CSS Accountancy and Auditing Syllabus: CSS Syllabus 2025
CSS Accountancy and Auditing Syllabus 2025
This article provides an in-depth overview of the CSS accountancy and auditing syllabus, including the marks distribution for each section. By reading this, you’ll gain valuable insights into the syllabus. Additionally, you can download the PDF version of the CSS accountancy and auditing syllabus directly from our website.
CSS Accountancy and Auditing Syllabus
Financial Accounting (50 Marks)
I. Basic Accounting Principles:
- Understanding the purpose & scope of accounting
- Key concepts include Accrual, Consistency, True and Fair View, Neutrality, Materiality, Prudence, Completeness, Understandability, Usefulness, Going Concern, and Substance over Form.
II. Accounting Process and Financial Statements:
- Steps in accounting: recording transactions, making journal entries, posting to the ledger, preparing an unadjusted trial balance, making adjustments, preparing an adjusted trial balance, and creating financial statements like the Income Statement, Cash Flow Statement, Balance Sheet, and Statement of Changes in Equity.
- Guidelines of International Accounting Standards (IAS) and the Companies Ordinance of 1984 in Pakistan.
- Closing and reversing entries.
III. Importance and Features of Accounting Information:
- Characteristics of useful accounting information.
- Reporting requirements for different users like external stakeholders (investors, creditors, government agencies) and internal stakeholders (management, employees).
IV. Accounting for Different Business Types:
- Principles of accounting and financial statements for sole proprietorships, partnerships, and joint stock companies, including banks (excluding advanced topics like mergers and consolidations).
V. Accounting for Non-Profits and Public Sector:
- Accounting standards and financial statements for non-profit organizations and public sector entities, as guided by the International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS).
VI. Accounting for Long-Term Assets:
- Understanding key concepts related to non-current tangible assets: cost, depreciation, fair value, residual value, and useful life.
- Depreciation methods like straight-line, reducing balance, and other commonly used techniques.
VII. Analysis of Financial Statements:
- Techniques for analyzing financial statements, including horizontal (trend) and vertical (ratio) analysis.
- Focus on liquidity, activity, debt, profitability, market ratio, technical, and industry analysis.
Cost and Managerial Accounting (50 Marks)
VIII. Basic Cost Accounting Principles and Concepts:
- Understanding the purpose and scope of cost and managerial accounting.
- Key cost concepts, including the different types and classifications of costs.
- Differences between financial accounting, cost accounting, and managerial accounting.
IX. Accounting for Materials, Labor, and Factory Overheads (FOH):
- How to recognize and value material inventory and methods for managing it.
- Calculating and recording payroll for different types of labor, including hourly and piece-rate systems.
- Overview of group incentive schemes.
- Understanding factory overhead costs, how to calculate the FOH rate, and how to allocate these costs to different departments.
- Methods for redistributing overhead costs, including both the repeated distribution method and the algebraic method.
X. Job Costing and Process Costing:
- Understanding job-order costing and its use in specific job scenarios.
- The process of costing production through the Cost of Production Report (CPR).
XI. Management Accounting for Planning, Decision-Making, and Control
- Budgeting: What a budget is and its different forms, including production, sales, cash, flexible, zero-based, and master budgets.
- Break-even Analysis: The difference between marginal and absorption costing, understanding relevant costs, and using contribution margin and other concepts for planning and decision-making.
- Variance Analysis: Understanding standards and variances, including material, labor, and FOH variances, and how to calculate them.
Auditing (40 Marks)
I. Basic Auditing Principles and Concepts
- Understanding what auditing is, including its purpose and what it aims to achieve.
- Concepts like showing a “true and fair view” in financial statements.
- Key ideas such as audit assertions, ensuring reasonable accuracy, and the importance of documentation and audit evidence.
- Creating an audit plan and understanding audit risks.
- The role of computer systems in auditing, including computer-assisted audit techniques (CAAT).
- Processes like inspection, detecting fraud, assessing if a business can continue operating (going concern), determining materiality, and identifying errors or misstatements.
- Understanding the role of governance, the premise of an audit, control tests, and procedures used to check financial data.
II. Key Considerations and Audit Process:
- The internal control system & the role of internal audits.
- Differences between internal and external audits.
- Who is responsible for the financial statements?
- Planning an audit, determining its scope and objectives, and recognizing the inherent limitations.
- Assessing and managing risks and the role of internal audits in corporate governance.
- Different types of audits and the qualities needed in an auditor.
- How to conduct audits within computer systems and the common techniques used across different types of businesses like retail, manufacturing, banking, insurance, and investment entities.
- Completing an audit effectively and ensuring all audit tasks are finalized.
III. Auditor’s role and responsibilities:
- Understanding the professional and legal rights, duties, and liabilities of an auditor.
- Knowing the different types of opinions and reports an auditor can issue, as required by the Companies Ordinance 1984 and the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) handbook.
Business Taxation (30 Marks)
IV. Tax Structure and Key Concepts in Pakistan’s Income Tax:
- Overview of Pakistan’s tax system.
- Important terms and definitions as outlined in Section 2 of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001.
V. Principles and Applications of Income and Sales Tax:
- Income Tax: Key sections to focus on:
- Taxable income [Sections 4, 9 & 10]
- Different categories of income [Section 11]
- How to calculate tax on taxable income [First Schedule of the Ordinance]
- Salary income and how it is taxed [Sections 12 to 14]
- Income from property [Sections 15 & 16]
- Income from business [Sections 18 to 20]
- Capital gains [Sections 37 to 38]
- Other income sources [Sections 39, 40, 89, 101(6), 111]
- Tax credits available [Sections 61 to 65]
- Taxation specifics for individuals, associations of persons (AOPs), and companies [Sections 86, 92, 94]
- Tax payment deadlines [Section 137]
- Tax deductions at source and withholding tax [Sections 147, 149, 153, 155]
- Relevant Income Tax Rules from 2002.Sales Tax: Key sections to focus on:
- Scope of tax [Section 3]
- Exemptions [Section 2(11)]
- Definition of goods [Section 2(12)]
- Input tax [Section 2(14)]
- Definition of a registered person [Section 2(25)]
- Supply of goods and services [Section 2(33)]
- Definition of tax [Section 2(34)]
- Retail price and retailer [Sections 2(27) & 2(28)]
- What constitutes a taxable activity [Section 2(35)]?
- Taxable supply [Section 2(41)]
- How tax is calculated [Section 2(36)]Tax period [Section 2(43)]
- Timing of supply [Section 2(44)]
- How to determine tax liability [Section 7].
Business Studies and Finance (30 Marks)
VI. Business Studies:
- Understanding what a business entity is and its purpose.
- Challenges modern businesses face.
- Different legal forms of businesses, such as sole proprietorships, partnerships, and joint-stock companies, include their characteristics and how they are formed and managed.
- Business combinations and their significance.
- The business cycle and its impact.
- The role of information technology in business operations.
VII. Finance:
- Financial management, including their meaning, nature, and scope.
- Types of business finance: short-term, medium-term, and long-term.
- Overview of financial markets and institutions, their features, and how they are categorized.
- Financial management techniques that aid in decision-making, time value of money, cost of capital, and capital budgeting techniques.
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