I've been working in state government finance for 4 years and I'm finally pushing through to get my CGFM. Passed Part 1 (Governmental Environment) back in January with a 78 and Part 3 (Financial Management Applications) last fall. Part 2 (Governmental Accounting, Financial Reporting, and Budgeting) is the one that's been sitting on my to-do list and I've scheduled it for June 30.
The budgetary accounting module is where I keep losing points on practice exams — specifically the reconciliation between budgetary and proprietary accounting, and the fund balance classification under GASB 54. I understand the concepts but under exam pressure I second-guess myself constantly. I'm scoring around 71–73% on practice tests and you need a 75 to pass, so the margin is tight.
I'm using the AGA study guide and the NASBA practice tests. Does anyone have recommendations for additional resources specifically for the governmental accounting side? I'm also curious how closely the actual exam mirrors the AGA study guide questions — my Part 1 and Part 3 felt pretty consistent with it but I've seen people say Part 2 is different.
GASB 54 and the restricted/committed/assigned/unassigned classification tripped me up for weeks. What finally clicked was drawing out the decision tree for each classification type rather than just reading about them. A few YouTube videos from accounting professors explained it better than any study guide I found.
71–73% at 5 weeks out is workable. I was around that range and ended up with a 77 on exam day. The test itself felt slightly easier than the AGA practice questions to me honestly — cleaner wording and fewer trick questions than I expected.
Part 2 is the hardest of the three in my opinion. The fund accounting stuff especially if you don't work directly with GAAP reporting day-to-day. I used the AGA guide plus the actual GASB statements for the concepts I kept missing — reading the primary source helped more than any summary material.
Make sure you know the difference between modified accrual and full accrual cold. They'll throw scenarios at you where you have to apply both and know why the numbers are different. That was at least 10–12% of the questions in my version.