[Tony73085]

So I’m taking FAR in 5 days. Reviewing and feeling confident but Govt OMG. Just lost all confidence.

[Lauren]

Hello,

Govt can be tricky but once you get the hang of it you will be fine. My advice is to know the difference between which funds are modified accrual and which are full accrual. Know the modified accrual journal entries and attempt to understand what they are doing: budget, encumbrances, actual expenditures, reversals, and closing entries. Govt ACCT is about accountability! Drill your MCQs, that’s the best way to pick this up.

[Accountant405]

I took FAR earlier tonight and all I can say is read the post above for sure and make sure to understand the the governmental wide financials, the names of the statements and that fund does what. It’s heavily tested

[sdk4747]

Fund accounting is not difficult; it's just weird and takes some getting used to. If you're comfortable with the Intermediate II concepts and the Advanced Accounting concepts, you can get Fund Accounting. However, it takes time!

[SuperAccountingGod]

What my colleagues all said. I'll never understand the AICPA's obsession in heavily testing Governmental Accounting. What accountant really wants to go work in that sector?

[Operation_CPA]

Governmental accounting is all about repetition. Simply put: you need to do the MCQs over and over in your review software until it finally clicks.

As far as @SuperAccountingGod‘s comment – I'm presuming the AICPA believes or has some sort of data that shows people trending towards governmental accounting roles after leaving public. That's my guess at least.

[iceman]

“Fund accounting is not difficult; it's just weird and takes some getting used to. If you're comfortable with the Intermediate II concepts and the Advanced Accounting concepts, you can get Fund Accounting. However, it takes time!”

It is actually more difficult in that most of us don't have any real world experience with it while we do have experience with GAAP accounting and/or tax. So with Govt, most of us don't have the ability to intuit an answer by applying the question to real world scenarios we have experienced.

[iceman]

“As far as @superaccountinggod‘s comment – I'm presuming the AICPA believes or has some sort of data that shows people trending towards governmental accounting roles after leaving public. That's my guess at least.”

I'd go with “believes” not that they have good data. And based off the archaic/antiquated nature of the IT questions in BEC, its safe to say AICPA's “beliefs” are often based on some really old info.

[iceman]

I think most people struggle with Govt Acct. I did and I still got a 90 on FAR. AICPA knows/should know this and scale those questions which give everyone issues accordingly to the level of difficulty shown by exam results.

[Author]

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