ACCA September 2025 exam tips

Our tips aren’t optional!

For the first-time ever at the last sitting all the optional paper pass rates were 40% and above! Here’s our tips for the September exams, with the help of BPP, to make sure you keep up the good work!

Advanced Financial Management (AFM)

June pass rate 46%

All AFM exams will have questions which have a focus on:

1. Syllabus section B (Advanced Investment appraisal), and

2. Syllabus section E (Treasury and Advanced Risk Management Techniques).

These syllabus areas are therefore high priority areas for your revision.

Q1: 50 marks

We would expect questions to cover at least two different syllabus areas. This emphasises the importance of having a good broad knowledge of the syllabus, and NOT targeting your final exam revision on a small number of numerical syllabus areas.

Questions are often mainly based on core syllabus areas such as project appraisal (domestic or overseas), business valuations and business/financial reorganisations – these areas often include cost of capital calculations. Risk management may also feature in a number of different ways such as value at risk, real options, interest rate or current hedging, and risk management (e.g. mapping).

Q2-3: 25 marks each Areas that are commonly tested include:

• Risk management (currency or interest rate), including the functions and structure of a treasury department.

• Dividend policy and general financing issues.

• Real options (including limitations of the approach).

• Business reorganisation.

General advice: The examining team have emphasised that exams are designed to make question spotting extremely difficult for this paper, so it is important to have a broad understanding of the key aspects of each syllabus area. Pay as much attention to discussion areas as you do to numerical analysis in your final revision – remember that this paper is not a maths exam and that in all exam questions the examiner is interested in your ability to communicate well and to give sound, practical, management advice that relates to the scenario in the question. This

is now even more important as 20% of the marks are awarded for professional skills. Make sure you aware what these skills are and that you are confident in your ability to integrate these into your answer to the technical requirements of a question.

UK Advanced Taxation (ATX)

June pass rate 49%

The exam will comprise one compulsory 50-mark question within Section A. The requirements will be detailed in the manager’s email marked

‘work to be carried out’, and there will be several exhibits containing further information. The answer will need to be prepared in a specific format as set out in the manager’s email, which will include mark allocations for the subrequirements. Due to the size of the question it is possible that the scenario could involve more than one client or a personal client in addition to a corporate client. The question will comprise 35 technical marks, five ethics marks and 10 professional skills marks. Each of the four professional skills will be tested.

Section B will comprise of two compulsory 25-mark questions. These will be in a more succinct, note-form style and will comprise 20 technical marks and five professional skills marks. A minimum of two of the three professional skills will be tested in these questions (not including communication).

The whole syllabus is examinable throughout the exam.

The exam will test candidates’ ability to analyse

and evaluate the tax implications of various situations; numerical calculations will only be required to assist in producing an answer and no purely numerical questions will be set.

Since the introduction of the professional skills marks from the June 2023 sitting students now have more time to attempt each question than under earlier sittings. The ACCA has stated that the additional professional skills marks should not be considered as additional requirements but that the extra time they allow should be used for planning and thus to prepare a more comprehensive answer.

Topics/ scenarios we would expect to see include:

• Personal income tax scenarios that could involve investing in a pension; investing in EIS, SEIS or VCTs, share schemes; employment income possibly with termination payments; a personal service company; property income or a takeover.

• Unincorporated business – particularly including loss reliefs, partnerships or basis period rules.

• A question focusing on overseas issues. This could be income tax, capital gains tax, inheritance tax or a corporate scenario.

• Capital gains tax versus inheritance tax including availability of reliefs.

• Corporate scenarios – likely to focus in more depth on intangibles; research and development; losses; corporate groups or consortia.

• Special corporate scenarios such as liquidation; purchase of own shares; close or investment companies.

• A business transformation scenario question such as selling a sole trade business, incorporation or, in a corporate context, the sale of shares versus the sale of trade and assets.

• Other common types of question/ calculation to expect are

• Reviewing a pre-prepared computation to spot, explain and correct errors.

• Calculations such as ‘tax saved through an action’, ‘after-tax proceeds’, ‘the value of a posttax inheritance’, ‘net spendable income’ or the ‘net of tax cost of something’.

Don’t forget that across the scenarios we typically expect to see VAT marks available. The partial exemption rules, VAT on land & buildings, a transfer of going concern, the capital goods scheme, overseas VAT transactions and registration/group registration/deregistration tend to be frequently examined.

There will also likely be a couple of marks for stamp duty points if you remember to think about it in your planning.

Finally, don’t forget your basic administration points are also likely to be examined: when does

the tax need to be paid, when does the return need to be filed, what if either of those are late?

Advanced Performance Management APM

June pass rate 40%

Q1 section A: Q1 of the APM exam will focus on a range of issues from syllabus section A (strategic planning and control), section B (performance measurement systems and design), and section C (strategic performance measurement).

Section A (50 marks) contains one question broken down into sub requirements. You will often be required to link a business’s mission to its performance objectives using the concept of CSFs and KPIs. You may well also have to critique and recommend improvements to performance reports and the balanced scorecard and/or information systems could well be tested in this context.

Assessing the performance of an organisation is likely to be tested and this could include benchmarking as a theme.

Financial performance measures (ROCE/ RI/EVA, etc.) are also likely to be examined in this context, but don’t neglect non-financial issues from syllabus section C such as quality management, value for management and reward systems.

Q2-3 section B: ACCA has said that one of two section B questions will come from syllabus section D (performance evaluation). This means you need to have sound knowledge of the balance scorecard, building block and performance pyramid models. You will also need to have a good working knowledge of activity based management (ABM) and value based management (VBM).

The other question can be sourced from a variety of syllabus areas including quality management, information reporting (e.g. big data, lean information), HR frameworks (e.g. reward & appraisal systems), transfer pricing and environmental management accounting.

General advice: APM is primarily a skills-based exam that tests the ability to apply knowledge to practical problems. This is now even more important as 20% of the marks are awarded for professional skills. Make sure you aware what these skills are and that you are confident in your ability to integrate these into your answer to the technical requirements of a question.

However, application of knowledge is only possible if you have a good range of technical skills in place. So, even though APM is not about reciting technical knowledge it is vital that you ensure that you have a good broad knowledge of core technical areas.

Advanced Audit & Assurance AAA

March pass rate 40%

Recent AAA exams have contained no real surprises, although you should be prepared for the look and feel of the embedded email and supporting exhibits and the split of both technical and professional skills marks.

Section A will comprise a case study, worth 50 marks – split into 40 technical marks and 10 professional skills marks – and will be set at the planning stage of the audit for a single company, a group of companies or potentially several audit clients.

Candidates will be provided with detailed

information, which will vary between examinations, but is likely to include extracts of financial information, strategic, operational, and other relevant information for a client, as well as extracts from audit working papers, which could include the results of analytical procedures. The date will be set as 1 July 20X5 unless you are told otherwise.

Candidates will be required to address a range of requirements, from syllabus sections A, B, C and D, thereby tackling a real-world situation where candidates may have to manage a range of issues simultaneously in relation to planning, risk assessment, evidence gathering and ethical and professional considerations.

Ten professional marks will be available in section A and will be awarded based on the demonstration of professional skill within a candidate’s answer, including communication, analysis and evaluation, professional scepticism and judgement, and commercial acumen.

Section B will contain two compulsory 25-mark questions, with each being predominately based on a short scenario. The marks will be split into 20 technical marks and five professional skills marks. There are no optional questions in AAA.

One question will always test syllabus section E, and candidates should therefore always be prepared to answer a question relating to completion, review and reporting. There are a number of formats this question could adopt, including but not limited to matters to be considered and evidence expected to be on file, a going concern assessment, the impact of subsequent events, evaluating identified misstatements and any corresponding effects on the auditor’s report. Candidates may also be asked to critique an auditor’s report or a report which is to be provided to management or

those charged with governance. The second section B question can be drawn from any other part of the syllabus, including sections A, B, C, D and F. Syllabus section G on current issues is unlikely to form the basis of a question on its own. Instead, it will be incorporated into the case study or either of the section B questions, depending on question content and the topical issues affecting the profession at the time of sitting the exam. Five professional marks will be available in each Section B question for demonstrating professional skill in analysis and evaluation, plus at least one of professional scepticism and judgement and commercial acumen.

This is a technically demanding exam which tests auditing knowledge from both AA and AAA. All three exam questions will require you to apply this knowledge to the scenarios given: the professional marks will be awarded on the strength of your application of knowledge to the situation presented in each of the exhibits. Apart from poor auditing knowledge, lack of success usually comes from poor analytical skills, poor application, poor judgement and poor timekeeping.

This subject can also test topical issues that have been covered by the AAA examination team’s technical articles (e.g. quality management in September 2022, and the impact of data analytics in September/December 2020). You should be prepared for a requirement where you will not need to refer to an exhibit at all (in other words, a knowledge-based requirement), which was last seen in 2024. Then candidates were asked to ‘Discuss the challenges associated with the use of data analytics in performing external company audits’. This is most likely to be seen in Section B.

Check out the examining team’s two articles on quality management, two articles on planning questions and risk, plus another two articles that discuss recent developments in social, environmental and sustainability reporting. There are also ‘Topic explainer’ videos on areas such as quality management, audit procedures and prospective financial information (forecasts) that you may find of use.

There are two new syllabus learning outcomes for September’s exam: one on the ISA for auditing less complex entities (only applicable to the INT version) and an evaluation of evidence gathered as part of an assurance engagement (both versions), so you can expect to see something on these in the coming sittings. Also, remember the continuing focus on sustainability assurance following the issue of the IAASB’s exposure draft of ISSA 5000.

In addition to syllabus changes, IFRS 18 Presentation and disclosure in financial statements is now examinable so you should be prepared for the changes in terminology that this will require.

The examining team has advised that certain less frequently examined topics such as audit committees, money laundering, internal auditing and outsourcing could make an appearance, so you should make sure you have covered a good breadth of subjects in your revision.

• For all the September tips for AA, PM, TX, FR, FM, SBL, and SBR see www.pqmagazine.com