No studio again this week. John Toon and Indi Tatla took the microphone round day two of the Digital Accountancy Show at ExCeL and sat down with the vendors on the floor, one at a time, to hear what they are shipping.

Dext gets two chairs. Sabby Gill, fresh from Dext Insiders Day, explains how three separate systems (Receipt Bank, Xavier Analytics and Greenback) became one platform, why everything starts with the source data, and why he thinks the system of record now comes second to the experience a business has with its numbers. Asked about the doomsday clock that says accountants are done by 2028, he gives the Y2K answer: nothing happened then either. Paul Lodder picks up the product detail with John: AI Assist, the new AI connectors to ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot, the delayed index and time-spent-per-document insights, and an optimisation score on the way. John asks the VAT question nobody likes answering, and they get into whether the general ledger is becoming a repository rather than a place you work.

Stu McEwan at FreeAgent says MTD numbers have doubled what they expected, with 200 to 300 of HMRC’s 700 beta testers running a full year end through FreeAgent, and unrepresented customers getting on with it better than anyone predicted. Tracking groups and management reports are the move upmarket. “Not AI native, but AI in it.”

Paul Sparkes from iplicit talks through the all-new UI and a single prompt inside the software, and why iplicit is a restaurant rather than a sweetie shop when it comes to AI and your data. Chris Downing shows Indi Sage Period Review: the Sage ledger consumed by banking partners, Tide first, so a sole trader categorises in their banking app and the accountant reviews, fixes and files from Sage for Accountants with no bank feed to set up. Indi’s question: when did Sage turn into such a speedboat?

Tushir Patel at Capium has gone from baby steps to adolescence, with Capium 365 as the data capture layer for sole traders and landlords and a largest client running about 20,000 clients through the system. Henrik Grim at Mimo has spent 18 months all in on Mimo Associate, agents for the financial close that sit on top of whatever ledger a firm already runs. His bet is the shift from doing the work to reviewing it. Asked if accounting ends in 2028, his answer is one word.

Jonathan Gaunt from Socket, Release of the Year at the Disruptor Awards, wants deeper handoffs into Senta, FYI and Karbon, runs Socket through Claude himself, and thinks MTD is battleships waiting to sink practices that are not charging for it.

Then the microphone changes hands. Kendrick Hair from Fishbowl interviews Ryan Pearcy on the Fishbowl stand about why Ryan’s firm partners with them: 25 years of inventory and manufacturing software rebuilt for the cloud, an agent called Juno on top, and a UK inventory market that had gone quiet until someone turned up to disrupt it. Kendrick’s observation from the US side: UK business owners lean on their accountant in a way American ones don’t.

Johann Gorée closes with Engager’s latest releases (multiple addresses synced with TaxCalc, hyperlinks in checklists, dynamic date formats) and a warning about firms feeding client data into the free tier of ChatGPT. A car can do more than 70 miles an hour. That does not make it legal.

Chapters

00:00 Intro, day two at the Digital Accountancy Show 02:21 Advancetrack 02:59 Sabby Gill, Dext: the ledger comes second 11:30 Stu McEwan, FreeAgent: MTD is a numbers game 16:42 Paul Sparkes, iplicit: a restaurant, not a sweetie shop 21:53 Paul Lodder, Dext: too much time chasing clients 28:39 Chris Downing, Sage: Period Review and Tide 33:30 Tushir Patel, Capium: the dark horse in purple 38:35 Henrik Grim, Mimo: from doing to reviewing 48:03 Jonathan Gaunt, Socket: MTD is battleships 55:59 Kendrick Hair and Ryan Pearcy, Fishbowl: disrupting, not going anywhere 63:51 Johann Gorée, Engager: AI, responsibly

No studio this week. Indi Tatla and Alastair Barlow took a microphone round the Digital Accountancy Show at ExCeL London and stopped anyone who would talk to them, with Ryan Pearcy waiting at the end on The Loop stand.

Yogesh Patel opens with a phrase he had just heard on the main stage: the AI discount. If AI makes the work faster, how does a firm stop the saving going straight to the client as a lower fee? Indi then brings back the idea Dext pushed at its insider day, that the system of record does not have to be where the work happens. Alastair calls it the headless ledger, and Damon Anderson later tells us the AI-native ledger was the big story of the day, name-checking Digits, Light, Campfire, Rillet and DualEntry. He also gives the market a three to five year runway, because real firms have real people, real trust and HMRC to work with.

Paul Layte from Ascendant walks through four versions of the firm delivery model, ending with a question nobody was asking two years ago: do we need offshore at all, or can AI agents do this? Andrew Douthwaite from Alliotts, part of the Shaw Gibbs Group, talks about life after a private equity deal and what he would build with a war chest. Daniel Rock from SuiteFiles previews the new connect portals and the agentic chasing on the way, and Trent McLaren from Vinyl explains why the real gain from an AI note taker is the mental load it lifts.

Kate Hayward, Xero’s UK Managing Director, and Kendrick Hair from Fishbowl talk through a family-run yoghurt maker that has grown threefold in 18 months on Xero and Fishbowl. Kate brings the number of the day, two in five UK small businesses did not know if they were profitable last month, and news of a Xero and The Loop hackathon in November. Kendrick explains Fishbowl’s new accountant’s ledger.

Katie Hawking from TaxAssist comes off a women in accountancy panel with SilverFin and a line worth taking back to the office: be the women we want to walk behind. Ryan closes it out at The Loop stand, giving compliance four years before the way firms deliver it changes completely.

Also covered: James Howell and Dan Cockerton on putting on the show and taking it to the US and Barcelona, Phil Hobden on what Sage has been asked about Intacct and MTD, a new firm owner five months into practice, Lisa Marshall flying in from Canada and discovering FreeAgent, and why they walked straight past John Toon.

Chapters

00:00 Intro, live from the Digital Accountancy Show

01:33 Employment Hero

02:10 Yogesh Patel on the AI discount

04:50 First time at the show

06:40 Why come to DAS, and skipping John Toon

07:47 James Howell on building the show

10:16 Dext and the headless ledger

12:21 £4m in fees from LinkedIn

15:57 People and agents in one org chart

18:36 Andrew Douthwaite on PE and a war chest

24:31 SuiteFiles and agentic chasing

26:06 What Baker Tilly does differently with AI

30:56 Phil Hobden at Sage

32:56 Five months into a new practice

35:56 Fractional CFO or outsourced finance function

38:06 Dan Cockerton on DAS in the US and Barcelona

42:56 Trent McLaren, Vinyl and the mental load

45:26 Paul Layte: do we need offshore at all?

48:26 Katie Hawking: be the women we want to walk behind

52:16 Damon Anderson and the AI-native ledger

55:09 Joiin

56:16 Xero and Fishbowl: two in five didn’t know

66:40 Lisa Marshall, all the way from Canada

69:35 Ryan Pearcy: plan now or have it thrust upon you

73:25 Outro

Billie McLoughlin, Eriona Bajrakurtaj and John Toon go a little AI heavy this week, with an MCP for AML checks, a decision-making model from TypeSafe and a new AI-native ledger from Briefcase, plus a chat with its co-founder Reuben Steenkamp.

Billie welcomes Sage's free Period Review for MTD for Income Tax, and likes that Sage hasn't sold it as AI, but wishes it worked for clients on Xero, QuickBooks and FreeAgent too. Eriona expects to be asking clients the same questions every quarter regardless. John reckons the profession can be too precise, and Eriona shares the HMRC enquiry that came down to one missing £26 receipt.

Intuit has cut 17% of its workforce while revenue grew 14% and QuickBooks Online Accounting grew 23%. Eriona asks where that leaves UK accountants now the accountants' council has gone. John questions how much revenue really comes through the accounting channel, and Billie thinks price rises explain a lot of the growth.

DNA Payments has partnered with iwoca so merchants can borrow £1,000 to £1m from the DNA app. John asks whether borrowing to cover running costs is ever wise, Eriona talks business rates and 15% interest, and Billie wonders how many small businesses keep their books up to date enough for live-data lending.

Eriona welcomes Sodium's FuseSign integration and wants one core system running the work. Billie explains MCP through Firmcheck's launch alongside its FYI and Sodium integrations, and asks whether firms will let AI change AML records. Eriona wonders what happens to software brands nobody logs into, and John worries about being spread too thin.

John introduces TypeSafe's Jev, and Eriona asks how you tell a regulator "the AI did that". John then walks through Briefcase Ledger, compares it with Xero, QuickBooks and FreeAgent, and talks to Reuben Steenkamp about the launch at the Digital Accountancy Show.

Also covered: Vinyl launches calendar booking, Joiin raises €1.5m of non-dilutive growth capital from Gilion, and Caseware brings Verity agents to Excel and client requests, along with John's Angry Audit Manager.

00:00 Intro

01:12 Fishbowl

02:19 Sage Period Review for MTD

13:11 Intuit cuts 17% while revenue grows

20:42 DNA Payments and iwoca Flexi Loans

26:35 Sodium integrates FuseSign

28:16 Firmcheck launches an MCP

37:52 TypeSafe launches Jev

42:57 Briefcase launches Briefcase Ledger

53:27 Vinyl launches calendar booking

56:48 Joiin raises €1.5m

1:01:10 Caseware Verity agents for audit

1:06:43 Outro