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