Leader track 🧾 · six sessions, no spreadsheets
For anyone handed a P&L in a meeting, or who has to argue for a budget. What the statements are for, why profit is an opinion, where the money went, what growth costs, how to read accounts somebody else prepared, and how to ask for money and be believed.
What a set of accounts is for
Three statements, three different questions. Marchmont earns its best month ever and runs out of cash in the same month.
⚖️ Leader session 2Profit is an opinion, cash is a fact
Accruals, and the four judgement calls sitting inside every profit figure.
🔎 Leader session 3Where the money actually went
The cash flow statement as a bridge. £445,631 of profit, minus £297,261 of cash, and every pound accounted for.
📈 Leader session 4The cost of growing
Grow faster, earn more, and go broke sooner. The same company across five growth rates.
📰 Leader session 5Reading someone else's accounts
What published accounts can and cannot tell you, and the six cheapest checks first.
🎯 Leader session 6Defending a number
Taking a funding requirement to a board or a bank, and why a bridge is fundable when a rescue is not.
Practitioner track 🏗️ · ten sessions, hands on
For the people who build the model. The three statements wired together, each one line by line, working capital, the tie, driving it with assumptions, the levers, sizing a gap, a finding that changed when the horizon changed, and a capstone bench.
The three statements, wired together
Two wires hold the model together. Break either one and the balance sheet stops tying.
🧮 Practitioner session 2The income statement
Revenue down to net income, line by line, and where judgement enters each one.
🔄 Practitioner session 3Working capital
Three dials turn trading into a cash position. Receivables grow £539,454 in a year.
🌉 Practitioner session 4The cash flow statement
The indirect method built line by line, from net income to the change in cash.
⚓ Practitioner session 5The balance sheet and the tie
Why it must balance, what it means when it does not, and how to break it on purpose.
🎛️ Practitioner session 6Driving the model
The same model over 24 months and 48 months tells two different stories. Pick the horizon deliberately.
🔧 Practitioner session 7The levers
Eight ways out, measured. Four of them change the profit figure by exactly nothing.
📐 Practitioner session 8Sizing a funding requirement
The trough, the buffer, and the number you actually ask for.
💥 Practitioner session 9The finding that changed at 48 months
A 24 month window said the company died. It recovers in month 28.
🏗️ Practitioner session 10The model bench
Build it, drive it, break it, and size the gap. The whole model live in the page.
The whole thing on one page
Every idea in the course and the session that owns it. Click any node to jump there.
Three ways through
Everyone starts at session 1 of their track. These are the shortest useful routes if you cannot take all sixteen.
What is real here
Every figure on every page comes out of a model that runs when you open the page. Nothing is a stored result.
| The company | Marchmont Instruments is invented, but its accounts are computed from assumptions written out in assets/fin-live.js |
| Every statement | Income statement, balance sheet and cash flow, generated month by month and linked by two wires |
| The balance sheet ties | Across 50 model runs the worst error is 0.0000000224, which is floating point noise. A model that does not tie is reported as broken, not plotted |
| The finding that changed | Run to 24 months the company looks dead. Run to 48 it recovers in month 28. Session 9 keeps the record |