FPAC study plan

Build a one-page formula sheet covering the three financial statements and how net income, cash flow, and balance-sheet items link together

Compute free cash flow, EBITDA, and net working capital from a set of income-statement and balance-sheet figures without notes

Explain in writing why net income and operating cash flow diverge, using at least three concrete accrual examples

Set up a personal error log with categories for calculation slips, concept gaps, and misread question stems

Calculate gross margin, operating margin, net margin, ROA, ROE, and asset turnover and state what each ratio isolates

Decompose ROE with the three-factor DuPont model and identify which lever drives a change in a worked example

Distinguish liquidity ratios from solvency ratios and select the right one for a stated analytical question

Interpret a ratio that moves sharply year over year and list at least three plausible causes before concluding

Build a discounted cash flow model from a blank sheet with explicit forecast, discount, and terminal-value steps

Compute NPV and IRR for a capital project and explain when the two measures rank projects differently

Calculate WACC from component costs of debt and equity and test sensitivity to a two-point change in the discount rate

Apply payback and profitability-index screens and justify which project a capital-constrained firm should fund

Reconcile accrual net income to operating cash flow using the indirect method, line by line

Classify cash flows into operating, investing, and financing activities for ten transactions without hesitation

Compute the cash conversion cycle from receivables, inventory, and payables days and explain each component's cash effect

Analyze a variance between budgeted and actual results and separate volume effects from price effects

Write and debug formulas using lookups, conditional aggregation, and nested logic on a 500-row dataset

Clean a messy dataset by handling duplicates, blanks, text-formatted numbers, and inconsistent date formats

Build a pivot-table summary that answers three specific analytical questions about the data

Apply data-validation and structured references so the workbook recalculates correctly when rows are added

Describe how a relational table is structured and write join, filter, and aggregate queries against a small sample database

Explain the difference between a data warehouse and a data lake and match each to a stated reporting need

Trace a transaction from source system through transformation to a financial report and name the controls at each stage

Identify the control weaknesses that let a data error reach a published report and propose a preventive check

Automate a recurring financial analysis so refreshed inputs regenerate the output without manual edits

Build a dashboard that surfaces three key metrics with correct aggregation and no hardcoded values

Document assumptions and data sources so a reviewer can reproduce every number in the model

Stress-test the automated output by changing one input and confirming the downstream results update as expected

Complete two full-length timed practice sets and log the domain and error type for every miss

Re-drill only the error-log categories that recurred more than twice across the practice sets

Re-derive the ten formulas you missed most often from memory and verify each against your week-one sheet

Simulate exam pacing to confirm you can finish each section with time to spare