Hi all. Hope everyone did OK on F7 this morning. For what it's worth I hope I passed. Mid 50's with a bit of luck!

One thing puzzled me. On question 3, the cash flow question, there was a note (poss ii) stating that £20million had been included in admin expenses but needed to be removed (I can't quite remember the details of why!).

The problem is that the admin expenses amounted to (I think) £435,000. Total turnover was (again I think) only ~£4million.

Was this £20million a mistake on the paper?! Did anyone else notice this?

I wrote a short note as part of my answer questioning this figure but, as I wrote in the note, I may very well be wrong!

i did remove the 20 and put it in the financing cost with the loan redemption as it was penalty for loan redemption....i knew something was wrong but i did not bother as i did not have time...

The $20 million was a mistake in the question paper. It wasted about my 10 minutes during the exam. How can a loan note of $400,000 being redeemed early can have a penalty of $ 20 million? and total Admin expenses of $350,000 can include a figure of $ 20 million?
Now that ACCA has uploaded the F7 exam paper on their web portal the $20 million figure has ben replaced with $20 thousand . Download the Exam paper and check this out !

check ACCA website...qpaper now on site

Well that is just a little bit wrong. I'd very much like a formal statement from ACCA about this.

I also wasted much time in trying to figure out what was going on with the £20million. To the extent that I wrote a half page note at the end of my answer pointing out that I thought it was a mistake and that it made accurate analysis of the cash flows impossible.

I also wrote about it in the feedback form I was emailed yesterday.

Please anyone reading this assist me and others by sending a short email to ACCA asking for a response. Some sort of upward revision of everyone's marks for this question would seem a fair resolution.

I've already done it but I do not expect a personal response.. probably the examiner's report will state the ACCA position on the error..

I would first like an acknowledgement that the error happened. In my opinion this should happen quickly and publicly (perhaps in student accountant).

That the published question paper has a modified question 3 worries me slightly; and might be worrying other people somewhat more. It is slightly pravdaesque!

I work for one of the big 4 and this is being highlighted in a meeting with the ACCA next week as we send a representative along. Will keep you updated!

I received a response from ACCA to my question about how the error would be treated.
See what I got:

'We are aware that there was an error in one element of question 3 of paper F7 at the June 2008 exam sitting and that this will be taken into account during the marking process. Students who have taken this paper can therefore be reassured that that they will not be disadvantaged in any way.'

So I think we'll get ,say, 2 marks for that penalty no matter what we've done with it.

2 marks is for sure, but what about a wasted time trying to figure out what to do with this penalty (and thus not spending it on other questions)? I'd say 4-5 marks to everyone will do a fair compensation for error.

Yes I agree to comment made by regitoni that 2 marks do not compensate the time wated .
It should be 4--5 marks for this error.
this error ate significant amount of time during paper.
I am already very weak on time managment!

Sad soul! I totally agree with you...It wasted my time too. I wasted nearly 5 minutes and in those 5 minutes I could have checked my answers to pick up my mistakes.

We are aware that there was an error in one element of question 3 of paper F7 at
the June 2008 exam sitting and that this will be taken into account during the
marking process. Students who have taken this paper can therefore be reassured
that that they will not be disadvantaged in any way


recd the same reply.....