THE SCHOOL · Funance
Applied finance and accounting, for a life with AI.
Six months. Twenty-six weeks in six terms. The theory from an open, peer-reviewed textbook; the practice in Funance on your own books; the teaching by Claude or Lundr through a card; every quiz, homework, test and check graded online; the term checks and the capstone read by a person. Harvard teaches you to read Coca-Cola's balance sheet in eight weeks for $1,850. This teaches you to read yours, every month, for the rest of your life — with an AI at the table that knows what it must never do.
Six months · 26 weeks · 6 to 9 hours a week · online, with the tutor, the quiz, the homework, the test and the check in one student app
$333, once — or $89 a term · Weeks 1 and 2 are free, the way the five minutes are
OpenStax Principles of Accounting, Volume 1 (Financial) and Volume 2 (Managerial) — open, peer-reviewed, free (CC BY); plus the IRS publications and FASB concepts named in each week
Funance — the student keeps a real or a sandbox set of books for the whole six months; every exercise is a real entry
THE TEACHER CARD — a skill card the student saves into Claude or Lundr; Socratic, on the student's own numbers; grades reasoning, never invents figures, never gives tax advice
THE SEAT — an LCC-1 card, punched to the student's capstone; a record of work done, not a licence, not a credential, and it says so on its face
The week
Seven parts, six to nine hours.
Two letters from the desk (the applied half) and the assigned OpenStax chapter (the theory half). The letters say what the chapter means on a Tuesday.
The lab, in Funance, on your own books or the sandbox. Every exercise is a real entry; nothing is hypothetical for long.
The tutor session. Save the Teacher Card into Claude or Lundr; it runs the session — Socratic, on your numbers. It asks; you answer; it probes what you got wrong.
Five questions, graded on the spot in the student app. Under four right, read the letters again before the homework.
The problem set — ten problems from the week, answered with the working. The AI grades reasoning before arithmetic and shows the working it expected.
Three open questions, written. Graded by the AI on the student's own key against what a strong answer contains, with the score said aloud.
The artefact — one document a week, from your own books, graded on the rubric. Six term checks and the capstone are also read by a person at the studio.
The six terms
Twenty-six weeks, every one written.
Every week has two letters, a lab in Funance, a sitting with the tutor, a five-question quiz, ten homework problems with the working, a three-question test and a check from your own books. The rows below are the map; Week 1 is printed in full beneath them so you can judge the level before you start.
TERM I · Weeks 1–4
The Language of Money
Every number on a screen is a sentence in a language. Learn to read it, then to write it.
| Week | Teaches | Read | Do (the lab) | Check |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| W01 | What a set of books isAssets, liabilities, equity; the accounting equation; why a ledger is a story and not a pile | OpenStax V1 ch. 1–2 | Open Funance. Create one entity. Enter ten real lines by hand from a bank statement. | Explain the accounting equation using your own ten lines, in writing, to the tutor. |
| W02 | Debits, credits, and the double entryWhy every entry has two sides; T-accounts; the trial balance; what Funance is doing when it "routes a line" | OpenStax V1 ch. 3 | Export your ledger to CSV. Rebuild eight of the lines as journal entries by hand. Check the trial balance. | A trial balance that balances, with a note on the entry you found hardest. |
| W03 | Cash and accrualRevenue when earned, expense when incurred; receivables, payables, accruals, deferrals; why the bank balance lies | OpenStax V1 ch. 4 (adjusting entries) | Create two invoices in Funance; mark one paid. Read the ledger under both views: what changed and why. | Reconcile a month's cash to accrual income and explain every line of the bridge. |
| W04 | Closing the booksThe closing process; temporary and permanent accounts; the first look at a P&L and a balance sheet built from your own ledger | OpenStax V1 ch. 5 | Run Reports in Funance for the month: P&L, Balances, General Ledger detail. Trace three numbers back to the lines that made them; build the balance sheet by hand from them. | TERM I CHECK — a month closed from raw lines to two statements, every figure traceable. |
TERM II · Weeks 5–9
Financial Accounting
The statements the world runs on — and how to build and read yours to the same standard.
| Week | Teaches | Read | Do (the lab) | Check |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| W05 | RevenueThe five-step model in plain words; timing; refunds and discounts; Shopify payouts split into sale and fee; what "revenue" is not | OpenStax V1 ch. 9 (receivables) + ASC 606 concepts | Drop a payout export; watch the sale/fee split; correct one line by hand. | A one-page revenue policy for your own business. |
| W06 | Expenses, matching, and the things you ownMatching; capitalise vs expense; depreciation in plain words; inventory only as far as a solo operator needs it | OpenStax V1 ch. 6, 10–11 | Find one purchase that is an asset, not an expense. Record it; compute one year of straight-line depreciation by hand. | Your own fixed-asset list with a depreciation schedule. |
| W07 | The balance sheetWhat you have and what you owe on one day; liabilities and equity in detail; working capital; the owner's account | OpenStax V1 ch. 12–13 | Build your balance sheet by hand from Funance's Balances report, open invoices and your asset list. Explain the owner's equity movement for the year. | Your balance sheet, with every line explained in one sentence. |
| W08 | Cash flowThe statement of cash flows; operating, investing, financing; the indirect method; why profit and cash disagree | OpenStax V1 ch. 16 | Build a cash-flow statement for a quarter from your ledger and reports, by hand. | Your quarter's cash-flow statement, reconciled to the bank. |
| W09 | Reading statementsRatios that matter to an operator (margin, current ratio, burn, days sales outstanding); reading a public 10-K in an hour; what auditors do | OpenStax V1 Appendix A (financial statement analysis) | Compute six ratios on your books; compute the same six on a public company; write what each tells you. | TERM II CHECK — a written analysis of your three statements plus one public company's, with ratios. |
TERM III · Weeks 10–13
The Operator's Finance
Managerial accounting for one person who has to decide things: cost, price, burn, runway, and the scenario.
| Week | Teaches | Read | Do (the lab) | Check |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| W10 | Cost, price, contributionFixed and variable cost; contribution margin; break-even; why the price you charge is a math problem before it is a feeling | OpenStax V2 ch. 2–3 | Take one product or service you sell; compute its contribution margin and break-even volume from your ledger. | A break-even analysis for your real offering. |
| W11 | Budgets and forecastsThe operating budget; the cash budget; rolling forecasts; the difference between a plan and a wish | OpenStax V2 ch. 7 | Build a 12-month operating and cash budget from the P&L monthly spread; stress it in Scenarios (revenue ×, expenses ×, a hire); compare month 1 to actual. | Your own 12-month budget with the assumptions written out. |
| W12 | Burn, runway, the decisionBurn rate as a trailing number; runway on operating cash only; the hire, the lease, the pivot as cash decisions | Letters from the Funance desk; OpenStax V2 ch. 10 (short-term decisions) | Use Scenarios to model a hire at three monthly costs; read runway on each. | A written decision memo on one real choice, with the numbers. |
| W13 | Variance and controlActual against plan; what a variance means and what it does not; the monthly close as a control; fraud and error in small books | OpenStax V2 ch. 8; V1 ch. 8 (fraud, internal controls) | Close a month in Funance against your budget; explain every variance over 10%. | TERM III CHECK — a month closed against budget with a variance report and one control you added. |
TERM IV · Weeks 14–17
Entities, Tax, and the Law of the Books
How the state sees your books. Taught as knowledge, ended with the sentence "and here is when you call a professional."
| Week | Teaches | Read | Do (the lab) | Check |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| W14 | The forms a business takesSole proprietor, LLC, S corporation, C corporation, partnership, nonprofit — as bookkeeping realities, not advice; owner's draw vs salary vs distribution | IRS Pub. 334, 541, 542, 557 (read the summaries); Funance manual § Entities | Set up two entities in Funance of different types; record a draw in one and a payroll run in the other. | A map of your own entities with the money flows between them. |
| W15 | Transfers, loans, and the line between you and the businessInter-entity transfers; loans to and from owners; commingling and why it is dangerous; the transfer schedule as evidence | IRS Pub. 583 (records), 334; Funance manual § Entities | Record a loan between two of your entities; produce the transfers-and-loans schedule. | A clean transfer schedule for a quarter, with a paragraph on why each line is not income. |
| W16 | Taxes an operator actually meetsIncome tax as a concept; self-employment tax; quarterly estimates; sales tax basics; payroll taxes; the deductions people misunderstand — taught as vocabulary, never as advice | IRS Pub. 505, 583; the Funance Tax room | Set a blended rate; compute the quarterly set-aside; log a quarter of mileage. | A quarter's CPA packet: the set-aside, the logs, three questions written for the professional. |
| W17 | Nonprofits, grants, fundsFund accounting in plain words; restricted and unrestricted money; grant reporting; the program budget; why a nonprofit's books look different | FASB ASC 958 concepts (net assets, functional expenses); IRS Pub. 557 | Set up a nonprofit entity with a grant and a program in Funance; report on the grant. | TERM IV CHECK — a grant report a funder would accept, plus the three questions you would ask a CPA about your own entities. |
TERM V · Weeks 18–22
Capital and the Long Game
Corporate finance for a person: money over time, debt and equity, valuation, the owner's own future.
| Week | Teaches | Read | Do (the lab) | Check |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| W18 | Money over timeTime value of money; present and future value; discount rates; what interest actually costs | OpenStax V2 ch. 11 (time value) | Price a piece of equipment two ways: buy now vs. pay over three years; compute the true cost. | A present-value comparison of two real choices you face. |
| W19 | Investing decisionsNPV, IRR, payback; capital budgeting for one person; the hurdle rate as a personal decision | OpenStax V2 ch. 11 | Evaluate one real investment (a course, a machine, a hire) with NPV at two rates. | A capital-budgeting memo on one real decision. |
| W20 | Debt and equityLoans, lines, credit cards as debt; equity and dilution; the cost of each; reading a term sheet; when not to raise | OpenStax V1 ch. 13–14; a public term sheet (Y Combinator SAFE) | Model a $50k loan and a $50k equity raise in Scenarios; compare cash and ownership at year three. | A financing memo: what you would raise, how, and why — or why not. |
| W21 | Valuation, plainlyMultiples, discounted cash flow in outline, what a small business is actually worth and to whom; the accountant's value vs the market's | Letters; public comparables | Value your own business two ways; explain the gap. | A one-page valuation of your business, with the honest range. |
| W22 | The owner's own moneyPaying yourself; retirement accounts as vocabulary; insurance and risk; the personal balance sheet; keeping the business from eating the person | IRS Pub. 560 (summary); the personal entity in Funance | Add a personal entity; produce a household balance sheet beside the business one. | TERM V CHECK — a financing decision, a valuation, and a personal balance sheet, in one memo. |
TERM VI · Weeks 23–26
Money and the Machine
Finance with an AI at the table: what to hand it, what never to, how to check it, and the capstone — a year of books, defended.
| Week | Teaches | Read | Do (the lab) | Check |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| W23 | What an AI can and cannot do with moneyReading vs deciding; hallucinated numbers; the review bin as a principle; audit trails; the skill card anatomy | The Funance Skill Card; the manual § Your Claude | Run a batch of receipts through Route with Claude; find the line it got wrong; fix the card's instruction that would have prevented it. | Your own skill card, drafted, with a NEVER section you can defend. |
| W24 | Prompts that hold upAsking an AI for a number vs. asking for the lines behind it; verification; the difference between an answer and evidence | Letters; the machine face of the manual | Ask your AI three finance questions on your exported ledger; verify each answer against the lines; document the misses. | A prompt book for your monthly close, with the check for each. |
| W25 | The close, with the machineBuilding your own monthly close as a procedure: drop, route, review, reconcile, report, pack, hand off — with the AI doing what it should and you doing what it must not | The manual § Month end; the Monthly Pack | Run one full close on your books with the AI as clerk; time it; note every place you overrode it. | Your close procedure, run once, with the pack produced. |
| W26 | The capstoneA year of books for a two-entity business — real or the school's sandbox — with statements, a budget, a variance report, a CPA packet, a financing memo, and the AI policy; defended to the tutor, reviewed by a person | Everything | Build it. Twelve months, two entities, every artefact of the six months. | THE SEAT — punched to the SHA-256 of your capstone packet. Issued, never sold, not a licence. |
Week 1, in full
What a set of books is
By Friday you can look at any line in a ledger and say what it changed — what you have, what you owe, or what is yours — and why the equation always balances.
Read
Letter 1 · A ledger is a story, not a pile
Open a bank statement and it is a pile: dates, names, amounts, in the order the bank noticed them. Open a ledger and the same lines are a story, because every one has been told where it belongs. That telling is the whole of bookkeeping, and the rest of accounting is what you can say once it is done.
Here is the entire vocabulary you need this week. An asset is something you have that is worth money — cash in the account, a laptop, an invoice a client owes you. A liability is something you owe — the credit card balance, the loan, the sales tax you collected and have not sent. Equity is what is left when you subtract what you owe from what you have; if the business closed today and paid everyone, equity is what walks out the door with you. That is it. Three words.
The one law: Assets = Liabilities + Equity. Not a rule you follow; a fact you cannot break, because equity is defined as the difference. Every line in a ledger changes two of these — or two things inside one of them — and the equation is still true afterward. When you buy a laptop with cash, one asset goes up and another goes down; the equation never noticed. When a client pays an invoice, cash goes up and the receivable goes down. When you charge software to the card, an expense goes up (which lowers equity) and a liability goes up. Two sides, every time.
Funance does this telling for you when it routes a line: it names the entity, the category and the treatment. This week you do it by hand, so that when the app does it for you, you can see whether it was right. That is the point of the school: not to replace the app, and not to replace the professional, but to make you the person in the room who knows what the numbers mean.
Letter 2 · Ten lines, by hand
This week's lab is ten lines. Pick a real bank statement — yours, your business's, or the school's sandbox statement — and enter ten transactions into Funance by hand, on the Drop tab, one at a time. Do not drop the file. Type them.
For each line, before you type it, answer three questions out loud: What did I have more of afterward? What did I have less of? Did I owe anyone anything new? A coffee on the business card: more expense (equity down), more owed (liability up). A client payment: more cash, less owed to me. A transfer from your personal account to cover a slow month: more cash in the business, and — this is the one people get wrong — not revenue. It is a contribution: equity up, because you put more of your own money in. Funance calls it Transfer · Contribution and keeps it out of profit and loss. Now you know why.
When your ten lines are in, open the Ledger and read them back as a story: "On the 3rd the business bought supplies; on the 5th a client paid; on the 9th I lent it money." If a line does not read as a sentence, it is not routed yet.
Then sit with the tutor. Save the Teacher Card into Claude, tell it "Week 1, Sit", and let it ask. It will pick three of your ten lines and make you defend them. Defend them. The arithmetic was never the hard part; the sentence is.
Do — the lab
- Create one entity in Funance (Settings): a name, a type, a state, a blended rate — 0 is fine this week.
- Enter ten real transactions by hand on the Drop tab. For each, write in the memo what changed: e.g. "cash down, supplies expense up".
- Open the Ledger; read your ten lines as sentences. Fix any that do not read.
- Export the Ledger to CSV. Keep it; it is Week 2's raw material.
Sit — the tutor session
- Tell the tutor: "Week 1, Sit. Here are my ten lines." Paste the CSV.
- The tutor will choose three lines and ask, for each: what went up, what went down, what is owed. Answer before it explains.
- Ask it one question you could not answer from the letters. Write its answer in your own words.
Homework — the problem set, with the working the tutor expects
Check — the artefact
Write one page: the accounting equation, explained using five of your own ten lines, with what each line did to each side. The tutor scores it on the rubric; 8 or more and Week 2 opens.
How the school is built
THE RECORD — seven marks, a seal, a seat.
Most certificate programmes open a module on the calendar, ask for a quiz to unlock the next, set a due date a week out, grade participation, and end in a PDF on the school's server that says you finished. THE SCHOOL is built the other way round.
A week opens when the one before it scores eight on its check. No due dates, no cohort to fall behind, no module that closes on a Sunday. A pace clock reads the calendar against your work and never penalises it.
Read · Do · Sit · Quiz · Homework · Test · Check — each one a mark in the record, each one earned by evidence: a lab done in Funance, a sitting held, a quiz passed on the spot, homework and a test graded with the working shown, a check scored on a rubric of traceability.
Every lab, every problem and every check is on the student's own ledger. The case study is the student's business.
The tutor grades the twenty-six weeks. A named person — Carter Luense — reads the six term checks and the capstone, and writes one paragraph back. Everything human is spent on the work, not on the attendance.
When a term's weeks all pass, the app makes the term record — the scores and the fingerprint of the check texts, one file. The reader returns a seal signed by the studio. Six seals and the seat are the credential.
A seal is a signed object. Anyone can paste it at funance.tech/?view=seat and see what it says and that it is real — no account, no server, no window that expires. The seat is punched to the SHA-256 of the capstone packet, so the card and the work are provably the same.
No Pass, Honors or High Honors. The record prints the actual scores, and a reader who wants more can ask for the packet. A tier is a summary that hides the work; the record shows it.
FOR YOUR AI · the same syllabus as a file — hand it to Claude, ChatGPT or Lundr: the-school.md · the Teacher Card: SKILL.md
Not a CPA programme · not accredited · not tax, legal or financial advice · the seat is a record of work, not a licence · OpenStax is CC BY, openstax.org · Claude is a trademark of Anthropic; no affiliation · © 2026 Lund Studio LLC, Westminster, Colorado