Advanced performance management exam prep

The Advanced Performance Management syllabus

The APM syllabus for September 2026 to June 2027 has six areas, A to F. Professional skills run through every question, and the last area is about using the exam's tools well.

Syllabus	September 2026 to June 2027
Areas	A to F
Builds on	Performance Management

The six areas

A Strategic management and value creation
B Performance optimisation
C Performance reporting
D Data science and technology for performance and insights
E Professional skills
F Employability and technology skills

What changed for 2026 to 2027

The syllabus was restructured into these areas, with some outcomes reworded, combined or removed and some added: for example service businesses (SHIP), service level agreements and narrative commentary, and more on data science, machine learning and data models. The BCG matrix, Porter's five forces and McKinsey 7S are no longer listed.

Try 3 questions

Short questions in the course’s own format, not ACCA’s: the exam itself is all written.

Question 1 · Course practice question · Sustainability2 marks

Sustainability and environmental costs

Fairley Co makes two chemicals, Alpha and Beta. Its environmental overheads for 2026 are effluent treatment, $480,000, and hazardous waste handling, $270,000. At present it absorbs all environmental overheads into products on machine hours. It is moving to activity-based costing, with effluent treatment driven by litres of effluent and hazardous waste handling by kilograms of hazardous waste.

Alpha: 40,000 units, 30,000 machine hours, 1,200,000 litres of effluent and 6,000 kg of hazardous waste. Beta: 10,000 units, 10,000 machine hours, 1,800,000 litres of effluent and 12,000 kg of hazardous waste.

What is Beta's environmental overhead cost per unit under activity-based costing, in $ to two decimal places? (2 marks)

Question 2 · Course practice question · Services, not-for-profit and complex structures2 marks

Service, not-for-profit and complex structures

Kestrel Health Trust runs a flu vaccination programme. Its objective is to vaccinate 80% of the 50,000 eligible residents. The budget was 8,000 nurse hours at $40 an hour, with 5 doses given per nurse hour. In fact nurses worked 9,000 hours at $38 an hour and gave 36,000 doses. Of these doses, 1,500 were given in error to residents who had already been vaccinated, so 34,500 different residents were vaccinated.

The trust judges value for money with the 3Es: economy is the price paid for each unit of input, efficiency is the output achieved per unit of input, and effectiveness is how far the programme achieved its objective.

Which three of the following statements are correct? (2 marks)

Tick 3Economy worsened, because total nurse cost rose from $320,000 to $342,000Economy improved: each nurse hour cost 5.0% less than budgetedEffectiveness reached 90.0% of the objective, since 36,000 doses were given against a target of 40,000Efficiency worsened: 4.0 doses were given per nurse hour against 5.0 plannedEffectiveness fell short: 69.0% of eligible residents were vaccinated against the 80% objectiveEfficiency improved, because nurses worked more hours than budgeted

Question 3 · Course practice question · Information systems2 marks

Information systems for performance management

Selby Co holds customer records in three separate systems: 5,000 customers in the sales system, 3,200 in the service system and 4,000 in the billing system. Matching the systems for the first time shows 2,600 customers in both the sales and billing systems, 1,500 in both the sales and service systems and 1,200 in both the service and billing systems. Each of these three counts includes the 900 customers found in all three systems.

Revenue for the year was $15,600,000.

What is Selby Co's revenue per customer, counting each customer once? Give your answer to the nearest dollar. (2 marks)

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Questions people ask

What does APM build on?

Performance Management. Knowledge from it, such as variances, activity-based costing and budgeting, is assumed.

Does APM include data analytics?

Yes. Area D covers big data, the data science process, descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive analytics, regression, machine learning and AI, and the ethics of data use.

Unofficial practice for the ACCA Advanced Performance Management (APM) exam, not affiliated with ACCA. ACCA is a trademark of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, which does not endorse this course. Every question here is original. No VAT is charged.