ACCA考试F2考试试题每日一练(2020-08-14)

正确答案：
6 Overview:
The need for clear and concise communication and the consequences of poor communication must be understood by a profession
which exists to provide information to others. Poor communication leads to ineffective control, poor co-ordination and management
failure.
Part (a):
Good communication ensures that individuals know what is expected of them. Co-ordination takes place within the organisation
and there is control of the organisation’s plans, procedures and staff. Instructions of management need to be clearly understood in
assisting group and team cohesiveness and reducing stress from misunderstood instructions. Bias, distortion and omission is
removed with clear communication, as is secrecy, innuendo and rumour. Good communication ensures that the right information
is received by the correct person and thus acted upon, reducing conflict within and between different parts of the organisation.

正确答案：
5 Dexter Co
(a) Responsibilities of management and auditors
Responsibilities
ISA 570 Going Concern provides a clear framework for the assessment of the going concern status of an entity, and
differentiates between the responsibilities of management and of auditors. Management should assess going concern in order
to decide on the most appropriate basis for the preparation of the financial statements. IAS 1 Presentation of Financial
Statements (revised) requires that where there is significant doubt over an entity’s ability to continue as a going concern, the
uncertainties should be disclosed in a note to the financial statements. Where the directors intend to cease trading, or have
no realistic alternative but to do so, the financial statements should be prepared on a ‘break up’ basis.
Thus the main focus of the management’s assessment of going concern is to ensure that relevant disclosures are made where
necessary, and that the correct basis of preparation is used.
The auditor’s responsibility is to consider the appropriateness of the management’s use of the going concern assumption in
the preparation of the financial statements and to consider whether there are material uncertainties about the entity’s ability
to continue as a going concern that need to be disclosed in a note.
The auditor should also consider the length of the time period that management have looked at in their assessment of going
concern.
The auditor will therefore need to come to an opinion as to the going concern status of an entity but the focus of the auditor’s
evaluation of going concern is to see whether they agree with the assessment made by the management. Therefore whether
they agree with the basis of preparation of the financial statements, or the inclusion in a note to the financial statements, as
required by IAS 1, of any material uncertainty.
Evaluation techniques
In carrying out the going concern assessment, management will evaluate a wide variety of indicators, including operational
and financial. An entity employing good principles of corporate governance should be carrying out such an assessment as
part of the on-going management of the business.
Auditors will use a similar assessment technique in order to come to their own opinion as to the going concern status of an
entity. They will carry out an operational review of the business in order to confirm business understanding, and will conduct
a financial review as part of analytical procedures. Thus both management and auditors will use similar business risk
assessment techniques to discover any threats to the going concern status of the business.
Auditors should not see going concern as a ‘completion issue’, but be alert to issues affecting going concern throughout the
audit. In the same way that management should continually be managing risk (therefore minimising going concern risk),
auditors should be continually be alert to going concern problems throughout the duration of the audit.
However, one difference is that when going concern problems are discovered, the auditor is required by IAS 570 to carry out
additional procedures. Examples of such procedures would include:
– Analysing and discussing cash flow, profit and other relevant forecasts with management
– Analysing and discussing the entity’s latest available interim financial statements
– Reviewing events after the period end to identify those that either mitigate or otherwise affect the entity’s ability to
continue as a going concern, and
– Reading minutes of meetings of shareholders, those charged with governance and relevant committees for reference to
financing difficulties.
Management are not explicitly required to gather specific evidence about going concern, but as part of good governance would
be likely to investigate and react to problems discovered.

正确答案：

(b) Controlling variable costs
The first step in the process of controlling costs is to measure actual costs. The second step is to calculate variances that show
the difference between actual costs and budgeted or standard costs. These variances then need to be reported to those
managers who have responsibility for them. These managers can then decide whether action needs to be taken to bring actual
costs back into line with budgeted or standard costs. The operating statement therefore has a role to play in reporting
information to management in a way that assists in the decision-making process.
The operating statement quantifies the effect of the volume difference between budgeted and actual sales so that the actual
cost of the actual output can be compared with the standard (or budgeted) cost of the actual output. The statement clearly
differentiates between adverse and favourable variances so that managers can identify areas where there is a significant
difference between actual results and planned performance. This supports management by exception, since managers can
focus their efforts on these significant areas in order to obtain the most impact in terms of getting actual operations back in
line with planned activity.
In control terms, variable costs can be affected in the short term and so an operating statement for the last month showing
variable cost variances will highlight those areas where management action may be effective. In the short term, for example,
managers may be able to improve labour efficiency through training, or through reducing or eliminating staff actions which
do not assist the production process. In this way the adverse direct labour efficiency variance of ￡252, which is 7·3% of the
standard direct labour cost of the actual output, could be reduced.
Controlling fixed production overhead costs
In the short term, it is unlikely that fixed production overhead costs can be controlled. An operating statement from last month
showing fixed production overhead variances may not therefore assist in controlling fixed costs. Managers will not be able to
take any action to correct the adverse fixed production overhead expenditure variance, for example, which may in fact simply
show the need for improvement in the area of budget planning. Investigation of the component parts of fixed production
overhead will show, however, whether any of these are controllable. In general, this is not the case2.
Absorption costing gives rise to a fixed production overhead volume variance, which shows the effect of actual production
being different from planned production. Since fixed production overheads are a sunk cost, the volume variance shows little
more than that the standard hours for actual production were different from budgeted standard hours3. Similarly, the fixed
production overhead efficiency variance offers little more in information terms than the direct labour efficiency variance. While
fixed production overhead variances assist in reconciling budgeted profit with actual profit, therefore, their reporting in an
operating statement is unlikely to assist in controlling fixed costs.