Corporate Reporting (CR) is an Advanced Level exam for the ICAEW ACA qualification to become a Chartered Accountant.
There are three levels to the ACA which get progressively harder: Certificate, Professional and Advanced. There are 6 exams at Certificate Level, a further 6 at Professional Level, and a final 3 at Advanced Level.
At my firm, the training contract is three years and each year you (hopefully) advance to the next level. Usually, we sit all 3 Advanced Level exams together in either November or July, however given that my cohort had started the exams earlier than usual due to Covid, I finished my Professional Level in June 2022 and thus requested to sit the first Advanced Level exam, CR, earlier than usual. Most other firms split the Advanced Level into two sittings anyway so I wasn't at a huge advantage but I wanted to get as many exams out the way as soon as possible. I sat CR in November 2022, with the remaining 2 exams (SBM and Case) to be sat in July 2023.
Tuition
CR is a 3.5-hour exam so there is quite a bit of content to get through. This exam focuses on accounting and audit, neither of which I specialise in at work, and I knew I was up against candidates who work in these areas for a living. Despite this, I had gotten used to making the most of the tuition period to visit family or travel, and given that tuition was over the August bank holiday, I took the opportunity to visit the North of Portugal with various family members. This was a lot of fun as I finally managed to visit various places I'd been yearning to see for ages, including Gerês National Park, Coimbra, and Viana do Castelo.
As I knew I'd be travelling over tuition, I had watched most of the online videos available to get a rough idea of the content, however I didn't have time to do all of the pre-course work that had been set or review all of my FAR and AA notes from the Professional Level.
Tuition itself is only from 9:30am until 4:15pm, giving plenty of time for exploration. I wasn't expecting to enjoy tuition as I'm not too enthusiastic about accounting nor audit, however I loved my tutor as she was very engaging, didn't put you on the spot, finished early everyday, and always had breaks on time (whereas most others I've had overrun). This meant that I could actually concentrate throughout the entire day and do the questions in class, whereas typically during tuition I lose focus regularly (especially in the afternoons and towards the end of the week).
Revision
Tuition ended at the beginning of September, so the period of individual revision began. Usually I am fairly proactive with revision and can motivate myself to do enough in good time, however CR was the first exam in which I really struggled with revision, despite only having one exam to sit. I was the only one in my cohort sitting CR as I had specifically asked to sit it early, so the pressure was on to pass.
During the first two weeks of September, I was in a bad headspace and couldn't focus so I struggled to initially start question practice. I then had a work deadline at the end of September, so was working until 9pm everyday, meaning I had no motivation to then revise once I got home. The weekend after the deadline (30th September - 2nd October), I headed to Munich for Oktoberfest, which I'd booked prior to getting approval to sit CR early. I was stressed as I'd never revised so little by this point, but I was set on enjoying the trip and then cracking down once I was back. A colleague of mine had revised for only 5 weeks for CR and had passed, which was extremely encouraging to me.
I arrived back on 2nd October, giving me 3 weeks until the revision sessions and 5 weeks until the exam. Needless to say, I was very stressed.
I have never struggled so much mentally and cried so often, however I was still getting used to living alone, long distance was becoming tougher, buying a house was draining, and I had friendship drama alongside work stress. I am never usually debilitated by exams and can't remember the last time I felt this stressed for an exam; I'd felt fairly confident that I'd pass for all of the other ACA exams (if the paper wasn't harder than usual), but with CR I was much less prepared. I focused on my mental health so still saw friends often, kept up my reading and running, and went to the office more frequently, however I was often on the verge of tears, had little appetite, and felt that my work, and especially revision, was suffering, so I needed to push through it. I often went back to my parents to revise so I would have comfort foods and company, which was very appreciated.
I started question practice with the questions that had video debriefs online, which was helpful but similarly to BPT, the questions cover so much content that initially each question seems impossible. Furthermore, each CR question takes at least an hour (often more) on exam day, and significantly longer during the initial revision period. I'd printed a list of every question to keep track of which questions I'd done, and although I was very behind, I aimed to do 2-5 questions a day on the weekends in October, so even though I hadn't done all of the recommended questions by the revision session, I felt slightly more comfortable.
The revision session lasted a week and had a similar format to tuition, and whilst I felt a bit more comfortable with the questions, I failed the first revision mock (only improving by 1.5% from tuition) and struggled a lot with the second revision mock, which knocked my confidence slightly.
I then had one week between the revision session and the exam, and although by this point I'd done more questions and spent more time on revision than I had with BPT, there were still various areas I struggled with and I couldn't focus for an entire 3.5-hour period. Regardless, the sheer number of questions and answers I'd seen and hours I'd sat at a desk reassured me somewhat (even if some were completely wrong or barely attempted). I kept going between ‘I'm gonna fail’ to ‘I might be okay, c'mon you’ve got this’. Although it took me several weeks to start revising, over revision I averaged about 5 questions a day, followed by 1 or 2 questions a day after work the week leading up to the exam until I'd finally attempted all 92 practice questions. Needless to say, this was the most intense ACA exam I've done to date by far.
Personally, I didn't look at my notes for either FAR or AA but if you have the time I'd definitely recommend doing so as the majority of AA can be tested, as can parts of FAR, especially regarding consolidated financial statements. Luckily for me, a colleague who'd sat the exam earlier in the year had created some notes with various audit risks and procedures, which she gave me a couple of weeks before the exam and were extremely helpful. I didn't use any of the IFRS standards but would strongly recommend tabbing up your notes similarly to in BPT so that by the time the exam comes around you know exactly where in your notes to turn to, especially as the 3.5 hours fly by in the real exam. I would definitely recommend splitting revision into different areas, for example spending one day on hedging, the next on FX transactions, the following on groups et cetera. I didn't do this so it took me much longer to grasp certain concepts (and some I didn't feel confident with even by the exam). I'd also create some audit notes with all risks, procedures, and weaknesses as soon as you start practice questions as audit was the area I was most scared for (unless you work in audit, of course).
CR involves an element of audit in which a software is used to analyse some accounts for which we receive some of the information in advance. This was a big element of stress for me as not only is audit my least favourite area of all of the ACA, but the software had failed in my AA sitting and in the last CR sitting so was known for being faulty. That said, my tuition provider ran a session on this 'advanced information' which put my mind slightly at ease and was very helpful. I was provided with notes on the information, as well as potential questions that could be asked (neither of which came up but were useful nonetheless). This is question 1 (of 3) in the exam and has the most marks so I wanted to get it out of the way, despite being scared that I'd read through the whole question only for the software to crash on me in the exam.
Exam
On the day of the exam I woke up at 6am, which was accidental but gave me enough time to have a very slow morning, including making a hearty breakfast of scrambled eggs with smoked salmon on toast and pampering myself, which was very calming.
As I commuted to the exam centre in Kensington, my main fear was not being able to eat or use the loo for 3.5 hours, however time ended up passing extremely quickly so it wasn't a problem at all. The software for the first question didn't crash, for which I was very grateful, and the audit questions were much better than I'd anticipated. That said, the accounting question, which was the question that I was most confident for, threw me right off, but I gave it my best shot and tried not to dwell on it.
Coincidentally, I saw a schoolmate and had a quick chat, which was nice yet unexpected. I celebrated with some drinks in the evening but had to endure an afternoon of work beforehand, which wasn't ideal. Regardless, I received innumerable well wishes and flowers (to the point where I didn't have enough vases) and felt extremely loved, especially given the difficulty of the past couple of months.
Results
On 16th December, five weeks after sitting the exam, I received a text stating that I'd passed the exam with 71% and I was filled with emotion that it was finally over and all of the struggle had been worth it and paid off. Although I did find CR difficult, a huge part of my struggle wasn't related to the exam whatsoever, but instead exacerbated by it. I think CR is definitely manageable, but a lot of hours of revision are required to feel somewhat comfortable with it (especially if you do not work in audit or accounting directly) so I'd recommend starting early to avoid a last-minute panic.
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