How Business Keeps Score
Demystify financial records and see where money really goes. Learn the fundamental balance equation, how to make sense of debits and credits, and how to read the three core financial statements with ease.
Like Duolingo, but for How Business Keeps Score. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
24 levels across 3 sections, about 48 minutes end to end, roughly 10 days at five minutes a day. It moves through The Core Engine; The Big Three Financial Statements; and Timing, Valuation, and the Full Cycle. It starts from scratch.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in How Business Keeps Score
- A business's total belongings are divided entirely between outside lenders and inside owners
- There is no third group claiming company assets; every asset is financed by either debt or equity
- Creditors get paid first, and owners claim whatever is left
- Assets must be controlled or owned directly by the business, not borrowed from employees
- An asset must provide measurable future economic benefit or cash flow
- Vague hopes or future intentions cannot be recorded as assets until concrete value exists
- Liabilities are not just bank debt; they include any future obligation owed to an outside party
- Receiving cash in advance creates a liability to deliver future goods or services
- Getting supplies on credit creates an obligation to pay later
- Owner's equity is whatever is left over after settling all obligations to outsiders
- The accounting formula can be rewritten as Assets minus Liabilities equals Equity
- Equity shrinks whenever debts grow without an equal increase in assets
- Every incoming asset must come from somewhere: paid with another asset, borrowed, or funded by the owner
- The equation must balance after every single transaction because resources cannot appear out of nowhere
- Gaining an asset always causes an equal decrease in another asset, an increase in liabilities, or an increase in equity
- Every single transaction must touch at least two accounts
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives How Business Keeps Score the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
Where does the money come from to pay for all of a company's assets?
Get it right to open this lesson and 23 more in the app.
Where How Business Keeps Score takes you
- 1
The Core Engine
- The Accounting Equation in Plain English
- Double-Entry Bookkeeping and Journal Entries
- 2
The Big Three Financial Statements
- Reading the Balance Sheet
- Decoding the Income Statement
- Tracking Reality with the Cash Flow Statement
- 3
Timing, Valuation, and the Full Cycle
- Cash Versus Accrual Accounting
- Depreciation and Long-Term Assets
- Closing the Books and Avoiding Traps
3 sections · 8 units · 24 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
You pick the voice
How Business Keeps Score is taught in the The Bestie style: your friend who just gets it. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start How Business Keeps Score today.
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