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Strategic Business Management

The Strategic Business Management exam enables you to demonstrate quantitative and qualitative skills, to make realistic business recommendations in complex scenarios. The exam is 3.5 hours long and will consist of two questions. The exam is available in July and November. The exam is open book and will permit you to take any written or printed material into the exam.

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Exam guidance

We are here to support you throughout your ACA journey to ensure you have everything you need for your upcoming exam, from exam resources to free and confidential wellbeing support from CABA. Ensure you are fully prepared by reading our exam guidance prior to your exam.

Exam preparation

Syllabus

The syllabus presents the learning outcomes for each exam and should be read with the relevant technical knowledge grids and, where applicable, the skills development grids.

Data analytics software

If you are sitting the Corporate Reporting exam, we have a range of resources to support you with the data analytics software within the exam. Visit icaew.com/corporatereportingDAS for all the resources, including guidance from the examiners on using the software within your exam.

Practice software

It's important that you get to know the exam software and its various functions before you take an exam. To help, we have created an online only practice exam software.

Visit icaew.com/examsoftware to access the question banks and mocks in the practice exam software.

Corporate Reporting Question Bank Supplement

Corporate Reporting is based on IFRS Accounting Standards, and so we have produced this supplement to support transition from UK GAAP.

Exams and marks plans

Use past exams in addition to the blank practice software where you can practise answering questions. The marks plans will help you check your answers.

Some past exams are used within our learning materials, they are updated to be in line with the examinable syllabus. The majority will appear in the published question banks, and some may be used in mock exams.

  • 2023

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  • 2022

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  • 2021

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Spreadsheet Functionality

As part of introducing new spreadsheet functions in the 2022 exams, you may be examined in the following ways:

  1. Data will be provided in the question, and you should populate the spreadsheet based on the data in the question.
  2. A spreadsheet will be provided in the exam with pre-populated data for you to structure, assimilate, interpret and evaluate.

To support this change, practice questions have been produced to show different ways you may be assessed. You can download the word processing and spreadsheet areas to work on offline, or access the questions and spreadsheet within the practice software, to see exactly how the spreadsheet functions may be presented to you in your exam.

Exam study support