Business & Operations
Running a business means making calls on prices, people, stock and projects, usually with incomplete information. These courses turn those calls into spreadsheets you build yourself: a plan an investor can follow, a price that protects your margin, a project schedule that holds, a supply chain with enough buffer. Each cell is checked as you go, so the logic is sound before you rely on it.
Across 49 courses you will meet business-plan financials, pricing and profitability, startup and subscription metrics, sales compensation, procurement, quality and Six Sigma statistics, call-centre staffing, maintenance planning, landed import costs, marketplaces and franchise economics. Practical topics for independents, such as freelancer rates and gig-driver earnings, sit alongside them.
Business & OperationsPlan, schedule, budget and track one real project end to end: PERT estimates, workday schedules, critical path, S-curve, earned value, risk register and RAG status in 8 labs.
Business & OperationsInventory KPIs, ABC, EOQ, safety stock, forecasting, capacity, landed cost and Lean metrics: 8 labs on one distributor's real-looking data.
Business & OperationsWork out unit economics, MRR, churn, LTV:CAC, runway, a seed-round cap table and scenarios the way founders and investors do, with every cell checked as you go.
Business & OperationsMeasure funnels, campaign ROI, pipeline forecasts, commissions, discounts, RFM segments, A/B tests and shop KPIs in real spreadsheets, with every cell checked as you go.
Business & OperationsTurn HR data into answers: headcount and FTE, turnover, tenure bands, pay analysis, payroll, recruiting and absence KPIs, every cell checked as you go.
Business & OperationsSupply and demand, elasticity, costs and profit, market power, inflation, interest rates, GDP and exchange rates: 8 labs that turn economics into numbers.
Business & OperationsPrice-volume trade-offs, price waterfalls, value-based pricing, elasticity, product and customer profitability, promotions and tiered pricing, in graded labs.
Business & OperationsValue a $3.2m plumbing business from normalised SDE to multiples, working-capital peg, deal structure, DSCR, earn-out and a DCF cross-check, every formula checked live. Educational only, not investment advice.
Business & OperationsBuild the numbers behind a real business plan for a café-roastery: startup costs, sales forecast, margins, staffing, P&L, cash flow, break-even and the ratios banks ask for – 8 labs, every cell checked instantly.
Business & OperationsSet a rate that really covers your costs, price proposals, net out platform fees, chase invoices, pay yourself a steady salary and put tax money aside: eight hands-on labs, every cell checked live.
Business & OperationsGHG Protocol scopes, activity data × emission factors, location- and market-based electricity, travel and commuting, intensity metrics, reduction targets, a marginal abatement cost curve, carbon prices and an ESG KPI dashboard: 8 graded labs for one fictional manufacturer.
Business & OperationsAHT, ASA, abandonment and FCR, traffic in Erlangs, the Erlang C formula built by hand, 80/20 service level, agents needed, shrinkage, hourly forecasts and cost per contact: 8 labs on one contact center's data.
Business & OperationsSpend cube, supplier Pareto and tail spend, PPV and savings, supplier scorecards, should-cost, total cost of ownership, maverick spend and tender evaluation: 8 labs on one food manufacturer's purchasing data.
Business & OperationsDPU, DPMO, rolled throughput yield, sigma levels, Pareto, Cp/Cpk/Ppk, X-bar/R and p-charts, gage R&R, before/after tests and the cost of poor quality: 8 graded labs at Green Belt level. Not an official belt certification; no affiliation with ASQ or IASSC.
Business & OperationsClassify MRR movements, normalise billing into ARR and ARPA, measure churn, GRR and NRR, read cohort triangles and score CAC payback, LTV:CAC, burn multiple and the Rule of 40 – every cell checked as you go.
Business & OperationsPayoff tables and decision criteria, decision-tree roll-back, the value of perfect and sample information with Bayes, utility and certainty equivalents, Monte Carlo NPV, tornado sensitivity and real options: 8 graded labs on one robotics company's decisions.
Business & OperationsOTE and pay mix, commission tiers and accelerators, top-down and bottom-up quotas, attainment distributions, SPIFFs, draws and clawbacks, cost of sales and pipeline coverage: design and test a sales comp plan in a live spreadsheet that checks every cell.
Business & OperationsRun the numbers on a franchise like an investor: initial investment, royalties and ad fund, four-wall EBITDA, cash-on-cash, payback, franchised vs company-owned, the franchisor's revenue model, a multi-unit rollout and two offers compared by NPV and IRR – 8 labs, every cell checked instantly.
Business & OperationsMeasure customer experience like a CX analyst: NPS from raw answers, segments and margins of error, CSAT top-2-box, effort scores, coded comments and Pareto, driver analysis, the link to churn and revenue, and a CX dashboard – 8 labs on one broadband provider's data, every cell checked instantly.
Business & OperationsPlan people like finance does: headcount roll-forwards, FTE, fully loaded cost, prorated hiring plans, backfill, span of control, demand vs supply and budget-vs-actual variance, every cell checked as you go.
Business & OperationsPut numbers behind the classic strategy tools: market share, BCG matrix, GE-McKinsey scoring, five forces, SWOT priorities, Ansoff expected value, scenarios and a balanced scorecard, every cell checked as you go.
Business & OperationsDefine KPIs as clean formulas, set red/amber/green thresholds, score key results 0–1, roll objectives up and cascade team OKRs, test leading indicators and check your data quality, every cell checked as you go.
Business & OperationsValue your BATNA, find the ZOPA, score multi-issue packages, price payment terms, read concession patterns, test anchors on your own deal history, pick the offer with the best expected value and total up a contract: 8 graded labs on one packaging supplier's deals.
Business & OperationsScore a risk register and colour it as a heat map, measure supplier concentration with the HHI, compare time to recover with time to survive, size safety stock for late deliveries, cost disruption scenarios, weigh dual sourcing and rank resilience investments by NPV: 8 graded labs on one e-bike maker's supply chain.
Business & OperationsRun the numbers of a consulting firm: utilisation by role, standard value and blended rates, realisation and write-offs, leverage and profit per partner, project budget vs actuals, fixed fee vs T&M, a bench forecast and a rate card built for a target margin – every cell checked as you go.
Business & OperationsTurn a value stream map into numbers: data boxes, takt vs cycle time, Little's law waiting times, lead time and process cycle efficiency, the bottleneck and rolled yield, a future state with smaller lots, a before/after chart and the kaizen business case – every cell checked as you go.
Business & OperationsRun a gym and a coworking space by the numbers: membership mix and MRR, churn and member LTV, peak capacity, joining-fee promotions, ancillary revenue, staffing per opening hour, break-even occupancy and pricing tiers – 8 labs, every cell checked instantly.
Business & OperationsRun the numbers of a fictional services marketplace: GMV, net revenue and take rate, active buyers and sellers, fill rate and time to match, supply balance by city, contribution per order, coupon payback, network effects and a monthly dashboard, every cell checked as you go.
Business & OperationsRun a business impact analysis in a spreadsheet: map process dependencies, cost an hour of outage, chart how impact grows over time, derive MTD and RTO from impact thresholds, pick an RPO by trading backup cost against data loss, rank recovery priorities, test strategies against expected loss avoided and grade an exercise against the RTOs: 8 graded labs on one fictional parcel company. Educational; not affiliated with ISO.
Business & OperationsTurn badge swipes and desk bookings into the numbers a workplace team needs: attendance, desk utilisation and no-shows, desks needed and sharing ratio, space and cost per desk, meeting-room fit and a floor-consolidation case, every cell checked as you go.
Business & OperationsAnalyse an online shop's returns like an operations analyst: return rates by category and size, a reasons Pareto, cost per return, the refund/exchange/credit mix, value recovery, serial returners, refund times and a paid-returns scenario, every cell checked as you go.
Business & OperationsAnalyse a cost baseline, rebuild costs from drivers, turn department plans into minimum, current and enhanced decision packages, rank them by benefit-to-cost, draw the funding line at a budget cap, measure savings against the baseline and the incremental budget and track the result in a dashboard: 8 labs on one fictional distributor (educational).
Business & OperationsRun the numbers of a salon and day spa in a live grid: revenue per chair hour, utilisation, commission vs booth rental vs salary, product cost per service, retail attach, rebooking, no-show fees and break-even visits, every cell checked as you go.
Business & OperationsBuild and manage a multi-year grant budget for a fictional health nonprofit: personnel and fringe, non-personnel lines, an MTDC-style indirect base, cost share, escalation, spending pace, rebudgeting and a portfolio dashboard, with every cell checked as you go.
Business & OperationsRun a B2B software deal desk in a live spreadsheet: pocket-price waterfall, effective discounts, margin floors, approval routing, multi-year TCV/ACV, the cost of payment terms and free months, leakage by rep and a dashboard. Fictional company, illustrative numbers.
Business & OperationsPrice a fictional 3PL's clients like a provider: activity profiles, storage on peak vs average, receiving, pick & pack, surcharges, minimum fees and volume tiers, cost to serve and margin, and a quote with options and a chart, with every cell checked as you go.
Business & OperationsAnalyse a consulting firm's travel and expense data hands-on: totals by category and employee, hotel caps by city and class-of-travel checks, per diems with 75 % travel days, booking lead time vs airfare, duplicate and weekend claims, mileage with a rental break-even, savings from advance booking and preferred hotels, and a T&E dashboard with a chart and red flags. Fictional company, illustrative rates.
Business & OperationsRun a shipper's truckload tender from lane file to award memo: baseline cost, normalising bids with fuel and accessorials, lowest bid per lane, carrier scorecards, best-value and capacity-aware award scenarios, backup carriers and leakage, savings and an award dashboard, with every cell checked as you go.
Business & OperationsTurn a trip log into pay per mile and hour, build your vehicle cost per mile, find your true net hourly pay with dead miles and waiting time, compare a standard mileage rate with actual costs, find the best hours with AVERAGEIFS, rank platforms and multi-apping, estimate quarterly tax set-asides and plan the hours for an income goal: 8 graded labs with a fictional driver. Illustrative numbers, no platform affiliation; tax rules vary, not tax advice.
Business & OperationsCompare supplier quotes across Incoterms, build the customs value on a CIF or FOB basis, calculate ad valorem, specific and compound duty from an HS lookup, import VAT on the duty-inclusive value, allocate freight across SKUs, convert currencies with a buffer, find the true landed cost per unit and test tariff scenarios, all with a fictional importer in a live spreadsheet that checks every cell. Illustrative rates, not a tariff schedule; not legal or tax advice.
Business & OperationsCompute new vs renewal commission by line, turn written premium into revenue, measure retention and rounding, project the book of business, pay producers with splits and validation, calculate contingency bonuses from loss-ratio tiers, build the agency P&L and EBITDA, and value the agency with multiples and an earnout, with every cell checked as you go.
Business & OperationsTurn a failure log into MTBF, MTTR and line availability, model reliability with EXP and a Weibull fit, weigh preventive maintenance against run-to-failure, find the cheapest PM interval, size spares with POISSON.DIST, rank failure modes by RPN and keep the backlog in check – every cell checked as you go.
Business & OperationsTurn a venue manifest into sellable seats, scale the house and its gross potential, track the sales pace against a target curve, run early-bird tier switching and bounded dynamic pricing, build all-in prices and net to promoter, plan for no-shows and settle a guarantee-versus-percentage deal: 8 graded labs for a fictional amphitheater show.
Business & OperationsSet a funding goal from tooling, MOQ and platform fees, forecast the backer mix and average pledge, cost fulfilment with a shipping-zone lookup, flag loss-making reward tiers, read the funding curve, price stretch goals, measure the funnel's CAC and ROAS and plan the cash flow after the campaign: 8 graded labs for a fictional product launch.
Business & OperationsBuild the cost stack of one box, value the plan mix, read cohort churn and the first-box cliff, price skips and pauses, pay back CAC, value subscribers by plan, forecast next month's inventory and test first-box discounts, with every cell checked as you go.
Score proposals against strategy, calculate NPV, IRR, PI and payback, build a weighted priority rank, select projects within a capital budget, check team capacity in FTE-months, handle mandatory work and dependencies, chart the value-vs-cost curve and re-prioritise every quarter: 8 hands-on labs.
Business & OperationsQuote translation jobs with confidence: weighted word counts, fictional match-discount grids, throughput, rush fees and multi-language project prices, with every cell checked as you go.
Manage a book of accounts with numbers: health scores, onboarding time-to-value, renewal forecasts, expansion and how many accounts each manager can cover, with every cell checked as you go.
Decide if a vending route pays: machine cost and payback, location commissions, slot-by-slot product mix, restock routes and payment fees, with every cell checked as you go.
The EOQ formula √(2DS/H) with a worked example in Excel: holding cost, orders per year, the cost curve, and why rounding to a pack size is fine.
Earned value management formulas with one consistent example: PV, EV, AC, CV, SV, CPI, SPI, EAC, ETC, VAC and TCPI, calculated step by step in Excel.
How to calculate the LTV:CAC ratio: fully loaded CAC, LTV from gross margin and churn, CAC payback and the churn limit, in a worked Excel example.
The compa-ratio formula (salary ÷ band midpoint) with an Excel example: lookups to the salary band, range penetration, group compa-ratio and review flags.
How to calculate your freelance hourly rate: revenue needed ÷ billable hours, with overheads, utilisation and a margin. Worked example and Excel formulas.
How to calculate a carbon footprint by scope: activity data × emission factor, location- vs market-based Scope 2, travel and commuting, totals with SUMIFS.
No. The courses explain each figure as it appears. If you want a stronger foundation, the accounting fundamentals course is a good companion.
Both. Managers learn what the numbers mean and how they connect; analysts learn to build the models cleanly enough that others can check them.
Each course is a single purchase of $9.99. That covers every lesson and lab, the final exam and the certificate, with no subscription and nothing that renews.
Start with the recommended course and build your first result in the lab today.
