Cost & Management Accountancy · The Institute of Cost Accountants of India (ICMAI), a statutory body under the Cost and Works Accountants Act, 1959
CMA Intermediate — Cost and Management Accountancy Intermediate Course — the professional stage of the CMA qualification
The complete CMA Intermediate blueprint: tier-wise pattern, topic weightage from previous-year analyses, and free chapter-by-chapter study material.
8 papers 100 marks each, in two groups of four, under Syllabus 202270 : 30 descriptive marks to MCQs, in every paper — no negative marking40% + 50% per paper, and per group in aggregate, to pass Free · tutor-verified
CMA Intermediate at a glance
Conducted byThe Institute of Cost Accountants of India (ICMAI), a statutory body under the Cost and Works Accountants Act, 1959
CycleTwice a year — June and December terms
ModePen-and-paper at ICMAI examination centres. Every paper runs three hours for 100 marks, with Section A (MCQs) and Section B (descriptive) both attempted within the same sitting
EligibilitySeveral routes in. Complete 10+2 and pass CMA Foundation, or qualify CAT Part I, or register directly as a graduate in any discipline (Direct Entry, no Foundation needed — candidates who cleared CAT Part I are additionally exempted from the Business Laws and Ethics paper), or register after completing the second year of an engineering degree. Provisional registration for degree-awaiting candidates carries an 18-month window to convert to full registration. Registration for Intermediate remains valid for 7 years from the date of registration; a lapsed registration requires a DE NOVO (fresh) registration to continue.
LanguagesEnglish
Qualifies you forIntermediate is a stage, not a terminal qualification, but a cleared group already opens articled-assistant and finance-support roles. The completed CMA typically starts broadly comparable to CA and CS entry compensation in cost, finance and audit roles — commonly cited in the ₹6-10 lakh a year range — with cost-audit practice and senior industry finance roles (CFO, Financial Controller, Cost Controller) commanding considerably more; a distinct government-service route also exists via the Indian Cost Accounts Service (ICoAS), an all-India Class-I service ranked alongside the IAS and IFS
Where CMA Intermediate leads
Practical training under a practising Cost Accountant or in industry — 15 monthsCMA Final — the qualifying examinationCost audit and cost compliance practice (a function statutorily reserved for CMAs)Direct and indirect tax computation and compliance rolesCosting, budgeting and management-reporting roles in industryFinancial management, treasury and business-analytics support roles
⚡ What changed recently
- Syllabus 2022 fixed the current eight-paper, two-group structure, with every paper carrying a uniform 30% MCQ (Section A, no negative marking) plus 70% descriptive (Section B, 14-mark questions in parts of 4 to 10 marks) split — confirmed uniform across all eight papers at both Intermediate and Final, unlike some sister institutes' single fully-descriptive paper.
- ICMAI has announced a transition to CMA Syllabus 2026 across all three levels, with authors and reviewers invited for new study material; secondary reporting indicates first application from around the June 2027 term, with Syllabus 2022 continuing to govern the nearer December 2026 and May-June 2027 sittings — candidates should confirm the applicable syllabus for their specific attempt closer to the date.
- Intermediate registration validity was confirmed at 7 years from registration (not the shorter figure sometimes quoted for older schemes), with a DE NOVO registration process available to extend it by a further 5 years if it lapses before both groups are cleared.
- Practical training now runs 15 months in total and can begin immediately upon Intermediate registration, rather than only after clearing it — but the full 15 months must be completed before a Final-group result can be declared for a candidate who has completed both groups together.
- A candidate scoring 60% or more in an individual paper without clearing the whole group is granted an exemption in that paper for a limited number of subsequent attempts, carrying its marks forward — check the current circular for the exact number of attempts the exemption spans, since this figure is periodically revised.
How CMA Intermediate selection works
Know what each stage is for before you spend a single hour preparing.
THE GROUP MOST CANDIDATES ATTEMPT FIRST
Group I — Business Laws & Ethics, Financial Accounting, Direct & Indirect Taxation, Cost Accounting
400 marks across four papers. Clearing Group I, together with completing the registered practical-training start, lets a candidate begin building towards the 15-month training requirement while Group II is still pending.
THE GROUP THAT COMPLETES THE LEVEL
Group II — Operations & Strategic Management, Corporate Accounting & Auditing, Financial Management & Business Data Analytics, Management Accounting
400 marks across four papers. Both groups must be cleared, together with the 15-month practical training requirement, before the Final examination result can be declared.
UNDER A PRACTISING COST ACCOUNTANT, OR IN APPROVED INDUSTRY ROLES
Practical training — 15 months
Can begin immediately upon Intermediate registration, running in parallel with study. Must be substantially complete before a Final-level result is declared — check the current timing circular for the exact checkpoint rules.
THE QUALIFYING EXAMINATION
CMA Final — eight papers in two groups
Papers 13-20, including a chosen elective (Paper 20, not modelled on this hub since a question set for one elective is of no use to a candidate who chose another). Passing, plus completed training, admits a candidate to ICMAI membership.
The exam pattern, tier by tier
Marks, timing and negative marking exactly as per the official notification.
Group I — Business Laws & Ethics, Financial Accounting, Direct & Indirect Taxation, Cost Accounting
The group most candidates attempt first400 marks · Section A: MCQs (30 marks); Section B: descriptive questions of up to 14 marks each (70 marks) Q
3 hours per paper · None on Section A. Working notes form part of the answer in Section B.
| Section | Questions | Marks | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paper 5 — Business Laws and Ethics | Section A MCQ + Section B descriptive | 100 | 180 min |
| Paper 6 — Financial Accounting | Section A MCQ + Section B descriptive | 100 | 180 min |
| Paper 7 — Direct and Indirect Taxation | Section A MCQ + Section B descriptive | 100 | 180 min |
| Paper 8 — Cost Accounting | Section A MCQ + Section B descriptive | 100 | 180 min |
💡 Business Laws & Ethics and Financial Accounting are the lighter-reading papers of the group; Taxation and Cost Accounting carry the heavier computational load, mirroring their equivalents in every other accounting-institute syllabus on this hub.
Group II — Operations & Strategic Management, Corporate Accounting & Auditing, Financial Management & Business Data Analytics, Management Accounting
Both groups, plus 15 months of practical training, unlock CMA Final400 marks · Section A: MCQs (30 marks); Section B: descriptive questions of up to 14 marks each (70 marks) Q
3 hours per paper · None on Section A. Working notes form part of the answer in Section B.
| Section | Questions | Marks | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paper 9 — Operations Management and Strategic Management | Section A MCQ + Section B descriptive | 100 | 180 min |
| Paper 10 — Corporate Accounting and Auditing | Section A MCQ + Section B descriptive | 100 | 180 min |
| Paper 11 — Financial Management and Business Data Analytics | Section A MCQ + Section B descriptive | 100 | 180 min |
| Paper 12 — Management Accounting | Section A MCQ + Section B descriptive | 100 | 180 min |
💡 Paper 10 (Corporate Accounting and Auditing) is taught on this hub as two subjects — Corporate Accounting and Auditing — since the single 100-mark paper genuinely combines two separable disciplines that are easier to study, and to alias into this site's existing accounting-institute content, as two distinct blocks.
Where CMA Intermediate's 800 marks come from
Eight papers of exactly 100 marks, arranged in two groups of four that can be attempted together or one at a time. Every paper carries the same internal split: Section A is 30 marks of multiple-choice questions with no negative marking, and Section B is 70 marks of descriptive answers, each of 14 marks broken into parts of 4 to 10 marks with working notes forming part of the answer. This site organises the eight ICMAI papers into nine subjects rather than eight, because Paper 10 (Corporate Accounting and Auditing) genuinely combines two separable disciplines — company accounting and auditing procedure — that this hub teaches as two distinct subjects for clarity, exactly the way the official 100-mark paper's own two-section structure already separates them. Click any block to open its chapters:
Business Laws and Ethics100 marks · 12.5%
Group I. Commercial and industrial laws (Contract, Sale of Goods, Partnership/LLP, Negotiable Instruments, Companies Act fundamentals, the Labour Codes in outline) share Section A with Section B's business ethics — the fastest-scoring 30-40 marks in the group once the named frameworks are memorised.
Financial Accounting100 marks · 12.5%
Group I. Accounting standards and final accounts share the paper with special transactions — branch, consignment, joint venture and hire purchase accounts, plus partnership reconstitution — each examined as a full numerical problem.
Direct and Indirect Taxation100 marks · 12.5%
Group I. Income-tax computation and GST share the paper roughly evenly, with customs examined only in outline. The computation format is separately marked, same as every other tax paper on this hub.
Cost Accounting100 marks · 12.5%
Group I. Material and employee cost, overheads, cost sheets and the major costing methods (job, process, service) — numerical, format-driven, and one of the most reliably scoring papers in the level.
Operations Management and Strategic Management100 marks · 12.5%
Group II. The newest, least accounting-flavoured paper — production planning, capacity, sequencing and project scheduling in Section A, strategic management frameworks in Section B.
Corporate Accounting50 marks · 6.25%
Group II, half of Paper 10. Schedule III financial statements, amalgamation and consolidated financial statements — the company-accounting half of the paper.
Auditing50 marks · 6.25%
Group II, half of Paper 10. Audit planning, evidence, reporting and ethics — the audit-procedure half of the paper, written and Standards-driven.
Financial Management and Business Data Analytics100 marks · 12.5%
Group II. Cost of capital, capital structure and capital budgeting share the paper with the syllabus's newest topic — business data analytics, correlation, regression and dashboard design.
Management Accounting100 marks · 12.5%
Group II. Marginal costing, standard costing and budgetary control extend into pricing decisions, transfer pricing, the learning curve and responsibility accounting — the level's most decision-oriented costing paper.
Subjects in CMA Intermediate
Chapter-by-chapter study material built to the exam's own blueprint.
Topic-wise weightage — what to study first
Question counts per topic, distilled from previous-year paper analyses. Click any topic with a link to open its full chapter.
| Topic | Marks | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| The Regulatory Framework & Contract Formation | ~10 | High |
| Contract Act: Capacity, Consent & Validity | ~8 | High |
| Contract Act: Performance, Breach & Special Contracts | ~8 | High |
| The Sale of Goods Act, 1930 | ~6 | Medium |
| The Partnership Act, 1932 & the LLP Act, 2008 | ~8 | High |
| The Companies Act, 2013 (fundamentals) | ~8 | High |
| The Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881 | ~6 | Medium |
| Labour Codes in Outline | ~10 | Very high |
| Business Ethics and Corporate Governance | ~35 | Very high |
🎯 Section A's laws (Contract, Sale of Goods, Partnership/LLP, Negotiable Instruments, Companies Act fundamentals, the Labour Codes) reward the same provision-application-conclusion discipline every law paper on this hub rewards. Section B's ethics is different in kind — it is marked on correctly naming a framework (the five fundamental principles, the five threats) rather than on unstructured opinion, and is the single fastest-scoring block in the entire paper once those named lists are memorised.
| Topic | Marks | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| The Accounting Process & Theoretical Framework | ~14 | High |
| Bank Reconciliation, Inventories & Depreciation | ~16 | Very high |
| Bills of Exchange, Final Accounts & Incomplete Records | ~18 | Very high |
| Not-for-Profit Organisations & Partnership Accounts | ~20 | Very high |
| Branch, Consignment, Joint Venture & Hire Purchase Accounting | ~32 | Very high |
🎯 Section A is definitional and format-driven — accounting standards, depreciation, final accounts and incomplete records. Section B is where the paper is actually won or lost: branch accounts, consignment, joint venture and hire purchase each hinge on one defining fact (no sale on consignment dispatch; deferred ownership under hire purchase), and each is examined as a complete numerical problem, not a one-line answer.
| Topic | Marks | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| Basic Concepts and Residential Status | ~8 | Very high |
| Salaries and Income from House Property | ~10 | Very high |
| Profits and Gains of Business or Profession | ~10 | Very high |
| Capital Gains and Income from Other Sources | ~10 | Very high |
| Clubbing, Set-Off and Deductions from Gross Total Income | ~8 | High |
| TDS, TCS, Advance Tax, Returns and Tax Computation | ~8 | High |
| GST: Introduction, Supply, Charge and Place of Supply | ~12 | Very high |
| GST: Exemptions, Time and Value of Supply | ~10 | High |
| Input Tax Credit and Registration | ~12 | Very high |
| GST: Documentation, Payment and Returns | ~8 | Medium |
| Customs Duty: An Outline | ~4 | Low |
🎯 Treat the two halves as two separate papers stapled together, same as every other tax paper on this hub. Income-tax computation follows a fixed five-heads-then-deductions skeleton; GST resolves almost every question to whether it is a supply, whether it is taxable, when liability arises and on what value. Customs is deliberately shallow — one CIF-valuation formula and a handful of duty-type distinctions, not a full customs-law treatment.
| Topic | Marks | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| Introduction to Cost and Management Accounting | ~6 | Medium |
| Material Cost and Employee Cost | ~16 | Very high |
| Overheads, Absorption and Activity-Based Costing | ~16 | Very high |
| Cost Sheet and Cost Accounting Systems | ~14 | Very high |
| Unit, Batch, Job and Service Costing | ~16 | Very high |
| Process Costing, Joint Products and By-Products | ~16 | Very high |
| Method — How to Crack Cost Accounting | method | Very high |
🎯 The most reliably scoring paper in Group I, since its questions are numerical and its formats repeat. Build the cost sheet first — it is the spine unit, batch, job and service costing all hang from — and treat material and employee cost, overheads absorption and process costing as the three heaviest, most format-driven blocks.
| Topic | Marks | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| Production Planning, Productivity and Quality Management | ~22 | Very high |
| Capacity Planning, Scheduling, Project and Supply Chain Management | ~26 | Very high |
| Introduction to Strategic Management | ~14 | High |
| Strategic Analysis: External and Internal Environment | ~20 | Very high |
| Strategic Choices, Implementation and Evaluation | ~18 | High |
🎯 The syllabus's newest, least accounting-flavoured paper — mostly descriptive and conceptual, with a handful of genuinely numerical techniques (standard time, EOQ, PERT, Johnson's rule) that carry disproportionate marks precisely because they are the few places a definite right answer exists. Section B's strategic management is written and short, and is the fastest marks in the paper once its frameworks (Porter's five forces, SWOT, the industry life cycle) are attached correctly to a described situation.
| Topic | Marks | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| Company Financial Statements and Buyback | ~18 | Very high |
| Amalgamation and Internal Reconstruction | ~18 | Very high |
| Consolidated Financial Statements | ~14 | High |
🎯 Company financial statements under Schedule III, amalgamation/internal reconstruction and consolidated financial statements — format-driven company-accounting topics that reward reproducing the correct statement structure and working notes, exactly as CA Inter's own Advanced Accounting rewards the same three topics.
| Topic | Marks | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| Nature, Objective and Scope of Audit | ~6 | High |
| Audit Strategy, Planning and Programme | ~6 | High |
| Risk Assessment and Internal Control | ~8 | Very high |
| Audit Evidence and Sampling | ~8 | Very high |
| Audit of Items of Financial Statements | ~8 | Very high |
| Audit Documentation, Completion and Review | ~6 | Medium |
| The Audit Report | ~8 | Very high |
| Audit of Different Types of Entities and Banks | ~6 | Medium |
| Ethics and Terms of Audit Engagements | ~4 | Medium |
🎯 A Standards-driven, written half-paper. Build the subject as the audit's own sequence — accept the engagement, assess risk, plan, gather evidence, document, evaluate, report — and answer in the Standards' own vocabulary rather than a paraphrase, exactly the discipline CA Inter's own auditing chapters teach.
| Topic | Marks | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| Scope, Objectives and Types of Financing | ~6 | Medium |
| Ratio Analysis and Financial Planning | ~8 | High |
| Cost of Capital | ~8 | Very high |
| Capital Structure and Leverages | ~8 | Very high |
| Investment Decisions: Capital Budgeting | ~8 | Very high |
| Dividend Decision and Working Capital Management | ~10 | High |
| Foundations of Business Data Analytics | ~18 | Very high |
| Analytics, Visualisation and Dashboards in Finance and Costing | ~20 | Very high |
🎯 Financial Management is cumulative and numerical — cost of capital feeds capital structure, which feeds every capital-budgeting answer downstream — so a shaky early chapter quietly damages the rest. Business Data Analytics, the syllabus's newest topic, is classificatory in its opening chapter and computational (correlation, regression, EOQ-style cost estimation) in its second, and rewards a candidate who can name the right data-quality dimension or analytics type as reliably as one who can build a regression line.
| Topic | Marks | Priority |
|---|---|---|
| Marginal Costing and Decision Making | ~18 | Very high |
| Standard Costing and Variance Analysis | ~18 | Very high |
| Budgets and Budgetary Control | ~14 | High |
| Pricing Decisions, Transfer Pricing and Life Cycle Costing | ~26 | Very high |
| Responsibility Accounting and Performance Measurement | ~24 | Very high |
🎯 The level's most decision-oriented costing paper. Marginal costing's contribution logic drives every relevant-costing decision, standard costing and budgetary control extend it into variance and planning territory, and this hub's own new chapters extend it further into pricing, transfer pricing, the learning curve and Residual-Income-versus-ROI responsibility accounting — a genuinely distinct decision-making toolkit from Paper 8's Cost Accounting.
CMA Intermediate resources
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FAQs
Frequently asked questions
Eight papers of 100 marks, arranged as two groups of four. Group I is Business Laws & Ethics, Financial Accounting, Direct & Indirect Taxation, and Cost Accounting. Group II is Operations & Strategic Management, Corporate Accounting & Auditing, Financial Management & Business Data Analytics, and Management Accounting. Candidates may attempt one group at a time or both together, in either order.
No. Every paper's Section A (30 marks of MCQs) carries no negative marking at either Intermediate or Final level, so every MCQ should be attempted.
Two conditions applied group by group: at least 40 marks in each individual paper of the group, and at least 50% of the group's aggregate (200 out of 400). A candidate scoring 60% or more in an individual paper without clearing the whole group is granted an exemption in that paper for a limited number of subsequent attempts — check the current circular for the exact figure, since it is periodically revised.
Every paper maps to one subject except Paper 10 (Corporate Accounting and Auditing), which this hub teaches as two subjects — Corporate Accounting and Auditing — since the two disciplines are genuinely separable and are easier to study, and to align with this site's existing accounting-institute content, as two distinct blocks. The official paper (and its 100 marks) remains one paper for registration and result purposes.
Substantially, by design — the underlying laws, accounting standards, costing techniques and financial-management formulas are the same facts regardless of which institute examines them, so this hub aliases directly into the equivalent CA Foundation and CA Intermediate chapters wherever the syllabi genuinely match, and writes new content only where CMA's syllabus diverges (labour codes, business data analytics, operations management, and several special-transaction accounting topics).
Similar in shape but not identical. Both offer a Foundation-plus-10+2 route and a graduate Direct Entry route, but CMA additionally recognises CAT Part I as an entry qualification (with an exemption from the Business Laws and Ethics paper) and an engineering-second-year route, and CMA's registration validity (7 years, extendable via DE NOVO) differs from CA's own registration-renewal rules.
Practical training runs 15 months in total and can begin immediately upon Intermediate registration, rather than only after clearing it. The full 15 months must be substantially complete before a Final-level result can be declared for a candidate who appears for both Final groups together.
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