The Operational Case Study, learned the way you’ll actually be tested.
A complete, interactive walk-through of CIMA’s OCS exam: the blueprint examiners use, the techniques tutors actually teach, and seven realistic SoPa scenarios with model answers you can study task by task.
What other tutors paywall behind £99 study packs, we made free.
The case study exam at the first level of the CIMA professional qualification.
The OCS tests your ability to apply your E1, P1 and F1 knowledge in a realistic business scenario. You play the role of a Finance Officer inside a fictional company, advising managers with answers that are professional and practical.
The OCS is not just about theoretical knowledge. It is about applying that knowledge in a realistic business context. Generic textbook answers score poorly. Scenario-specific application scores well.
What CIMA is actually testing.
The OCS is not a theory exam. It is a simulation of the entry-level finance job. CIMA condenses that job into six core activities, each with a weighting range. Every task in your exam links to one of them. Master the activities, and you have mastered the paper.
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A
Costing information for differing business needs
Discuss which costing methods give which insights, and recommend the one that fits this company’s situation.
12–18% -
B
Budget information for planning and control
Build, flex, and interpret budgets. Compare incremental, zero-based, rolling and beyond-budgeting approaches in context.
17–25% -
C
Financial and non-financial performance analysis
Read the numbers. Interpret variances, KPIs, ratios. Communicate what the data actually means about the company.
17–25% -
D
Financial reporting, governance, ethics and tax
Apply IFRS, IAS, ethical principles and tax rules to the company’s specific transactions and decisions.
7–13% -
E
Short-term decision making
Use relevant costs, limiting factors, decision trees and expected values to advise on real operating choices.
17–25% -
F
Working capital management
Inventory days, receivables, payables, cash. Diagnose where the cash is stuck and recommend what to do about it.
12–18%
B, C and E carry the most marks and deserve the most revision time. They map cleanly onto your E1, P1 and F1 syllabus — if you cover those well, you can satisfy these activities and score strongly on this paper.
You get a head start, but only if you study it properly.
Around seven weeks before the exam, you receive a 20–30 page document describing a fictional company: its background, environment and key issues. You study it in advance so that on exam day you already know the business.
What to do with the preseen, week by week.
Most students re-read the preseen and call it studying. This is what tutors actually do across the seven weeks between release and exam day.
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Week 7First read
Read end-to-end for context
One pass, no highlighter. Get a feel for the business, the industry, the people, and where the story sits today. Don’t try to memorise yet.
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Week 6Map the business
Build a one-page business map
Write out products, customers, suppliers, locations, key people and roles. Sketch the org chart. Identify the operating model and how the company makes money.
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Week 5External lens
Industry & environment analysis
Run a quick PESTLE and Porter’s Five Forces on the company. Identify external risks and opportunities. These are the lenses examiners love to test.
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Week 4The numbers
Financial analysis
Read the financials carefully. Calculate profitability, liquidity, gearing and working capital ratios. Spot the trends and the weak spots. Examiners ask about numbers that look unusual.
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Week 3Issue spotting
List the 5–8 strategic issues
From everything above, write down the issues the company is realistically facing. New product launches, capacity constraints, customer concentration, ethical questions, financing decisions. These are what get asked.
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Week 2Active practice
Practice writing answers
Pick anticipated issues and write timed answers in the OCS format. Use the practice questions on this page. Get used to applying theory to this company under exam pressure.
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Week 1Polish
Refine technique, not knowledge
Re-read your notes, time yourself on one full mock, sharpen your structure and your instruction-verb responses. Sleep well the night before. Knowledge is set by now, what changes the score is execution.
Three hours. Four questions. One Finance Officer: you.
Each question contains two to three tasks, all set inside the same preseen company. Your job is to read the email from your senior, work the numbers where needed, and write professional, scenario-specific advice.
Officer
Computer-based. Four sittings a year.
The OCS is sat at Pearson VUE centres, or remotely where available. There are four sittings per year: February, May, August and November.
The current syllabus is the 2019 syllabus with a few updates announced and incorporated within Finntutors’ 2026 material.
Three ways to get to OCS. One way out.
Before sitting the OCS you must have closed out the E1, P1 and F1 knowledge, by one of three routes. Completing the Operational level then earns you the CIMA Diploma in Management Accounting.
Technical knowledge alone does not pass.
The examiner wants to see that you think and behave like a finance professional, not that you can recall content. Three qualities run through every marking grid.
Communication
Writing clearly and professionally, as if you are addressing a real manager. Short sentences. Logical structure. Plain English over jargon.
Professional judgement
Making sensible, reasoned recommendations. Weighing trade-offs. Reaching a conclusion when the task asks for one and being willing to take a view.
Business acumen
Understanding the bigger picture of what the company is trying to achieve and how the finance lens connects to operations, customers and strategy.
Every task begins with a verb. The verb decides the answer.
CIMA uses a small set of command verbs across the OCS. The verb tells you how deep to go, what shape your answer takes, and what kind of response the examiner is looking for. Get this wrong and even strong knowledge scores poorly.
Give a balanced view, considering multiple angles. The most common OCS verb. It appears across costing, budgeting, performance, financial reporting, decision making, and working capital.
Break something down and explain what it means in context. In OCS, this usually means looking at financial or non-financial data and saying what the numbers tell you about performance or position. Do not just describe what you see. Say what it means and why it matters.
Name or list specific items clearly and concisely. A well-placed, scenario-specific point is enough. Appears around performance and decision making, for example identifying additional information sources or areas for improvement.
Take a technique or standard and use it in the specific context of the scenario. Comes up most around IFRS and short-term decision techniques. Describing the rule is not enough. Show how it works for this company in this situation.
Look at data or output and explain what it tells you. Common around forecasting and KPIs. Similar to analyse but usually applied to a specific figure or result — what does this variance mean, what does this forecast suggest about the business.
Set two or more options side by side and highlight the meaningful differences between them. Appears in costing methods and budgeting approaches. A strong answer explains which option suits the company better, and why.
3 + 3 + 3. Plan every section before you write a word.
You have 45 minutes per section. Spend the first 9 to 11 minutes planning. Three stages of roughly three minutes each. The students who skip this phase always finish under-time and under-scored.
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3 minFirst three
Read and understand the scenario
Read the unseen email or conversation carefully. Who is asking, what has happened, what needs addressing. Note the names, the numbers, the things that stand out. Absorb the situation fully before thinking about your answer.
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3 minSecond three
Decode the sub-tasks
Read every sub-task. For each, identify the command verb and the weighting. Read them all before answering any of them. This stops you covering later content too early and leaving yourself empty.
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3 minThird three
Plan your points
Jot down the sub-headings for each sub-task. Think about the technical knowledge that applies, what the preseen tells you about this company, and what new detail the unseen has introduced. You are building a skeleton, not writing sentences yet.
PEA. Every paragraph, every time.
PEA stands for Point, Explanation, Application. It is the structure for every single point you make. Once you have planned, every paragraph follows this pattern. A PEA paragraph written well earns Level 3 marks.
Point
State your point clearly and directly in one sentence. Do not build up to it. Lead with it.
Explanation
Explain why this point matters or how it works. This is where the technical knowledge comes in. One to two sentences is usually enough.
Application
Link the point directly to the company. Use the name, the specific numbers, the situation from the preseen or unseen. This is what separates a pass from a borderline answer.
Levels-based marking. Click to see the same answer at each level.
The OCS does not tick correct facts. The examiner reads your whole answer and places it in Level 1, 2 or 3. Three things decide which: clarity, depth, and application to the scenario. The example below shows the same point on rolling budgets for SoPa, answered at each level.
A benefit of rolling budgets is that they are more up to date. A drawback is that they take more time to prepare.
Technically not wrong, but vague and undeveloped. The points could have been written about any company in any industry. No explanation of why being up to date matters, and no mention of SoPa at all.
A benefit of rolling budgets is that they are continuously updated, which means the budget always reflects the most recent information. This makes them more useful for planning than a fixed annual budget that may quickly become outdated. A drawback is that rolling budgets require management to spend time preparing a new budget period every month, which increases the workload on the finance team.
The points are now explained and the reasoning is clear. The shortfall: still no specific reference to SoPa. It reads like a textbook answer that could apply anywhere.
A benefit of rolling budgets for SoPa is that they would allow the finance team to update forecasts regularly to reflect the seasonal fluctuations in customer covers that the business experiences across its nine restaurants. SoPa’s current annual budget is set once and may quickly become unreliable if cover numbers shift, for example during quieter winter months or unexpectedly busy periods. A rolling budget would give management a more realistic and current picture to make decisions from.
A drawback, however, is that producing a new budget period every month would place additional demands on SoPa’s finance function, which may not have the capacity to absorb that workload alongside its existing reporting responsibilities.
Every point is explained clearly, tied directly to SoPa’s specific situation, and uses details from the preseen — the nine restaurants, seasonal covers, the finance team’s capacity. It reads like it was written by someone who knows this company, not someone reciting a definition.
What costs students marks every sitting.
Most students who fail know enough content to pass. The marks are lost in how the answers are written. Five mistakes show up across every sitting.
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01
Writing generically instead of applying to the company
The single biggest reason students drop from Level 3 to Level 2. Technically correct answers that could apply to any business. If your answer does not mention the company by name, reference its specific situation, and use numbers or details from the preseen or unseen, it will not reach Level 3.
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02
Ignoring the command verb
Writing a discuss answer when the task says identify. Writing a list when the verb is evaluate, missing the judgement the marks depend on. Every task starts with a verb. Read it. Match it.
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03
Misallocating time across sub-tasks
Spending too long on the first comfortable sub-task and running out of time for the rest. Levels-based marking means a brilliant answer on one sub-task cannot compensate for a missing answer on another. A complete Level 2 on every sub-task beats Level 3 on one and nothing on the next.
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04
No planning before writing
Diving straight in produces rambling, unstructured answers that jump between points without clear logic. 3+3+3 per section produces tighter answers, ensures every sub-task is covered, and almost always reaches a higher level than unplanned writing.
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05
Making points without explaining them
A point with no explanation sits at Level 1. Students list five or six correct ideas in quick succession but never develop any of them. One well-explained, well-applied point is worth more than three undeveloped ones.
The OCS at a glance.
Seven scenarios from inside SoPa.
Open any scenario to read the brief from Jack Griggs, head of Finance. Each question breaks down into sub-tasks with their CIMA-style weighting. Reveal the model answer task by task, or flip on Practice mode to write your attempt first.
