The ACCA F5 Syllabus is devoted to Performance Management. In the accounting world performance management s referred to as achieving corporate goals in the process of a company’s performance. It concerns all functioning stages and departments of a company – performance of employees, management levels; that is the system of techniques to handle both behavior and results.
It is the second step in the Skills module at the Fundamentals level. This ACCA F5 paper syllabus is designed to provide an ACCA student with accounting techniques of handling qualitative and quantitative information. It reflects the basic interrelations between management and accounting and denotes the role of accountancy in corporate performance.
It is necessary to know that practically all materials in the ACCA F5 syllabus are based upon those of the F2 Management Accounting, especially the first chapter of F2, which concerns marginal cost and recaps absorption. Other similar topics, which are necessary to revise before getting down to the ACCA F5 paper, are variance analysis, relevant costing, linear programming and budgeting.
This ACCA F5 exam will last for three hours and will be either paper or computer based. The pass mark is the half of the questions, which are correctly answered.
The following June-December 2011 ACCA F5 chapters concern such management functions as planning, performance evaluation, decision-making and control. There are totally five issues to be handled in the F5 course:
- cost accounting techniques;
- decision-making techniques and clever allocation of scarce resources;
- budgeting and planning/control management methods;
- performance evaluation, both financial and non-financial.
The ACCA F5 examiners’ approach and interview deal with student ratings and performance during previous years of studying for the ACCA qualification, including also useful information on the general process of F5 study, successful pass of the exam and achieving personal and career highlights. This section directly relates to F5 examiners’ reports.