[justgivemea75]

Hi all,

I’m seriously struggling with chapter 4. I watched the lecture, re-read + took notes, did the MCQs (terribly I might add), re-read/re-wrote what I wasn’t understanding in my own framework, did it one more time before attempting the supplemental questions, took the supps. After all that, my MCQ score went from a whopping 61 to a 67. I take the test on Friday and I really don’t know what to do. I’m not working yet, so I have all day (literally) to study, but I really can’t crack these MCQ questions.

The biggest issue I’m having is that I can figure out what procedure needs to be done (i.e. do I need to trace/vouch), but I can never understand which documents to pick. That has been my biggest source of frustration because I know that I understand what to do, but I can’t keep straight what a remittance is, bill of lading, etc. and then whether it’s the shipping/billing department that prepares blah blah and sends it to blah.

Has anyone else struggled with this chapter that can help me out? Why is it that the CPA seems to heavily test the one area I don’t understand? I have done well on the last few chapters, but this chapter, the most heavily tested, is the one I don’t get. It was a similar thing with FAR. I understood just about everything except for that one topic, and that topic is the one guaranteed to be heavily tested 🙁

FAR - 84
AUD - 76 (phew)
BEC - 88
REG - 77

DONE!

[Anonymous]

Do you have auditing experience? If not, I would suggest to continue reading the material and redoing MCQs until it sticks. This is the hardest section for nearly everyone and its only less difficult if you have substantial auditing experience.

[justgivemea75]

No, I will be starting audit in just over a month. I really wanted to knock out 3 sections of the CPA before I start work, but it looks like at best I'll only have a shot at FAR/BEC. I've honestly found it harder to study for AUD than FAR. FAR had numbers and such, but at least the topics were distinct. In AUD, all the reports sound the same, all the processes sound the same, and the compliance stuff is so hard to motivate myself to study for because it's BORING.

I guess I'll spend the rest of the day re-reading/re-copying notes and go from there. I thought that if I could match procedures to assertions I'd be OK, but I'm still doing really poorly

FAR - 84
AUD - 76 (phew)
BEC - 88
REG - 77

DONE!

[Anonymous]

Once you have a year or so in audit, if you were to retake AUD, you would find it much easier 🙂 I think Audit is one of those sections where its really helpful to have experience because you can apply a lot of your own experience to the material, which makes it a lot less memorization. I took Audit before I started my audit job too and I found A4 to be extremely confusing. The only thing that helped was really just going over it again and again and again. All of the sudden, it just clicked.

[justgivemea75]

Yeah. I should disclose the other issue is that I've only given myself a week to study for AUD. That might be another issue. I maybe should have given this one 2 weeks and BEC 1 since I'm much more comfortable with business/cost accounting knowledge than I am with AUD.

FAR - 84
AUD - 76 (phew)
BEC - 88
REG - 77

DONE!

[thelonewolf527]

I will admit myself that even after taking the exam on Monday, I definitely didn't master Chapter 4 and it was probably the hardest/most confusing. Certain things WILL become easier though.

However Becker is also awful at “teaching” certain things. Bill of Lading and Remittance I'm fairly certain do not show up ONCE in the book, but are included in a few multiple choice questions. There's times where you'll click the button to see where in the book it mentions something, only to find that the page it takes you to has nothing to do with the question.

Best advice? Just keep doing them over and over and they'll eventually make a little more sense.

AUD - 08/04/14 - 83
FAR - 11/29/14 - 80
REG - 02/26/15 - 89
BEC - 05/30/15 - 86

DONE!

[go2134]

I talk about some of this stuff here:

https://www.another71.com/cpa-exam-forum/topic/my-aud-experience-plus-what-i-regret-what-im-glad-i-did

It takes practice, but realize how crucial the Revenue cycle is, and walk yourself through the process.

[Anonymous]

What I did was memorize the flow of info through the flowcharts.

Then I got down to Coveu(trans/events) cver(acc bals) cvru(pres/disclose)

Then I memorized the chart on A4 18 of the audit procedures for each assertion.

After that I rewrote all the transaction cycles and tried to guess what the procedure was by covering up the answer written in the book. It's a pain to write Coveu cver cvru with explanations over and over, but after all that I finally feel like its beginning to come together.. Still working on it though.

[Anonymous]

I remember having a problem with chapter 4 also. I just got the basics down and, for me, that was enough for the test.

[Author]

Replies