A free school from Cat3 Books
Nobody starts a business because they love debits and credits. But the owners who understand their own books make better decisions, faster — and get taken advantage of far less often. This is where you learn how, in plain English, one lesson at a time.
Free, no signup, no course platform. Every lesson is a page on this site — searchable, linkable, and written to be read in ten minutes or less.
Eight departments, each answering one question an owner actually asks. Start wherever your problem is — nothing here assumes you read the rest.
The vocabulary and the mental model — accounts, debits and credits, cash vs. accrual — explained without accounting-school jargon.
Enter subject →Setting up and running QuickBooks Online the way a bookkeeper would — click by click, with the settings that matter called out.
Enter subject →The repeatable weekly and monthly rhythm: categorizing, reconciling, invoicing, paying bills, closing the month.
Enter subject →How to read a P&L, a balance sheet and a cash flow statement — and what each one is actually telling you to do.
Enter subject →Why a profitable business runs out of money — and the receivables, payables and forecasting habits that fix it.
Enter subject →Payroll, contractors and 1099s, sales tax, and how to hand your accountant a clean year instead of a shoebox.
Enter subject →The specific messes every set of books develops — negative balances, stale AR, undeposited funds — and the fix for each.
Enter subject →Using your books to price work, decide on a hire, choose an entity, or make the case to a lender.
Enter subject →If you would rather be walked through it in order, take a course. Each one is a sequence of lessons that builds, with a clear finish line.
The complete beginner's path: what bookkeeping is, how the accounts fit together, and how to get your first month closed.
The setup decisions that are painful to undo, made correctly the first time — then the daily workflow that keeps it clean.
Line by line through the P&L, balance sheet and cash flow statement — and the decisions each one is asking you to make.
The lessons most owners need first — whether you have never opened an accounting app or you have a file full of transactions you do not trust.
Bookkeeping is not data entry — it is a working model of your business. Once you see what the model is for, the rules stop being arbitrary and start being obvious.
Debit does not mean money out and credit does not mean money in. Here is what the two words actually mean, and the one sentence that lets you work out any entry without memorizing a table.
Revenue at the top, net income at the bottom, and six lines in between that decide whether you had a good month. Here is what each section is telling you to do about it.
Reconciliation is the monthly proof that your books match reality. Seven steps, about twenty minutes an account — and the one habit that keeps errors from compounding for a year.
The same month can show a $30,000 profit or a $4,000 loss depending on which basis you use. Here is what each one measures, and how to pick the one that matches how your business actually works.
Your chart of accounts is the outline of every report you will ever read. Most are either three lines long or three hundred — here is how to build one sized to the decisions you actually make.
Companion publication
We teach you to keep clean books and read your own numbers. Where those numbers meet the specialty tax code, The Carryforward picks up. The Carryforward is a separate, independent reference for the specialty corners of the tax code — specialty tax & incentives, explained plainly.
Read The Carryforward ↗thecarryforward.com · Free · Educational only
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