ICB Level 2 Mock Online Examination

As you prepare for the Level 2 examination it is a good idea to tackle the online mock examination as relevant practice for the actual examination. I worked my way through the mock examination and below share my experiences and thoughts in case you find them helpful. Please do feel free to add any comments on the mock or your actual examination if you feel they will be helpful to other students. It would be much appreciated.

The mock examinations for all levels are available at the ICB shop on the ICB website (http://www.bookkeepers.org.uk/)

Purchasing the examinations is straightforward and you should, within a couple of minutes, be provided with the information of how to take the mock examinations. When I took the mock I was told it was valid for use for 28 days from the date of purchase. The time allocated from start to finish in which to complete the mock examination was 2 hours. This should be ample time.

I am not sure if you could buy the mock, book the actual examination and then attempt both on the same day. But as this occurred to me I tackled the Level 3 mock within an hour of completing the Level 2 mock. Having done so, I would not recommend this approach. It would be sensible to have more of a break between the mock and the examination.

As you will be taking the actual examination in a Pearson Vue Centre it is easier to put the time aside but for best use of the mock examination at home I would suggest replicating examination conditions. My advice is the same as for Level 1. Make sure you have:

- a clear 2 hours on the computer without interruption, including phone calls
- a pad of blank paper
- a calculator.

You will certainly need to make calculations and probably draw up financial statements on your pad. And it is advisable to take your time in preparing the statements clearly so you can refer back to them easily. You will find that sometimes you click on a page in the mock examination and will need either to refer back by clicking back on screen or looking down at your answer on your pad. Please write clearly and double check all the figures you take from pad to screen because some options are very similar in the answers given. It can be easy to mistake, for example, 2700 and 2900 if you are part thinking about the technology and part book-keeping. It is just as easy to transcribe figures as well, e.g 450 for 540 for the same reason.


The manual examinations of the past are still good practice for the online examination. But the online approach, at least if the mock examination is a good indicator of the actual examination, tends to require less writing and more thinking. For instance, rather than writing up a control account you could be asked ‘where will ‘x’ appear in the control account and sales ledger, for example.
So long as you have had plenty of practice in writing up relevant statements, thinking about how they are compiled should not cause too many difficulties. But you will need to be very clear about the various accounts and how they interrelate.

Turning now to the practicalities of the mock examination (and, I assume the actual examination). As with Level 1 you are provided with details the pass mark, how long you have to complete the examination and very important information about the FINISH button. Once you press that you cannot return to the mock so it is important to be completely happy with your work before pressing it. You are reminded at the end to check your work. Please do so!

There is also a START button on this page. Once you have pressed it you are then into your mock examination time and to the next page which lists a number of tasks down the left hand side (13 in my case) with the word finish at the end. There is instantly a feeling of time pressure but I found, in hindsight, that there was ample time. Completing the mock online will help you better manage your time in the examination.

As I mentioned for Level 1, you can flick through the pages to see what is involved in each of the tasks if you wish before starting and you will see some tasks are shorter than others. You are advised to complete the tasks in order but most appeared to be discrete so if you have a ‘favourite topic’ it is probably possible to tackle that first. I would certainly recommend reading through all the tasks quickly and then each task in turn fully before starting because there are more interrelationships between parts of tasks at Level 2 than Level 1.

The question style remains the same as with Level 1 – radio buttons, fill-in boxes, drop down menus and so on.

If you took Level 1 online you will recognise some tasks as being very similar:
- identifying debit and credit entries for transactions
- calculating totals for a trial balance and calculating capital. (You will probably have to clearly identify assets and liabilities and so on at Level 2 and they will be more mixed-up than at Level 1.)

Your Level 2 studies cover more that ledger accounts and trial balance of course. So you could well be expected to make calculations for depreciation, accruals, prepayments and other end of year adjustments in the mock examination. I certainly faced such questions.

There were also some more complex tasks:
- completing a bank reconciliation statement in a given pro-forma
- completing a trading, profit and loss account and balance sheet in a pro-forma.

I must admit it was comforting for the cash book to reconcile with the bank statement balance and for the balance sheet to balance. I did initially miss part of an adjustment in the balance sheet but once I had taken one balance sheet total away from the other the difference was a single figure which I could spot easily.

I am sure you would be more careful. But if the statements do not balance, there should be time to find and correct any error. However, watch the time if looking for errors. It is a better strategy to come back to the question after having completed them all rather than possibly spending time aiming for a perfect answer on one question and not answering another.

As I was working through the mock examination I could see that there were possibly different ways to write answers so with the risk of getting something wrong I included variations. For instance, the final question on the mock examination was the completion of a VAT Return. In fact the task was to complete boxes and there was a link to a VAT Return which had been scanned. The scan on the mock examination was not as clear as I assume it will be on the actual examination so you may find it useful to remind yourself of the contents and layout of a VAT Return before the mock/actual examination. However, the examiner has commented in past examinations that ‘NONE’ is the only correct terminology to use for ‘0.00’ in the boxes. I tried NONE, NIL, and 0 and they were all accepted as correct. So, clearly some variation is accepted. I did not leave a box blank but I would imagine that would be treated as an incomplete answer.

Just to finish on some other ‘testing’ of the system which I tried and points I met along the way:
- I entered thousands with commas and without commas and both were accepted. One ‘trick’ I found was that if you click on or back a page and then come back to the page you are working on the hundreds or thousands can sometimes sprout a pence column as well so the system automatically turns the figures into its default setting. Be careful not to press a full stop instead of a comma. I did and my intended £2,140 became £2.14.
- I focussed on one part of a question at a time and found that I needed to keep a more open mind. Occasionally a part of a question referred back to information given slightly earlier and did not make sense on its own.
- Bank which can have a debit or credit balance in reality seems to be used as a default for a debit balance (asset). Balance at bank was also used which would certainly be an asset.
- There were one or two minor typographical errors. Do not be put off by these.
- One question was asked on depreciation which is probably something you would know if you worked as a book-keeper but might not know as a student. If you do meet something like this it is only likely to relate to a mark or two so select and option and move on. Do not agonise about it.

Please aim for accuracy in all your calculations. In manual examinations you are often given credit for the correct approach for later calculations even if earlier ones are incorrect. It was not clear that this was the same approach taken in the online paper.

Finally, after completing the examination, almost instantly after pressing finish you are taken to a page which provides the mark earned and a question by question breakdown of the answers given and the correct answers. So you can clearly see what was correct and any mistakes made.