Digi-Tools In Accrual World

John Toon is joined by Kendrick Hair of Fishbowl and Leigh Stallard for a news episode about who ends up owning the client. Leigh opens on a LinkedIn post from Joshua at Reva, written after Starling took heat for putting books next to the current account. The more interesting move is embedding the service itself, advisers included, inside the platforms an SME already uses. Uprise is doing exactly that in the US. John's caveat is that nobody has done it at scale yet, although compliance is already being commoditised and Mazuma has been running like a software company with accountants attached for years. Kendrick brings the US lens on firms niching hard into tax as technology moves onto their patch. Fishbowl has bought Repfabric, and Kendrick takes the two questions customers actually ask after an acquisition. Does the brand disappear, and do the connections to competing products get switched off. His answers are no and no. Repfabric brings a decade of commissions, territories and multi-line sales work to sit in front of everything Fishbowl already does once the order lands. Kendrick then picks up Joiin Intelligence, which goes exception hunting rather than writing prose about revenue. Its agents clean the chart of accounts, build eliminations and diagnose a consolidated balance sheet that will not balance. John's angle is where the data physically goes once a firm hands it to a model, and why Joiin running on AWS matters to anyone with GDPR to answer to. He remembers early Jax being slower than clicking the report. Leigh follows with Joiin's new report pack sharing and the wider point underneath it. Firms do not adopt what they cannot picture themselves using, so a release that ships without a workflow attached quietly dies in the inbox. Then the Xero run. Engager, now part of TaxCalc, ships its August features, and John pushes back on listening to the loudest customer instead of leading. Kendrick covers BrightPay's Oscar onboarding assistant, Pay by Bank, and the cloud transition Bright had to pull and rebuild. Leigh takes Xero's developer growth programme for practice apps and John asks what it says about Xero Practice Manager. Back orders and prepayments land in the Xero API, which Kendrick has been waiting for and which Cin7, Katana and Fishbowl are not using yet, and Leigh explains why giving people back orders in core Xero is a dog on a half-submerged pontoon. Also covered: Trent McLaren's map of where there is still room to build in the Xero ecosystem, the test of whether a Xero product manager could describe your product in one sentence, and what it now costs vendors to keep the data flowing since Xero and Intuit both put a price on API access. This episode is brought to you by Fishbowl, inventory and manufacturing software for businesses that have outgrown spreadsheets but are not ready for full ERP. https://www.fishbowlinventory.com 00:00 Intro 02:14 Sponsor: Fishbowl 03:25 Accounting as a feature, and the fight for the client 09:57 Fishbowl buys Repfabric 19:45 Joiin Intelligence goes exception hunting 26:11 Joiin report packs, and why releases die in the inbox 29:38 Reporting people actually act on 33:22 Sponsor: SuiteFiles 34:21 Engager updates, and who you listen to 39:07 BrightPay, Oscar and the cloud move 44:06 Xero opens its growth programme to practice apps 46:46 Back orders and prepayments in the Xero API 53:45 Enough rope: back orders in core Xero 56:34 Where to build in the Xero ecosystem 01:08:19 Outro

Eriona Bajrakurtaj, Alastair Barlow and John Toon go through the accounting tech week, and most of it comes back to the same question: is the thing being announced the thing that actually works? The headline everyone shared was OpenAI buying accounting firms. It has not. OpenAI took an equity position in Thrive Holdings back in December, Thrive owns Current, the roll-up formerly called Crete Professionals Alliance, and OpenAI engineers go into those firms in exchange for more equity and access to the data. Alastair breaks the structure down and lands on how circular it is. What matters more than the deal is the taxonomy forming around it, with roll-ups buying legacy firms, platforms buying and re-tooling them, and AI-native challengers like Amsterdam's Neno starting from nothing. Then the other end of the telescope. An accountant proofread a set of accounts produced in Xero Tax and posted what he found, including the wrong directors on the cover page and an inappropriate section 444 disclosure, in the same week Xerocon Denver was selling agentic workflows. Eriona is an advocate for AI in accounting and still lands on the obvious point, that an assistant saving you twenty minutes is worth nothing if you spend twenty minutes checking its output. John then admits Xero Tax double-counted the corporation tax on his own company, and blames his own chart of accounts rather than the software. On the compliance side, Active have released accounts production, taking a firm from trial balance to a filed set of accounts inside one platform, with Companies House filing built in. John has been tracking it for the best part of a year and reads it as Active going at Silverfin directly. Workiro released Workflows in the same week, which routes every step of a job to the right person with an AI summary at each hand-off, and Eriona asks the fair question of why a practice management system cannot already do that. The episode ends on Sodium and TaxCalc arguing publicly about an encrypted form, and underneath it a bigger question about who owns accounting data. Alastair's answer is the strongest few minutes on the pod. A vendor making it hard to move your clients' data has not built a moat, it has built friction, and the decision to use your own historic client data sits between you and your client. Also covered: OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar's target of a zero-day close, and why John thinks the phrase is too ambiguous to mean anything. Prosaic, an AI-native cash-based ledger out of New Zealand now past fifty firms. The Xero Global App Awards, won globally by Gojee and Ignition, with ApprovalMax taking the UK and SuiteFiles the US practice award. Updates to Xero's Auto Bank Reconciliation and what "confident" is actually doing in that sentence. WorkGuru's rebuilt workflows. And Repodo in Copenhagen raising the largest pre-seed Denmark has recorded to launch an AI-native audit firm. 00:00 Intro 04:42 The zero-day close 14:25 Prosaic rethinks the ledger 26:27 Xero App Awards 2026 37:56 Somebody proofread Xero Tax 44:42 How JAX decides 54:51 Workiro releases Workflows 57:22 Trial balance to Companies House 1:00:54 OpenAI has not bought a firm 1:13:31 Who owns the data 1:23:47 Outro

Indi Tatla is joined by Lara Manton and Billie McLoughlin for a run through the month's accounting tech updates, most of which nobody would call exciting and all of which somebody will end up using. Two from Xero. The bills page gets the same full-page treatment invoices and quotes already had, with contact editing and planned payment dates moving into the bill itself, and Lara makes the point that the people who will feel the change hardest are the ones who use it most. Then the builder story: Xero has released a Lovable connector, so an accountant can describe an app in plain English and have it running on live Xero data. Xero says one in five connections into its ecosystem is now a custom app built outside the App Store. Billie is not convinced, and reckons meaningful builds will come from the 1% of the 1%. Vinyl has moved from recording meetings to preparing for them. Pre-meeting briefs pull context from previous calls, open items in your practice management system and the calendar invite itself, which as Billie points out makes better preparation a data hygiene problem in disguise. Sodium has connected its practice management platform to Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini, giving them a line into tasks, billing, AML checks, document requests and client workflows. Indi's read is that Duane Jackson has built this shape before in payroll and in bookkeeping, and that boring businesses are the ones worth watching. The admin round. TaxCalc and Engager keep stitching themselves together, with tax figures dropping into bulk client emails and filed returns ticking themselves off. Otto Capture launches from With Otto at £9 a client, with Emma James running her own practice behind it, and goes to Xero and FreeAgent together rather than Xero alone. Sage is on the roadmap. Billie's line on all of it is how much manual glue accountants create day to day without noticing. Briefcase gets the longest argument. Sales invoicing and aged reports land in Briefcase Ledger, and Working Papers takes the month end out of spreadsheets with an immutable balance sheet snapshot. Billie wants to know where it falls short before she trusts it, and makes the case that the big AI companies are not using AI to do their own accounts. Lara asks whether it matters that this is an accounting app with AI rather than an AI app that does accounting. Also covered: MyDocSafe removing portal chat on purpose, adding a signature dashboard and making form consents compulsory. Chapters 00:00 Intro 02:40 Xero bills refresh 06:36 One in five is custom 12:50 Vinyl pre-meeting briefs 17:50 Sodium talks to the LLMs 23:10 TaxCalc into Engager 27:05 Sponsor: Joiin 28:13 Otto Capture 31:11 MyDocSafe removes chat 34:20 Briefcase Ledger invoicing 35:52 Briefcase and the close 42:20 Outro

Indi Tatla, Lara Manton and Robbie White on a week where almost every story turned out to be about payments. Intuit has taken its QuickBooks connectors in Claude and ChatGPT past read-only, so a business owner can raise and send an invoice from inside a chat window. Robbie calls the direction of travel genuinely exciting, then names the problem with it. The businesses most likely to switch it on are the ones with nobody in the building to catch it when it gets something wrong. Lara puts the consequence into a scene involving an auditor. ApprovalMax has rebuilt its pricing around tiered usage, bundling Capture and Pay into the core product and dropping the multi-client discounts. Lara uses it every day for a client and asks the question a pricing page cannot answer, which is whether firms decide the basic approvals in their other software will do. Telleroo is moving from pushing money out of a client account to also taking it in, holding it, and paying interest on it through Griffin Bank. Indi explains why she is happy for one vendor to make money out of her and not another. It involves bread. Also covered: Intuit's own business credit card, Dext Payments arriving on QuickBooks Online, Allica Bank launching Cashew, Sage and GoCardless adding pay by bank, and a developer who built an app off 589 Xero feature-request votes and found the demand was never there. Thanks to our sponsor Employment Hero - https://employmenthero.com 00:00 Intro 02:58 Intuit launches a business credit card 08:57 QuickBooks lets Claude and ChatGPT send the invoice 17:15 Dext Payments comes to QuickBooks Online 23:33 ApprovalMax bundles everything and puts the price up 29:54 Allica Bank launches Cashew 36:15 Sage and GoCardless add pay by bank 40:26 Telleroo will pay interest on the money sitting in the account 45:33 589 votes and the demand never arrived 50:09 Outro

Almost half of UK firms say they plan to spend up to £100,000 on AI this year. John Toon runs the numbers on what that actually buys and does not believe a word of it. Indi, John Toon and Eriona Bajrakurtaj work through a month where the same question keeps surfacing from different directions. If software can file it, who checked it? In the US, CLA has partnered with Digits to build and train its own model on its client base and workflows, which raises the question UK firms are starting to ask out loud about their own ledger. Sage put the review layer question in a room with a round table on embedded accounting, picking up the campaign Lucy Cohen has been running in public. And FreeAgent has enabled MTD quarterly filing from the mobile app, which is the right call for a mobile-first cohort and removes a piece of friction that was arguably doing a job. Also in this one: Lord Vallance takes the chair of a new AI taskforce while funding comes out of other science, more than 120 millionaires ask to be taxed more, and the small business employment figures show a labour market that no longer looks national. Plus product updates from MIMO and Katana. This episode sponsored by Fishbowl - https://www.fishbowlinventory.com/en-gb Chapters 00:00 Welcome, and what is in this episode 03:17 CLA is training its own model rather than buying one 10:36 Lucy Cohen and the review layer nobody has built 17:55 What UK firms are actually spending their AI budget on 24:26 A new AI taskforce, and the models we do not own 29:24 More than 120 millionaires ask to be taxed more 37:43 Small business employment and twelve labour markets 42:52 Mimo launches VAT review 45:10 Katana MCP goes live, Amazon FBM arrives natively 46:14 FreeAgent brings MTD filing to mobile 49:08 Wrap

John Toon is joined by Ian Gregory of Advancetrack and Billie McLoughlin to work through July's accounting tech news, and it turns into a run of arguments about what a general ledger is actually for. Billie opens on the batch newly certified for the Xero App Store. Garfield, the UK's first SRA-regulated AI law firm, reads your Xero data, chases overdue invoices and drafts small claims paperwork for amounts up to £10,000. Autohive is a no-code AI agent that works inside Xero itself. That second one sets up her argument for the episode: firms may be about to stop shopping for tools and start shopping for workers, where you pick the task and the most qualified agent surfaces against it. John is not convinced that reduces the number of apps you end up running, and Ian asks the question nobody has answered yet, which is whether we adapt to Xero's workflows or Xero adapts to ours. Then the leadership news. Xero's CTO Rick Carragher leaves after 16 months, weeks after chief people officer Jeff Ryan went after 15, with Madhuri Dhulipala arriving from BlackRock as SVP of Engineering, Payments and AI Transformation and Maninder Sawhney joining from Adobe as chief business officer. Ian reads the payments hire as a signal about where Xero wants to sit in agentic payments, and makes the point that the future of receipts is the future of bookkeeping. Billie's concern is more practical. If the people who promised you a roadmap leave, does the promise leave with them? Then the ledger layer. FreeAgent now connects directly to Joiin for group consolidation, Acumatica has bought Vertrax to get into fuel and energy distribution, and Crunchafi has launched FRS 102 lease accounting for the UK and Ireland. Ian's line on the Vertrax deal is the sharpest of the episode: this is the operational detail a generic ledger does not understand, and a generic AI agent will not magically invent. Which leads to the argument the episode was always heading for. Someone vibe coded their way off premium accounting software over a weekend and wrote it up on AccountingWEB. Billie is not making her own butter just because butter has gone up, and she puts a number on the Saturday it cost him. Ian reckons it goes the way of open source, a niche for the dabblers and nothing mission critical. John has vibe coded a product himself and is still paying outside experts to check it before anyone touches it. Also covered: the Social Prosperity Network's plan to replace six taxes with a single national contribution, and the progress update on HMRC's Transformation Roadmap, where digital engagement is up and so, awkwardly, is the tax gap. This episode is brought to you by FreeAgent and Suitefiles: freeagent.com suitefiles.com 00:00 Intro 02:17 Xero's July app store intake: an AI law firm and no-code agents 08:38 Xero loses its CTO, and what the BlackRock hire signals 12:33 The chief people officer exits too, and a new chief business officer arrives 17:10 FreeAgent users can now connect straight to Joiin 20:55 Acumatica buys Vertrax and moves deeper into fuel distribution 23:27 Crunchafi brings FRS 102 lease accounting to the UK and Ireland 26:28 Someone vibe coded their way off premium accounting software 34:11 Replacing six taxes with a single national contribution 45:21 Outro

Ryan Pearcy is joined by Kevin Fitzgerald and Leigh Stallard for a bumper week of accounting tech news, and a period close nobody can stop talking about. Starling has rolled out expense cards, ringfenced spending spaces and read-only access for bookkeepers and accountants. Kevin sees a bank pulling small business finance workflow into the banking platform, and wonders what comes next, because it does not feel like a bank would do expenses and then stop. Leigh names who just lost their lunch, and why being a bank is one of the few moats left standing. Microsoft has taught Copilot in Excel repeatable skills, so a team can define the steps for a model, a close or a variance analysis once and have it run the same way twice. Leigh reckons Microsoft has given up trying to kill Excel and started building where everyone already is. Ryan is more excited than he expected to be, with one caveat: most firms have not written their workflows down yet. Sage is embedding its accounting technology inside Satago, opening invoice finance to sole traders and micro businesses. Leigh has history here and talks through the revenue-per-customer logic, and why adoption decides whether any of it ever gets seen. Kevin's read is that this is a new financial service rather than a workflow improvement, and the open question is who the customer thinks they are dealing with. Then the close. Puzzle has brought AI Close to accountants with what it calls programmatic accounting, and Pilot has launched Meridian, which it says runs month end from start to finish. Ryan makes the case for AI-native ledgers being the real battleground. Kevin questions whether the standalone players survive it. Leigh has a warning for any firm buying these tools without first telling the team what they will be doing instead. Ryan brings Employment Hero's AI Paradox research, 8,800 business leaders and employees across four markets, which found the most AI-heavy businesses hiring the most people rather than the fewest. That runs into the skills gap underneath it, whether AI skills belong on a job spec at all, and how you would ever vet them. Also covered: Inscope's agentic disclosure checklist and its agent Penny, Socket wiring won proposals straight into Sodium, Content Snare adding FuseSign and Annature signing, and Joiin's Q2 release with AI agents, live Stripe data and drill-down to individual transactions. We also hear from our sponsor, Advancetrack! www.advancetrack.com Chapters 00:00 Intro 04:04 Ad break 04:42 Starling adds expense cards and read-only access for accountants 08:35 Copilot in Excel learns your close, one skill at a time 12:53 Sage embeds its accounting technology inside Satago 17:06 Puzzle brings AI Close to accountants with programmatic policies 20:48 Inscope launches an agentic disclosure checklist 23:35 Pilot launches Meridian and claims it closes the books end to end 26:49 Win the work in Socket, run the client in Sodium 28:38 Employment Hero finds AI-heavy businesses hiring the most people 40:35 Content Snare adds FuseSign and Annature signing 42:41 Joiin's Q2 release brings AI agents and live Stripe data 49:08 Outro

In this episode of Digi-Tools in Accrual World, host Indi is joined by global accounting-tech heavyweights Heather Smith (dialling in from a beautiful corner of the UK Cotswolds) and With Kendrick Hair Chief Evangelist at Fishbowl (live from the US). Together, the team tears down the massive wave of announcements out of Xerocon London and digs into the platform's aggressive structural shift under CEO Sukinder Singh Cassidy. Initially Kendrick Hair and Heather talked about FishBowl, the inventory solution. The sweet spot for Fishbowl is businesses that need real traceability: food, pharmaceutical, chemists, advanced manufacturing, not your retail or tradie style inventory. 2026 shall see Fishbowl focus on their AI first online platform, which includes an Agent called Juno that helps users manage operations, and gain insights into the numbers. We dive deep into Xero Ultra, the brand-new plan aimed at the "messy middle"—scaling businesses with 20-200 employees who need multi-entity reporting and predictive cash flows without the massive price tag of a traditional enterprise ERP move. The team also breaks down Xero’s massive leap into "Accountable Intelligence." With Xero crossing the 5-million customer milestone, we look at JAX (automated document capture replacing decade-old OCR technology), real-time automatic bank reconciliation, and Xero Force—a game-changing, no-code environment for accountants to build custom AI agents using natural language. Finally, we discuss the ripple effects across the ecosystem, from Dext CEO Sabby Gill’s viral LinkedIn post on why they skipped sponsoring the event, to the realities of implementing Silicon Valley-style performance cultures in the accounting tech space. This episode is brought to you by The Loop and sponsored by Employment Hero. Switch to an AI-powered platform that actually takes the pain out of manual HR and payroll admin. Learn more at employmenthero.co.uk. Chapter Markers 00:00 - Welcome & Episode Intro: Global Tech Roundup with Heather and Kendrick 01:45 - Ecosystem Spotlights: Deep-diving into niche cloud tracking and regional jurisdictional differences 03:42 - FIshbowl Inventory Update 06:22 - Sponsor Break: Employment Hero 07:12 - Post-Conference Reflections: The evolution of Xerocon London 08:35 - Xero goes agentic, and hits five million customers doing it 10:10 - The New Toolkit: Breaking down JAX, Smart Document Capture, and Xero Force agents 11:58 - Xero builds a Lite-ERP tier for the businesses it keeps losing 14:15 - The Mid-Market Shift: Managing transaction limits, consolidation, and the "messy middle" subscription gap 18:50 - Corporate Culture & App Relations: Debating Sabby Gill’s Dext announcement and Xero’s internal "trim down" 23:10 - Closing Thoughts & Post-Show Banter

Recorded live from day two of Xerocon London. Xero opened the show with two solid hours of announcements. Xero Force, the Ultra plan, smart data capture, JAX and a big push on the rise of the builder. Most of it is in beta and lands later in the year. So we spent two days in the hall asking the people it lands on what they actually made of it. The centrepiece is our interview with Kate Haywood, MD of Xero UK. We put it to her straight. The accounting and bookkeeping channel arguably is not as important to Xero's revenue as it once was, so does there need to be a bit more honesty about where accountants and bookkeepers sit in the hierarchy? She did not dodge it. "They are fundamentally important to us at Xero, and especially here in the UK." We also pushed her on the ecosystem. When Xero ships data capture, invoice chasing and reporting, it starts competing with the app partners who built on top of it. Kate says Xero is an open ecosystem led by what is right for the customer, and that if you try and build everything you end up building nothing. The vendors are less relaxed about it. Daniel Rock of SuiteFiles reckons "there's a lot of app vendors that will feel very squeezed". David Tuck of Mayday is delighted, because the Ultra plan points straight at his market. Jordan Vickery of Vinyl says nobody is running scared, which was disappointingly uncontroversial of him. Reuben from Briefcase wishes more people were trying to do what they do. The accountants are warier. Plenty of hope in the room, not much validation yet. Stuart Hurst points out that JAX launched two years ago and not a great deal has happened. Sharon, ten Xerocons in, says this one felt different, because Xero has become a bigger and more corporate establishment and it is "lacking a little bit of the human side". David from Youtopia goes further. "I don't think people actually implement anything from these shows." Featuring David Tuck (MayDay), Daniel Rock (SuiteFiles), Vipul Sheth (AdvanceTrack), Jordan Vickery (Vinyl), Reuben (Briefcase), Kate Haywood (Xero UK), Jim, Ravi, Sharon, Stuart Hurst, Will, David (Youtopia) and Sam. Is Xero still building for accountants, or around them? Chapters 00:00 Cold open 00:37 Live from day two. The party, the slide and the design lab 07:06 David Tuck, Mayday. The Ultra plan 08:32 Daniel Rock, SuiteFiles. Who gets squeezed 09:46 Vipul Sheth, AdvanceTrack. The proof is in the pudding 11:10 Jordan Vickery, Vinyl. Is anyone running scared? 12:22 Reuben, Briefcase. AI native, and welcoming the competition 13:28 Kate Haywood, MD of Xero UK. The full interview 47:11 Jim. Hope, but not much validation 48:35 Ravi. JAX, and small steps with AI 49:49 Sharon. Ten Xerocons, and a missing human side 51:24 Stuart Hurst. Best in years, but Dext and Chaser look nervous 52:47 Will. It all looks good. Now show us it working 54:07 David, Youtopia. Nobody implements anything 55:39 Sam. First Xerocon 56:55 Wrap up

John Toon is joined by Alastair Barlow and Vipul Sheth of Advancetrack for the accounting tech and fintech news that actually matters. They open on Cortea, the Berlin audit AI startup that has raised over £10m from Dawn Capital, with Larry Bradley, the former global head of audit at KPMG, in as an angel investor. It sells Audit Quality Agents that check reports, disclosure notes and financial statements before sign-off. John is not convinced that is where audits actually fail, and reckons any time saved gets sold straight back out as more audit work. Alastair makes the point that sets up the whole episode: vendors are taking more and more of the workflow, but nobody is taking the liability. You do 99.9% of the checks this month, then 99.9% of that next month, and one day you look up and you are barely checking anything. Then HMRC's timely payments consultation, which would move income tax self assessment towards in-year collection through payroll from April 2029. John thinks the outrage is misplaced, on the grounds that the money was never the client's to spend. Alastair counters that a real working capital squeeze is coming for businesses that have grown used to holding the cash. Vipul settles it with a story about a Range Rover on the drive. Six banks and UK Finance are working on a voluntary digital verification service, letting customers prove their name, age and address from inside their banking app. It could take a lot of friction out of client onboarding, if the regulators get behind it. It also raises the liability question again, because somebody has to carry the can when the bank has your client's old address. On e-invoicing, 2029 is looking crowded. MTD, e-invoicing, timely payments and Companies House reform are all landing in the same window, and John wants VAT simplification to come as part of the deal. He also asks the question nobody has answered: when you receive an e-invoice and it is wrong, what actually happens next? Also covered: Digits deepens its partnerships with Ignition, Karbon and Reach Reporting, which Alastair reads as a signal it wants to work with firms rather than around them. Croner Intelligence goes on general release, built only on Croner's own decades of guidance, which opens up a good argument about what a moat even is now the barrier to building software has collapsed. AccountsIQ and GoCardless launch a native integration. Socket adds Forms. And the ICAEW rounds up AI agents behaving badly, including the coding agent that deleted a car rental firm's entire database and put them out of action for a week. Chapters 00:00 Intro 03:00 A word from Fishbowl 04:07 Cortea raises £10m to point AI at audit quality 11:26 HMRC wants your clients' tax collected at payday 17:08 Six banks and UK Finance on a digital verification service 21:53 Peppol confirmed as the UK's e-invoicing network from April 2029 25:32 Digits partners with Ignition, Karbon and Reach Reporting 30:00 Croner Intelligence launches 37:46 AccountsIQ and GoCardless launch a native integration 39:30 Socket adds Forms 42:19 ICAEW on AI agents behaving badly 46:14 Outro

Ryan Pearcy is joined by Lara Manton of LJ Bookkeeping and Robbie from Forbes Mazars for a run through the accounting tech news that actually matters this month, with plenty of disagreement along the way. The big one close to home: The Loop has acquired the Early Adopters Hub, the community that vets new accounting tech and puts it in front of real firms before launch. Ryan has been involved since the start, and the panel gets into why that objective, critical feedback saves founders from building the wrong thing, and what it means for firms wanting to try new tools without going first alone. Then to the news everyone was waiting for. Xero is raising UK prices again from September. Ignite and Grow go up £2 a month, Comprehensive and Ultimate £5, and the discount for running multiple organisations under one bill is going away. The team debate whether the back-end development finally justifies it, and at what point firms start asking where they go from here. The one that got heated: Visa and OpenAI opening the door to AI agents making real purchases. Robbie is part petrified, part intrigued, Lara wants to know who carries the can when an agent buys the wrong thing, and Ryan makes the case for agents drafting payments that a human still approves. Ryan also runs through April, May and June's Xero App Store additions in one go, from Lemon Booking and Juice to AI reporting tools like Aleph and Sterling, plus 445, which came through the Early Adopters Hub. Also covered: Engager's new relationship types and filed job status, FYI's Automation Import Wizard, Briefcase adding paperwork and bank statement chasing, and Gusto's oddly out-of-lane AI agents for winning clients. Chapters 00:00 Welcome and what's on the agenda 03:13 The Loop acquires the Early Adopters Hub 08:37 Xero raises UK prices again from September 15:30 Xero App Store: April, May and June's new apps 20:38 AI agents can now make purchases (Visa and OpenAI) 25:25 Engager adds relationship types 28:16 FYI launches its Automation Import Wizard 32:30 Briefcase adds paperwork and bank statement chasing 35:50 Gusto's out-of-lane AI agents for firms 39:20 Wrap-up: The Loop Awards and Accountex North

John Toon is joined by guest presenters Billie McLoughlin and Kendrick Hair to work through the month's accounting tech and fintech news, with plenty of disagreement along the way. The headline story is Digits, which published a benchmark claiming its bookkeeping agent hit 97.8% accuracy against 79.1% for outsourced human accountants. Billie is quick to raise an eyebrow at a vendor grading its own homework, while John questions whether firms even have a way to measure their own staff's accuracy. Kendrick reframes it as a capacity and delivery story rather than an AI one, and warns it could be dangerous for the app partners that sit around the ledger. Adfin's new customer agents move payment chasing and collections onto autopilot, though Billie flags the educational gap for firms that are not ready to use them. Starling gets a going over too, after the bank added an accountant partner portal following criticism of its "make bookkeeping a breeze" pitch and Lucy Cohen's response. On the tools that quietly help, Kendrick makes the case for Vinyl's email integration, which drafts client follow-ups straight after a meeting and solves a workflow problem rather than an intelligence one. Billie walks through SuiteFiles' new Outlook add-in, which files emails and attachments to the right client folder without leaving the inbox. Profit and loss filing is back on the agenda for small companies and micro-entities from April 2028, with an opt-out from publishing on the public register. John, a big supporter of the original plan, argues the opt-out defeats the point, while Billie hears small business owners worried about handing rivals their trade secrets. The episode closes on HMRC's move to stop firms sharing sign-in details and using screen-scraping and automation tools to reach agent services accounts. John, who sits on an HMRC advisory panel, calls it a bit of a mess and warns practices relying on these tools for July payment-on-account reminders are first in the firing line. Also covered: Inflo and HubSync's partnership linking digital audit data into tax workflows, Penfold's place in Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 EMEA, and Employment Hero research showing UK full-time employment costs up 10% in a year and the shift towards contractors. This episode is sponsored by Advancetrack, which provides outsourced accounting and tax resourcing for firms, giving practices access to trained teams that integrate with their own workflow. advancetrack.com Chapters 00:00 Intro: The Loop, the Early Adopters Hub and what's new 04:40 Digits says its AI now books better than humans 14:52 Adfin's customer agents for payments and collections 17:52 Starling adds an accountant partner portal 22:50 Vinyl drafts client follow-ups minutes after meetings 25:48 P&L filing returns for small companies in 2028 29:12 SuiteFiles launches an Outlook add-in 32:01 Inflo and HubSync partner on digital audit and tax 33:51 Penfold makes Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 EMEA 36:00 Employment costs up 10% and the contractor shift 39:53 HMRC clamps down on shared logins and screen-scraping 48:47 Wrap-up

ohn Toon, Eriona Bajrakurtaj, and Leigh Stallard cover FYI's first AI features, two separate Xero conversations, BrightPay Oscar, Sodium, Record OS and the Maple Review. FYI has added its first AI features, built around the existing automation layer rather than added on top as a chatbot. Firms that have properly embedded the product will benefit most. It runs on AWS Bedrock, which doesn't retain data or train models, which the hosts consider important for client confidentiality. Xero comes up twice. First, incremental bank rec improvements: view, add and delete files and change account codes in the reconcile screen, search by payment reference, and upload multiple files through the accounting app. Then a more uncomfortable story: Xero sent an email to all users saying "your Xero numbers are now in Claude," which alarmed a lot of people. The hosts work through what the integration actually means, who owns client data when it flows through a third-party LLM, and what the GDPR implications are. John explains the difference between read-only MCP connections and write access, using the example of a US marketing company whose entire database was deleted by Claude Code overnight. Eriona raises what happens when Xero moves from sharing insights to taking actions - she has already seen Claude ask to take control of her computer mid-session. BrightPay's Oscar gets a revisit after Accounting Web covered early adopter feedback. Mark Francis of Francis Bookkeeping Solutions reported that onboarding which previously took one to two weeks now takes five to ten minutes. Eriona is cautious about how this translates for small-client practices where the business owner, not an HR team, is handling the process. Leigh then covers Sodium adding billing and walks through the commercial logic: a slice of payment processing interchange could nearly double their average revenue per customer. John uses it to open a debate on why practice management has never been solved - and all three agree it probably never will be. Record OS has launched publicly after raising £2 million in pre-seed funding. The model pairs AI data capture with a qualified tax professional reviewing the return before submission, priced at £125 for a standard self-assessment filing. Eriona's concern is whether the economics hold when cases get complex. John is more optimistic, arguing it represents a shift from human capital cost to product cost in compliance work. Leigh adds the sharpest point: Record OS is one government policy change away from not having a business model, and the same risk applies to any practice built mainly on compliance. Also covered: FreeAgent's new landlord statement upload feature ahead of MTD; Plaid opening its MCP server to AI agents for bank feed diagnostics, with Eriona and John debating how comfortable they are with AI that close to financial infrastructure; Brief's latest update, including a UI overhaul, AI client profiles, two-way client scoring and automated group check-ins; and the Maple Review, a government report on barriers to entrepreneurship in the UK. All three back its recommendations on financial and business education in schools, and Xero gets a namecheck for supporting the report. 00:00 Intro and Disruptor Awards 01:54 Episode preview 02:52 Check-ins 06:35 FYI: First AI features 09:52 Xero: Bank rec improvements 11:45 Xero meets Claude: Data, privacy and agentic risk 15:09 BrightPay Oscar: AI employee onboarding 18:58 Sodium: Practice management and billing 24:30 FreeAgent: Landlord statement upload 26:19 Plaid: AI agents and bank feed diagnostics 28:23 Brief: Client relationships, scoring and check-ins 31:48 Record OS: Self-assessment productised 38:13 The Maple Review 46:12 Outro

Indi and Ryan are joined by Kevin Fitzgerald covering VAT workflow improvements, AI payroll onboarding, the month-end close race, and a blunt conversation about why most accounting professionals still are not using AI at all. FreeAgent has shipped VAT return improvements timed to the April 2026 MTD rollout for sole traders and landlords. Kevin notes that FreeAgent's position within NatWest Group gives it a natural route to compliance ownership of the SMEs it serves. Ryan observes that FreeAgent and Sage are now competing on functionality that Xero and Intuit have largely left behind as they moved upmarket. Dext has added Core Guidance to AI Assist, a pre-configured library of compliance-aligned bookkeeping rules that firms can activate per client without any setup work. Indi argues that setup friction has been the real enemy of AI adoption, and Ryan, despite being the self-declared cynic, concedes it is a strong release. The conversation turns to a harder question: if firms are training the Dext engine through their own decisions, are accountants teaching the software vendor how to do their job? Bright has launched Oscar, an AI onboarding agent that contacts new starters via WhatsApp, collects P45s, bank details and right-to-work documents, and passes everything to BrightPay for review. A process that takes up to seven days is reduced to 1.5 hours. Kevin questions whether that saving justifies packaging as a chargeable service. Ryan challenges the WhatsApp security model before the source article confirms the interaction sits behind a Bright login. Kevin also explains how Employment Hero is building Hero AI, with compliance agents that can read employment contracts and surface risk across the business. MIMO has extended Associate into bank and balance sheet reconciliation. Indi explains the logic: to make its receivables financing work downstream, MIMO needed the upstream data layer to be reliable first. Ryan notes that period close is the story everyone in accounting tech is chasing, and the question is not who gets there first but who builds it well enough to change how accountants work. Kevin leads a direct conversation on the AI skills gap. Fifty-eight per cent of finance departments report skills gaps, 19% of accounting professionals use AI daily, and 70% have never used AI at work. Ryan offers four structural reasons: productivity targets that penalise learning time, the cost and data sensitivity of paid tools, centralised training cultures that resist independent exploration, and a shortage of accounting-specific AI guidance. Also covered: Zoho Books is bringing a summer roadshow to six UK cities covering MTD, corporation tax and AI for practices. Ryan highlights Trove, a bootstrapped Xero credit control app launched in late 2024, claiming a 60% reduction in overdue invoices. This episode is supported by Employment Hero, an AI-powered HR, payroll and recruitment platform for UK businesses. employmenthero.co.uk This episode is also supported by SuiteFiles, practice management and document automation software for accounting firms. suitefiles.com 00:00 Welcome to Digi-Tools in Accrual World 02:53 FreeAgent updates its VAT workflow as MTD for Income Tax goes live for the first wave of users 05:31 Dext adds a compliance-aligned baseline to AI Assist 11:51 Zoho Books brings a free summer roadshow to six UK cities for practices 14:27 Bright launches Oscar, an AI payroll onboarding agent that works via WhatsApp 19:49 Bright's CTO on why the firm mapped compliance workflows before shipping any AI 27:54 MIMO extends Associate into bank and balance sheet reconciliation 32:58 Trove cuts overdue invoices by 60% for early Xero adopters 36:05 SuiteFiles launches AI Smart Templates to automate placeholder field recognition 38:14 Only one in five accountants use AI daily.

Ryan Pearcy and Indi Tatla cover a big week in accounting tech, from Starling's contested MTD launch to Intuit cutting 3,000 jobs and Xero's push to own the workflow layer. Starling Bank launched Accounting Essentials in March, a free bookkeeping and MTD submission tool for sole traders and landlords built on its acquisition of Ember. Indi walks through Lucy Cohen's analysis, which found 18% of entries in a fully reconciled ledger had no corresponding bank entry for the same period. That raises serious questions about what happens when AI-categorised bank data is the primary input for MTD submissions. Ryan notes that Starling had built a strong accountant partner channel and the "job done" framing has damaged those relationships. Neither host disputes the product's convenience. Both dispute that convenience is the same thing as accuracy. Xero has announced XeroForce, a no-code agent builder that lets practices describe repeatable processes in plain English and run them as automated workflows across clients and connected apps. The ambition is to shift Xero from the ledger layer to the workflow layer, with audit trails and sign-off controls across an entire client base. Indi is sceptical about how it performs against messy real-world data and edge-case tax rules. Ryan raises whether XeroCon might be where Xero fills in the technical detail. Intuit has cut around 3,000 roles, 17% of its global workforce, across QuickBooks, TurboTax, Credit Karma and Mailchimp, announcing the cuts on the same day it raised its full-year revenue guidance. Indi frames it as AI shifting from feature roadmap to operating model, and notes that Intuit has a history of testing "you don't need an accountant" messaging in other markets before the UK. Also covered: Starling adds Tap to Pay via Adyen; Bokio exits the UK on 30 June with six weeks notice to users; Sage Copilot now included in Sage Business Cloud Accounting at no extra charge; Ignition launches beta integrations with Vinyl and FYI; a correction on Xero Workpapers access when clients disconnect; and Xero practitioner awards are not running in the UK this year. 00:00 Welcome to the Digi-Tools in Accrual World podcast 03:55 Starling says 'job done' on Making Tax Digital. Accountants have thoughts. 11:17 Starling adds Tap to Pay via Adyen, extending its accounting suite to contactless payments 13:10 XeroForce: Xero launches a no-code AI agent builder for financial workflows 19:18 Bokio exits the UK on 30 June, giving users six weeks to save their data 22:12 Intuit cuts 3,000 jobs and signs deals with Anthropic and OpenAI 25:42 Sage Copilot now available to all Sage Business Cloud Accounting users at no additional charge 27:40 Ignition launches Vinyl and FYI integrations 31:00 Xero Workpapers Correction 32:40 Xero practitioner awards skip the UK in 2026, with the programme running in other regions 36:33 Rate, Subscribe and Nominate for the Digital Disruptor Awards

Indi Tatla, Ryan Pearcy and guest host Alastair Barlow are in the chair this week, with John Toon taking the week off. The episode opens fresh from Accountex, comparing notes on the talks, the vendors and what the arrival of a dedicated FD show on the floor might mean for the direction of the market. The Xero conversation is substantial, and not entirely kind. Alastair, who built his firm on Xero, gives a candid view of a product he thinks is well-intentioned but slow and lacking cohesion. The team work through a refreshed app navigation, Xero Coaches launching in the US, the new benchmarking tool built on Sift Analytics data, and the replacement of Xero HQ with Partner Hub from 15 June. Ryan's concern about Coaches is pointed: he does not want Xero going the way of QuickBooks Live, where Intuit's move into the advisory space caused serious conflict with the accountant community in the US. Alastair covers Socket's new feature, which ingests a call transcript from any note-taker and produces a first-draft client proposal with a confidence rating on each point. Indi is broadly positive but flags that AI note-takers still miss commercial nuance, so the 20% that matters most still needs human judgment. Ryan runs through the Intuit Enterprise Suite spring 2026 update: inter-company eliminations, enhanced board reporting, Workforce Elite for HCM and deeper WIP reporting for construction. The team read it as Intuit pushing hard into mid-market territory. Indi takes both Sage stories. On the expanded MTD IT agent she argues the tool's complexity partly reflects Sage's own fragmented product estate. On Steve Hare's AI trust comments, she goes further than the auditability argument: the real test will come when firms understand the margin implications of AI-native versus AI-infused pricing. Alastair closes with Hg Capital, explaining why HG Trust's share price fell even as its portfolio companies improved, and introduces Damon Anderson's a2z AI Accounting report: 300-plus apps mapped, with the argument that accountants' defensible position is liability absorption, future value sits in the orchestration layer between tools, and 80% of point solutions are barnacles on the whale. Also covered: Xero Ultra, launching in Australia in late June targeting the 20 to 200 employee segment. 00:00 Reflections on Accountex 2026 01:14 The FD Show, fractional CFOs and where the market is heading 12:14 Xero refreshes its app navigation 16:53 Xero is hiring coaches to onboard small businesses in the US 19:45 Xero launches industry benchmarking inside Analytics 24:16 Xero is replacing Xero HQ with Partner Hub from 15 June 25:43 Socket can now turn a meeting transcript into a client proposal 30:23 Intuit Enterprise Suite spring 2026: inter-company, board reporting and HCM 35:10 Sage expands its MTD IT agent with automatic client matching 41:40 Hg marks down its software fund by 9% as valuations hit a 20-year low 47:01 Sage CEO: accountants won't trust AI they can't inspect 52:41 Damon Anderson's a2z AI Accounting report 56:45 Outro

Leigh Stallard is joined by Lara Manton and Robbie White for a packed episode recorded in the wake of Accountex 2026. Between them they cover eight stories spanning practice management, bookkeeping automation, MTD, AI strategy and the long-running question of what an accountant is actually for. Duane Jackson's Sodium has moved to general availability. It is API-first, built around a single client record and designed with AI integrated from the start rather than bolted on later. Leigh frames the real challenge not as product quality but as firm inertia: practice management is the Lego wall nobody wants to dismantle, and a golden brick is only useful if someone is prepared to pull the old ones out. Lara and Robbie both know from experience how painful that process is, and the conversation turns quickly to whether AI-assisted migration might eventually lower the barrier. Apron's William AI is now generally available, having launched in beta in March. Lara walks through what it actually does: connecting to client email inboxes, extracting and categorising documents, publishing to Xero or QuickBooks, and flagging anything it is not confident about. The auto-publish toggle defaults off and needs firm-specific guidance rules to reach its potential. The beta hit 50% autonomous publish rate; the GA pitch is 90% for firms that put the configuration work in. Robbie leads on the Xero and Claude integration, which went live globally on 12 May. Early practitioner testing found it read-only, limited to account-level data and prone to missing transactions. Leigh and Lara discuss what it means that the major general ledgers are simultaneously embedding AI inside their own products and surfacing their data inside the large language models. Intuit's intelligence layer across QuickBooks covers AI-powered chat, portfolio benchmarking and a capability that appears pointed directly at end clients. Lara raises the concern that clients with incomplete books could get confident-sounding answers to questions they should be asking their accountant instead. Lara covers the QuickBooks AI-powered MTD checker, which flags duplicates, missing transactions and non-trading income sources before submission. QuickBooks claims the highest cumulative MTD pilot sign-ups during HMRC's testing period. Robbie welcomes it as a live use case rather than a theoretical one. Robbie covers Combinely, the browser-based AI co-worker backed by YC and OpenAI. Early UK adopters include Burgess Hodgson, where it handled 2,600+ tasks across December and January with a reported 75% reduction in income and expenditure creation time. Leigh raises the structural tension: a tool that sits on the periphery of a workflow is easy to adopt and equally easy to quietly drop. Lara covers FreeAgent's integration with Equali, pulling e-commerce data from Shopify into FreeAgent for reconciliation and categorisation, and notes FreeAgent's incoming Apron partnership as part of a broader push beyond its freelancer roots. The episode closes on the Accountex panel from ICAEW, ACCA and IFAC. The fat middle concern runs through the final section: AI handling transactional work, hollowing out the junior pipeline and, with it, the intuition that comes from years of doing the basics. Robbie's view is that AI will eventually learn the human stuff too. The question is what accountants do with the time that creates. Chapter list 00:00 Introduction and Overview of Topics 04:00 The Launch of Sodium: A New Practice Management Tool 08:25 Apron's William AI: Enhancing Document Management 12:44 General Ledgers and AI Strategies 23:31 QuickBooks AI-Powered MTD Checker Flags Errors Before Submission, Not After 27:18 Combinely's AI Co-Worker Handles 2,600+ Tasks in a Month for Early UK Firm Adopters 30:45 FreeAgent's E-Commerce Expansion 36:09 The Future of Accountancy: AI and Brand Perception

Indi and John are joined by Kendrick from Fishbowl, inventory and manufacturing software for businesses that have outgrown spreadsheets but aren't ready for a full ERP. Kendrick brings a US perspective to a week dominated by AI agent launches, a major tax authority investment and a string of Sage announcements. Anthropic has launched ten ready-to-run agents aimed at finance operations, covering general ledger reconciliation, statement review, journal preparation and KYC screening. The hosts debate whether these genuinely displace specialist close management tools or simply make existing model capabilities more accessible, and where the line between "human in the loop" and "human who gets sued" actually sits. Campfire has officially opened its first London office, adding VAT support and UK-specific functionality as it builds out boots on the ground ahead of the conference season. John covers the story and explains why a US ERP with existing UK clients making this move matters for the market. HMRC is rolling out 28,000 Microsoft Copilot licences with a target of 50,000, positioning itself as the world's most AI-enabled tax authority. Kendrick contrasts the approach with a far more cautious IRS, while Indi makes the point that a faster, sharper HMRC changes the maths for accountants who rely on year-end reconciliation as a safety net. Sage had a substantial week. Indi covers the expansion of its developer platform across Intacct, X3 and Sage Active, including the launch of Sage Agent Builder, an AI gateway and usage-based revenue sharing for partners. John follows with Sage's acquisition of Doyen AI, a data migration tool founded in 2024 that Sage moved quickly to bring in-house. NetSuite has released SuiteCloud Agent Skills, knowledge packages that help AI coding assistants build and customise inside NetSuite without breaking things. Kendrick, coming from the ERP world, gives his take on why guardrails in AI-assisted development matter more than the speed gains. Digits has launched an MCP server connecting its agentic general ledger to tools including Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor on a read-only basis. John and Kendrick discuss what the read-only decision signals about where Digits thinks the value of its product still sits. The episode closes with a story that cuts against the week's optimism: Google's AI overviews are serving UK users outdated government information pulled from unmaintained gov.uk pages. One example, the cost of registering a charity, returned answers ranging from free to over £183, against an actual fee of £100 online. Indi makes the case that before anyone hands autonomous agents the keys, it's worth checking whether they're working from data that should have been retired years ago. This episode is sponsored by Advancetrack, the outsourced accounting and tax service trusted by UK practices for over 20 years. 00:00 Introduction to DigiTools and Fishbowl 03:27 Claude Coming for Accountants? 10:30 Campfire opens in London 12:43 HMRC rolls out 28,000 Copilot licences 17:43 Sage expands developer platform for AI tools 26:21 Sage acquires Doyen for data transfers 28:30 NetSuite brings AI speed for SuiteCloud developers 32:11 Digits MCP expands AI utilisation 36:16 AI giving wrong Gov data to UK users 38:00 Nominate your candidates for a Digital Disruptor award!

Ryan Pearcy is joined by Eriona Bajrakurtaj from Majors Accountants and Ian Gregory, CTO of Advancetrack, for a week dominated by Intuit news, a quietly significant iplicit release and a pointed question about who controls your data as AI agents become the new interface for everything. iplicit's May 2026 release introduces AI Detect, real-time fraud and anomaly detection built into the core of the platform rather than bolted on. It flags unusual transactions, out-of-hours activity and VAT mismatches before they become problems. The same release adds 4-4-5 period support and extends AP automation with improved supplier matching and automatic VAT status flagging for non-registered legal entities. Intuit had a busy week. Eriona covers the May Accountant Suite feature drop, including proactive bank feed alerts, plain-English AI querying of live client data and a confirmed sunset date for QuickBooks Online Accountant in December. Ian picks up the Anthropic partnership, framing it less as an AI story and more as a distribution one: Intuit products are now available directly inside Claude. The panel debates whether that is a smart channel play or a quiet concession that the AI interface is winning. Eriona also covers Intuit for Education's UK launch, which kicked off with a financial literacy forum at the London Stadium with West Ham United Foundation. Only 26% of young adults in the UK say they received financial education at school. Ian covers Fivetran's Open Data Infrastructure benchmark, which names Workday, Rippling and Slack among the worst performers for data portability, and the panel debates whether regulation will eventually force openness the way open banking did. Also covered: Xero extends AI document extraction to bills with line-item capture and automatic reconciliation matching. A real-world example of Claude rebuilding a Sage invoice as a working Xero template in minutes. The NCSC's push for passkeys over passwords, and the operational headaches that creates. Ryan rounds off with Xero Small Business Insights showing sales holding firm across all five tracked markets despite the fuel crisis, with Australia leading at just under 11% growth. Sponsored by Employment Hero. AI-powered HR, payroll and recruitment that integrates with your accounting software. employmenthero.com 00:00 Introduction & Accountex Preview 06:46 Employment Hero (Sponsor) 07:25 iplicit's new AI Detect brings real-time fraud spotting to mid-market finance 13:26 Intuit pushes a wave of new Accountant Suite features as Accelerate launch looms 18:57 Intuit and Anthropic partner to bring QuickBooks data and AI agents directly inside Claude 22:00 Intuit for Education brings financial literacy programme to UK schools via West Ham partnership 27:56 Workday, Rippling and Slack named as the worst platforms for data access 30:04 Xero's AI document extraction now covers bills, with duplicate detection and auto-reconciliation 33:31 How one firm used Claude to rebuild a Sage invoice template for Xero in minutes 37:33 NCSC says passwords are done — passkeys are the way forward, but the practicalities are messier than they sound 40:01 Xero small business data: UK sales held firm in March despite the fuel crisis 🎧 Listen to our latest episode - https://digitoolsinaccrual.world/ 🔗 Follow Digital Disruptors on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/thedigitaldisruptors/ 🏆 Join the Awards waitlist - https://forms.gle/scwgDkL7Tjj56MDFA 🗞️ Subscribe to the AppNewsLetter on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7420780382737866752

Ryan Pearcy, Indi Tatla and John Toon are back together covering QuickBooks updates, a significant Active Workpapers release, and two AI stories worth your attention. QuickBooks has restructured its payroll offering into three tiers: Core for simple automated salary runs, Premium adding time tracking and self-serve tools, and Elite bringing in geo-fencing and project profitability. Indi covers Intuit Intelligence, a conversational AI built into QuickBooks that lets business owners ask questions about their own data. She makes the point that QuickBooks has always been more direct about going after the business owner than Xero — this is the latest iteration of that strategy. John adds the arrival of auto-save in invoices and estimates, though he and Ryan disagree on whether it genuinely qualifies. Tax Systems has launched an AI assistant for cross-border tax via its Loctax acquisition, covering 220 jurisdictions and drawing on verified content from the International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation. Indi's take: the biggest problem with AI in tax is not speed, it's trust. John raises the billing question — if research time drops significantly, hourly-rate firms face a difficult conversation. John covers a LinkedIn video from Daryl Aw demonstrating the use of Claude to produce financial statements. Pretty much any accountant can do this. The harder question is whether you can do it reliably at scale. Digits has moved to outcome-based pricing. Firms pay only when 95% of transactions are fully automated with no human edits. Ryan thinks they're either very confident or making a desperate growth bet. John says he'd put all his most complex clients on it and never pay a penny. Also covered: WorkGuru's Easter release with new Sales and Operations Hubs, Certinia's Veda AI engine for professional services firms, and the Digital Disruptors Awards returning at Accountex North in Manchester. Advancetrack provides outsourcing and offshoring services for accounting firms, covering bookkeeping, accounts preparation, payroll, VAT and self-assessment. www.advancetrack.com 00:00 Introduction and Nostalgia 03:54 QBO launches new payroll stack 07:04 QBO launches Intuit Intelligence 12:02 QuickBooks adds auto-save to invoices and estimates 13:26 WorkGuru releases major Easter update 16:31 Ryan's AI reluctance 18:01 Active Workpapers drops April UK release 21:25 Nostalgia Trip 22:52 Tax Systems targets cross-border tax with verified AI 28:37 Wrap-Up and Community Engagement 29:37 Daryl Aw demonstrates building financial statements with Claude 33:30 Certinia launches Veda, an AI operations engine for professional services firms 36:54 Digits bets its revenue on whether its AI actually works 41:54 Register for the Digital Disruptor Awards