Make Colette's March Add Up
Maps to: Accountant · Auditor · Bookkeeper · Tax Preparer · Financial Analyst · Management Consultant
Make Colette's March add up, like an accountant.
You leave with one page that says whether a month of money adds up. It shows you can check every payment and find what is missing.
Colette runs two flower shops and wants a bank loan. Her books say one number for March and the bank says another. You write both totals down, match every line of her month to the bank's list, chase the gaps that matter, own the one tick you got wrong, and hand her the page the bank reads first. Everything happens here, on her real month, with Juno showing you a finished piece before each step.
How this shows up on a resume or college app
I checked one month of whose money by matching every line of their own record against the bank's. The two totals were amount apart. I set a size below which gaps were written down and left, traced the larger ones to what they turned out to be, and could not explain amount. I decided to what I did about it, wrote a one-page summary with the answer on the first line and the unexplained gap stated plainly, and gave it to the person, who told me they would have looked first at what they said. I learned that a total nobody has checked is a total nobody actually knows.
When you finish you have the thing itself, plus a Common App activity description Sidequest drafts from what you actually built.
Not sure yet? Play 5 minutes as an accountant first and see how the work feels.
See what this career pays and what it takes to get in.
The plan
- 1
10 min
Your two totals
Colette sends her March so the bank sees one clean month. Her books say $4,370 was in the bank at the end of March. The bank says $3,804. Before a single line is matched, you write both numbers down and say what you think the gap is.
- 2
10 min
Every line, matched
Two lists, one month. Every line in Colette's books gets matched to a line on the bank's list, one tap at a time. A line with no match stays open. Most of an accountant's hours go here.
- 3
10 min
The gaps that matter
Three lines in Colette's March do not add up: her books have them and the bank does not, or the other way round. You pick how small a gap you still look into. Then you find out what each one was. Nobody knows yet, so the answer is somewhere in her papers or in how the shops handle cash.
- 4
10 min
The tick that was yours
Thursday night. The page goes to the bank in the morning. One match you made was wrong: the $85 cash sale on March 19 was not the $85 Colette paid in that day. You decide what she hears tonight.
- 5
10 min
Colette's page, handed over
Friday morning. Colette reads the page before the bank does. You write the opening line, then she hears what it means and asks about the $2,400 a wedding venue still owes her.