Disclaimer

No professional advice

The calculators, guides and worked examples on BA II Plus Calculator are published for education and estimation. They are not financial, investment, tax, accounting or legal advice, and no result is a recommendation to take a loan, buy a security, accept an offer or enter into any other transaction. Nobody here knows your income, your obligations, your tax position or your tolerance for risk. Before acting on a number, take it to a qualified professional who does.

No affiliation with Texas Instruments

This is an independent implementation written from published behaviour of the device. BA II Plus™ is a trademark of Texas Instruments Incorporated, referred to here only to identify the calculator being emulated. Texas Instruments has not reviewed, approved, endorsed or sponsored this site, and is not associated with it. For the manufacturer's own documentation, guidance and firmware, go to Texas Instruments.

Accuracy, and where results legitimately differ

The emulator's keystroke behaviour and the finance library behind the dedicated pages are covered by automated tests checked against published worked examples, and reported errors are fixed and then locked down with a test. Even so, a figure here can disagree with your textbook without either being broken. The usual causes:

• Rounding and floating-point arithmetic. Results are computed at full double precision and rounded only for display. A source that rounded at each intermediate step will land a few pennies away on a long amortization schedule.
• Compounding frequency. P/Y and C/Y are separate settings, and a nominal rate compounded monthly is not the same rate compounded semiannually. Canadian-style mortgages are the classic trap.
• Day-count convention. Bond and date results differ between actual/actual and 30/360. Both are offered because both are used.
• Timing. An annuity due (BGN) is one period of interest richer than an ordinary annuity (END).
• Sign convention. Money out is negative and money in is positive. A negative answer is usually the convention working, not an error.
• Genuinely ambiguous problems. A cash-flow series that changes sign more than once can have several internal rates of return; iterative solvers return one root, and it may not be the one your source picked.

Two deliberate differences from the hardware

The emulator shows six decimal places where the device ships showing two, and one press of CE|C resets the whole calculator rather than clearing the entry first. Both are conveniences for practice, and both mean a keystroke sequence that works here will not always behave identically on the physical device. About this site explains the reasoning. Everything else — order of operations, parenthesis depth, worksheet field order, the sign convention — follows the exam-room device.

Exam rules are your provider's, not ours

No online calculator, phone, tablet or laptop is permitted in the CFA, CFP or FRM exam room. CFA Institute allows two physical models — the TI BA II Plus, including the Professional, and the HP 12C. Use this emulator to drill the keystrokes, then rehearse on the hardware you will actually carry in, and confirm your provider's current calculator policy before test day. Policies change, and this page is not a substitute for reading the current one.

External links

Links to exam providers, standards bodies and reference material are for convenience only. Their content is theirs, and including a link is not an endorsement.

Limitation of liability

The site is provided “as is”, without warranty of any kind. To the fullest extent permitted by law, its operator accepts no liability for loss or damage arising from use of the site or reliance on any figure it produces. The terms of service set this out in full.

Something looks wrong?

Report it. Send the keystrokes in order and the answer you expected to hello@baiipluscalculator.com, or use the contact page. Corrections are the most useful mail this site gets.