License to Bill: Corporate Espionage & App News Drama! (+ FreeAgent)

[00:00:00] I've tried to keep up with you John and I've learned that that is a terrible thing to do. Ripley claims that Deals sent one of its own employees, identified only as DS, to infiltrate Ripley's most sensitive business strategy channels and gets a little bit juicier. There's some nervous Bright Pay desktop users out there. Is that because when it comes to MTD doing it in space is more suitable because no one can hear your screen? It could be that, it could be that. I hadn't thought of that. That's a very good point actually.

[00:00:29] Here's the thing for accounting. While you define the integration on the no fee model, it can be a blessing, but it also means you need to remain really vigilant in terms of like transactions, generally monitoring, AML. One thing that, you know, as an accountant is making sure that you have the insurance in place. Hello and welcome to the Digi-Tools In Accrual World podcast brought to you by the Digital Disruptors. This week, we're diving into app news regarding Xero and Jax.

[00:00:57] Got some bits from Access, as well as Bright Pay, Accounts IQ and among others. We're also joined again by free agents to discuss a little bit about their brand and branding. But before we get into any of that, let's hear from the other members of this team. Starting with Indy. Hola, almost us. Oh, don't talk to me in a different language. You know I can't do that.

[00:01:26] Hello, Ryan. How are you? I'm good, thank you. Fresh off the back of the Digital Accountancy Show. How do you feel? Yeah, I feel energised. Always do at the end of the Digital Accountancy Show. I feel like there's lots that we need to do. I feel drained. I'm always so tired. Excitement. No, I'm in an adrenaline rush after the shows and so much I want to research further, bring into what I do. Yeah.

[00:01:52] So, yeah, I'm more drained. I'm just at the end of a pod talking to John. That's what drains me. Speaking of John, how are you doing, mate? I'm good, thank you. And I don't know about you, Ryan, but at the end of a show, I'm always knackered, but that's because I tend to go out and party way too much and clearly take it much more seriously than you do. So, you know, that's just the way it is.

[00:02:19] Yeah, I've tried to keep up with you, John, and I've learned that that is a terrible thing to do. I was obviously a lot more tired when I used to do that. Now, I retire early, or at least earlier than you, late for some others, and then make sure I'm in it. I've still got energy for the next day. And if we look at what happened the last show at the Alternative Tech Conference, I even went for a morning run. I went for a shower instead. On that note, let's jump into App News. Let's cut to the chase.

[00:02:51] Okay, so in this week's App News, it's in the cutthroat world of HR tech. So there's no ordinary rivalry, I guess we'd describe it as Rippling, has just filed an explosive 50-page lawsuit against their biggest competitor deal. A couple of the apps that we've covered on our podcast before, and it's filled with allegations that are nothing short of Hollywood-level drama.

[00:03:18] The accusations so far, racketeering, misappropriation of trade secrets, and get this, corporate espionage. Rippling claims that Deals sent one of its own employees, identified only as DS, to infiltrate Rippling's most sensitive business strategy channels. And, it gets a little bit juicier.

[00:03:41] DS allegedly scoured these private channels over 450 times, sifting through confidential details on Rippling's sales marketing strategies and customer retention plans, all while working in a completely unrelated role. Can you say spy? But the twist doesn't stop there. Rippling claims they set up a honeypot trap.

[00:04:08] So a fake Slack channel loaded with embarrassing info about Deal, and waited to see if DS would go for it. And sure enough, DS took the bait, logged into the channel, just like some sort of, like, spy in a movie. And when they were confronted, things went from bad to worse. DS allegedly locked himself in a bathroom when a court-appointed officer tried to seize his phone,

[00:04:36] and even flushed it down the toilet to hide the evidence. He then stormed out of the office, telling officials, I'm willing to take that risk. The drama is real, and it's only just getting started. So now Deal is firing back, denying all claims and accusing Rippling of using these sensational charges to distract from its own alleged violations, including ties to Russian sanctions. It's corporate warfare at its finest.

[00:05:02] I think we've missed out for the last couple, well, the last year, actually, the last case, the big case that we saw last year. But this one is worth billions of dollars. So, guys, I mean, get the popcorn out. Have you ever read something so sensationalised as this? Not the way you described it, Indy. That was amazing. I'd sign up for that. It's a new Netflix series, I think. I genuinely enjoyed reading it.

[00:05:27] I thought, wow, this is like levels of honeypot trap that go on here. I know that we had similar, you know, in the past when you've had, we've had different dealings of like brand trademark issues, right, in the accounting text space. We've never had something on this level before. No. And I'm interested to see where it ends up. I know I obviously record these videos and audio slightly in advance,

[00:05:56] so maybe at the time that this comes out, there will already be another twist. Yeah, I can't wait. Obviously, I'm enjoying reading it. The thing is, I'm so intrigued as to how this could even happen, because in the age of like data protection or in general, like what data we share, how do you not have control, I guess, over the type of behaviour that's exhibited

[00:06:24] on a remote worker's laptop or plugged into these channels? I think we're only a few steps away from that being a situation where there is monitoring that will happen at IT level with teams. But, yeah, we use remote softwares to manage all laptops. So it's quite interesting that these guys, you know, didn't pick up on that a lot sooner. So when you're using software to control laptops, are you tracking what people are doing in them now?

[00:06:55] You can see certain level of activity. Yeah. I mean, not to the granular level of which Slack channels that they're referencing, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time. Well, there's definitely software that's already out there that does it. I think it just comes into individuals' rights and disclosing that, making sure they've signed the appropriate forms, policies, et cetera, early on, so that you don't create a lawsuit with your staff. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, anyway, watch this space.

[00:07:24] I will bring it just to sensationalise this the next time whenever I read something new on this. I do read with that voice as well on this particular case. I think so. I'm excited for it. Well, look, my update is not quite as exciting as that. It is a zero-update release. We've had a few things that have come out across the product. From a global aspect, i.e. across every jurisdiction, you can now attach files to new fixed assets, which I think should have been there for a while.

[00:07:53] But it's great that they've brought it in. It really helps with tracking, especially when you're adding assets directly into that area rather than through the nominal ledger, you would do through a purchasing invoice. You've got a clearer view of your accounts from a reporting update. It feels like we've not really had reporting updates for a while. This is a minor one. You can basically toggle on or off active nominal accounts.

[00:08:17] So rather than see a trial balance appear now cluttered or empty, which nominal is that you know should be in there, you can turn on or off that functionality. You've got other functions that have been released in different jurisdictions. But the one that I thought was quite interesting is in the US, you can now visualize your financial performance powered by SIFT, the recent acquisition by Xero. And they are bringing in SIFT reporting directly into Xero, but only in the US to start with.

[00:08:47] Now, the graph that this show is a visualization of how the income and expenses come out. But I know they're planning to embed more SIFT reporting directly into Xero. And I hope it's not going to be always over in the US. We're going to start seeing it in the UK because I'm excited about that. Because there's lots of accountants use SIFT over in the UK. And we'd probably appreciate that functionality coming directly into the Xero product. One thing I would add on this is I was recently invited to a fathom dinner

[00:09:17] to then look through their latest releases on the product. And I believe you guys were also invited to have a quick look at how they're planning to enhance the advisory opportunities through the reporting that they're doing. So it'd be really interesting to get your perspective on how this compares to SIFT and how Xero have approached this as something that could help accountants. Any thoughts? Penny for your thoughts.

[00:09:47] Interesting take on it. Why they're going down the US side. Maybe the Xero product didn't have the reporting debt over there compared to the UK. Yeah. That's my only comment on this. I know they're going to bring it in. I know they're going to probably switch the model from an all-in-one package to a per-user package. Makes sense once they've made the acquisition. But I'm keen to see how they blend it in if it takes as long as other products they've acquired. And I have for my notes, actually,

[00:10:15] because I did take a few notes from the fathom dinner. So they actually have an open beta started from March 17th, which was not too long ago, for their new insights dashboard. And they have got some really interesting features that allow change management to be less of a barrier to adoption. And you can sort data with multiple metrics to prompt discussions based on the service. For example, if you search for clients eligible for funding,

[00:10:44] you can add a column with EBITDA, filter by tag of services for those who only receive statutory reports. And with healthy gross profit margin to then prompt a conversation around funding, which I thought was really interesting. And perhaps you guys, again, have had a little bit more of an inside view on fathom. But if not, then I think we should get those guys on this show because I'm really intrigued to find out more about how they're coming at the problem in the UK. Just for us, we're on the zero news.

[00:11:14] I've got something as well from Jax, which is the AI-powered assistant that sits in zero and launched a little while ago. And this was announced, gosh, when was it announced back in the end of Feb, beginning of March time. But they've already released a few more updates to the product. So the new bits that they've launched into Jax are you can create invoices faster using the integrated inventory item codes,

[00:11:41] which makes that process of creating a new invoice a little bit more intelligent, I guess. And you can also now get summarized information on paid, unpaid or overdue invoices with a smarter search and summary response that you get. So yes, there you go. So Jax has been powered up. And then the other little bits that they've added in is that you can also now use Jax to get better responses from Xero Central.

[00:12:10] So rather than maybe sometimes having to ask and then trawl through a series of responses, you can actually get Jax to help with your support queries and stuff, which obviously makes just getting through that data a little bit easier. I've got something a little bit different. Well, I say different. It seems to be we talk about an access group acquisition all the time. And there's another one. They've bought Kiwi Trader Tradies software, specialist Geo over in New Zealand.

[00:12:36] Now, Geo serves over 10,000 users across Australia, New Zealand, US and the UK. But it's interesting they're in the tradie space because access not that long ago acquired Tradify. So I believe Geo sits at the level above that. And they've got Geo op and Geo next in the ERP space. So now they've got Tradify on the smaller end. They've got Geo in maybe the mid tier area.

[00:13:03] And as access have been doing, rather than build a lot of new products, they are acquiring one strategic place to integrate into their access financial suite and I guess power a modern ERP that way. Interesting the fact that they're focusing a lot on the tradie side. Maybe that's where they're seeing as a niche for their product. Do you think that's the case, John? I don't know it, Ryan, because it's a really good question.

[00:13:31] Because last time, when we talked about the Tradify acquisition, given the type to scale of clients or customers that we knew that they had, we did question whether or not it was a good fit for their access from a product point of view. Obviously now with the acquisition of Geo, like we say, they're kind of doubling down in this space and going in at a slightly higher level. So you have the NMC. This is a great opportunity for the products and for their wider suite.

[00:13:59] And I guess it'll be fascinating to see what they do, if anything, in terms of the connections between Tradify and Geo, whether they encourage people to move up or whether those products might merge into one singular thing and take the best features from each. But yeah, clearly an interesting opportunity for them. And like I say, there's never a quiet moment when it comes to an access acquisition. I've got a little bit from BrightPay, which is that BrightPay Windows desktop version

[00:14:27] will only be available for the 2025-2026 year, of which it will then be discontinued. Now that's obviously pushing the BrightPay customers into the cloud system. Is the cloud system ready for that? I know they released it a couple of years ago and had to retract it pretty promptly because it was not up to spec. So have they brought in everything? Is it now on a parity with the desktop system? I think there's a lot of questions out there.

[00:14:55] They still have a year to do the development, make sure it's in place. But I bet there's some nervous existing BrightPay desktop users out there that may be considering looking at other payroll systems because they're going to have to make a change anyway. Yeah, there's definitely some nervousness in the market, that's for sure. If you have a look at the various forums and places where people are sharing information and asking questions about alternatives. So BrightPay needs to be, or BrightPay needs to be very careful

[00:15:23] about the transition over the next year or so because there are some people who don't believe that they're going to be able to complete what they've said they would do. But we shall see. We shall see. There is never a singular conclusion with these things. I've got a quick update from AccountsIQ. And they're doing what everyone else in their space is doing at the moment, which is throwing out a workflow approval process.

[00:15:54] And they've got a really powerful engine by looks, in terms of being able to work across single entity or multi-entity approvals within their workflow, within the system. And essentially, they've sort of identified this as a big problem. And they think a lot of their customers are struggling to get through workflows efficiently, to avoid delays in terms of getting invoices approved, getting expenses approved, helping with growth, and all the multitude of factors that go into this stuff.

[00:16:24] So this is a big issue, a big issue that they were looking to address and not utilising third-party products to kind of fix this, which is what some others have tried to do, particularly in the sort of smaller space in the Xero quick looks ecosystem. And so they've got the ability now, as a consequence, to approve invoices, expenses, and a few other bits and pieces. And they're going to continue to build out the functionality. So I suspect that what we'll see

[00:16:52] is also maybe some approvals around things like journals and possibly other allegations that would happen across multi-entity at some point. Very nice, John. And I have something from Apron. Their new product, dubbed Apron Card, very original, designed to streamline how businesses handle employee expenses, offering real-time spending alerts and the ability to set daily and monthly limits. And, of course,

[00:17:20] integrate it with the popular accounting softwares that they're already integrated with, like Xero and QuickBooks. It's built directly into Apron's existing platform. So it ensures everything syncs up seamlessly, eliminating the need for businesses to juggle multiple tools. The Apron Card comes as both virtual and physical cards, and it's real-time expense tracking promises to save businesses time and improve their financial oversight. So one of the biggest selling points is the simplicity.

[00:17:50] So no fees per card or transaction, just a subscription plan with interchange fees covering the cost. Here's the thing for accountants. While the user-friendly integration with accounting systems and the no-fee model are appealing, it's really essential to ensure that this solution doesn't create additional complexity when it comes to financial control. As businesses grow, keeping track of all that data in one place can be a blessing,

[00:18:19] but it also means you need to remain really vigilant about how expenses are maybe categorized or managed. And also in terms of transactions, generally monitoring, AML, and I reassert this once more, is that it's very easy to set up things like payments. One thing that, you know, as an accountant is making sure that you have the insurance in place, that if something goes wrong in the classification or the capturing

[00:18:47] of these types of payments, that you are yourself protected. So the key takeaway for me, apron expense card, solid tool for simplifying workflows, but as always, important to assess how well it aligns aligns with your client's financial controls and just in general, long-term goals of the practice. And that's not to say I'm not pro it, it just means to say there's lots of options out there.

[00:19:16] And I think that in doing your diligence, that it's no harm in making sure that you've got the right cover and place for yourself. And hopefully that helps us all to move forward in the industry of payments. I mean, I think the one thing that's really striking about this announcement from apron is that they've decided to come down the route of not charging for cards, which I think probably the vast majority of their competitors tend to do. And one thing you can say for sure is that they do listen quite closely to the market.

[00:19:46] And this is one of the key objections that we hear from other businesses is that they struggle a little bit with paying for card solutions. So I think this is an interesting one from apron. It's a busy market. We've talked about this before. You know, the guys are operating in a really busy market where you've got AP, you know, OCR extraction, etc. Payments, cards now as well, expenses, approvals. Yeah. So there's a huge amount of competition

[00:20:15] and going to be a huge amount of aggregation over time, I'm sure, in this market. Yeah, I would agree. Right. Last little thing. Hey, Indy, did you know that Fathom are releasing this whole new thing? And it's called the Fathom Insights Dashboard and Portfolio Plan. I don't know if you've heard about this, but... I'm not sure. I'm not sure I have, actually. I'm pretty sure that Xero released something or spoke more about their SIFT dashboard. But I'm very, very intrigued to hear more about

[00:20:45] how Darren and his team and Fathom are coming at the problem. Because, you know, it's a little bit more UK-centric. They know that accountancy firms really struggle to keep on track on top of a whole bunch of metrics and things. So this Insights Dashboard has been designed specifically for accounting and advisory firms to help you get this kind of single view of your client base that's connected to the platform. And essentially, they've got a whole bunch of metrics. I think there's 28 KPIs

[00:21:14] in total that you can review and monitor at any one time. and this is based off the back of a survey that Fathom did where they said that they found that one in four accounting firms lack a structured process or tool for monitoring their client performance. And I guess if I was to be just slightly sort of negative about this, I think some firms are not structured particularly well to monitor their client base anyway and be proactive about dealing with this. So it's good to see that Fathom have created a tool to engage with this. But I think

[00:21:44] one of the things that Fathom has to encourage firms to do is not just get this data but then also think about what they're going to do with this data in terms of what does it mean if a client's performing really well for example and what kind of services could you offer versus a client that maybe isn't performing particularly well or maybe it's flatlined and how do you interpret this data? How do you do something else with it? And equally for some firms how do you figure out the time and the capacity to deal with some of these things? So I think that's going to be interesting

[00:22:15] there's the ability to attract cashflow revenue profitability and a whole bunch of other metrics across the base and then you can take that data and you can segment and you can benchmark your clients as well doing that. Now you've been able to benchmark clients a little bit in the past which I always thought was one of their key differentiators but now you can do that across the entire client base with all of this data that you're going to be served up and then you can drill down into those KPIs to see what's trending or to analyse quickly what's going on and because you can

[00:22:45] set custom thresholds which is something you can get in quite a few other products you know SIFT has this Dext Precision has this and a few of the other monitoring systems your expert has this kind of concept as well is you're going to get alerts and notifications as things change so you've got a whole bunch of ways to enable productivity within your accounting practice so exciting times for these guys and then finally

[00:23:14] if you're on a Fathom plan then you'll be moved across to something now called Fathom Pro and you'll automatically access the insights dashboard for all of your clients you've got included on there and they've just kind of made this a little bit easier a little bit more accessible with a slightly lower price point which I guess maybe reflects some of the competition that they see from SIFT and others in terms of getting into the reporting segment and reporting market and if I'm being perfectly honest that has been one of the pushbacks that we've heard before about Fathom is that

[00:23:43] it's been a premium product it is a great product I'm a big fan but it is quite challenging sometimes from a price point of view to justify investing and that's possibly where some of the competing products have had a little bit of an advantage in the past although one thing that's true about accountants is we know the price and everything but the value of very little so there you go fascinating fascinating so pleased to hear that the Vogue show has gone delightfully well you did stay very quiet when I said about what Fathom were doing you were very tight-lipped about that

[00:24:13] so that is great news and it's a joy to always support people that just seem to really get it from the accountant's perspective and really consider all of the different angles that they could try and actually engage with the accounting community in a really authentic sincere way plus you'll also provide a really good slap up meal well I'm delighted

[00:24:42] to say I'm joined again by Tony Stevenson from Free Agent and we're going to be covering a whole bunch of things with Tony over the next few episodes and things with the podcast and stuff but in this particular episode we're just going to be jumping into a little bit more about Free Agent a little bit more about the brand and also something quite exciting which they released at DAS in the last few days which is about you know you can now do your tax returns in space which is very exciting particularly your MTD ones so we'll

[00:25:12] get into that in a second Tony but yeah tell for anyone that's been hiding under a rock and isn't aware of Free Agent and what you guys are up to maybe just give people a little bit of an intro to Free Agent and why you're rising to the top at the moment in terms of getting out there and building incredible integrations and all sorts of other stuff in readiness but all these compliance headaches we've got coming up indeed so I guess the starter pack of information

[00:25:42] is we are a bookkeeping product and you can do all the kind of stuff that you'd expect in a bookkeeping product raise your invoices direct your bills snap pictures of receipts and have it drag the information off automatically explain your bank transactions connect up to the bank do call reporting you know a bunch of stuff right and we started life focused on sort of the one man band the contractor and then over the years the product

[00:26:11] has kind of grown and grown and fits a slightly larger size of business now so that evolution was kind of the contractor and the one man person business through to the micro and now we're stretching out into the small as well right so we're pretty comfortable in that space and the average kind of number of employees that are a user of free agent has continues to

[00:26:41] disperse further up that sort of level of numbers and you know when we started life with ones or twos we're now tens twenties thirties there is even a 60 person business that's got seven figures of turnover eight figures of turnover I think actually still using free edge and probably a few creaky edges at that kind of size but still doable with a simple business model so yeah that's kind of like the bare bones basics of where

[00:27:11] we sit and we operate in that similar space to the Zeros the QuickBooks the Sages as well but starting from the smaller end end of the market and pushing up into the small and I mean I guess it

[00:27:53] guys are also the only platform where you can pretty much do all of the compliance requirements that an accounting practicer or bookkeeper would want to deliver for a business operating at that sort of scale as well on the platform indeed we were a much unknown factor but we were the first cloud accounting provider to allow you to file a back return in the UK and we've had that for a long time and then in recent years we have a payroll function which allows it's really good for director only businesses

[00:28:23] really cool which we've been working to flesh out over the last three or four years and add some of the more fiddly bits in that weren't in there previously some reporting on the parts to it and then in recent years also we added the ability to be able to file your corporation tax and your micro entity accounts as well there's the coverage of

[00:28:53] you build something you get it out there and then you continue to improve it and then we circle around onto the MTD piece so obviously MTD for VAT all far and good that was dealt with a long time ago but we've been quietly and patiently waiting for MTD for now IT or IT to come in and we are we're good to go with it right we had a solution built working in our product the first time around we've still got

[00:29:23] that solution built and still working in our product we've got the filing of returns that's being done people on the beta that stuff is all happening so what we've always endeavored to do is to build these solutions in a simple way which makes them accessible to practices and we

[00:29:54] get to go with it and we're quite excited about it coming in and being able to help our partners and help our users of free agent to get on board with that big compliance change it

[00:30:27] tied in very nicely if you were remiss of me not to give Maslin a shout out of the firm that helped us put this together and there's a whole bunch of like kind of videos and blog posts

[00:30:57] and there's tons of press that have picked it up and stuff out there. So yeah, they got like a hydrogen balloon, I think it was. They had to sort of build this rig that allowed you to take essentially like a server up into space and it kind of boils down to like a little tablet and then there's a robot arm that comes out and hits the file button and you can see the world in the background. It's minus 46.5 degrees at the height in the stratosphere

[00:31:27] that they had to contend with in order to get the filing done and make sure that the robot arm worked and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, really cool. And it seems to have landed well, so no pun intended. I like that. Well, I mean, I guess that's quite reflective, right? You guys are free agent team in terms of like, I think you're fun and engaging and a little bit silly occasionally as well. It's sort of summed you up quite neatly.

[00:31:56] But also I think very much you're working very closely with your customers, whether it's accounting practices or you're more direct. I think it's fair to say that you guys do that very well and listen acutely to what people are telling you about the products and what they want from the various things that you're doing. We certainly try. And I think that when you get into the nuances of what makes that possible and where the opportunities were to improve,

[00:32:24] I think that we've always had a product that end users love to use and are good at using. So there's this line, right? And you know this, John. Above which if the product is genuinely usable, then your clients will kind of get hold of it with a little bit of help maybe. But what they'll produce won't be garbage. And if it's below that line, then what they'll produce can not be great, right?

[00:32:52] And then that leads to challenging conversations. It needs to scope creep. It leads to having to fix stuff that takes longer than if you've just done it in the first place. So what we found is that focusing on building out that really good end user experience means that we get less support tickets per head and they're easier to solve, which means that we can have a phone line so that you can call our support team when you have got a genuinely difficult query to run through. We don't not bog down by the smaller bits and pieces.

[00:33:18] And actually when practices come to use FreeAgent, they're kind of happy with putting their clients on it and saying we'll give you the mobile app and you can crack on. And actually what we get back is pretty good. And then where we had to make choices over the years was in the practice experience, right? So that was the bit that kind of was lagging slightly behind the end user experience because we know our end users love using 75 MPS as a world-leading score.

[00:33:48] But our practice one was slightly lower. So we want to focus on that. So Rowan's been really big on that in his tenure as CEO. Very keen on the practices focus, very keen on the integrations piece as well. So it meant that, you know, actually if there's something that we want to be able to do this outside the FreeAgent walls, we need those integrations so people can choose us. And then also what we need to do is to focus on the practices piece. So things like rebuilding depreciation.

[00:34:17] There's a big project on reporting going on at the moment, which will be, you know, there's some of it's dropped and there'll be more continuing to drop for the rest of the year. There's another big practice feature that we're going to launch, you know, around AccountEx, which is a real game changer. And then the little, like the little button where you can consent all of your bank feeds all in one go, instead of having to go, you know, just these little pieces of the puzzle. Yeah. That have, that have meant that our practice partners are now sitting there kind of going like, instead of kind of being like,

[00:34:47] oh, she's great on this little bit here that, and this little bit here, those little bits we're starting to fix. Right. And then what's that, what that's leading to, I think, is with all these combined efforts of the great people at FreeAgent, we're finding that now the conversations that we're having aren't so much like what's FreeAgent there, like I know what FreeAgent is. And actually, you know, maybe because of MTD for IT, maybe because of some challenges we've had with our existing suppliers, actually, we're looking at you strategically now,

[00:35:16] and we want to spread a little bit of the risk in our bookkeeping portfolio. And, you know, we're looking to move at scale. So what that's leading to is, without forgetting where we've come from in terms of the smaller practices and the smaller clients, you know, we're starting to see a push into the larger space and those relationships, which often actually were already established, starting to become strategic rather than tactical. And what that's done, I think, as well, is it's like,

[00:35:46] we always love like this, the one that always comes back to is the friendliest software provider, right? So we love that. And that's something that we love to lean into. But actually, what we've kind of got underneath that is being taken really seriously by the market now from a bookkeeping perspective and really leaning into FreeAgent as a potential strategic choice without having to make any sacrifices on the practice side, which is kind of where we want to get to. It's really exciting.

[00:36:14] You know, we're kind of buzzing for the next couple of years of the evolution of FreeAgent. So, yeah, lots going on. Tons of stuff there. Great people. Get in touch if you'll be keen to find out more. Well, Tony, I think that's the perfect place to stop there. And as you say, if anyone's interested in finding out more about FreeAgent, they can, of course, jump on the website. You guys do an incredible amount of work on integrations and other work just to expand out the product and work on features like you mentioned. And, yeah, you are genuinely a friendly bunch

[00:36:44] and a great bunch to hang around with and get to know. So, it's worth spending that time at AccountEx or any dealer shows where you might be able to go and meet the team as well. Pretty good. Thank you, mate. Always a pleasure chatting and I look forward to the next one. Well, there you go. That wraps up another awesome episode of the Digitals and Accrual Podcast. Hope you find it insightful and helpful as always. We're always looking forward to hearing from you. If you've got any feedback, good or negative, we would love to hear from you.

[00:37:12] And, of course, we'll be back next week for another episode. More, probably, thrills and spills from interviews that we've been doing at shows and other bits of news and updates as it comes flowing through. And we're hoping, we're hoping that we'll get another exciting update on the whole rippling fallout because who doesn't want to hear a bit more of Indie Tatler's ASMR-inducing commentary on that.

[00:37:41] Yeah, I can't wait to bring it to you guys as well. I won't lie, I was quite excited. That's a wrap. Perfect.