Exam advice for each level
ACCA is made up of three levels: Applied Knowledge, Applied Skills and Strategic Professional.
You can move onto exams at the next level as long as you have completed the previous level, or are taking your final exams of the previous level at the same time. Other than that, ACCA do not have any rules on which order the exams should be attempted.
Applied Knowledge
You can overlap with Applied Skills as long as you are on the last exam of Applied Knowledge. The order of these exams isn’t critical, although some students find Management Accounting (MA) makes more sense if they have done Financial Accounting (FA) and learnt the basics of bookkeeping first.
Applied Skills
Subjects can be sat in any order, but as mentioned earlier, you should sit Audit and Assurance (AA) with or after Financial Reporting (FR). You can overlap with the lower level exams as long as you are on the last exam(s) of Applied Knowledge level.
Strategic Professional
Again, you can sit Strategic Professional exams at the same time as those from the lower level as long as you are on the last exam(s) of the Applied Skills level.
You should also be aware with all subjects at this level there will be a certain amount of assumed knowledge from earlier subjects at Applied Skills level, so if you were exempt or sat these some time ago, you should use the resources and advice in the beginning of your course to refresh your understanding.
If you haven’t yet enrolled on your course and you want some insight into the assumed knowledge for a subject, there are some really helpful syllabus guide documents in each subject’s study resources section on the ACCAglobal website, which will help you identify which subjects feed into each exam at the Strategic Professional level.
You can choose to sit your Essentials and Options subjects in any order, but do read the ‘What order?’ section above for some crucial tips to ensure you have the best chances of passing. If you are studying ACCA under a Level 7 Apprenticeship remember you must sit Strategic Business Leader (SBL) last, as it is your End Point Assessment.
