AWARD-WINNING AMAZON BESTSELLER
Turn Financial Clarity into a Leadership Advantage
A story-led guide for leaders and non-finance professionals who want to understand the numbers, ask better questions and make more confident decisions.
Change how you lead, manage and operate.
Outside Singapore or prefer an eBook?
International Impact Book Awards
Winner
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17th International Book Awards
Finalist
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Amazon No. 1
Hot New Release
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Finance Should Not Feel Like a Foreign Language
Financial understanding is now a leadership capability.
Finance often feels difficult because it is taught through terminology, formulas and reporting conventions.
The problem is not the reader’s ability, but how finance has traditionally been explained. The book makes financial statements accessible without losing their business meaning.
Finance does not have to be complex to be clear.
It can be seriously fun.
Who is This Book For
Business Leaders and Functional Heads
Make sharper strategic decisions
Managers accountable for budgets and results
Improve performance and cash
Entrepreneurs and Business Owners
Make sound growth choices
Professionals moving into leadership
Lead with financial confidence
Board and Non-profit Leaders
Strengthen governance
A Different Way to Understand Finance
Story-driven
Visual
Practical
Memorable characters and metaphors make abstract ideas easier to grasp.
Illustrations reveal the relationships behind financial statements.
Concepts are connected to decisions, risks, performance and cash.
Finance meets storytelling, making learning stick.
Inside the Visual Learning Experience
See the financial structure
See how assets, equity and liabilities fit together to reveal the financial structure of a business. Understand the balance sheet as a connected story rather than a collection of numbers.
Look beyond sales
See why sales alone do not tell the whole story by exploring the relationship between revenue, profit and cash. Understand how apparent growth can still conceal pressure beneath the surface.
Build financial resilience
See how liquid assets and lower liabilities create a stronger balance sheet and reduce financial risk. Understand how financial resilience helps a business withstand pressure and uncertainty.
Trace the sources of cash
See where cash comes from and where it goes through operating, investing and financing activities. Learn what those movements reveal about the financial health and direction of a busines.
FROM INFORMATION TO TRANSFORMATION
Financial knowledge is only the beginning
Superior Performance
Translate financial understanding into sharper decisions, better resource allocation and stronger business results.
Cash Flow Resilience
Build the financial strength to withstand disruption, manage uncertainty and keep the business moving.
Empowered Ownership
Equip people to take ownership of financial outcomes, challenge assumptions and act with greater commercial confidence.
ENTER THE FINANCIAL STORYVERSE®
Where Financial Concepts Come to Life
The Financial Storyverse® is a story-led learning world behind Once Upon a Balance Sheet.
It transforms financial concepts into connected stories, characters and journeys that make the relationships behind the numbers easier to see, understand and remember.
Readers begin in the World of Confusion, cross the Sea of Jargon and progress towards the World of Illumination. Each Island of Knowledge represents another stage in understanding how financial statements reveal the strength, performance and health of a business.
By exploring finance as a connected story rather than a collection of formulas, readers can move beyond memorising definitions to understand the decisions, risks and business realities behind the numbers.
The Financial Storyverse® was created to reduce the barriers that often make finance feel technical, intimidating and difficult to approach. By transforming learning into an engaging visual journey, it invites readers to explore unfamiliar ideas with curiosity, making finance more accessible, memorable and enjoyable to learn.
What Readers will Learn
Understand the Balance Sheet, Profit & Loss and Cash Flow without jargon
Spot warning signs and financial risks earlier
Connect business decisions to financial consequences
Participate confidently in finance conversations
Use financial clarity to strengthen growth, performance and resilience
Recommended by Leaders
“I would strongly encourage you and your team to make full use of this invaluable resource to grow a successful business.”
Lim Ming Yan
Chairman, Changi Airport Group
Lead Independent Director, SembCorp Industries Limited
Former President and Group CEO, CapitaLand
“Once Upon a Balance Sheet demystifies the world of accounting and financial statements, making complex concepts accessible and understandable.”
Fann Kor
Chief Executive Officer
Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants
“For HR leaders who need to connect people strategies with business performance, James’ straightforward approach breaks down complex financial concepts into practical insights.”
Dr Fermin Diez
Adjunct Professor, NUS & SMU
Governing Council Member, Singapore Institute of Directors
“I especially recommend this for non-profit board directors and managers tasked with achieving high-impact work with limited resources.”
Theresa Goh
Chairperson, Charity Council
Fellow, Singapore Institute of Directors
THE STORY BEHIND THE BOOK
The Book that Almost Never Made It to Print
Once Upon a Balance Sheet grew out of years of helping leaders and non-finance professionals understand finance differently through stories, visuals and practical business language.
The book was created to bring that learning approach beyond the classroom, giving readers a more engaging and accessible way to understand what financial numbers mean for a business.
The manuscript developed into more than a conventional finance book. Its characters, journeys and visual frameworks were designed to help readers move past technical terminology and see how financial concepts connect with real decisions, risks and outcomes.
During the publishing journey, however, the original publisher went bankrupt and disappeared. Communication stopped, enquiries went unanswered and the project was left in uncertainty for months. A book that had taken years to develop suddenly faced the possibility of never reaching its readers.
Rather than allow the work to disappear, Prof James rebuilt the publishing process from the ground up, page by page. This meant taking ownership of the editing, formatting, cover development and production arrangements needed to bring the completed book into the world.
What almost ended the project ultimately became another chapter in its story. Once Upon a Balance Sheet went on to become an Amazon bestseller, a winner in the International Impact Book Awards- Management Accounting category and a finalist in the 17th International Book Awards- Business/General category.
The journey reflects the same lesson that runs through the book itself: setbacks do not have to determine the final outcome when there is clarity, resilience and a willingness to rebuild.
A WORLD-FIRST IN FINANCIAL LITERACY EDUCATION
Meet Count Jargon®
Count Jargon® serves as the principal guide through the Financial Storyverse®, translating unfamiliar terminology into plain language without taking away the meaning behind it.
Through his guidance, readers are encouraged to look beyond definitions and calculations to understand what the numbers are saying and why they matter.
Along the journey, Miss Numbers®, the STEPH Model®, Huat® and Master C Foo® each bring a different perspective. Together, they help readers explore the relationships, decisions, risks and business realities behind financial statements, turning finance into a learning experience that is easier to follow, discuss and apply.
Making Finance Huggable
Once Upon a Balance Sheet is the world’s first financial literacy book for non-finance professionals launched with its own author-created, trademarked plush character.
Count Jargon® is more than a mascot. He is an educational story guide designed into the structure of the book to translate financial terminology into plain, practical language.
Created to take the jargon out of finance without taking away the meaning, Count Jargon® makes financial learning more approachable, memorable and huggable.
A limited number of Count Jargon® plushies are available for readers who would like to bring him home.
About the Author
Prof James C Foo Leong is the award-winning author of the Amazon bestseller Once Upon a Balance Sheet: How to Make Better Decisions, Drive Growth and Increase Profits. In 2026, the book won the International Impact Book Award for Business and Management Accounting and was a finalist in the International Book Awards.
An Adjunct Professor at the National University of Singapore and a former regional finance head in a Fortune 500 company, James brings together leadership experience, professional expertise and a deep understanding of how people learn. He is a Chartered Accountant of Singapore and Australia, and the founder of Financial Storytelling.
James is also the creator of the Financial Storyverse® and the developer of Accounting in a Box® and the STEPH Model®. Through stories, characters and visual frameworks, he turns complex financial concepts into ideas that leaders and professionals can understand, remember and apply.
Recognised as one of Singapore’s Top 60 Trainers and Speakers in celebration of SG60, James was also named a 2026 Spirit of Enterprise Honouree for his entrepreneurial journey and contribution to Singapore’s business community.