Kaplan

　　Concentrate on the core areas – these are the ones that are regularly examined; your Kaplan tutor will help you to identify what they are. But your strategy should be study breadth not depth; it is much better to have a working knowledge of the whole syllabus rather than just 6 topics in lots of depth.

　　Pay attention to the verbs in the question to start with. ‘Explain’ requires you to state an answer with some facts as examples to support it. So, if the question was, ‘Explain the evidence you would seek when auditing provisions’, then an answer may be, ‘ External advice from a solicitor to prove existence and valuation.

　　BPP

　　Section A:

　　This comprises two compulsory questions worth 35 marks and 25 marks respectively. Typically question 1 will test planning, risk assessment, evidence gathering and practice management issues using a scenario where audit client details are presented, often including financial statements extracts, which candidates need to consider as part of their answers. However, the topics covered by question 2 will be more uncertain to predict – possibly a non-audit engagement such as prospective financial information (PFI) or due diligence, or a question testing specific parts of the syllabus, such as audit completion or consolidated groups. Whatever the subject, application is vital for success here.

　　Within one of the compulsory questions, there will be 4 professional marks available which reward candidates for the layout and presentation of their answers.

　　Section B:

　　A choice of two from three written questions that are each worth 20 marks and typically test the following syllabus areas: audit evidence and financial reporting issues, practice management including ethics and quality control and reporting including completion and communication. Again, candidates will be expected to apply their knowledge to the scenario in order to score well.

　　P7 has the following syllabus areas:

　　A Regulatory environment

　　B Professional and ethical considerations

　　C Practice management

　　D Audit of historical financial information

　　E Other assignments

　　F Reporting

　　G Current issues and developments

　　General advice:

　　ACCA students are no longer given a separate period of 15 minutes ‘reading and planning’ time at the start of each written exam as the exam duration is now 3 hours and 15 minutes to include reading, planning and writing. However, we would still advise you to use a period similar to this at the start of the exam to continue planning the things you need to include in your answer. It is essential that you use the information in each scenario to make your answers relevant – due to the typical size of the compulsory scenarios, we would advise that you still use this notional 15 minutes to plan these question above all others.

　　During this time you should also pay attention to the verbs used in question requirements as these indicate the number of marks available. For example, the requirement to “evaluate the audit risks” requires a couple of sentences and will score up to 2 marks if the matter is fully explained, whereas use of the verb “list” simply requires you to present information with no further explanation: this will typically only score ½ mark per point listed.

　　Recent exams have tested fresh content from the examiner’s technical articles: for example, key audit matters were examined in December 2016, while INT candidates were tested on the audit of public sector performance information in December 2015.

　　All technical articles can be found here: http://www.accaglobal.com/gb/en/student/exam-support-resources/professional-exams-study-resources/p7/technical-articles.html so you are strongly advised to keep referring to them in advance of the exam.