Great SaaS updates. Maybe the greatest ever. Tremendous Features – Everyone’s Talking About Them. Beautiful.

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Digi-Tools In Accrual World podcast, the place to go for your accounting software insights and news brought to you by the Digital Instructors. And this episode is sponsored by FYI, the former document management system now moved into practice management. It's also going to be covering some interesting conversations with Xledger, the mid-tier finance solution that is

[00:00:25] there for if you're trying to outsource or provide outsourcing services for your mid-tier clients. And this week, we are missing one of our trio. We're missing Indi. She is still on holiday and I am only joined, and I say only, in a gut-wrenching kind of way by John Toon. How are you, mate? Yeah, I'm good. I'm good, thanks, Ryan. Yeah, disappointing to see that Indi is still on holiday

[00:00:53] again. I mean, it feels like she's been on holiday forever. I mean, who knows when she'll ever turn up at a pod recording ever again? But, you know, for us normal people who only go on holiday once or twice a year, you know, I'm still here, still recording. I'm enjoying the sunshine in the UK, of course, because it is glorious at the moment. And yeah, glorious, but not that warm. I've still got the

[00:01:19] heating on, which is slightly upsetting. Well, that is because you're up north. It looks like you're wearing a jumper and I'm just wearing a polo shirt. So, although we are both indoors, so that means nothing. True. I am wearing my new swag, actually, which I got after a recent trip to Amsterdam. So, yeah, very nice. Pardon? What kind of swag have you got from Amsterdam? It's a hemp shirt. No, it's...

[00:01:48] I'll be itchy, I think. It's like that. No, it's my new data sniffer top. There you go. Look, there's some free advertising data sniffer. Is there anything on the back as well or is it just on the arm? No, just on the arm and only on the left arm. So, you have to quite literally, like the dutchie, you have to pass me on the left-hand side. So, that's it. That's it. It's not built for UK roads, this. You can't stick your arm out the side of the car in the same way and advertise. Anyway, we could get lost down a rabbit hole

[00:02:18] here, I think, Ryan, if we can pursue this much longer. This is what happens when Indy is not around to keep us in check. We said this in the last episode. We need her back. Indy, please come back from holiday. It is actually quite lonely here with just us two. Yeah, unless you're a tax exile now, Indy, and then maybe you'll never come back. That's it. Just found ways to reduce her tax burden. On that note, let's jump into Act News.

[00:02:49] Awesome. Well, I'm starting with Act News. This time, a quick update from Xero. And this is pretty pleasing for me because I posted something just before DAS around MCPs, Model Context Protocols. These are the things that you need to plug into if you want to use a large language model for a piece of software. I guess the way that you would kind of think about this is it's almost like an API

[00:03:13] for a large language model. And what it does is it allows software vendors to build these MCPs, which allows an LLM to then go, right, if I was to create an invoice, for example, in Xero, how do I go about doing this? What part of the data structure do I need to go into? And the MCP would tell that effectively in its structure and its context. They're not the first to do this because I think the Adfin guys have also announced an MCP server as well. But we're going

[00:03:42] to see more and more of this for sure from a lot of the vendors in our market, partly because we know that LLMs are here to stay, but also because we know that people want to be able to interact with their software in different ways. And you can see that in the same way that APIs have allowed us to transfer data between products and plug those in, although clearly it's taken a little bit of time for maturity to come into the market. We're going to see people do the same with MCPs in terms of being

[00:04:07] able to plug something like a chat GPT direct into maybe Xero and Adfin. And then you could maybe see, you could maybe imagine a world where you say, right, hey, Xero, create an invoice that you send to Ryan for 500 pounds and please can you collect it by direct debit using Adfin. Done. Bosh. Simple as. That's the dream. That's the future that we might be getting to. It's not quite there yet. It's going to take a little bit of time for people to build this, but this is absolutely the way to go. And

[00:04:33] like I say, Xero have announced this. Really interesting, I think, is that in the context of announcing this and talking about some of the use cases of which raising invoices was one, they also talked about being able to manage and update contacts and keep those up to date more effectively, which again is another really quick way of understanding how to keep on top of your data and keep it clean. They also talked about maybe unlocking customer insights and asking the

[00:04:57] LLM questions around your, around the data that you're holding on your customers or even be able to like help correct errors and stuff where maybe bills and stuff have been miscategorized. I think it's fascinating to see that they're talking about these use cases here and yet Xero's own large language model based bot, Jax, can't perform any of these tasks at the moment and doesn't work effectively. So I wonder if maybe, just maybe, I'm going to put this out here, Ryan,

[00:05:27] maybe Xero Mothball Jacks at some point and somebody else will come along and build a better bot for them. Well, you're saying this is like a Xero Go incident where they've now got, I can't remember, Xero, it's not Xero Ledger, Xero Simple. Xero Gone. What was? Xero Gone, yeah. Go, Go, Gone. And now replaced by Xero Simple, which is effectively exactly what people needed for their small clients. And I completely agree with

[00:05:53] you. As you were talking there, John, I was thinking, it's not so much for Jax, but Xero have built a successful business around sharing and connecting with others. The Xero App Store was a huge differentiator in basically building out a successful ecosystem where you didn't have to just work with Xero, you could work with something else and then share data. And I think that's essentially what they're doing here. And it's a much better playbook. It works for them. It works

[00:06:21] for the fact they've got a huge app store with over a thousand apps that they can interact with. And so if their MCP model then encourages them to build out that app store, I think, or app store functionality, I think this is a huge move in the right direction, unlike what felt with Jax was more of a response, retaliation to others in the market. Yeah, maybe. And I mean, look, I'm not too bothered about getting into a debate about the

[00:06:49] suitability of Jax or not. But I think the one thing I will say about MCPs... You started it. I did not. You did. And one thing I would say about MCPs very quickly is that currently this is not an agreed standard issue like. So it's not an industry standard. This is something that was created by one of the LLM providers in the market. It's not like your API technology where API is an agreed and

[00:07:17] standardized protocol that people will utilize. MCP is very much new in the market. There may well be some competing equivalent models that might come in from other people. Difficult to say again, whether that will happen or not, or whether people will just aggregate and align around this MCP protocol. I think it'd be good to do that. The fact that someone like Xero have already made moves and aligned themselves with this rather than going looking for something else or building

[00:07:43] something else is a great move. And as you say, Ryan, I think what is Xero really great at? It's really great at building an ecosystem. It's really great at making sure their data is accessible to as many people as possible. I know there are question marks sometimes about the API and what you can and can't do with it, but they have demonstrated that having an open, accessible ecosystem works for everyone involved. Yes, they have. I would dispute there's a standardization of APIs. People understand what

[00:08:12] APIs, but they all differ between every product. But I get what you're saying. It's a technical standardization, I guess. Yeah, I do agree with you that not all APIs are built equally, but there is a technical standard in terms of the way that APIs work, which is standardized. And on that boring, nuanced geek thing that I've just done, let's move into a different bit of news. So Penny Lane have now reached a $2 billion investment value. They have done their Series D

[00:08:40] at $75 million, which has been co-led by Sequoia Capital, Capital G and Meritech Capital. And so since founding in 2020, they've reached a valuation of $2.2 billion, which is insane. They service over 4,500 accountancy firms covering 350,000 SMEs. Now, they're doing this all

[00:09:07] from just France. This is where they're based. This is where they focus their product. And to be able to do, I guess, quite have such a significant impact, what they're now doing, what they're utilizing this additional money for is to expand beyond that. So they're going to invest in some products. They're going to invest in their R&D, as well as building into e-invoicing, which we know

[00:09:33] it has a critical rollout in the EU, as well as what we're trying to do in the UK. But they have said they're going abroad. They are invading. And the first place they're going is Germany. So the French are going to Germany. Not really sure politically what that means. But yeah, for Penny Lane, this sounds very good. Yeah, I mean, Penny Lane are a really fascinating business sometimes, aren't they? I mean, like you

[00:10:02] say, they're a behemoth, really, when you think about it. And yet, in the UK, we barely sort of talk about them or think about them because they've never really tried to make it into this market. And yet, a $2.2 billion valuation? I mean, that's outrageous, isn't it? For something that really has just operated out of France for so long. So yeah, I mean, they've got good products. They're

[00:10:27] going to be doing some really fascinating and interesting things. And yeah, and given that the Beatles movie is about to be made, surely they should be looking for people like Paul Mescal and stuff to front up their advertising and promotional material for the next few months. That's obviously what they're going to capitalize. That's going to be where all the marketing money goes. But I think what's interesting with this, they've got a 2.2 billion valuation. Their revenue

[00:10:52] is 100 million euros at the moment. So it's quite a multiple there. You know, 22 markup? Well, more than 22 because it's euros compared to dollars. I'm not sure where the exchange rate sits now of everything that's going on, actually. So maybe it's less. Yeah. Who knows? Who knows? I mean, well, at this rate, we're going to be using Trump dollars, aren't we? So, you know, those will be worth, you know, well, basically you'll get them off a roll

[00:11:19] next to a toilet. So who knows? Definitely. Right. Moving on. Free agent have announced the release of CIS for contractors within the product. So you're now able to do CIS returns. There are one or two limitations, which I'll cover in a second. But essentially, if you have CIS bills coming into

[00:11:45] free agent, if you're a contractor, you're now able to process those from your contractors and obviously start to deal with the whole complex arrangements that are there when it comes to VAT, the tax, the charges, et cetera, et cetera. There are a number of steps that you do need to do first before you can enable this. So you do have to set up the CIS module in free agent first. You do have to make sure that your subcontractors are ticked as a subcontractor so that the CIS

[00:12:14] applies, but it knows to deal with that. And then obviously you can then start to go through the process of doing the returns, et cetera. Now, currently let's just make sure you're aware of this. Currently the CIS 300 return cannot be filed from within free agent. It's not supported, but it will be there in the not too distant future. And you do have to have full access to set up CIS. So if you're passing this out to some of your clients and haven't given them full access, you will have to

[00:12:41] create this or set this up for them or change their access settings. But once you're up and running, it's a pretty seamless process of going through there. There's eight steps that you've got to follow, which takes you all the way through the process of the setup, all the way through to filing as well. So not too complex and yeah, a great way of being able to keep on top of something that is incredibly

[00:13:06] complex when it can get a bit weird and wacky in the old CIS world. But you've also got the ability to see things like on the dashboard, track the monthly payments, the statements, et cetera, and just generally keep on top of the amounts, which is a great thing because as I said, CIS can become incredibly complex when it wants to. Yes. I mean, this is another example of free agent

[00:13:33] building out their product to rival the likes of Xero, Sage and QuickBooks Online. So great to see more developments after all of the integrations that they've been doing recently as well. I've got something from Intuit. Now it feels like it's been a bit quiet from the Intuit side for a little while, but Intuit Enterprise, which was launched last year in the UK, has been building out its offering and now features new project reporting and operation capabilities. So if you're not sure what

[00:14:02] Intuit Enterprise suite is, this is the tier above Intuit advanced. So it's moving into, I guess, that mid-tier large businesses where you are used to working in Intuit and you want to kind of, I guess, you know, you've got much larger volumes, you're much more complex and you need a more advanced system. So what they've been doing with projects. So they've got a new reporting dashboard, which

[00:14:28] consolidates all of your information across all your projects into a real-time view, tracking all your financial performance across all of those. And you can drill down to see what's going on. And as well, as you'd expect, there are AI actionable suggestions inside it. So little prompts that basically say you may want to consider this or what's going on with your projects. You need to dive into take a bit more of a deeper, deeper check. We've also got some little tweaks. You've got project

[00:14:58] expense reminders, some profitability reminders as well. And as well, well, it seems to be a whole plethora of reminders. So updates and invoices all in the same tool. So it seems to be what they're doing is taking a normal project reporting suite and trying to overlay some of their AI functionality to prompt you into tasks that you may need to complete. Now, this is something we're not really seeing in the smaller end of the products. They've promised a lot with AI across the Intuit suite.

[00:15:28] And I think that this is maybe an example of how they're going to roll it out. Bring it into the enterprise level and then drip feed it down, maybe in a lower scale. So it's prompting you to spend more money by utilizing AI tools, i.e. utilize a slightly more expensive tier of subscription, rather than just roll it out across all of their products. That is pure speculation. It's based just on what we're kind of starting to see in the news that's coming across the Intuit.

[00:15:55] So it'd be interesting to see actually if this functionality is already in the UK product, or if they're going to have to wait the standard year before it comes over from the US. I was going to ask you, precisely that actually, Ryan, and just sort of say, do you know if it's in the UK product? Because there's usually a bit of a time, like isn't there between the future releases? Yeah, as I guess with any Intuit release, it's really hard to tell if it's global instantly, or if there is a delay. It doesn't say anywhere. I'm not being able to find it. I know who will know.

[00:16:26] So I'm going to try and find that information out. And I might even do a post about it, John. Amazing. Amazing. Well, at least I can keep you in your LinkedIn habits. So it's good to hear. Yeah. TaxCalc have announced their own bridging software solution for MTD for Income Tax. It was only just announced the last, gosh, when was it? A couple of days ago. Yeah, literally last week.

[00:16:55] In anticipation of the fact that people are moving more and more towards using the beta and trying to sort of get some of their clients on board to get a feel for how MTD is going to work. So its official title is the MTD quarterly filer solution. And as I said, it is a bridging solution. So it's going to be something that connects into spreadsheets if clients want to keep their data and records on spreadsheets and allows them to make those quarterly submissions from there. And interesting, I mean,

[00:17:22] maybe we'll come back to this in a second, Ryan, but an interesting thing because I was under the impression originally when the rules for MTD for Income Tax were released that bridging software was not going to be suitable and that spreadsheets were potentially not going to be an acceptable record keeping format. But I have since read that that is no longer the case. So bridging software seems like it's going to be here to stay at least for the time being. But yeah, I think this is

[00:17:48] exciting times for TaxCout because I mean, clearly they're working on a whole bunch of different things to broaden out their software and their capabilities and capacity so that they appeal to a broader audience. And of course, they're being very successful in picking up people and moving away from things like Tax Filer, which Iris owned and mothballed fairly recently. So I know that they're busy little bees over there in Woking, picking up and developing new bits of software and picking up

[00:18:18] new clients and customers. But there's no pricing available at the moment currently for the products. Effectively, it's free to use until the MTD testing period closes, which is going to be end of April 2026. But I'm sure with most things TaxCout based, it's going to be offered at a pretty reasonable price because they tend to be pretty good on their pricing and really understand what their clients and customers

[00:18:42] value. So it's a very exciting opportunity, I think, for those who are going to be sitting in that sitting in that ecosystem. The one thing that did catch my eye just only because you posted me, that posted this on the accounting website was in the comments. One of the comments really caught my eye because they said, let me just find it now. They said, oh yeah, the way that this kind of software

[00:19:08] is referred to nowadays is poo flicker software. I was like, oh wow, that's quite bold. And it wasn't one of my comments either. So yeah, that opened my eyes. But what do you think about this whole bridging software thing in income tax? Because I know we've got it for VAT. Personally, I feel like, you know, certainly amongst our client base, it started to die a death. We had quite a few

[00:19:34] organizations and companies and businesses that started live on a bridging software for MTD for VAT. But I think, you know, I can't remember the exact number, but if we had say 50, we've probably only maybe got like four or five left on bridging software. Most of them have transitioned onto a piece of accounting software that, you know, complies with the requirements. Do you think we'll see the same with personal tax? Because like I say, I was quite surprised to see that it was available in

[00:20:01] personal tax because originally I was under the impression it wasn't going to be available. Well, first I should say, John, is be careful opening your eyes for poo flicking software. That's quite a dangerous combination. It's the hippo. It's the hippo of accounting software. Have you ever seen a hippo poo? I have seen a few. They wagged their tails to spread their feces as far as possible. I got the reference straight away.

[00:20:27] Well, you could have been, you could have been, you know, that's a dingleberry though, isn't it? Yeah. And I assume they, they will love the reference of being known as the hippo of accounting software. But I'm not sure I like this, John. I'm torn because in the last show, we talked about the reduction in the threshold down to 20,000. So now we're getting down to the levels of

[00:20:50] business size where actually the cost of utilizing software is notably higher compared to the income they're bringing in. So that to me implies that maybe there's some justification of having bridging software. For most sole trader businesses or those that are reporting under income tax, we shouldn't be encouraging them in any way to be using bridging software. We should be encouraging them to use modern tools, modern software that, that streamlines their operations,

[00:21:18] actually saves them time and allows them to do more of their business or gives them more time back in the day. And I do worry that bringing bridging software out this early, way before the 2028 trigger for the 20,000 threshold is, it's going to do that. And I would say that there is some need, there is definitely some need for VAT. When you get, you know, partial exemption calculations for

[00:21:45] group VAT reporting, some software just struggles to do that. So you need the bridging software to kind of fill in the gaps. And I'm hopeful that this will be how it's used when there's some notable complexity out there where you can't use a false software suite, you need something to kind of overlay, take the data that's coming out of it and translate it into something to report to HMRC. I can only hope that that is how it will be used rather than this be a backward step. And if we use VAT as an example,

[00:22:14] John, as you said, a lot of businesses started on that and have transitioned into using software, and maybe it's just a stepping stone. And if so, I think I could get on board with that. Yeah, agreed. And I mean, I agree there was some justification for bridging software with VAT for the reasons that you kind of explained, Ryan. But yeah, I do wonder, I mean, like, you know, let's ignore the 20,000 limit, which is three years away. But if you're a 50,000 plus turnover

[00:22:41] organization running your business on spreadsheets, unless you're doing one 50,000 pound a year invoice, or two 25,000 pound a year invoices, it feels a little bit worrying that you might be, you know, engaging with a business that operates like that, with all of the implications that it comes with. And I'm not knocking Excel here, because Excel is a great tool that should be utilized in the most appropriate ways. But if you're running a business on Excel, that means you're going to be generating

[00:23:07] invoices in some way that's effectively manual, whether that's in Excel itself, or whether it's in Word, you may be you might be using other technology, but then you're gonna have to aggregate that from somewhere else. How are you going to collect payments? Is that going to be as streamlined as it possibly could from from a business point of view, and from a customer point of view? How are you managing your expenses and your overheads and all the other things? You know, there's a whole bunch of opportunities here when it comes to digitalization of an organization that can be done outside of sitting

[00:23:34] within Excel. And you can still use Excel for some of the reporting and some of the analysis and everything else. But you know, again, I got into a discussion on accounting web on something else to do with MTD, which was around some of the software and someone was looking for recommendations. And I've sort of said, you know, look, it's not just about recommendations, but it's about how are you going to work with your clients and your customers to engage them with the whole MTD thing and get them on board

[00:24:01] with the software and not just give them a piece of software and assume that they're going to run with it because there is going to be a training requirement and, you know, maybe a support element, which I think is a great opportunity. I know that there's a challenge in terms of capacity and the implications of doing four quarterly returns rather than one, a whole bunch of other things that need to be thought about and considered. But you know, I'd rather look at this as an opportunity rather than

[00:24:26] a problem that we've got to overcome. And fundamentally, you know, if you're a business operating with a 50,000 turnover and you can't afford a piece of software that costs, you know, anywhere between nothing and maybe 30 pounds a month, and you can't afford the professional services to help you make the most of that either, then you've really got to wonder why these people are in business in the first place and why they're a customer or a client that you want to look after. Yeah, sometimes it's just a side hustle, isn't it? And that's what I guess we're

[00:24:53] stepping down into now is those businesses that aren't there to be the primary source of income. They're just there to help. And considering, you know, what we've been through as a country, you know, all across the globe, sometimes those side hustles are actually now a notable differentiator and be able to do more as an individual or as a family. And we shouldn't be, I guess, eating into that just for red tape. So this is where I'm torn.

[00:25:19] I've got my systems hat on going. No, you need a system in place. But actually, there are scenarios where bridging software may be the right choice, at least for the short term. Anyway, let's move on to something a bit more lighthearted and happy. We've got Xero who have partnered with Someday to offer 12 months free carbon accounting utilisation for the Xero customers. So Someday, if you've not come across them before, is a carbon accounting tracking tool that integrates

[00:25:46] directly into Xero. Now, there's a lot of these in the marketplace and why Xero have specifically picked Someday to partner with, I'm not entirely sure. I'm also not certain if this is all of the Xero jurisdictions. The articles that I've looked at, and I can't seem to find any validation on this, lean heavily into US greenhouse gas emissions. Now, either that's just because they want to pick up

[00:26:12] on the US and how bad it is with their greenhouse gas emissions, or it's because you can only get this in the US. It does say that the eligibility and terms apply. So by trying to locate this, maybe I'm trying to sign up in the UK or prevent me doing it. But there is a notable benefit of tracking your greenhouse gas emissions. I've not used a Someday tool. I'm not saying this is the right way to go,

[00:26:41] but I'm glad that Xero have taken this on as a complimentary offering for their Xero clients or customers. Yeah, I think this is a good opportunity for Xero on Someday. I mean, as it happens, I met the co-founder of Someday Jess. She came to our pre-DAS event, Ryan, and I was milling around with a few people. I got to say hi to her. I didn't get too much of a chance to talk about the product. But

[00:27:06] my understanding is that this is a US release with a future more global release potentially coming down the track. But maybe we should get Jess on and we can have a conversation with her and find out exactly what the details are because I think it's fair to say that Someday is a product that probably isn't all that familiar to us. And interesting, I think as well, being a US product in the context of all of the stuff that's happening in the US at the moment with Trump and

[00:27:33] the whole ESG agenda being sort of wiped out almost is that I think for their long-term survival survival or maybe short-term survival at the very least is that they need to be looking at other markets to develop and grow into. Definitely. It'd be nice for just to come on so she doesn't know me as a shiny egg that you were portraying me as a pre-DAS event. I am a human, even if my head does look like a

[00:27:57] shiny egg. That is true. Maybe we should have employed some form of AI to make it really clear that either you weren't 100% Humpty Dumpty or the egg spoke. Yeah, I mean that's maybe for next show, John. We can work on it for next show. We'll work on that. It could be a later avatar. Yeah. Okay, cool. Well, that's good. Bringing something else from the team at Counting Up, who we haven't talked about for what feels like a

[00:28:27] very long time. But they've announced a whole bunch of updates and exciting feature releases for their product all in time for us to digest at the beginning of this coming quarter. So they've launched a formations offering which they reckon is the simplest and quickest way to get a new company up and running. It takes less than 19 minutes, they say, to do that. Now I must admit I haven't

[00:28:55] tested the capabilities of things like Informed Direct or Cast360 doing the same, but I'll assume that that is legit and that is a genuine thing. But maybe that's how people host side-by-side drag races of vehicles online. Maybe that's the next thing that we should do for the digital digest, Ryan. It's like we could do, let's form a company as quickly as we possibly can and we could film it.

[00:29:22] Yeah, I mean, it feels as you know, it will inspire as much adrenaline in people watching that as a drag race, I think. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it feels like it's totally the thing that we should be we should be getting into, doesn't it? I mean, clearly we're wasted in accounting and marketing is the future for us. Just quickly, let's cover the other features that Counting Up have released as well. They've overhauled the home screen, so it's a little bit simpler and easier to navigate.

[00:29:44] They've also introduced a new AI-based ML, so machine learning model to help auto-categorization so that you can manage customer changes a little bit more effectively. So they reckon it reduces the time taken by about 50%. And they're also hoping to release some tax hacks so that you can

[00:30:10] help, so they can help their customers save more money. So, you know, great little thing. Just very quickly as well, if you're not that familiar with Counting Up, then it's a cheeky little app you can put on your phone and it allows you to do a whole bunch of different things in terms of monitor your money and where it's moving around to, and also auto-categorize those transactions so that you

[00:30:36] can keep on top of things and file your taxes and stuff at the end of the year, which is a neat thing to do, isn't it? It is indeed. There's some quite bold claims from them as well. So, you know, at least they're going big or go home. And as you know, we're counting up, it's not a product we talk about that often. We've also got some news from Workflow Max by BlueRock, which is another product that we don't come across a lot of news on, but they seem to have released a lot in February. Maybe that

[00:31:04] they just saved everything up and that was it. They're going to release everything in February. So as seems to be the thing nowadays for releases, there are some reporting enhancements. So you've got some new, I guess, out of the box reports built in, such as job status reports, staff allocation report, productivity report, et cetera. But you can also add customizations to these now. So you'll be able to put in dynamic filters and save these down as well. So you can kind

[00:31:32] of see how those reports are on a regular basis. They've also released the ability to export account data, CSVs, and also any uploaded documents, which means if you need to transition or work alongside another product, that's become a lot easier. And they've enhanced their HubSpot integration. So they've built out how that works with multiple deal stages and pipelines, triggering the creation of

[00:31:58] new Workflow Max job. So if you ever work with HubSpot integration, that's becoming the norm now. So if you've got certain statuses or deal stages, as they called them in HubSpot, that will then be the trigger that pushes it directly into the associated program, in this case, Workflow Max. Some other things such as global search and communication improvements and lead management tweaks. So you can do a bit more in there. But they've got other things that I think are

[00:32:23] interesting that they've announced in the pipeline. So they've got a new version of their API coming out, which is usually a big development. They've got invoicing by phase, which for the sectors they're in, sounds like it'd be quite a critical release. They've got better variation management. So whenever you are going beyond the initial scope, tracking that and be able to invoice and capacity planning in there as well. And capacity planning, I think, could be a big game changer for this app. It's usually a very

[00:32:50] advanced feature. And if they do that really effectively, it's going to be something that really helps define themselves against their competitors in this space. Yeah, exciting times from the team there. And interestingly, I was on a call with someone a week or so ago and they were asking me about Workflow Max and what I thought about their sort of penetration in the UK market. I think they've always struggled to sort of maximize their

[00:33:17] opportunity here, obviously being big in Australia, but certainly not quite as successful in the UK. But maybe that will all change with these updates. Final bit of news then, I think, which is another bunch of updates from another app. So I never quite know how to say this. So I'm going to turn into you, Ryan, with this one. But is it join or is it joy-in? I'm never quite sure how to

[00:33:42] talk about them. But effectively, the reporting app that allows you to do consolidations connects into Xero and a whole bunch of other things like QuickBooks Online and Sage. But they have just launched their unwrapped announcement at the tail end of March, which covers a whole bunch of updates and things and what's coming down their pipeline. So let's get into that. They have launched

[00:34:10] an AI mapping tool that allows you to map your chart of accounts into their chart of accounts to make it a little bit easier from a reporting point of view. I guess this is a familiar problem. You know, whenever you set up a new reporting system and reporting module, you're always going to have to map those P&L and balance sheet codes to the right places to make sure they appear in your reporting properly. And anything that helps to sort of save time on that is always helpful. Of course,

[00:34:39] this isn't new. Silverfin have that and some of the other reporting tools also do some of this automatically, whether it's using AI or not. Sometimes they're just using the Xero report codes, but that is available for sure. And then there is now a new tool called Join Connect, which allows you to plug into things like Zapier and other things using their API to pull the data to and from their product.

[00:35:08] So another nice little efficiency saving to help with you managing data and things like that. And then again, another AI feature, they've got Join Intelligence, which sits on top of the reporting functionality and allows you to do things like trend analysis. It will allow you to draft emails to clients and also helps with error spotting and stuff. This is something that we're increasingly seeing because

[00:35:35] I'm fairly certain that Fathom also announced something fairly similar in terms of checking for errors in the data that they're analyzing and stuff. And obviously this isn't new. You've got tools like Dexpert and Dext Precision as well in the market amongst others doing these kinds of things. But it seems to be that this is the way that these kinds of products are moving. And I guess SIFT were probably the first to start doing this. So yeah, fascinating to see more and more of this.

[00:36:02] And then I think the next thing that they're going to be working on is building out more of this intelligence function in terms of giving it more capabilities to be able to do more. And they're going to be focusing on things like month end close, which again, there's a few products in the market that are targeting this at the moment and also getting more into that anomaly detection or the error detection capability and functionality, which like I say,

[00:36:30] is already kind of present in the market. So yeah, it's an exciting time to be in this game for sure, because these reporting tools are becoming data analysis tools and these data analysis tools are becoming reporting tools. And who knows where the blend of these products starts and ends nowadays. Yeah, I think that we're seeing it. We keep saying it, we're seeing consolidation. Products are

[00:36:59] building features that are overlapping. And we're going to see, you know, they can't all last, right? We're going to see some losing clients over time. So I'm delighted to say I'm joined by Laura Jolly from X Ledger. And one of the things we're going to address today is, you know, when it comes to like outsourcing, business outsourcing, that many accounting practices probably here in the UK are offering some kind of outsourced finance function,

[00:37:25] I guess, typically through the likes of Xero, QuickBooks, etc. But often they struggle to then sort of find out what the next natural step for them is, is that as their clients scale and grow, and obviously start to make, you know, those other products creak a little bit at the edges. Yeah, it's a big challenge we see pretty much on a daily basis in my role anyway, is working with the county practices that they've got tons of clients on those smaller systems that, you know, work

[00:37:54] perfectly up to a point. And then it's, they almost lose a lot of those clients because they've either insourcing or they, you know, not aware of those full next steps and can't, you know, react quick enough. And we started seeing some kind of hybrid outsourcing that where they've still got an FC and FD in place, but the accountant is doing a lot of the kind of back office, you know, value add activities. And that's where we see there's a big kind of gap in the UK

[00:38:22] market that kind of not many people do that, you know, they have kind of maybe a spattering of people in that in that space, but not, you know, not to scale. But something like Exeter would really scale well with the county practices with, you know, all our inbuilt functionality, that multi entity also works within a partner domain structure as well. So for example, for processing, you know, your AP, for example, you'd have to go in and out of each entity, you can sit at the top and

[00:38:51] process for all your clients, you know, it's, it's quick and easy and just removes a lot of those tedious, just moving around, really not even doing anything, just moving from entity to entity. So certainly in my experience, historically, when we were doing maybe some of this outsourced finance function in the past is that, you know, as a, as your client business grows and scales, they do want to appoint people to the board, whether it's a CFO or an FD, for example, or maybe bring in some, some description of a finance function that's in house,

[00:39:20] so that they've got someone there 24 seven, as it were, to be able to rely on, which is really difficult to replicate and outsource your finance function role. But the fact that you're saying that this is possible to do in a hybrid so that you can still provide some of that function, and like you say, back office in particular, in a way that allows both the business to scale. So they've got the right senior people, maybe leading more strategically on certain things. But also as an accounting practice,

[00:39:50] you can carry on on that journey with that, with them as well, without maybe losing a client, which might have happened in the past or, or may well happen, you know, at the moment where people are outgrowing these other systems. Yeah, definitely. And we see a lot of people, they're using ExEdge for that kind of outsourcing. It's, they're almost a part of the team anyway, you know, yes, they work for the accountants, but actually, you know, they are very well embedded, you know, they're still doing work

[00:40:17] on other clients, but they, you know, they know the internals, they know what needs to be done. And, you know, they are, they are that extension of them without having to get a full finance team in, you know, from day one that, you know, we all know at the moment, resourcing is, isn't the most fun topic or fun thing to be doing. But it's, it allows them to kind of maintain that relationship. And I think ExEdge allows them to have that relationship with a lot of the automation,

[00:40:46] and it allows them to do a lot more value add activities. So not just, you know, we've done all your AP, we've done your bank payments, and here's some reports, it's, look, we can now do this, we've booked, we can build you this dashboard and start adding that value, rather than having to bring a whole, you know, new finance team in. Yeah, and I totally agree with that. And I think the opportunity of that kind of hybridizing of, you know, having, you know, maybe someone leading

[00:41:12] more strategically from a finance point of view that you bring in as an employee, but then also making sure that you still use an accounting practice means that that kind of relationship, you know, stops being a transactional relationship, right, in terms of, you know, the client brings up and says, I've got a problem with tax, can you help fix it? Whereas you can be there present day to day going, oh, we can, we can anticipate this problem coming down the track now, and do do something about it. And I want to move on that, you know, you talked about, you know, one of the great opportunities of using like Xlendr, and you talked about the fact that if you've

[00:41:42] got a multi entity scenario, you're able to process AP from one place rather than maybe again, if you're more familiar with with a Xero or a QuickBooks having to hop between products, or you might be hopping between versions of Dext or auto entry or something to do that. And I think that's a huge opportunity when it comes to multi entity, you know, processing of data, because suddenly, you're making everything much more efficient. And just being in one place makes

[00:42:08] life so much easier, right? Yeah, definitely. It's that efficiency that we really try to work with our partners to do, you know, and it's not just AP, it's, you know, bank payments, it's your approvals, all of the things that you would want to do, you can do that in one place, but still have the access controls for each of those clients. So the clients can still go into their own entities, you know, with no risk of them seeing anyone else's data, because they're in their own little

[00:42:35] ecosphere. But in a much bigger ecosphere, the partner can then kind of see everything else, you know, even from a management point of view, you know, within the accounts, perhaps if they want to know, right, at any one point, right, how many AP transactions are there ready to process, they can go in and see that at one, you know, at one point. And there's a lot more automation there as well. We've got mainly used in Norway, we've got a lot of automation of actually processing, and they do a lot of exception reporting, which can again, really, really help with that automation

[00:43:05] piece. I think we've got one partner, I think it's something ridiculous, like over 5000 invoices a month, go through with no, you know, no one seeing it, other than the end client that then just does their approval. And that saved them, you know, an immense amount of time. That's incredible. Yeah, those are some very impressive stats. And I guess added to that with all the automation that you talked about previously, as well is that, you know, you're just making life

[00:43:30] a lot easier for people in terms of keeping on top of that financial data, processing that financial data, and then also ensuring the accuracy and everything else. And I think one of the things that, you know, we talked about was the fact that, you know, as businesses do scale and grow, and they become multi entity or become more complex, you know, they will be looking to bring in, you know, probably someone with a finance background to be more permanent, if you like, in the role, but still

[00:43:56] create an opportunity where the accounting firm can provide this outsource service. And I guess, you know, the ability that you kind of touched on very briefly, this ability to report more comprehensively across an organization or a group of organizations, you know, I think is really important because, you know, that allows you to work in tandem more effectively with maybe that person in that sort of strategic role to sort of say, right, okay, tell me what you want. You know, tell me what kind of information you want to see on a regular basis, what you're exposed to, where your currency risks

[00:44:25] might be, for example, or even just how business is going in terms of growth and, you know, hitting your targets and metrics and being able to pull together multiple different pieces of data and dashboards and things, I think is really important, isn't it for, for facilitating those kind of conversations? Yeah, 100%. You know, we have got an inbuilt report writer and that allows, you know, well, all of our clients to have that flexibility. We don't gatekeep any of that,

[00:44:53] you know, report writing, we allow, you know, our partners and our end clients to do that themselves because we don't want to, you know, restrict what they want to do. If they want to add different metrics in, if they want different dashboard blocks or, you know, actually, you know, we just want to look in a very slightly different way or we want to look at it on a cost center basis or actually, you know, we want to look at how each of the, you know, entities are doing. All of that can

[00:45:18] be really easily built within the system and it allows, you know, especially our partners with those end clients to kind of build what they need, not go, here's a standard P&L that, you know, anyone could produce. Actually, we can use your own terminology. We can use, you know, any different metrics. It can be split, you know, see within reason, your own, all your own structure, the structure that's within Exledger. You know, as well, we have a lot of clients that, you know, when they

[00:45:46] go live, they've kind of made decisions, but it's like, actually, Exledger can do so much more, you know, six, 12 months down the line. We're adding more metrics in. So they're using more of our dimensions and they're getting so much more out of the system. And I think that's what Exledger does really, really great is that it can scale with your clients, you know, either internally or with the partner to make sure that they're ticking a lot of those boxes, you know, without having to go, oh, I need a new system now. It's like, well, actually, we can just activate

[00:46:16] this and put this in now, you know, or just kind of change a little bit the config, you know, within, you know, very quick timeframe without having to kind of completely restructure. And you're getting a lot more analytics out of the system. So I think, I mean, I think that's fascinating. I think in summary here, you know, for anyone that works in an accountancy practice where you're already offering outsourcing of some description, you know, we're talking about here an opportunity for you to stay in contact more closely with your clients as they grow and scale and maybe move out of other solutions,

[00:46:45] but also the opportunity to then provide a wider breadth of services if it's, you know, even if it is something like ESG and moving away from some of that non-financial data, but also to be able to do that in a way that's scalable so that it allows that organization to continue to grow and also allows you to continue to have an ongoing relationship to provide information, you know, in a way that's just not possible with other systems, you know, and that's a really important

[00:47:12] thing. So Laura, thank you for taking the time to talk to me about this. It's always really great to hear more about Exledger and what you guys are doing. And, you know, great to hear that there's more developments and more exciting things to come down the track as well. So thank you. Thank you. Lovely talking to you. And that brings another DigiTools in a Cruel World podcast to a close. Thank you for listening and taking the time out to learn a little bit more about software in our space. If you haven't already,

[00:47:40] please do follow us on LinkedIn and subscribe to our YouTube channel, but also subscribe to our newsletter, which has recently come out. If you have not seen the link for this, do check out the LinkedIn channel, which we will be seeing many posts advertising this. We do understand that people would like to ingest information in different ways. And our newsletter will basically be a summary of the key news, as well as the key discussion points we have and our live show every Thursday,

[00:48:06] where we will dive into one of these, one of these nuggets of information to get your insights into what do you think this has as an impact on the account sector in the UK? Hello, and welcome to the DigiTools in a Cruel World podcast, the place to go for all your accounting software industry. Fucking hell. I'm going to leave this in. You know, I'm going to leave this at the start. I'm going to start just talking again. Welcome to Ryan, formerly a podcast host.

[00:48:34] Yeah. Now fired for ineptitude. My brain is not working this morning. Because it's the evening. It's afternoon. It's not the evening. I know that you get up at five o'clock in the morning, but that doesn't advance the times. It doesn't move. What is going on? It's half past four in the afternoon. Earlier, I said the word G instead of J. I literally cannot think. Maybe this is compressing my skull. I don't know. I think your brain's been crushed by your massive headphones.

[00:49:03] That's what it is. Yeah. Okay. Sorry, Lee. Ignore the first minute of this and then we'll crack on from one minute in. You do know that he has to listen to that first before he hears the apology. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He does. Cut. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.