Learn accounting, with Emma! Accounting with Emma is a small fill-in-the-blanks game for the TIC-80 fantasy computer. Help Emma record a ledger of financial transactions for her fledgling art business, building up the balance sheet as you go.
Copyright © 2021 Dan Jacka
Released under the GNU General Public License version 3; see the file LICENSE.
You can play directly from your web browser on itch.io:
https://danjacka.itch.io/accounting-with-emma
Your role in the game is to help Emma balance each transaction in the ledger by setting any missing values correctly.
Press the RIGHT arrow key to select the missing value, then use UP or DOWN to increment or decrement the amount. Hold the Z key to increment or decrement in larger units: $50 rather than $1.
Make the claims and resources amounts match, then press the LEFT arrow key to move back to the ledger. Zing! Onto transaction two. The balance sheet shows the total amounts including all of the previous transactions.
Read Emma's commentary at the bottom of the screen to understand what is being captured in a transaction. You'll need those details to figure out what the missing values are. If you're stuck, pay close attention to Emma's hints.
Sometimes it's useful to look back at previously completed transactions. To do so, press LEFT until no value is selected, then UP and DOWN to navigate the ledger.
You can edit the game's source code directly. Press ESC twice to access TIC-80's
code editor. Accounting with Emma is written in
Fennel. Try changing some values in the puzzles
data structure. To play the game with your changes, press ESC again to access
the TIC-80 console, then type "run".
You can also play and make changes locally. Get the repository from
https://github.com/danjacka/accounting-with-emma. Then with make and
tic80 on your path:
$ make
If you know nothing about accounting but want to learn through Accounting with Emma, here's some basic help:
Keeping accounts helps businesses understand how they spend and receive money. Emma could if she wanted keep a journal (or "ledger") of changes to her finances like this:
Spent $50 on renting a market stall
Received $20 by selling a painting
That's useful, but prone to error. Real businesses record transactions as adjustments to accounts, like this:
Rent a market stall: $50 FROM the cash account, $50 TO the expenses account
Sell painting: $20 TO the cash account, $20 FROM the sales account
Note that in each of these transactions, the total of the FROM and TO amounts is zero. We say that the accounts balance. A total other than zero is invalid, and indicates a mistake. Balancing transactions like this is called double-entry accounting.
(You might ask why in the second example it's $20 FROM the sales account. Aren't we adding TO our sales? FROM is correct. It's because there are two types of accounts: resources and claims. Resources are what the business has - assets. Claims are what the business owes - liabilities - and what the business is worth - equity. Increasing a resource account amount is a TO (a credit); increasing a claim account amount is a FROM (a debit).)
It's less common, but a transaction may include adjustments to only resources accounts or only claims accounts, for example when trading one asset type directly for another asset type. The usual rules apply: the total of the FROM and TO amounts must equal zero.
The balance sheet shows the cumulative totals of accounts. Despite its simplicity the balance sheet is a powerful tool for gauging a business's financial health. A single transaction can have a dramatic effect. When you've completed the final transaction, scroll back through the ledger and follow how the balance sheet changes as Emma's business grows.
Accounting with Emma illustrates how transactions are balanced movements between accounts, but it doesn't cover common accounting concepts like tax and depreciation. Where do you learn about those?
First, good news: those are part of balanced movements between accounts too! Accounting is buckets-of-numbers-that-add-up-to-zero all the way down. As you learn about more advanced concepts, you should find that they fit into the model you've learned through playing Accounting with Emma.
Looking for online help? I found the writing on accountingcoach.com easy to follow. Written by a single author, it's a cohesive view of accounting that provides lots of detail without being overwhelming. There are tests and certifications if you like that kind of thing.
Book-wise, I recommend "Accounting: A Very Short Introduction" by Christopher Nobes. This neat little book covers just enough accounting mechanics (the same basics as seen in Accounting with Emma, in fact the game uses the book's terminology) and sets out accounting's place in the world: where it came from, why it's useful, how companies think about it, etc.
If you are comfortable on the command-line, I recommend trying out Ledger, a plain text accounting system. In particular I recommend reading Ledger's excellent manual and following the examples therein. You'll see all the moving parts of a real-world accounting system that fits naturally with your UNIX-wired brain.
- Made by Dan Jacka.
- Based on a written version of Emma's story by Dan, Justin B, Kavi S, Kelly M, Lauren C, Ming L and Zac M.
- Inspired by Phil Hagelberg and Emma Bukacek's "This Is My Mech" game.
- Uses Adigun A. Polack's AAP-16 colour palette.