Learn and Practice
You have met the company and followed its processes. Now open its records and learn to support an explanation with evidence.
Begin with one customer and one order. Follow the order through shipment, billing, settlement, and accounting. Then reuse that method for services, purchasing, manufacturing, payroll, and close. Finish by turning a monthly summary into a conclusion you can defend.
The course assumes basic financial accounting, including debits and credits. It introduces the database and tool steps as you need them. Each lesson has a worked example, a result check, and one small variation.
Choose Your Tool
The business question and expected result are shared. Select Excel or SQL and follow that route throughout the course. The site remembers your selection. You can switch tools or compare results later.
- Excel
- SQL
Use Microsoft 365 desktop Excel. You will import selected tables into a separate analysis workbook, then learn filters, lookups, merges, and PivotTables.
Set up Excel to import your first customer table. Allow time for the published workbook to download before opening the import window.
Use the SQLite database with DB Browser for SQLite. You will begin with complete queries to copy and run, then learn to change a filter, follow a key, and summarize records.
Set up SQL to open the database and run your first query.
Already set up? Begin Lesson 1: Meet the Records.
Foundations: Recognize and Connect Records
| Lesson | What you will learn |
|---|---|
| 1. Meet the Records | Find one customer and explain its identifier and descriptive fields. |
| 2. Read an Order | Distinguish an order header from its lines and check their total. |
| 3. Connect the Records | Add customer and item descriptions using matching keys. |
These lessons establish a habit: say what one row represents before you calculate a total.
Processes: Follow Events and Accounting
| Lesson | Question to answer |
|---|---|
| 4. Follow a Goods Sale | What was ordered, shipped, and invoiced? |
| 5. Follow Customer Settlement | When was cash received, and when did it settle this invoice? |
| 6. Find the Accounting Entries | Which events changed which accounts? |
| 7. Follow Design Time into Billing | How does approved time become a customer invoice? |
| 8. Follow a Purchase | What is owed before and after the supplier bill arrives? |
| 9. Follow Manufacturing Costs | When are goods complete, and when are their costs closed? |
| 10. Follow Hours into Payroll | Which obligations remain after an employee is paid? |
| 11. Follow an Estimate into Settlement | How does later evidence replace an expense estimate? |
The first sales lessons continue the same selected order. Later processes introduce separate records, each with its own scope and identifiers. Follow the document links within each lesson and keep its selected population clear when moving to a new process.
Interpretation: Explain a Result
12. Turn Records into a Conclusion moves from individual records to a monthly invoice population. Build a checked summary, investigate a source sample, and write a short evidence memo.
After Lesson 12, continue to the Case Library. The optional BPMN and Controls Workshop builds on a trace you have already completed.
Choose a Focused Module
The twelve lessons above remain the full route in their existing order. A module selects the relevant work after those foundations without requiring every case or catalog query.
All modules begin with Lesson 1, Lesson 2, and Lesson 3, plus Excel setup or SQL setup. Pass the Lesson 3 readiness check before adding event relationships.
| Module | Lessons after foundations | Continuation and readiness |
|---|---|---|
| First O2C module | 4. Goods sale, 5. Customer settlement, 6. Accounting entries | Pass the Lesson 6 check, then Case 1: customer account review. |
| Focused P2P module | 8. Purchase, 11. Estimate and settlement | Explain receipt-matched and accrued-service links separately; pass summary readiness, then Case 3: supplier obligations. |
| Focused manufacturing module | 9. Manufacturing costs | Separate completion from close, reconcile without multiplying work-order totals, then pass summary readiness before the manufacturing case. |
| Focused payroll module | 10. Hours and payroll | Separate employee/period facts from period-wide remittances, then pass summary readiness before the workforce case. |
| Financial emphasis | 4. Goods sale, 5. Settlement, 6. Entries, 8. Purchase, 11. Estimates, 12. Conclusions | Check the statement case prerequisites and the advanced-case gate. |
| Managerial emphasis | 7. Design time, 8. Inputs, 9. Manufacturing, 10. Payroll, 12. Conclusions | Complete each lesson’s linked preparation; choose the design-services, manufacturing, or portfolio case after its prerequisites. |
Take Lesson 12 when you meet its explicit minimum skills. The recommended full route completes all earlier lessons. The BPMN and Controls Workshop follows at least one verified event trace. Model viewing itself needs no file download.
Complete a Shared Trace Before Continuing
Each focused module uses the same evidence template. Begin with Excel setup or SQL setup and result export. Predict the event's account effects, trace stored keys, reconcile one complete voucher, interpret the cutoff, and then attempt the lesson's practice variation. Retain one explanation of an event that creates no additional posting or supports a posting through another source. Explain why recognition occurs now and what the evidence does not establish before proceeding to the case.
For an AIS submission, extend that verified trace through responsibilities, the recorded authorization basis, and a proposed control with evidence limits. For an analytics submission, extend the same trace through population, grain, independent aggregation, reconciliation, and a supported recommendation. Both routes require the same checked accounting evidence.
Separate Accounting Preparation from Tool Skills
Review the relevant process chapter if the account relationship is unfamiliar. Complete the data preparation even when the bookkeeping is familiar, because correct account knowledge does not prevent a duplicated join or an incorrect cutoff.
| Module | Accounting refresher | Data and tool preparation |
|---|---|---|
| O2C | Shipment cost, invoice revenue, cash receipt, and application | Distinguish headers and lines, retain paired source filters, and sum applications independently. |
| Services | Time approval supports billing, while the invoice recognizes revenue | Align engagement and billing dates, retain approval cutoffs, and separate time-entry grain from invoice-line grain. |
| P2P | Receipt creates GRNI, invoice recognition establishes AP, and payment settles AP | Trace stored receipt or accrual keys and distinguish document, approval, posting, due, and payment dates. |
| Manufacturing | Issue debits WIP, completion transfers standard cost, and close resolves residuals | Aggregate issue, labor, completion, and close branches separately before comparing work orders. |
| Payroll | Gross pay, deductions, net pay, and employer costs create distinct obligations | Retain null categories and distinguish employee registers from period/cost-center summaries and period-wide remittances. |
| Estimates | Accrual, invoice, residual adjustment, and payment have separate effects | Follow AccrualJournalEntryID and ReversesJournalEntryID, preserving each event's date and full voucher. |
Repair the Method Before a Challenge
This public practice exercise is separate from every case’s independent challenge. A classmate joins an invoice header to its two invoice lines, then sums the repeated header total and calls the result cash collected. Diagnose the grain and measure errors before writing any calculation. Propose a repair and a before/after check for this relationship pattern without assuming an additional dataset record.
Compare the method repair
Keep the header total once per invoice, or independently summarize lines at invoice grain before comparing them with the header. Check row counts, unique invoice IDs, and amounts before and after the join. Invoice totals measure billed amounts, while cash collection requires dated receipt/application evidence and a defined cutoff. A plausible number from repeated headers does not support the conclusion.
Apply the method to two further public practice statements. A classmate calls receipt 173 new revenue because it increases cash. Another finds no FixedAssetEvent source rows and concludes that event 14 has no accounting effect. Identify the missing evidence before opening the feedback.
Diagnose the recognition and posting-route errors
Receipt 173 debits cash and credits customer deposits and unapplied cash. Revenue requires the invoice evidence, while application 225 separately reduces the receivable. Cash arrival and revenue recognition answer different questions.
FixedAssetEvent 14 carries JournalEntryID = 103. Its Debt Reclass voucher transfers 360,000.00 from AP to notes payable. Searching only for the table-name source misses the actual journal route. Follow the stored link and retrieve the complete voucher as shown in the Posting Reference. Neither a matching amount nor a zero-row source-name search justifies skipping that relationship check.
Keep a Small Evidence Portfolio
For each lesson, retain your workbook or SQL, source file, selected identifiers, filters, result check, and short interpretation. Use the blank evidence template and public method rubric to document your reasoning while keeping independent challenge solutions private. A useful submission explains both what the evidence supports and what it leaves unresolved.
The records include intentional exceptions. When a result differs from your expectation, check the selected records, dates, and relationships before drawing a conclusion. A matched example supports the selected comparison without establishing that the whole population is correct.
Explain differences from a checkpoint rather than altering source records to reproduce a displayed number.
Plan the Workload
The eight cases contain 23 sessions. At the published estimate of 60–90 minutes per session, all cases imply 23–34.5 hours, excluding setup, tutorials, and reading. This is a planning estimate, not measured learner completion time. Choose one module and its case first. Tutorial time estimates await a learner pilot.
Next Steps
Begin with Meet the Records, or finish the setup for your chosen tool first.
Instructors can use the Adoption Guide to select a shorter pathway. Accounting Analytics Hub and the Accounting Analytics textbook provide the wider learning context.