Digi-Tools In Accrual World

Indi Tatla, Ryan Pearcy, John Toon
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The go-to place for all things cloud accounting and digital. Find out the latest in accounting app news and exclusive interviews with cloud pioneers in the accounting industry.

  1. 2d ago

    Xero's C-Suite Churn, FreeAgent x Joiin and Vibe Coding the Ledger || In The Loop

    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

  2. Jul 27

    Starling Expense Cards, Copilot Skills in Excel, Pilot Meridian and Puzzle AI Close || In The Loop

    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

  3. Jul 20

    Xero Stretches Up, Trims Down | Be In The Loop

    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

  4. Jul 16 ·  Bonus

    Xerocon London special: Are accountants and the ecosystem still important to Xero?

    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

  5. Jul 14

    What HMRC's timely payments plan, Peppol e-invoicing and AI audit tools mean for your firm || In the Loop

    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

  6. Jul 6

    Would You Hand Your Client's Card to an AI?

    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

  7. Jun 29

    We Bought the Bridge | Robots Beat the Humans (?!) | Be in the Loop.

    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

  8. Jun 22

    Practice management, data privacy and why the Maple Review matters for accountants

    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

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About

The go-to place for all things cloud accounting and digital. Find out the latest in accounting app news and exclusive interviews with cloud pioneers in the accounting industry.

Information

  • Creator
    Indi Tatla, Ryan Pearcy, John Toon
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    100
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2025 Digi-Tools in Accrual World Limited. All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    Digi-Tools In Accrual World

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