Digi-Tools In Accrual World

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.

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

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 centrepiece is our interview with Kate Haywood, MD of Xero UK. We

We also pushed her on the ecosystem. When Xero ships data capture,

The vendors are less relaxed about it. Daniel Rock of SuiteFiles reckons

The accountants are warier. Plenty of hope in the room, not much

Featuring David Tuck (MayDay), Daniel Rock (SuiteFiles), Vipul Sheth

Is Xero still building for accountants, or around them?

Chapters

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.

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