Purchase to pay, order to cash, the ledger, reconciliation, master data and the close. Not theory — recall practice, because an interview asks you to produce the detail on demand.
Twenty terms. Read them once, then let the Drill tab ask you with the card shut.
Left and right, not good and bad
Every entry has two sides that must equal each other. Debit is simply the left column, credit the right. A debit increases an asset or an expense; a credit increases a liability, equity or income. Nothing about credit means 'money in' — a supplier invoice credits the payable and debits the cost.
One named bucket in the books
A single line you post to: bank, trade payables, office supplies, sales. Every account has a number and a type, and the type decides which side increases it.
The list of every bucket you may post to
The company's full account list, numbered. Two companies doing identical work will have different charts. When people say a posting was 'coded wrong', they mean it went to the wrong account in this list.
The complete record, all accounts together
The GL is where every transaction ends up. Subledgers — payables, receivables, fixed assets — hold the detail per supplier, customer or asset, and roll up into a single GL control account.
One posting, both sides, with a reason
The unit of bookkeeping: date, accounts, debit, credit, description and support. Manual journals are the ones a human writes rather than a system generating them, and they are what auditors look at first.
The detail behind one GL line
Trade payables might be one line in the GL and four hundred open invoices in the AP subledger. They must agree. When they do not, that is a GL-to-subledger reconciliation break.
Record it when it happens, not when it is paid
Cost belongs to the period the goods or service were received, whatever the invoice or payment date. This one idea is why accruals, prepayments and cut-off exist at all.
What the company owes its suppliers
Your home ground. Invoices in, matched, coded, approved, posted, paid. A liability account, so it increases on the credit side.
What customers owe the company
The mirror of AP. An asset, increasing on the debit side. Invoiced, chased, collected, applied against the right invoice.
The promise to buy, before anything arrives
A numbered commitment stating what, how many, at what price. It is the control: it fixes the price before the supplier can invoice something else.
Proof it actually arrived
Recorded when the goods or service are received, which is what makes accrual timing possible and what stops you paying for something nobody got.
PO, receipt and invoice must agree
Ordered what was received, received what was invoiced, at the agreed price. The single most important control in the purchase-to-pay cycle, and the thing most AP work is actually about.
An invoice in reverse
Issued when something was overcharged, returned or wrong. It reduces what is owed. In AP you receive them; in AR you issue them.
Two records of the same thing, made to agree
Compare, explain every difference, fix what is wrong, document what is timing. If you cannot explain a difference, you have not finished.
Every account's balance, in one list
Total debits equal total credits. It balancing proves the arithmetic, not the accuracy — a payment coded to the wrong supplier still balances.
Shutting the period so the numbers can be reported
A dated sequence: cut-off, accruals, reconciliations, review, lock. Run to a calendar, because everything depends on something else finishing first.
Something bought to use, not to consume
A machine, a vehicle, a fit-out. Capitalised on the balance sheet rather than expensed, then written down over its useful life.
Spreading an asset's cost over the years it is used
A van bought for 300,000 over five years is 5,000 a month of cost, not 300,000 in one month. The posting is a debit to depreciation expense and a credit to accumulated depreciation.
Trade between two companies in the same group
One entity's payable is another's receivable. They must match, and on consolidation they cancel out. Same discipline as any reconciliation, different counterparty.
The stored facts about a supplier
Name, address, payment terms, tax registration, bank details. Boring until it is wrong, at which point it is either a late payment or a fraud.
Six questions. Answer all six to unlock Level 0 in the Drill and Practice tabs.
A supplier invoice for office chairs arrives and is posted. What happens to accounts payable?
Goods arrive on 29 March. The invoice arrives on 5 April. Which period carries the cost?
The three-way match compares which three things?
The trial balance balances. What does that prove?
A company buys a delivery van it will use for five years. How is it treated?
The AP subledger shows 412,000 owed to suppliers. The GL trade payables account shows 418,000. What is this?
Six steps, and every control sits between two of them.
The reason a no-PO invoice is such a problem is that it skips steps two and three at once: nobody agreed the price and nobody confirmed arrival, so there is nothing to match against.
| Exception | What it means | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| Price variance | Invoice price above the PO price | Within tolerance, it posts. Outside, it goes back to the buyer — not to the supplier. The buyer agreed the price. |
| Quantity variance | Billed more than was received | Check the receipt first. Usually a part delivery invoiced in full. |
| No PO | Invoice with nothing to match | Find the requester, get a retrospective PO or an approval. Track how often it happens and by whom — that number is what fixes it. |
| Duplicate | Same invoice twice | Catch it on supplier plus invoice number plus amount. Once paid, recovery is slow and embarrassing. |
| Blocked for payment | Matched but held | Find out who blocked it and why. Suppliers stop delivering over unexplained blocks. |
Net 30 means thirty days from invoice date. Net 30 EOM means thirty days from the end of the invoice month, which is materially longer. 2/10 net 30 offers a 2% discount for paying within ten days — and that is worth roughly 36% annualised, which is why finance teams chase it.
Paying early costs cash; paying late costs the relationship and sometimes a penalty. The payment run exists to make that a policy rather than a series of individual decisions.
Answer all of them to unlock this module in the Drill and Practice tabs.
An invoice arrives for 10,000 against a PO for 9,400. Goods receipt shows everything arrived. What do you do?
Which pair of documents catches a supplier billing for goods that never arrived?
Your no-PO invoice rate has climbed to 30%. What is the most useful first action?
A supplier offers 2/10 net 30. What is that actually worth?
What makes a duplicate payment hard to recover?
Two steps quietly decide performance. Invoicing late moves every subsequent date. And cash application done badly produces customers being chased for invoices they have already paid, which destroys the credibility of the whole collections process.
The aged debtors report buckets what is owed by how overdue it is: current, 1–30, 31–60, 61–90, 90+. It is not a list, it is a priority order.
Two things matter more than the total. Concentration — one customer being most of the 90+ column is a different problem from fifty small ones. And movement — a 90+ bucket that grew this month is deteriorating even if the total fell.
Dunning is the structured reminder sequence: a polite note before due date, a reminder after, a firmer one, then a final demand. Structured, because ad-hoc chasing is inconsistent and cannot be defended.
The judgement is when to escalate to a stop on further supply. That decision is commercial, not accounting — it belongs to a sales or credit manager, and an AR specialist's job is to make sure it is taken with the facts in front of it rather than taken too late.
Answer all of them to unlock this module in the Drill and Practice tabs.
A customer pays 47,500 against invoices totalling 50,000, with no remittance advice. What do you do first?
Total receivables fell this month, but the 90+ bucket grew. What does that tell you?
At which point in the cycle should a customer's credit limit be checked?
Invoicing regularly happens five days after delivery. What is the real cost?
A customer disputes one line on a large invoice. What is the usual correct handling?
One rule covers it: debits increase what the company has or has spent; credits increase where it came from or what it owes.
| Account type | Increases on | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Asset | Debit | Bank, receivables, equipment |
| Expense | Debit | Rent, salaries, office supplies |
| Liability | Credit | Payables, loans, accruals |
| Income | Credit | Sales |
| Equity | Credit | Share capital, retained earnings |
Both exist to put cost in the right period.
Accrual — you have had it, you have not been invoiced. December's electricity, billed in January. Debit the expense in December, credit accruals. Reverse it when the invoice arrives.
Prepayment — you have paid, you have not had it. Annual insurance paid in January. Debit prepayments, then release one twelfth to expense each month.
They are opposites and they are the two entries every month-end close is mostly made of.
System-generated postings carry their own evidence. A manual journal does not, so it must bring its own: what it is for in plain words, the calculation behind the number, the support attached, who prepared it, who reviewed it, and whether it reverses next month.
Manual journals are where errors and fraud both live, which is why they are the first thing an auditor samples. A journal you cannot explain six months later is a finding.
Answer all of them to unlock this module in the Drill and Practice tabs.
December's electricity will be invoiced in January. What is the December entry?
Annual insurance of 24,000 is paid on 1 January. What happens in March?
Which is the strongest reason manual journals get audited first?
A payment to a supplier is posted as debit bank, credit payables. What is wrong?
Goods received on 30 September were not accrued, and the invoice posts in October. What is the effect?
An aged unexplained difference is the thing that turns into a write-off, so a reconciliation is judged on whether the differences are explained, not on whether the number is small.
| Type | Against what | Typical differences |
|---|---|---|
| Bank | Bank statement vs GL cash | Unpresented payments, deposits in transit, bank fees not yet posted |
| Supplier statement | Supplier's ledger vs your AP | Invoices they sent and you never received, credit notes, disputed items |
| GL to subledger | Control account vs AP/AR detail | Manual journals posted straight to the control account |
| Intercompany | Your payable vs their receivable | Cut-off timing, currency, one side recorded and the other not |
Mechanically it is the same as a supplier statement reconciliation. Three things make it harder in practice.
It must reach zero. With an external supplier a small aged difference can be written off. Intercompany balances are eliminated on consolidation, so a mismatch does not disappear — it lands in the group accounts as an unexplained figure.
Both sides are inside the company. You cannot simply ask the counterparty to send a statement and accept it; someone has to decide which entity is right, and that decision has a profit impact in two places.
It is time-boxed. Group reporting has a deadline, so intercompany differences must be agreed within the close calendar, which is why groups run a hard deadline for intercompany confirmations days before close.
Answer all of them to unlock this module in the Drill and Practice tabs.
A payment issued on 30 September clears the bank on 2 October. On the September bank reconciliation this is:
Your payable to a group company is 84,000. Their receivable from you is 91,000. Why does this matter more than a 7,000 difference with an external supplier?
Which of these is the correct final state for a reconciling item?
Your AP shows 412,000; the GL trade payables control shows 418,000. What is the most likely cause?
The group sets an intercompany confirmation deadline several days before close. Why?
Master data is the stored facts a transaction reuses: who the supplier is, their terms, their tax registration, their bank details. It is created once and relied on thousands of times, which is what makes an error in it so expensive — it is not one wrong invoice, it is every invoice from that supplier until someone notices.
Duplicates. The same supplier created twice, so spend is split across two records, terms differ, and duplicate-invoice detection silently stops working because the two invoices sit under different vendor numbers.
Stale terms. A renegotiated payment term never updated, so every invoice pays on the old one. Nobody sees it because each individual payment looks normal.
Bank detail fraud. The expensive one. An email asking to update a supplier's bank details, and the next payment run goes to a criminal. The control is to verify any bank change by calling a number you already held — never a number in the email requesting the change.
The person who can change a supplier's bank details must not also be able to approve a payment to that supplier. If one person can do both, one person can pay themselves.
This single rule is behind most of what look like pointless approval steps in AP systems, and being able to explain it is a credible answer to "why do you think this control exists".
Answer all of them to unlock this module in the Drill and Practice tabs.
An email from a known supplier's usual contact asks to update their bank details before the next payment. What do you do?
A supplier exists twice in the master. What breaks that is easy to miss?
Why must bank-detail maintenance and payment approval sit with different people?
What makes a master data error more costly than a transaction error?
A close is a dependency chain run to dates, not a list of tasks.
| Day | What happens |
|---|---|
| −2 to 0 | Cut-off: stop postings, confirm goods received not invoiced, intercompany confirmations |
| 1–2 | Accruals and prepayments, payroll, depreciation run |
| 2–3 | Reconciliations: bank, subledgers, intercompany |
| 3–4 | Review, variance explanation, corrections |
| 4–5 | Lock the period and report |
Everything before reconciliation has to finish first, because reconciling a ledger that is still moving is wasted work. That dependency is why close is run to a calendar with owners rather than a checklist.
The question: does this deliver benefit beyond the current period, and is it above the capitalisation threshold the company has set?
A 400-krone office chair is an expense even though it lasts years, because it is below threshold. A 300,000-krone van is capitalised. Repairs that keep an asset working are expensed; improvements that extend its life or increase its capacity are capitalised and added to the asset's value.
The line between a repair and an improvement is a genuine judgement, and it is exactly the kind of question an interviewer uses to find out whether you have done this or only read about it.
The fixed asset register is the subledger for assets: each asset with its cost, purchase date, useful life, method, accumulated depreciation and net book value. It reconciles to the GL like any subledger.
Depreciation is usually straight line — cost divided by useful life — posted monthly as debit depreciation expense, credit accumulated depreciation. Accumulated depreciation is a contra-asset: it sits on the asset side but carries a credit balance and reduces the net figure.
Disposal is the part people get wrong. Remove both the cost and its accumulated depreciation, compare the proceeds against the net book value, and the difference is a gain or loss. Leaving a sold asset on the register is a common and visible error.
Answer all of them to unlock this module in the Drill and Practice tabs.
A van costs 300,000 with a five-year useful life, straight line. What is the monthly entry?
An asset with a net book value of 40,000 is sold for 55,000. What is recorded?
A machine is resprayed to keep it working. Repair or improvement?
Why are reconciliations scheduled after accruals rather than alongside them?
What does it mean when someone says they 'closed in four days'?
Ten questions from memory, about four minutes. Miss one and it comes back tomorrow.
Mixed on purpose — consecutive questions come from different modules.
Every question you have missed, worst first. This list is the honest one.
Thirty-two terms. You are shown the meaning and must produce the word.
Four minutes of reading that makes every other hour in this academy worth more.
Each question sits in a box from 1 to 5. Answer it right and it moves up a box and goes quiet for longer. Miss it and it drops straight back to box 1 — tomorrow. That is the entire schedule; nothing to configure.
| Box | Comes back in | What it means about you |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tomorrow | New, or you just missed it |
| 2 | 2 days | One clean hit — fragile |
| 3 | 4 days | Holding |
| 4 | 9 days | Solid |
| 5 | 3 weeks | Yours. It will still check on you. |
At the end of every drill you get one question to explain out loud, in your own words, with the screen dark. Talk to the wall, your phone's voice recorder, or your wife. If you stumble or reach for the phrase from the card, you recognised it — you do not own it yet. That stumble is the most useful information in this whole app, and it is exactly what happens in an interview chair when someone asks "so what is MCP, actually?"
Pair it, order it, pick every one that applies, answer a real client out loud. Miss one and it comes back tomorrow.
Three exercises each, about six minutes. A module appears once its own quiz is done.
One question, sixty seconds, out loud. Then a model answer and an honest self-grade. This is the actual test you are training for.
Specific videos, specific docs, and one thing to actually go and do. Every link here was checked before it shipped.
What each family is tested on, and which artifact makes them relax about you.
Titles vary wildly — “Digital Lead”, “AI Specialist”, “Transformation Manager”. Match by responsibilities, never by title.
Which level makes you dangerous in each family.
The Expert phase is not a page to read — it is these, built and shown. Tick a line when it is genuinely true.
Scores you produced yourself. Cases and interviews are self-graded — they are worth exactly what your honesty is worth.