A WHO KNEW COURSE
The Basic Business Accountancy Course for People Who Will Not, Under Any Circumstances, Take an Accountancy Course
Six modules. Five real UK case studies. One bakery chain you'll come to love.
For founders, marketers, salespeople, and anyone else who has spent years nodding at numbers in meetings without being entirely sure what they were nodding at.
By the end, you'll read a full set of UK accounts in under thirty minutes. Spot the tricks. Understand what your competitors are actually doing. Built for the UK — not the US — so you can use it the day after you finish.
Total runtime: 2 hours 28 minutes. Built to fit in a Saturday afternoon.
One-time payment · £99 · Lifetime access
Roughly the price of dinner with an accountant. A fraction of any qualification. Yours forever.
Free preview
Lesson 1.1 — What a P&L actually is.
3 minutes 53 seconds. No signup. No email. Just watch.
Test yourself with the quiz when the video ends.
What you'll be able to do
Four things you'll do by the end. None of which you can do now.
01
Read any UK annual report in under thirty minutes.
Not skim. Read. Profit, cash, balance sheet, the notes, the bits the company would rather you skimmed. The first one will take you the full thirty. By the tenth, you'll be doing it in five.
02
Spot the tricks before they collapse the business.
Patisserie Valerie. Carillion. Thomas Cook. Quindell. Each one left clues in the accounts for years before anyone noticed. You'll know the clues. You'll see them in real time, in companies still trading, while everyone around you nods at the numbers.
03
Understand what your competitors are actually doing.
Their accounts are public. Companies House. Free, downloadable, sitting there. By the end of this course you'll read them in the way they're meant to be read — not just turnover and profit but margins, working capital, where the cash is going. Information your competitors assume nobody is looking at.
04
Quietly become the most numerate person in the room.
Not the loudest. Not the one with the qualification. The one who actually reads the numbers before the meeting and asks the question nobody else thought to ask. People notice. It's a slow upgrade to your professional reputation that compounds for the rest of your career.
Why this exists
Most online business courses are American. This one isn't.
If you're in UK business and you want to read a set of accounts, your options are not great.
Most online courses teach US GAAP. The SEC filings of US companies. American tax. None of that helps when the company you're trying to understand is filed at Companies House on a Tuesday morning in Cardiff. The UK has its own accounting standards, its own filing rules, its own audit regime, and its own particular ways of hiding things. This course teaches those.
The other option is a real accountancy qualification. AAT, ACCA, ICAEW. Two to four years of study, several thousand pounds, and at the end of it you're an accountant. Which is great, if that's what you wanted. Most people in business don't. They just want to read the numbers without it becoming a career change.
This is the middle option. The one that didn't exist. Six modules, two and a half hours, built for people who want to be numerate, not qualified. Built for the UK, because that's where the accounts are.
What's inside
Six modules. 2 hours 28 minutes of video. A worked example you can actually use.
Each module has four teaching lessons, a UK case study, a real-world activity using Companies House, a downloadable workbook, and an Excel template. Quizzes after every teaching lesson so you actually retain it.
Module 01 — P&L
21:26 total runtime
- Lesson 1.1 — What is a P&L3:53
- Lesson 1.2 — Why profit isn't the same as cash3:40
- Lesson 1.3 — How your P&L connects to Companies House4:00
- Lesson 1.4 — Reading Big Companies4:14
- Lesson 1.5 — Case Study: Carillion5:39
Includes: Workbook · Excel template · Companies House activity
Module 02 — Revenue
23:46 total runtime
- Lesson 2.1 — What counts as revenue4:33
- Lesson 2.2 — When you're allowed to recognise it4:54
- Lesson 2.3 — Why growing revenue can hide a shrinking business2:37
- Lesson 2.4 — Reading the Revenue note5:59
- Lesson 2.5 — Case Study: Patisserie Valerie5:43
Includes: Workbook · Excel template · Companies House activity
Module 03 — Costs
26:05 total runtime
- Lesson 3.1 — Cost of sales vs Overheads5:15
- Lesson 3.2 — The three margins that matter4:31
- Lesson 3.3 — Spotting hidden costs in the notes5:02
- Lesson 3.4 — Exceptional Items and when to be suspicious5:50
- Lesson 3.5 — Case Study: Marks & Spencer5:27
Includes: Workbook · Excel template · Companies House activity
Module 04 — Balance Sheet and Cash Flow
27:34 total runtime
- Lesson 4.1 — What the balance sheet always shows5:50
- Lesson 4.2 — Assets, Liabilities and what counts as equity5:50
- Lesson 4.3 — Working Capital4:30
- Lesson 4.4 — The cash flow5:15
- Lesson 4.5 — Case Study: Thomas Cook6:09
Includes: Workbook · Excel template · Companies House activity
Module 05 — How Tricks and Traps Hide in Accounts
28:20 total runtime
- Lesson 5.1 — Why accounts can lie4:53
- Lesson 5.2 — Revenue Tricks5:45
- Lesson 5.3 — Cost and Profit tricks5:55
- Lesson 5.4 — Balance sheet tricks5:41
- Lesson 5.5 — Case Study: Quindell6:06
Includes: Workbook · Excel template · Companies House activity
Module 06 — Reading a Real Company: Greggs
14:17 total runtime
- Lesson 6.1 — Reading a real P&L4:02
- Lesson 6.2 — Reading the balance sheet3:32
- Lesson 6.3 — Reading the cash flow3:53
- Lesson 6.4 — What you do with this2:50
Includes: Entire course workbook · Entire course template
One-time payment · £99 · Lifetime access
Who this is for
And a few people it isn't for.
Who this is for
Founders who haven't been taught to read their own accounts and are quietly winging it.
Marketers, salespeople, ops people, and anyone in the first few years of a business career who has to sit next to numbers without having been taught what they mean.
Senior people who got promoted before the numbers became their job and are now too senior to ask basic questions out loud.
Investors who'd rather read the actual accounts than the analyst's summary of the actual accounts.
Aspiring board members. Aspiring non-execs. Anyone who'd like to make their first board contribution be something other than nodding.
Anyone who has ever, in a meeting, said 'yep, makes sense' when it absolutely did not make sense.
Who this isn't for
Qualified accountants. You already know. Skip this. Possibly gift it to a client.
People who want to become accountants. AAT or ACCA is your route, not this. This course will not get you a job in finance — that's not what it's for.
People who want a certificate to put on LinkedIn. There isn't one. We considered it. Decided it would attract the wrong buyer.
People who want US GAAP. Wrong country. Wrong course. Sorry.
People who think the answer to every problem is a more complicated spreadsheet. We will not help.