Using Word "styles" when preparing Audit Trail and Summary Report

[KaustavSen]

The IFOA CP2 Guide states that:
In Paper 2, you must write the Summary document without the use of template headings and without copying large sections from the Examination Question (including the audit trail found within this paper).

Does this mean that we are not allowed to use the "Styles" feature in MS Word to create headers in the audit trail and report summary?

 

[Dar_Shan0209]

Hi,

The complete sentence says: " In Paper 2, you must write the Summary document without the use of template headings and without copying large sections from the Examination Question (including the audit trail found within this paper). Candidates who copy large sections of the information in the exam question and/or the audit trail provided into their Summary document, without consideration of the purpose of the Summary document or the target audience, are likely to gain very little credit from the examiners."

I have highlighted in bold the key take-aways from this sentence. In paper 2 you will be given a partially-completed project (as a spreadsheet) and you will be asked to complete the spreadsheet and produce a report. You need to make sure your report covers the whole project, including the work that has already been done and the new work you have completed. Your report structure should describe the purpose of the project, the analysis you have carried out, your results and your next steps. The ‘analysis’ section will be the best place to talk through the work carried out by your imaginary colleague and this will lead nicely into the work you have done.

Your paper 2 report needs to include:

• The purpose of the model
• The source of the data, the checks you carried out and any corrections you made
• A list of assumptions (copy the ones from the audit trail plus maybe about six new ideas)
• A description of what the model does (both the original model and your additions to it)
• Statements of the results (include all the key figures and copies of all the charts from your spreadsheet)
• Plenty of conclusions – describe every result and every chart, thinking about why the results look the way they do and what the implications might be
• Plenty of next steps – you will need 15-20 ideas and they need to be specific to the scenario

That said, what the guide says the purpose of your summary as per the above. If you would just copy the headings of the audit trail and copy what's already there without knowing who your audience is (a Fellow while the pitch of an audit trail is for a colleague), limited credit will be offered to you because that means you have not understand the purpose of the report.

Hope this helps.

 

[KaustavSen]

Hi @Dar_Shan0209

Thanks for the pointers - these are really helpful.

However, apologies if I wasn't clear in my question above. I wanted to know if we are allowed to use to preset "styles" present in MS Word. For example: generally we would want to make the section headings bold and give it a larger text size. Now, one way is to do this manually while the other is to apply the "Heading 1" style to the section headers.

Thus, my question was around the second option of using styles to format section headers. Are we allowed to do this in the exam?

Thanks!
Kaustav

 

[Dar_Shan0209]

Hi,
Sorry for mis-interpreting! Yes, you are allowed. I did use that in my attempt and was not penalised in any way.

 

[KaustavSen]

Thanks again, Darshan. Good to know as I was using this feature when attempting past papers.

 

[David Hopkins]

The IFOA CP2 Guide states that:
In Paper 2, you must write the Summary document without the use of template headings and without copying large sections from the Examination Question (including the audit trail found within this paper).

Does this mean that we are not allowed to use the "Styles" feature in MS Word to create headers in the audit trail and report summary?

The styles are part of the basic Word software, so it's fine to use these in the exam. The "templates" they are referring to are outline documents that you have set up yourself.

 

[KaustavSen]

Thanks David for confirming!