PIPFA Foundation study plan

Map the Corporate Sector syllabus into a one-page topic inventory and rate your confidence on each item from 1 to 5

Explain the legal forms of business organisation (sole proprietorship, partnership, company) and their accounting and reporting implications in your own words

Record the core IAS/IFRS recognition and measurement rules for inventory, property plant and equipment, and revenue in a personal formula sheet

Solve ten basic computational items on depreciation, cost of goods sold, and revenue cut-off, showing every working

Prepare a full set of financial statements from a trial balance, including statement of financial position, statement of profit or loss, and statement of cash flows

Compute and interpret at least six ratios covering liquidity, profitability, efficiency, and gearing, and write two sentences of interpretation for each

Distinguish between accounting profit and taxable profit and outline the treatment of common adjustments

Draft short notes on audit, internal control, and corporate governance duties of a finance professional

Outline the constitutional and legal framework governing public-sector budgeting, including the roles of the legislature and the executive

Compare the budget cycle stages from formulation through audit and legislative scrutiny, listing the document produced at each stage

Explain the bases of accounting used in the public sector (cash, modified cash, accrual) and the reporting implications of each

Describe the purpose and structure of a public-sector annual report and appropriation accounts

Explain the elements of public financial management: budget execution, commitment control, cash management, and internal audit

Distinguish public procurement principles and methods, and outline the controls that prevent and detect irregular expenditure

Interpret public-sector performance information against budget, including variance analysis and value-for-money criteria of economy, efficiency, and effectiveness

Summarise the role of the supreme audit institution and the typical findings it reports

Structure a technical report using a clear problem, analysis, recommendation, and conclusion sequence

Draft and revise a 900-word technical memo on an accounting or auditing issue, citing standards accurately

Design and deliver a five-minute presentation with a logical slide sequence and speaker notes

Apply plain-language editing to remove ambiguity and tighten sentence structure in two sample passages

Present a ten-minute technical topic to a practice partner or peer and collect structured written feedback

Enter a small dataset in a spreadsheet and produce pivot tables, lookups, and conditional formulas that answer three stated questions

Apply data-integrity checks, sorting, filtering, and validation rules to a messy dataset and document each correction

Explain how a database table structure maps to a business process such as purchasing or payroll

Navigate the core SAP module screens for a purchasing or sales cycle and record the document flow from requisition to payment

Create a master-data record and a transaction document in a training environment, then retrieve the resulting report

Run an ACL or audit-command-language script to test a full population for duplicates, gaps, and unusual entries, and interpret the exceptions

Document the audit trail and control points you identified in the tested process

Complete two timed full-length mock papers under exam conditions and mark them against the model answers

Re-teach your three weakest topics from the mock results in written form, as if explaining to a colleague

Consolidate all four domains into a single revision sheet limited to the facts you repeatedly got wrong

Rehearse the presentation and data-analysis tasks once more to confirm speed and accuracy