Ryan Pearcy, Heather Smith and Leigh Stallard return for Season 3 of Digi-Tools in Accrual World, covering the biggest stories in accounting tech this week.

Xero has launched a new accounts production workflow in partnership with BGL, bringing year-end workpapers directly into the platform. Heather reports from Australia, where the feature has been live for some time, and flags a data access issue that UK firms need to know about before they rely on it.

Xero has also announced a multi-year partnership with Anthropic, the company behind Claude. The announcement has generated significant discussion in the profession, not least because Xero previously stated that JAX would not provide financial advice. The new partnership appears to suggest otherwise. Ryan, Heather and Leigh examine what that means for accountants, who carries the liability, and whether AI becoming the default interface puts the underlying ledger at risk of becoming irrelevant.

US accounting platform Aiwyn has embedded its tax product inside Claude, allowing users to generate a 1040 tax return through the AI interface via an MCP-style connection. The hosts debate whether building core workflows on top of an LLM is a sound strategy right now, and whether the product will still be differentiated in two years once the base models catch up.

NetSuite used its Suite Connect London event to shift the conversation from co-pilot to autopilot, outlining plans for autonomous period close through its NetSuite Next platform. Leigh invokes Jurassic Park. Ryan pushes back with a transactions-first argument. Neither of them is entirely wrong.

Also covered: TaxNav launches Navi, a green furry MTD mascot of questionable necessity; TaxCalc Engager announces a collaboration with Virtual Cabinet and Workiro to embed document management into tax and accounts workflows; and Xero's credit note bank rec update gets more credit than the headlines suggest.

Chapters

00:00 Intro

02:22 Xero Accounts Production

06:09 Xero Credit Note Bank Rec

09:47 Xero and Anthropic

18:33 Aiwyn Tax inside Claude

23:31 NetSuite Autopilot

30:39 Navi launched to simplify MTD conversations

34:33 TaxCalc integrates with Workiro and Virtual Cabinet

35:58 Functional Updates from Xero