Money & investing · course 75 of 105

Markup Is Not Margin: Small Business Maths

Run the numbers a small-business owner repeats: markup against margin, a price for a target margin, break-even, what a discount does to profit, and cash runway from your burn.

4 modules

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Runs in Claude (claude.ai, the Claude apps or Claude Code) with your own Claude account. A course opens there as soon as your payment goes through; nothing is shipped.

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What it teaches

The few calculations a small-business owner repeats, and the slips that go with them. Markup (profit as a percent of cost) against gross margin (profit as a percent of the selling price), switching between them, and finding a price for a target margin or markup. Break-even units and sales, contribution per unit, profit or loss at a volume, units for a profit target, and the margin of safety. What a percent-off discount does to profit, how many more units a price cut needs to earn the same total, cash runway from a net burn, and what one order contributes after its costs. The AI asks 3 questions, places you, shows a short card per module, then gives you one question at a time.

Not an accounting course, and it can’t judge your business or tell you what to do: it drills formulas and arithmetic.

How long

33 items plus 10 concept questions. About 12-25 rounds for a confident student (a simulated confident student took 12-17, a strong beginner took 22-24) up to about 50-70 for a beginner (a simulated beginner took 70), plus a 12-item final: 1-2 sessions (estimate, not timed with a real student). The tutor gives a one-line save code at the end of each session.

The modules

4 modules, drilled one item at a time.

M0
The words
The words: markup and margin, fixed and variable costs, contribution per unit, break-even, burn rate, cash runway
M1
Margin and markup
Markup against gross margin, switching between them, and finding a price for a target margin or markup
M2
Break-even
Break-even units and sales, contribution per unit, profit or loss at a volume, units for a profit target, margin of safety
M3
Discounts, runway and orders
What a percent-off discount does to profit, how many more units a price cut needs, cash runway from a net burn, and what one order contributes

Before it teaches, it asks

1
What kind of business do you run or plan (shop, service, online, side project, nothing yet), and do you know your own numbers?
2
An item costs you $40 and sells for $50. What is the markup, as a percent?
3
Fixed costs are $6,000 a month. Each unit sells for $25 and has $10 of variable cost. How many units a month break even?

What’s exact, and what isn’t

Show

Straight from the course’s own notes.

Formulas quoted from their pages, read 2026-10-12: The sentences in quotation marks on the cards are word-for-word quotes from the SBA’s break-even page and glossary (US government), Wikipedia (Markup (business), Gross margin, Contribution margin, Break-even point, Burn rate, Fixed cost, Variable cost, Revenue, Discounts and allowances; revisions from May to October 2026), the Business Development Bank of Canada’s “cash runway” entry (April 2025), a University of Maine Extension bulletin and a Penn State Extension article. A script checks every quote on a saved copy of its page and fails if a page changes; it does not re-fetch the live pages.
Computed by script: Every key in M1, M2 and M3, in exact fractions, from the numbers in its question. The 33 wrong answers listed (one per item) are each computed from the slip they name and checked to differ from the key. Break-even and profit-target answers in whole units are checked to be the smallest whole number that reaches the goal.
The course's own arithmetic on those definitions: Percent-off prices, “net burn = spending minus revenue” (the sources call burn “the net cash outflow”), “cash needed = burn times months”, and “contribution of one order” (price minus the order’s costs). The sources define the parts; these exact steps are the course’s.
Sources use some words differently: The SBA page writes “contribution margin” as a formula that divides by the price (a percent), though the sentence before it calls it “the difference between the price of a product and what it costs to make that product” (https://www.sba.gov/business-guide/plan-your-business/calculate-your-startup-costs/break-even-point); Wikipedia means dollars per unit. A University of Maine bulletin calls the margin “markup based on selling price”. The cards say which way this course uses each word: markup always on cost, margin always on selling price, contribution per unit in dollars.
Rounding: Every question that needs a rounded answer says so (“to 1 decimal place”, “round up to a whole unit”). Rounding up follows the Wikipedia example (1000/(2.3 - 0.6) = 588.2 shown as 589, so rounded up); the Maine example (76.7 shown as 77) agrees but would read the same rounded to the nearest, and Maine gives its own break-even point as “about 59” shirts.
Honest limits: US dollars, before tax, no taxes, loans or interest. One product at a time (the SBA’s break-even tool is also built “on the foundation of a single product or service”), with a constant price and variable cost per unit. Runway is the simple version: cash divided by a burn that stays the same (BDC itself warns that a short run of months can give an inaccurate burn). The course can’t tell you whether a real price, discount or plan is a good idea, and the numbers in it are made-up examples, not benchmarks for any industry.
Not in it yet: Taxes, customer acquisition cost and lifetime value, working capital and loans, more than one product, price elasticity, inventory methods, a cash-flow statement.