Business & Finance line, station 2 of 4
Finance for Tech Teams
Read the numbers behind technology: P&L, unit economics, budgets, cloud costs, business cases and vendor deals.
- 6lessons
- 3.5 hto read and do
- Beginnerlevel
- 6podcast episodes
- 6checked exercises
Tools you'll use in this course
The lessons open these with a template ready. They work for your own job too, no course needed.
About this course
Technology decisions are money decisions. Engineers, managers, product people and finance staff who work with tech all need to read a profit and loss statement, cost a feature, build a budget, keep the cloud bill under control and make the case for an investment. This course teaches the finance tech teams use, from first principles, with every term explained and every number worked.
You are a tech lead at Mangrove Market who has just become budget owner for the partner and platform teams, in the middle of budget season. You read Mangrove's P&L, balance sheet and cash flow and see where its $28M of technology spending lands, work out the unit economics of an app order and a partner order, build next year's engineering budget with capex, opex and capitalised software, cut a $540,000-a-month cloud bill with FinOps practices and track cloud cost per order, build a business case for route-planning software with payback, NPV, IRR and sensitivity, and compare staying with the Lagoon Digital agency, rebuilding the Partner app in-house, buying a platform or a hybrid.
Each lesson has quick checks, a worked example, auto-checked SQL or JavaScript exercises that run in your browser, practice tasks with model answers, flashcards and a podcast episode. The numbers are Mangrove's and fictional: the course teaches concepts and methods, not investment, tax or accounting advice.
What you will be able to do
- Read a P&L, balance sheet and cash-flow statement and explain where technology spending shows up in each
- Calculate unit economics such as contribution margin per order, cost to serve, CAC, LTV and payback, and avoid allocation traps
- Build and track a technology budget with headcount timing, capex, opex and capitalised software
- Manage cloud and SaaS costs with FinOps practices: allocation, optimisation, commitments and unit cost per order
- Write business cases with payback, NPV and IRR, test them with sensitivity and switching values, and present them on one page
- Compare build, buy and outsource with total cost of ownership and the contract terms that change the answer
Syllabus
6 stops, about 3.5 h in total. Each stop fills in when you complete the lesson.
The three statements
Every company tells its money story three ways: what it earned and spent over a year, what it owns and owes on one day, and what cash really moved. This lesson walks you through Mangrove Market's three statements line by line, and shows exactly where $28 million of technology spending lands in each, so you can talk to finance in their own words from your first budget meeting.
Financial statementsCapex and opex
Unit economics
The P&L tells you whether Mangrove made money last year. Unit economics tells you whether the next order, the next channel or the next customer will. This lesson takes the finance view: which costs really belong to one order, what a partner order earns by channel once you count the cost of giving credit, and how to judge CAC, LTV and payback without the traps that make growth plans look better than they are.
Unit economicsBusiness cases
Budgets, capex and opex
A budget is the promise your team makes to the company about money: what you will spend, when, and on what. This lesson shows you how to build Mangrove's 2027 technology budget from the bottom up, decide which costs become assets, and explain the gap between budget and actual every month.
BudgetingCapex and opexFinancial statements
Cloud and SaaS costs with FinOps
Mangrove's cloud bill is about $540,000 a month, and almost nobody can say who spends it. This lesson shows you how to read the bill, give every dollar an owner with tags and split rules, cut cost in a safe order, buy commitments without locking in waste, and track one number that tells growth apart from waste: cloud cost per order.
FinOpsUnit economicsBudgeting
Business cases
You have a $180,000 request on your desk: route planning software for the distribution centres' wholesale deliveries. This lesson builds its case month by month, the way Mangrove's finance team will check it: payback, NPV and IRR at the right monthly rate, sensitivity with switching values, and a one-page case the CFO can approve in stages.
Business casesNPV and IRRSensitivity analysis
Build, buy or outsource
Mangrove pays Lagoon Digital about $390,000 a year to build and run the Partner app, and the contract ends on 30 June 2027. This lesson shows you how to compare staying, rebuilding in-house, buying a platform and a hybrid with a month-by-month total cost of ownership, how contract terms move the numbers, and what the numbers leave out.
Total cost of ownershipVendor managementBusiness cases
Capstone: Make the case for the Partner app rebuild
A realistic project with a rubric and a model answer.
Final exam and certificate
10 questions drawn at random, 70% to pass.
Capstone project
Make the case for the Partner app rebuild
Mangrove pays Lagoon Digital about $390,000 a year to build and run the Partner app: a $21,000 monthly retainer, about $90,000 of extra change work and about $4,000 a month of hosting. A change takes 6 to 10 weeks to reach shops, about 1,500 partner orders a week still come by phone at about $1.75 each to serve against $0.20 in the app, and the contract ends on 30 June 2027 with 90 days' notice. Mangrove owns its custom code, but Lagoon's core framework is licensed only while the contract runs. The finance committee wants a recommendation: stay and renegotiate, rebuild in-house, buy a B2B ordering platform, or a hybrid. Build the financial case: costs and benefits over three years with cash timing, unit economics per partner order, a cloud estimate for the in-house option with cloud cost per order, NPV and payback at Mangrove's 12% discount rate, a sensitivity analysis, the contract risks, and a recommendation.
You will hand in
- A spreadsheet model with the options, monthly cash flows over three years, NPV and payback per option, and low, base and high scenarios
- A one-page business case for the finance committee with the ask, the options considered, the numbers, the risks and a staged decision
- A cloud cost estimate for the in-house option with its assumptions and the cloud cost per partner order
- A short note on the contract terms to negotiate or watch: notice, exit assistance, the framework licence, SLAs and price caps
Check what you know
Already know some of this? Answer 6 quick questions, one from each lesson, and we will mark the lessons you can skim. It takes about 3 minutes and nothing is graded.
Questions
Do I need an accounting background?
No. Every term is explained from scratch with Mangrove's numbers. You need basic arithmetic and percentages; the exercises use short SQL queries and small JavaScript functions, with the shape given in the starter code.
Is this for finance people or tech people?
Both. Tech people learn to speak finance; finance people learn how technology costs and value really work, from cloud bills to capitalised software.
Is this financial or investment advice?
No. The course teaches concepts and methods with a fictional company's numbers. Accounting and tax rules depend on the standards your company follows (such as IFRS or US GAAP) and change over time, so real decisions belong with your finance team and auditors.
Can I use a spreadsheet instead of code?
Yes. Every calculation is shown so you can rebuild it in a spreadsheet, and the capstone model is a spreadsheet. The code exercises check your understanding automatically.
Is it really free?
Yes. Every lesson, podcast episode, exercise, quiz, final exam and certificate is free. The labs and their templates for real work are free too. Plus and Premium add every lab challenge, weekly extras and a mentor on top, and they never lock the tools or the courses.
How long does it take?
Each lesson shows an honest time for reading and doing. Most people finish a course in two to four weeks at three or four hours a week.
How does the final exam work?
You get 15 questions drawn at random from a larger bank. You need 70% to pass. If you do not pass, you can try again after 24 hours. The exam is graded on the server and you never see the answer key.