# The Rusty Mandatories Crib Accounting principles, business planning and data management on two sides: what the Level 1 descriptors ask for, and what an answer on each has to contain. Checked on 30 July 2026 against RICS Requirements and competencies guide, December 2025, Version 1.6, section 2, and the current pathway guide for your route. Always confirm against the current guidance for your own route. From The APC Candidate Guide: Cases to Conversation. Interboard is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by RICS, IChemE, or any awarding body, and does not guarantee any assessment outcome. --- What the Level 1 descriptors actually ask for, what to say out loud, and the questions to answer cold. Print it, or read it on the way in. ## Why these get you referred These three are mandatory at Level 1, which candidates read as "easy" and then never open again. Panels know that. A confident technical candidate who stumbles on "talk me through a balance sheet" does not look weak on accounting; they look unprepared across the board, and the chair starts checking whether anything else was left at university. The bar is knowledge and understanding, not expertise. You are not being asked to be an accountant. You are being asked to show you understand the numbers and the systems that govern the business you work in. ## The three levels, and where these sit - **Level 1** is knowledge and understanding. - **Level 2** is application of that knowledge in your own practice. - **Level 3** is reasoned advice given to clients. Of the eleven mandatory competencies, Ethics, Rules of Conduct and professionalism is the one taken to Level 3. Client care, Communication and negotiation, and Health and safety go to Level 2. The rest, including all three on this sheet, sit at Level 1. That floor is not a ceiling. Where one of these also appears in your pathway's technical lists and you chose it there, you are assessed at the higher level you declared, not at this one. So the question being put to you is not "can you do this". It is "do you understand it". ## Accounting principles and procedures The basic principles of accounting, and reading a set of company accounts well enough that advice given on top of them is sound. **Level 1 asks you to know:** - The three statements by name, and how management accounts differ from published company accounts. - The generally accepted accounting principles that apply where you work, and how property is treated in an entity's accounts under them. - Broadly how the international standards differ from your national ones, and how a property or an asset is treated under each. - What an auditor is for. **Above the bar.** Interpreting a set of accounts, and the measures that come with it (return on capital employed, net asset value, net assets per share, gearing, EBIT, EBITDA, the price/earnings ratio), sit at Level 2 in the descriptor. At Level 1 know what they mean and what a bad one would suggest. You are not being asked to advise on one, unless you declared this competency higher through your pathway. ## Saying it out loud: accounting Be able to say what each statement is for, not just what it is called. The balance sheet is a snapshot of what the business owns and owes at a date. The profit and loss account is performance across a period. The cash flow statement is money actually moving. Profit is an accounting position; cash is what pays wages, and the gap between them is where contractors fail. Then connect it to your day job, because that is what lifts a recited definition into an answer: covenant strength when you recommend a tenderer, the financial standing of a subcontractor before a large advance payment, whether a client can fund what they are asking you to price. If you are asked about a ratio you cannot interpret, say what it measures and what a bad one would make you ask. That is a Level 1 answer, honestly given. ## Business planning The principles and the tools of business planning. **Level 1 asks you to know:** - The types of plan and what each is for: strategic, corporate, departmental, operational. - What a business plan actually contains. - How organisations are structured. - Financial benchmarking, and the key ratios it runs on. - Working capital, stock, debtors and creditors: what each one means. - Accounting and forecasting techniques, and how planning activity serves the corporate objectives above it. ## Saying it out loud: business planning Know your own organisation well enough to describe it in three sentences: how it wins work, what its cost base is, and what a good year looks like. Then know where you sit in it, and what is measured about your work: fee recovery or utilisation, margin against budget, cash collection, repeat business. When asked about a plan, be concrete about its parts: objectives, the market and competition, the services and how they are delivered, the people and structure, the financial forecast and the risks. Say what timescale each type of plan runs to and who owns it. And link the layers. An operational plan that does not serve the corporate objectives above it is the failure the descriptor is pointing at, and saying so is worth more than listing plan types in order. ## Data management How data about projects and about your own work is collected, stored and retrieved: the systems available, the principles behind them, what makes one effective, and the move towards central project databases. **Level 1 asks you to know:** - Published sources of data, and what each is good for. - How your own organisation collects, analyses and stores data, and how project information is filed. - How electronic database systems work. - What a central project database or a building information model buys you: the benefits, the challenges and the dangers. - How a technical library is set up and used. - The legislation that applies to data management and data access. **Where GDPR sits.** The descriptor does not say "GDPR" anywhere. It arrives through that last line, the legislation applicable to data management and data access, and it is the part a chairperson reaches for, because it is the part everyone is expected to have an answer to. Treat it as in scope and prepare it. ## Saying it out loud: data, GDPR and information security Start with your own practice, because the descriptor is about systems rather than statute: where your cost data comes from, how you sanity-check it, how a project is filed, who has access, and what happens to it at the end. If you use a common data environment or a model, say what it gave you and what it cost in discipline. On personal data, three moves cover most questions: the lawful basis, data minimisation and retention, and what you would do in the first hour of a suspected breach. Contain it, report it internally under your firm's procedure, record the facts. Whether the regulator is notified is a firm-level assessment against the threshold, not a decision an individual surveyor takes alone. The honest answer is often right here: name the policy, name who owns it, and say what you would stop doing immediately. Inventing a regulation is far worse than saying you would check. ## Answer these cold Ten questions at the mandatory floor, and what an answer to each has to contain. Each competency's own module carries more, including the Level 2 questions a panel reaches for when the topic touches work you actually did. ### Accounting principles & procedures **What does a balance sheet tell you?** *(Level 1)* A balance sheet is a snapshot at a date: assets, liabilities and equity. Performance over a period is the profit and loss account, cash movement is the cash flow statement, and the order book is in neither. **How can a profitable business still run out of money?** *(Level 1)* Profit is an accounting position recognised when earned, while cash depends on timing: slow payment, retention, work in progress and costs paid up front. That gap is precisely what the cash flow statement exists to show, and it is how a business with a full order book fails. **What is an auditor for?** *(Level 1)* An auditor gives an independent opinion that the accounts give a true and fair view and are properly prepared. They do not prepare the accounts, do not value the business, and an unqualified opinion is not a promise that the company will not fail. ### Business planning **What distinguishes a strategic plan from an operational plan?** *(Level 1)* A strategic plan sets long-term direction and objectives; corporate and departmental plans translate them; an operational plan is the shorter-term activity, resourcing and targets that deliver them. Seniority of author is a symptom of the difference rather than the difference itself. **Which set best describes what a business plan contains?** *(Level 1)* A plan sets objectives, describes the market and the competition, the services and how they are delivered, the people and structure, the financial forecast, and the risks with what is being done about them. Accounts and a history describe what happened; a plan commits to what will. **What is working capital?** *(Level 1)* Working capital is current assets less current liabilities, the money that funds day-to-day trading while debtors, creditors and work in progress move. Cash alone is one component of it, and owners' capital is a different part of the balance sheet. **What is the difference between a budget and a forecast?** *(Level 1)* The budget is the plan agreed at the outset; the forecast is where you now expect to land given actuals to date, and the variance between them is the management conversation. Neither is inherently optimistic, and both belong to whoever owns the outturn. ### Data management **What does this competency mainly cover?** *(Level 1)* The descriptor is about data systems: sources, collection, storage, retrieval, security and the legislation that applies. Data protection is one part of that last item, and modelling and benchmarking are examples within it rather than the whole competency. **Under UK GDPR, what must you have before processing personal data?** *(Level 1)* You need a lawful basis: consent, contract, legal obligation, vital interests, public task or legitimate interests. Consent is one of six rather than a universal requirement, and keeping data inside the firm is not an exemption from having a basis at all. **You suspect project data has been sent to the wrong recipient. What do you do first?** *(Level 1)* Contain first, then report internally under the firm's breach procedure and record the facts. Your firm assesses whether the notification threshold is met, which is not an individual surveyor's unilateral call, and quietly deleting your copy destroys the record of what occurred. ## When you do not know Say so, name what you would check and who you would ask, and stop there. Inventing a regulation is worse than admitting a gap, because the assessor has heard the real answer many times and will hear the difference. "I would check our policy and speak to whoever owns it" is a Level 1 answer. A confident wrong one is not. ## About this sheet Two sides, free, no account needed. Recorded APC e-learning sells a single module on this ground at about £60. This is the reference version of it: what the descriptors ask, and what an answer has to contain. What paper cannot do is make you say it out loud, to someone who follows up, when you are tired. That is what the Accelerator is for.