge. Feedback.
What Edentos does about it
- The whole study text, in the order the marks are in.
- The official study text condensed and reorganised by examinable weighting, with every claim cited back to the page it came from — so you can check anything you doubt in one click.
- Find out now. Not when the results come out.
- Write by hand, photograph it, and have it marked against the examiner's own marking guide — with the marks broken down the way the examiner breaks them down, and the reason for each one.
- Revise where the marks are, not where the pages are.
- Every syllabus topic, ordered by the share of marks it carries, so your revision time follows the marks instead of the page count.
- A right answer with no workings is a wrong mark.
- The Institute's published solution beside your attempt, with the mark allocation visible — so you can see the marks sitting in the principle and the application, not only the final figure.