Management Accounting

Where the marks are

Percentages are the examinable weighting for each area. Revising in this order puts your time where the marks are.

1. Costing Methods and Techniques

   20%

   Costing methods (specific order, process and service costing) · Costing techniques (absorption and marginal costing) · Introduction to cost control and cost reduction

2. Forecasting, Budgeting and Budgetary Control

   20%

   Forecasting techniques · Budgeting

3. Decision Making Techniques

   20%

   Cost volume profit (CVP) analysis · Relevant cost analysis · Limiting factors

4. Management Information

   15%

   Nature and purposes of management accounting · Management information systems (MIS) · Spreadsheets · Big data and data analytics · Cost classifications, codification, segregation and estimation

5. Standard Costing and Basic Variance Analysis

   15%

   Purpose and principles of standard costing · Calculation of basic variances and their analyses · Interpretation of the various variances · Causes and remedies for the variances · Reconciliation of budgeted and actual profits under standard, marginal and absorption costing methods

6. Accounting for Cost Elements

   10%

   Accounting for inventory · Accounting for labour · Accounting for overheads

Where candidates lose this paper

The Institute publishes its own past questions. What it cannot give you is an answer to these.

There is not enough time to read the whole study text before the diet.

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.

You write practice answers for months and never find out whether a single one would have scored.

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.

The study text is hundreds of pages and none of it tells you which parts the examiner actually asks about.

Every syllabus topic, ordered by the share of marks it carries, so your revision time follows the marks instead of the page count.

You know the answer but lose marks anyway, and no one ever explains where they went.

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.