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Compound School is one path through accounting and finance, from how a business works to the decisions its numbers support. You can follow it in order, or come in through a single question.

If you are new: learn in order

Begin with Part 1, how businesses work. Accounting is a description of a business, so it is easier to learn once you can picture what is being described. Each later topic assumes the ones before it.

01 What a business does · video, 8 min
What is a business actually doing, before any accounting is involved?
02 How a business makes money · video, 6 min
Where does profit come from, and what determines how much a business makes?
03 Core business processes · video, 6 min
Which recurring processes, such as order-to-cash and procure-to-pay, produce a business's transactions?

Then continue through the course outline, one part at a time.

What exists today

The path has 28 topics. 12 have a written lesson on this site. 12 are taught in one of Grant’s YouTube videos until a written lesson is published. 4 are planned and not yet taught anywhere here: assets, liabilities, working capital, financial ratios.

So the beginner path is not yet complete in writing. Where a written lesson does not exist, the outline links to the video, and where neither exists it says so.

If you already know the basics

If debits and credits and the three statements are familiar, go to Part 5, accruals, cash, depreciation, and working capital. That is where accounting most often stops matching intuition: profit that is not cash, and expenses that are not payments.

If you have a specific question

Search the written lessons, or scan the outline for your question. Every written lesson answers one question on its own and lists what to read first if an idea it uses is new to you.

How each lesson teaches

A lesson starts with the underlying principle, makes it concrete with figures you can recompute, and then says what it connects to and where it stops applying. More about the method and editorial standards.