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 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

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 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

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