36-Week WAEC Revision Programme — Financial Accounting
September to the May WAEC sitting. SS3 is not a year of new material so much as a year of pressure on material already met, so this is not a course to work through from the beginning — it is a testing programme. Each week you answer cold, work the ones you got wrong, and have the AI explain why you got them wrong. Anything you turn out never to have been taught, you learn there and then, and meet again three weeks later.
A week is one block of the syllabus and the prompts that cover it. You are not meant to do all of them: answer the questions first, and let what you get wrong decide which of the rest you need. Fifteen or twenty minutes a subject is a real week's work — nine subjects do not fit any other way.
Three prompts in each topic are free to try before you subscribe. One subscription opens everything this guide links to.
Every week, in this order
Start with the questions, not the explanation. The first two steps are in every week; a purpose-written mistake or pitfalls prompt appears in about half of them, and where it does not, your own wrong answers are the material for step three.
- 1. Retrieve — Answer cold, with nothing in front of you. Wrong answers are the point — they show you where the week's work is.
- 2. Drill — Work the ones you missed properly, showing every step, so you and the AI can both see where it went wrong.
- 3. Explain my error — Ask why your answer was wrong, not just what the right one is. Where the week offers a Spot My Mistake or WAEC Pitfalls prompt, use it.
- 4. Teach me — Only if the error turns out to be something you were never taught. Then come back and retrieve it again.
Foundations of Accounting
↑ Jump to week- Week 1
- Quiz: The functions accounting performs for a business
- Quiz: The rule of debit and credit for each class of account
- Teach me: How accounting developed from single entry to modern practice
- WAEC prep: The stages of the accounting process from transaction to final account
- WAEC prep: The effect of a transaction on the accounting equation
- Practice set: Posting transactions using double entry
- Spot my mistake: Confusing accounting with book-keeping
- Spot my mistake: Assuming a debit always means an increase and a credit always means a decrease
- Let me explain: The users of accounting information and what each wants from it
- Let me explain: The dual aspect concept behind double entry
- Teach me: The accounting equation and why it always balances
- Week 2
- Quiz: The sales day book and the purchases day book
- WAEC prep: The journal proper and the entries it records
- Practice set: Entering transactions in the right subsidiary book
- Spot my mistake: Treating a sales invoice as a record of cash received rather than of a credit sale
- Let me explain: The returns inwards and returns outwards books
- Teach me: The source documents a business raises and receives
- Week 3
- Quiz: Personal, real and nominal accounts
- WAEC prep: Balancing off a ledger account
- Practice set: Classifying named accounts correctly
- Spot my mistake: Classifying the drawings account as an expense rather than a reduction of capital
- Let me explain: The sales ledger, purchases ledger and general ledger
- Teach me: The ledger and how accounts are arranged in it
Books of Original Entry and Control
↑ Jump to week- Week 4
- Quiz: Contra entries and how they are recorded
- WAEC prep: Discounts allowed and discounts received in the cash book
- Practice set: Writing up and balancing an analytical cash book
- Spot my mistake: Treating the discount columns of the cash book as ledger accounts that are balanced off
- Let me explain: The petty cash book and the imprest system
- Teach me: The two-column and three-column cash book
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 5
- Quiz: Why the two sides of a trial balance agree
- WAEC prep: Unpresented cheques and uncredited lodgements
- Practice set: Preparing a bank reconciliation statement
- Spot my mistake: Assuming the bank statement must be wrong whenever it disagrees with the cash book
- Let me explain: Why a cash book balance differs from a bank statement
- Teach me: How a trial balance is extracted
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 6
- Quiz: Errors that do affect the trial balance
- WAEC prep: Journal entries to correct stated errors
- Practice set: Restating profit after correcting errors
- Spot my mistake: Opening a suspense account for an error of principle that never affected the trial balance
- Let me explain: Opening a suspense account and clearing it
- Teach me: Errors that do not affect the trial balance
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 7
- Quiz: Posting the difference in the trial balance to suspense
- WAEC prep: The effect of suspense entries on reported profit
- Practice set: Restating a reported profit once suspense entries are cleared
- Spot my mistake: Leaving a suspense account balance in the balance sheet as an asset once the errors behind it are known
- Let me explain: Clearing the suspense account as errors are found
- Teach me: When a suspense account is opened
Revisit from three weeks ago
Final Accounts of a Sole Trader
↑ Jump to week- Week 8
- Quiz: Cost of goods sold and how it is built up
- WAEC prep: Carriage inwards and carriage outwards and where each belongs
- Practice set: Preparing a trading, profit and loss account from a trial balance
- Spot my mistake: Adding carriage outwards to the cost of goods sold
- Let me explain: The profit and loss account and net profit
- Teach me: The trading account and the calculation of gross profit
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 9
- Quiz: Fixed and current assets, and current and long-term liabilities
- WAEC prep: Closing stock and its treatment in the final accounts
- Practice set: Preparing final accounts with adjustments
- Spot my mistake: Recording a prepaid expense as a liability instead of an asset
- Let me explain: Accruals and prepayments and how they are adjusted
- Teach me: The layout of a balance sheet
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 10
- Quiz: Creating and adjusting a provision for doubtful debts
- Quiz: The causes of depreciation
- WAEC prep: The effect of a provision on profit and on the balance sheet
- Practice set: Computing a provision from given debtor figures
- WAEC prep: Disposal of a fixed asset and the profit or loss on it
- Spot my mistake: Charging the whole new provision for doubtful debts against profit instead of only the increase
- Spot my mistake: Treating depreciation as a fund of cash set aside
- Let me explain: Provision for discount allowable on debtors
- Let me explain: The provision for depreciation account
- Teach me: Bad debts and how they are written off
- Teach me: What depreciation is and why it is charged
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 11
- Quiz: The general reserve and other revenue reserves
- WAEC prep: The accounting treatment of reserves
- Practice set: Distinguishing reserves from provisions
- Spot my mistake: Treating a general reserve as cash the company is holding for future use
- Let me explain: The share premium and other capital reserves
- Teach me: What a reserve is and why a company creates one
Revisit from three weeks ago
Specialised Accounts
↑ Jump to week- Week 12
- Quiz: Factory overheads and the cost of production
- WAEC prep: Transferring cost of production to the trading account
- Practice set: Preparing a manufacturing account from given data
- Spot my mistake: Including factory overheads in prime cost
- Let me explain: Work in progress and its adjustment
- Teach me: Prime cost and what makes it up
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 13
- Quiz: The sales ledger control account and its entries
- WAEC prep: Reconciling a control account with the ledger
- Practice set: Preparing control accounts from given totals
- Spot my mistake: Entering a discount received in the sales ledger control account
- Let me explain: The purchases ledger control account
- Teach me: What a control account is and why it is kept
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 14
- Quiz: Computing profit from opening and closing capital
- Quiz: The subscriptions account and amounts in arrears or advance
- WAEC prep: Constructing missing figures from incomplete records
- Practice set: Preparing a statement of affairs
- WAEC prep: The accumulated fund and how it is arrived at
- Practice set: Preparing club accounts from given records
- Spot my mistake: Computing profit from closing capital alone without adjusting for drawings and fresh capital
- Spot my mistake: Carrying subscriptions received straight to the income and expenditure account without adjusting for arrears and amounts in advance
- Let me explain: Converting single entry to double entry
- Let me explain: The income and expenditure account
- Teach me: What single entry is and its weaknesses
- Teach me: The receipts and payments account
Revisit from three weeks ago
Partnership Accounts
↑ Jump to week- Week 15
- Quiz: Interest on capital and interest on drawings
- WAEC prep: Fixed and fluctuating capital accounts
- Practice set: Preparing partnership final accounts
- Spot my mistake: Crediting interest on drawings to a partner instead of charging it against them
- Let me explain: The appropriation account and how profit is shared
- Teach me: The partnership deed and what it settles
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 16
- Quiz: Methods of valuing goodwill
- Quiz: The realisation account and its purpose
- WAEC prep: The accounting entries when a partner is admitted
- Practice set: Adjusting capital accounts after an admission
- WAEC prep: The rule in Garner v Murray
- Practice set: Preparing dissolution accounts from given figures
- Spot my mistake: Treating goodwill written off on admission as a loss in the profit and loss account
- Spot my mistake: Repaying partners their capital before the firm's outside creditors on dissolution
- Let me explain: Revaluation of assets on admission
- Let me explain: The order in which assets are applied on dissolution
- Teach me: Goodwill and the reasons it arises
- Teach me: The circumstances in which a partnership is dissolved
Revisit from three weeks ago
Company Accounts
↑ Jump to week- Week 17
- Quiz: Ordinary and preference shares
- WAEC prep: Application, allotment and calls on shares
- Practice set: Recording a share issue including oversubscription
- Spot my mistake: Treating share premium as a trading profit available for dividend
- Let me explain: Issue of shares at par, at a premium and at a discount
- Teach me: How a company is formed and the documents required
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 18
- Quiz: Appropriation of company profit and dividends
- Quiz: Input VAT and output VAT
- WAEC prep: Simple ratios used to interpret company accounts
- Practice set: Preparing company final accounts from a trial balance
- WAEC prep: Recording VAT in the books of account
- Practice set: Preparing a VAT return from given transactions
- Spot my mistake: Treating a proposed dividend as an expense of the year rather than an appropriation of profit
- Spot my mistake: Treating input VAT paid on purchases as an expense of the business
- Let me explain: The company balance sheet and its capital section
- Let me explain: Computing the VAT payable to the revenue authority
- Teach me: The company income statement for internal use
- Teach me: What VAT is and who bears it
Revisit from three weeks ago
Advanced Accounting Topics
↑ Jump to week- Week 19
- Quiz: Apportioning expenses between departments
- WAEC prep: Goods sent to branch at cost and at selling price
- Practice set: Preparing departmental trading accounts
- Spot my mistake: Apportioning every departmental expense on the same basis regardless of what causes it
- Let me explain: The difference between a department and a branch
- Teach me: Why departmental accounts are prepared
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 20
- Quiz: The sources of government revenue
- Quiz: Accounting software and what it automates
- WAEC prep: Cash basis accounting in government
- Practice set: Preparing simple government accounts
- WAEC prep: The demerits and risks of computerised accounting
- Spot my mistake: Assuming government accounts set out to measure profit in the way a trading business does
- Spot my mistake: Assuming software removes the need to understand double entry
- Let me explain: The consolidated revenue fund and votes
- Let me explain: The merits of computerised accounting
- Teach me: How public sector accounting differs from private
- Teach me: Manual against computerised accounting systems
Revisit from three weeks ago
Mixed WAEC Practice
↑ Jump to week- Week 21
- Quiz: Comparability and consistency
- WAEC prep: Materiality and the cost-benefit constraint
- Practice set: Judging whether a described report is useful
- Spot my mistake: Treating the most detailed report as automatically the most useful one
- Let me explain: Understandability and timeliness
- Teach me: Relevance and reliability in accounting information
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 22
- Quiz: Margin and how it differs from mark up
- Quiz: Scrap value and estimated useful life
- WAEC prep: Using mark up to find a missing sales or cost figure
- Practice set: Working mark up and margin problems from given data
- WAEC prep: The advantages and drawbacks of the straight line method
- Practice set: Computing a depreciation schedule on the straight line basis
- Spot my mistake: Calculating margin on cost instead of on selling price
- Spot my mistake: Applying the straight line rate to the reducing book value each year
- Let me explain: Converting a mark up into a margin and back
- Let me explain: Why the charge is the same every year
- Teach me: Mark up and how it is calculated
- Teach me: The straight line formula and the figures it needs
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 23
- Quiz: Why the charge falls each year
- WAEC prep: The reducing balance method compared with straight line
- Practice set: Preparing a reducing balance schedule
- Spot my mistake: Deducting scrap value before applying the reducing balance rate
- Let me explain: The assets this method suits
- Teach me: How the reducing balance charge is computed
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 24
- Quiz: Computing depreciation by revaluation
- Quiz: Applying the fraction to the depreciable amount
- WAEC prep: The accounting entries under the revaluation method
- Practice set: Working a revaluation depreciation problem
- WAEC prep: The sum-of-the-years-digits method set against reducing balance
- Practice set: Preparing a sum-of-the-years-digits schedule
- Spot my mistake: Reading the revaluation method of depreciation as a revaluation of the asset upwards
- Spot my mistake: Using an asset's age rather than its remaining life as the numerator of the sum-of-the-years-digits fraction
- Let me explain: The assets for which revaluation is appropriate
- Let me explain: Why the charge is heaviest in the early years
- Teach me: When the revaluation method is used
- Teach me: How the sum of the years digits is worked out
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 25
- Quiz: The entries made in the purchase of business account
- WAEC prep: Recording the assets and liabilities taken over
- Practice set: Preparing a purchase of business account
- Spot my mistake: Recording the purchase consideration as the total of the assets taken over
- Let me explain: Goodwill arising on the purchase of a business
- Teach me: Why a purchase of business account is opened
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 26
- Quiz: Operating, investing and financing activities
- Quiz: The memorandum joint venture account
- WAEC prep: The indirect method and the adjustments it makes
- Practice set: Preparing a cash flow statement from given accounts
- WAEC prep: Sharing joint venture profit between co-venturers
- Practice set: Preparing joint venture accounts from given data
- Spot my mistake: Treating the depreciation added back under the indirect method as a source of cash
- Spot my mistake: Treating the memorandum joint venture account as part of the double entry of either co-venturer
- Let me explain: The direct method of presenting operating cash flow
- Let me explain: Recording a joint venture in each party's books
- Teach me: Why a cash flow statement is prepared
- Teach me: What a joint venture is in accounting terms
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 27
- Quiz: The account sales and what it shows
- WAEC prep: Valuing unsold stock on consignment
- Practice set: Preparing consignment accounts from given figures
- Spot my mistake: Valuing unsold stock on consignment at selling price rather than at cost plus a share of the expenses
- Let me explain: Del credere commission and ordinary commission
- Teach me: Consignor and consignee, and the relationship between them
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 28
- Quiz: Work certified and work uncertified
- Quiz: Hire purchase price, cash price and the interest element
- WAEC prep: Recognising profit on an incomplete contract
- Practice set: Preparing a contract account
- WAEC prep: Entries in the books of the seller
- Practice set: Apportioning interest over the instalments
- Spot my mistake: Taking the whole notional profit on an incomplete contract to the income statement
- Spot my mistake: Recording the full hire purchase price as the cost of the asset in the buyer's books
- Let me explain: Retention money and its treatment
- Let me explain: Entries in the books of the buyer
- Teach me: Why long-term contracts need their own accounts
- Teach me: How hire purchase differs from an outright sale
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 29
- Quiz: Treasury bills and certificates of deposit
- Quiz: The primary and secondary segments of the market
- WAEC prep: The insurance market and the risks it covers
- WAEC prep: The regulators of the Nigerian capital market
- Practice set: Tracing a security from issue to trading
- Spot my mistake: Confusing the money market with the capital market
- Spot my mistake: Treating the capital market as the place where firms borrow short-term working capital
- Let me explain: The institutions operating in the money market
- Let me explain: The instruments traded in the capital market
- Teach me: What the money market trades in
- Teach me: What the capital market is for
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 30
- Quiz: Rights issue and how it protects existing holders
- WAEC prep: Bonus issues and their effect on shareholders
- Practice set: Advising a company on how to raise fresh funds
- Spot my mistake: Assuming a bonus issue brings fresh cash into the company
- Let me explain: Private placement and when it is used
- Teach me: Offer for sale and offer for subscription
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 31
- Quiz: The documents a prospective issuer files
- WAEC prep: The costs of raising funds on the market
- Practice set: Assessing whether a firm is ready to list
- Spot my mistake: Assuming the issuing house buys shares as an investor rather than arranging the issue
- Let me explain: The role of the issuing house
- Teach me: The listing requirements a company must meet
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 32
- Quiz: The benefits it offers a company
- Quiz: Goods sent to branch and returns from branch
- WAEC prep: The contribution of the capital market to economic growth
- Practice set: Weighing the risks against the benefits for a saver
- WAEC prep: Reconciling branch and head office records
- Practice set: Preparing branch accounts from given data
- Spot my mistake: Assuming a listed security carries no risk of loss because the market is regulated
- Spot my mistake: Treating goods sent to branch as a sale in the head office trading account
- Let me explain: The benefits it offers government
- Let me explain: Branch stock and branch debtors accounts
- Teach me: The benefits the capital market offers an investor
- Teach me: The branch account kept in head office books
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 33
- Quiz: Recording goods transferred between branches
- WAEC prep: Eliminating inter-branch balances on consolidation
- Practice set: Recording a set of inter-branch transfers
- Spot my mistake: Leaving inter-branch transfers in the figures when branch and head office accounts are combined
- Let me explain: Treating inter-branch transfers through head office
- Teach me: What an inter-branch transaction is
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 34
- Quiz: Private and public limited companies distinguished
- Quiz: Secured and unsecured debentures
- WAEC prep: The statutory books a company must keep
- Practice set: Advising on which company form to adopt
- WAEC prep: Mortgages as a source of long-term finance
- Spot my mistake: Assuming the certificate of incorporation alone lets a public company begin business
- Spot my mistake: Treating debenture interest as an appropriation of profit
- Let me explain: The certificate of incorporation and its effect
- Let me explain: Redemption of debentures
- Teach me: The memorandum and articles of association
- Teach me: What a debenture is and how it differs from a share
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 35
- Quiz: Bank charges and direct debits in the cash book
- Quiz: The errors a trial balance will reveal
- WAEC prep: The adjusted cash book balance and the reconciliation
- Practice set: Adjusting a cash book then reconciling it
- Teach me: What the trial balance is meant to prove
- WAEC prep: The trial balance as a basis for final accounts
- Practice set: Detecting which errors a given trial balance hides
- Spot my mistake: Adjusting the cash book for an unpresented cheque
- Spot my mistake: Assuming an agreed trial balance rules out a compensating error
- Let me explain: Dishonoured cheques and their entry
- Let me explain: The errors it will not reveal
- Teach me: The items that require the cash book to be adjusted
Revisit from three weeks ago - Week 36
- Quiz: What makes a reserve a capital reserve
- WAEC prep: The presentation of reserves in the balance sheet
- Practice set: Classifying named reserves correctly
- Spot my mistake: Proposing a dividend out of the share premium account
- Let me explain: Which reserves may be used to pay a dividend
- Teach me: What makes a reserve a revenue reserve
Revisit from three weeks ago