9 Skill Building Games for Bookkeepers and Number-Crunchers
Written by Ben Robinson
Position
Analytical and numbers-based games are great ways for bookkeepers to practice skill-building while cutting loose and having fun with friends or family. Below, I’ll go over some of the best games I’ve encountered recently that tap into the parts of the brain bookkeepers and number-crunchers use every day.
RELATED: 8 Fun Activities that Also Build Bookkeeping Skills
In the artical:
Why Are Skill Building Games Important?
Let’s be honest; studying is often boring. Even if it’s a subject you’re interested in, reading books or informational articles gets old after a while.
So instead of finding more books and articles, it’s best to find a fun way to practice your professional skills. It is great motivation to improve, and it will ensure you don’t get tired of skill building.
The easiest way to have fun with skill building is by finding a game that you enjoy and that uses the skills you need to succeed. In this list, I focus on some video games, board games, and mobile games I have found that will help bookkeepers and other number-crunchers build important skills.
Video Games
Capitalism Lab
The Capitalism series is the most realistic business simulation on the market. They allow you to start your own company and act as CEO as it makes its way up the grueling ladder of capitalism.
The game is pretty heavy on the numbers side, but that’s to be expected in a business sim. And it helps you realize that running a business can actually be really fun — especially if you don’t actually have lots of capital on the line.
The game helps bookkeepers empathize with their clients and reminds them how many moving parts are involved in running a successful business.
Available for Windows and iOS.
Football Manager 2019
This game focuses on the sport Americans call soccer.
Football Manager is ideal for the bookkeeper who wants a break from the world of straight-up business. The game lets you pick from a real football franchise and get a different team management flavor, one where you get to sign players to contracts and manage finances. Through it all, you need to make sure your team keeps winning.
The game helps bookkeepers learn to consolidate certain parts of a business in order to let others excel.
Available for Windows, iOS, and Nintendo Switch.
Transport Tycoon
Transport Tycoon is all about building shipping routes and managing shipments. The player is put in charge of a transport empire, and they need to plan out where to build to get their cargo where it is going for the lowest price.
The game is a fantastic exercise in planning for the future and building streamlined systems, two skills essential to good bookkeeping.
Note that Transport Tycoon is an old classic and has pretty poor graphics by today’s standards.
Available for iOS, Android, and the Amazon app store.
Board Games
Cashflow 101
Cashflow is almost as much an educational exercise as it is a game, with a very slow pace and a lot of technical questions related to bookkeeping and accounting terms and concepts.
It might not have much new information for experienced number-crunching professionals because most of it is relatively basic. It is a great way to introduce younger people to the world of bookkeeping, though. Even more seasoned bookkeepers will benefit because helping explain a concept is the best way to gain mastery over that concept.
Food Chain Magnate
Food Chain Magnate is a longer board game that will teach the players about customer management. The game’s theme is running a business and hiring staff, but the real focus is getting your target demographic hooked on what you’re selling.
The game will help bookkeepers and accountants improve their customer management skills. It will illustrate the valuable lesson that creating a need for something is not the same as securing customers.
Globalization
Globalization focuses on business expansion. You start small with just one business and grow it exponentially, following a business strategy and acquiring more businesses along the way to the global stage.
The game gives bookkeepers and accountants a chance to step into their clients’ shoes and understand accounting for themselves, which helps them understand their work more deeply.
Mobile Games
Sudoku
There are tons of Sudoku apps, and they all have the same goal: arrange the numbers in lines where there are no repeating digits. It’s a classic game, and it has infinite replay value.
The skill-building benefit of the game is simple: by looking at the whole grid and deciding where to allocate certain digits, the player gains a deeper understanding of number-based networks. It’s also a great exercise in advance planning.
Numtris
Numtris is kind of like Tetris but with numbered blocks. The player can eliminate blocks by joining more blocks with a similar number to it, and they’ll lose if too many differently-numbered blocks stack up.
The game forces the player to process and sort numbers quickly; two skills professional number-crunchers use every day.
Minesweeper
An oldie but a goodie, Minesweeper, sees players eliminate spaces on a digital board to reveal more information about where the “mine” spaces on the board are located. If the player accidentally reveals a mine, they lose.
Minesweeper is good for building risk assessment skills and resource allocation abilities.
I have played all of the games on this list and can verify that they help accountants and other number-crunchers with professional skill-building. Try out a few of them, and I’m sure you’ll agree with me!
DO YOU HAVE ANY FAVORITE NUMBERS-BASED SKILL BUILDING GAMES YOU DON’T SEE IN THE LISTING ABOVE? LET ME KNOW ON THE BOOKKEEPERS FACEBOOK!
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