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 Stretches Up, Trims Down | Be In The Loop

    In this episode of Digi-Tools in a Cruel World, host Indi is joined by global accounting-tech heavyweights Heather Smith (dialling in from a beautiful corner of the UK Cotswolds) and Kendrick Hair (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. 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 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

  2. 6d ago ·  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

  3. 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

  4. 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

  5. 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

  6. 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

  7. Jun 15

    What the AI adoption numbers actually mean for your practice

    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.

  8. Jun 8

    Starling Says 'Job Done.' The Accountants Disagree.

    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

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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.

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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