ACCA Syllabus: Every Paper, Its Format and What Is Changing

How the three ACCA levels fit together

Think of the qualification as a ladder. Each rung builds the technical base for the next one, so the order matters even where ACCA allows some flexibility.

1. Applied Knowledge: Business and Technology (BT), Management Accounting (MA) and Financial Accounting (FA). These introduce how businesses work and the basics of costing and bookkeeping.
2. Applied Skills: Corporate and Business Law (LW), Performance Management (PM), Taxation (TX), Financial Reporting (FR), Audit and Assurance (AA) and Financial Management (FM). This is the technical core.
3. Strategic Professional: Strategic Business Leader (SBL) and Strategic Business Reporting (SBR) are compulsory. You then pick two options from Advanced Financial Management (AFM), Advanced Performance Management (APM), Advanced Taxation (ATX) and Advanced Audit and Assurance (AAA).

Graduates in commerce or accounting, and Indian CA students who have cleared certain levels, may be exempted from some lower papers. Exemptions depend on your exact qualification, so check them with the exemptions calculator on the ACCA website before you pay for any paper.

ACCA syllabus and exam format, paper by paper

In TX, Section C holds one 10 mark and two 15 mark questions, while PM, FR and FM use two 20 mark questions. ACCA does not use negative marking anywhere in the qualification.

Applied Knowledge topics

• Business and Technology: types of organisation, stakeholders, the business environment (political, legal, economic and technological factors), corporate governance, the role of the finance function, internal control and fraud, leadership, teams and personal effectiveness.
• Management Accounting: cost classification, materials, labour and overheads, absorption and marginal costing, job and process costing, budgeting, standard costing and variance analysis, and performance measures, with some data handling and spreadsheet ideas.
• Financial Accounting: the double entry system, books of prime entry, accruals and prepayments, inventory, receivables and payables, tangible and intangible non current assets, bank and control account reconciliations, preparing basic statements, simple group accounts and ratio interpretation.

These three papers are booked on demand at a test centre, so you can sit one as soon as you feel ready rather than waiting for a quarterly session.

Applied Skills topics, paper by paper

LW and TX

Law covers legal systems, contract and tort, employment law, company formation, share and loan capital, directors and meetings, insolvency and corporate fraud. Taxation covers income tax, capital gains, inheritance tax, corporation tax and VAT under the rules of the variant you sit.

PM and FM

Performance Management moves into decision making techniques, pricing, risk and uncertainty, budgeting, advanced variances and divisional performance. Financial Management covers working capital, investment appraisal with discounting, raising finance, the cost of capital, business valuation and foreign exchange and interest rate risk.

FR and AA

Financial Reporting applies international accounting standards and asks you to prepare and analyse single entity and group financial statements. Audit and Assurance runs through the audit framework, planning and risk assessment, internal control, audit evidence, review and reporting, plus employability and technology skills.

Strategic Professional: what the final papers test

At this level questions read like real assignments. SBL hands you a long pre seen and unseen case and asks for reports, briefing notes or slides covering governance, strategy, risk, technology, finance and change management, with marks for skills such as scepticism and commercial acumen. SBR asks you to apply and judge accounting standards for groups and complex transactions, explain ethical issues and discuss current reporting topics.

The options deepen one area each: AFM on corporate finance, APM on strategic performance and data, ATX on advanced personal and business tax, and AAA on group audits, assurance work and professional ethics. Choose the two that match the career you want, because an auditor and a treasury analyst need different strengths.

The ACCA new syllabus plan

ACCA has announced a redesigned qualification. In its plan the levels become Knowledge, Expertise and Strategic Professional, Business and Technology turns into a module instead of an exam, and you pick one option paper instead of two. Short employability modules replace the current ethics module, while the 36 months of experience stays.

Students already registered move across with credit for papers they have passed, using a transition tool ACCA provides. The current exams stay in place until the switch date. If you are starting now, plan around the current structure, and check the transition rules on the ACCA website before booking your last few papers.

Planning your study across ACCA sessions

Most learners take one or two papers per session. Put about 8 to 10 weeks into each Applied Knowledge paper and around 12 to 16 weeks into each Applied Skills paper, alongside college or a job.

• Pair papers that share ideas: FA with MA, then FR after FA, and PM before APM.
• Practise inside the official computer based exam practice platform, because the spreadsheet and word processor tools take getting used to.
• From Applied Skills onward, write full answers to past exam questions under time pressure and compare them with examiner reports.
• For SBL and SBR, read the pre seen material early and practise planning answers in the first few minutes.

For books, use the official study guide for your exam year and the approved study texts from ACCA learning partners, along with ACCA's own technical articles.

If you are still choosing between routes, compare this with the CA foundation syllabus, the CMA syllabus and other routes listed on our entrance exams page.