Sage, QuickBooks, iplicit & TrueLayer Making Power Moves | AI, MTD & £10bn Payments || Accounting Tech & Fintech News

[00:00:00] And I'm saying the same thing to brief as well. Please be more diverse in your choice of names. I would like them to say a name that gives us like a little bit more excitement, Tchaikovsky, you know? Something like that. What Sage are doing in Intact. Once again, the two letters of AI. This is where I think AI and AI agents are going to have a huge impact on the accounting space. A game changer for the mid-market businesses using IP6 and it's going to make your financial work clothes a lot smoother.

[00:00:28] If you are not talking to your clients about integrated payment solutions using payment routes such as TrueLayer, I think that you're now behind the curve. Big news in the payments world. TrueLayer just hit a record-breaking milestone, processing over 10bn in payments in just one month. It's becoming the go-to choice for businesses in all sectors like e-commerce, food, finance. For clients in high-volume industries, that means lower costs, better payments, security and potentially higher checkout conversion rates.

[00:00:58] I think the big question is whether the combination of AI automation with the promise of a single platform and everything under one roof and the backing of Intuit's hefty big tech pockets makes QuickBooks a clearer MTD winner. Hello and welcome back to the DigiTools in a Cruel World podcast, the place to go for your weekly insights into the accounting tech industry with app news, interviews and just general conversations.

[00:01:25] This episode is sponsored by Tugger, the Power BI-based visualization tool, taking your accounting data and transforming into useful insights for you and your clients. And I am joined as ever by the wonderful Indy Tatler. Indy, how are you? You are, I'm good. How are you, Ryan? I'm not bad. Well, I say not bad. I have man flu, which means, you know, I'm in constant agony. But it's just another form of, it's an excuse.

[00:01:55] What do you mean, excuse is real, it's tangible. Just the problem is that only one half of, what? Don't do this. A mansplaining, what's wrong with this? Yeah, exactly. I really don't need to be a gas liter or mansplained about what is man flu. It's just a common cold. Everyone knows that now. Fair enough. I won't dive into it anymore.

[00:02:19] But no, I do feel that I've burnt myself out and I've now been subjected to simple illnesses that just take me out entirely. At least something's taken you out. Oh, that's nice. Yes. Although my wife, I guess, would take me out now and again when we can get away from the kids. When you've been a good boy. Which is rarely. Fair enough. Yeah, good point. But we're also, we're missing our third wheel, Mr Toon.

[00:02:50] He's still, he's still alone in the wilderness. Rolling around. He's rolling around like a wheel does. But no, we do miss him. We'll have to get him back on for some future episodes. He's busy trying to get that mic in someone else's grill to find us some good interviews. So we trust in John Toon. But at least we've got a whole host of that news today to talk to the peoples about. We do. Let's crack straight on with that then.

[00:03:23] I am going to kick off with a little bit from Brief. A brief bit of news from Brief. Now, if you're unsure who Brief are, they are an advisory tool that essentially allows you to structure advisory meetings and now record them via a note taker. The note taker has been out for a while. I think from Christmas is when it initially launched in beta. But recently they have now brought out an in-person AI note taker.

[00:03:46] So essentially you send a meeting link to whoever will be in the meeting and they have to be able to just click a button to start a recording. And the app will flag if it's not picking up any audio or if there's any issue in the audio and automatically identify who's in the meeting and then assign a name based on when hopefully someone's referenced. Now, I have been in those meetings before with no one mentioning my name and I was just assigned around with names such as Paul. No idea why. But maybe I sounded like a Paul.

[00:04:16] But essentially the AI notes are stored in a secure place and summarized as any AI note taker would. So I know we've had a few of these out recently. We've had final launch and we've had Brief. I'm sure there'll be more and you've got the more generic ones out in the marketplace.

[00:04:34] But it is interesting how Brief suck this information automatically into their advisory structure and therefore create prompts and actions that align into a pathway that helps you stay on top of your advisory meetings for your clients. Very nice. Do you know, I think something about these advisory note takers, as you were saying, about the name that it signs you. So it was like Paul.

[00:05:02] I was in one and it just said, I think it said just person three or something like that, which I was not offended by because I would rather have something that actually like I would never hear them say a name that's not just like a traditional Western name. So imagine they actually came up with a name that's like, you know, it's the same with when they named the storms, isn't it? I never hear the storm, grinder, baal, jandar singh.

[00:05:31] You know, I'd like that then, you know, real school and it counts. But yeah, like it's like that, isn't it? With your AI note takers. I would like them to say a name that gives us like a, you know, a little bit more excitement. Tchaikovsky, you know, something like that. We should write in to the weather station, weather people. I think that's what we call them. And say we need to be more diverse in the name of our storms. A hundred percent. And I'm saying the same thing to brief as well.

[00:06:01] Please be more diverse in your choice of names. Well, then maybe it already does. Right. The one that recorded me was co-pilot. So maybe that's very Western. Yeah, true. It was ironically, there was another colleague in the meeting and it was, I don't know why, we called him sexy. Just a one-off.

[00:06:24] And the whole time the AI note taker referred to him as sexy in his name. That's great. I think that's, I think that is great. We need to see more of that. Exactly. And something completely different that moves away. And it's more akin to the three letters that we've all been hearing a lot about recently, MTD. Intuit's latest move with QuickBooks is designed to simplify the complexity of MTD for income tax,

[00:06:54] particularly for accountants managing clients with multiple income streams. Something KPM and other MTD players have been trying to address as well. But here's the quick, here is the kicker. QuickBooks is aiming to cover almost 2 million additional taxpayers, including landlords with joint property ownership and gig workers with one unified solution.

[00:07:20] So, while some of the other MTD offerings that we've seen recently are pretty straightforward for sole traders and individual clients, QuickBooks is going bigger and aiming to integrate property, investment and multiple income types into their solution. It's trying to eliminate the additional headache of managing multiple licenses and tools for different clients by offering everything under its one roof, as QuickBooks always does.

[00:07:43] The AI-powered automation allows things like auto-categorizing transactions, simplified bank reconciliation and streamlined tax filing processes, so that you can save hours of administrative work, especially when dealing with clients who juggle several income sources. Here's where the rubber meets the road, with QuickBooks already being one of the first to submit MTD for income tax updates to HMRC. They're not just catching up, they're setting the standard.

[00:08:11] And with their significant R&D budget, QuickBooks might be ahead of the curve, but with the likes of some of the other cloud accounting platforms, like Capium, who we spoke about last week, also providing cloud-based MTD tools, accountants are being presented with a number of different options that they can set through. So, for firms, I think the big question is whether the combination of AI automation, with the promise of a single platform and everything under one roof,

[00:08:38] and the backing of insurance hefty big tech pockets, makes QuickBooks a clearer MTD winner, or if it's just another overly ambitious tool in a rapidly saturated market that we still don't know is going to actually come to the rescue of all of those that will be affected by MTD for income tax. What do you think, Ryan? What I think is, I think you nearly broke me with when the rubber meets the road.

[00:09:07] Rubber meets the road. Yeah, I know. I was trying to really put some little alliteration into my poetry today. I like it. We need more of that. What I think is what you actually listed as the AI-powered elements, which was categorisation and bank reconciliation, and I think assistance with filing, it's already there. I don't think there's that much new in what was announced there. If you put AI in front of it, Ryan, didn't put AI in front of it before. No, that's true.

[00:09:38] So, I guess what I think is it doesn't feel like there's that much new. Yes, they are bringing in the way to automatically, I guess, capture certain elements of income, but we've seen that in the likes of free agent. And they've been working very well or very hard on the property side and on the construction management side. So, I think all of the players are doing something here. The bit I'm still waiting on, the bit I really want to see, and I was excited on it, I still don't feel it's come to fruition yet,

[00:10:06] is Intuit Assist really having a huge impact across all of their tools. And maybe this is over in the US, but come on, bring it to the UK. I promised big things. I want to see it. On a different note, and something a lot more positive and exciting, is what Sage are doing in Intact. Once again, the two letters of AI. But what they are rolling out across the Sage Intact platform,

[00:10:35] as well as a whole plethora of other releases, which we'll come to in a minute, is period, end, close assistance. Now, this is where I think AI and AI agents are going to have a huge impact on the accounting space. And essentially, I think what they're doing in Sage Intact, and I'm assuming there's other platforms that also do this, such as NetSuite, et cetera, is changing how the period and close process will work. So, they are automatically reconciling various accounts,

[00:11:04] highlighting variances, and providing drill down insights. So, essentially, it is doing the front-loaded work that most accounting individuals would do on a period and close. It is looking for those differences, and it is flagging discrepancies, allowing you to focus your work, to identify and eliminate any of the errors that may be in that process. I mean, this sounds a brilliant initial step, and it's been rolled out across the UK and the US first.

[00:11:31] They've also got a closed assistant, which simplifies, I guess, the processes, the tracking across various elements inside the trial balance. So, the ledgers and the sub-ledgers, enabling you to identify, okay, what has been done, what hasn't been done, what do we need at closed? And so, combining that with the reconciliation assistant, I think it's a huge leap forward in AI-powered finance systems, and something that I guess I was hoping for with the likes of QuickBooks,

[00:12:01] when you mentioned there was AI that were bringing into the platform. But I'm sure we will see this in the smaller platforms. This is only in Intact. This is not in Sage accounting. So, it's not for the small business space at the moment. It's for the more premium, mid-tier or mid-sized businesses. But they have released other things as well. So, in the UK, you've got automated whip relief. So, moving the work-in-progress balance upon completion of the project into,

[00:12:31] or aligning that with costs and revenue. You've also got a release for contract summary. So, anything where you've got key contract data, you're putting that into a single view across all elements inside that, contracts and billing, purchasing, and project details. But all other functionality is for the US. So, they've got new things regarding an EMR connection. Tessitura. I'm terrible with pronunciation, but I'm going with Tessitura. Ticketing connector.

[00:13:01] And a fundraising system powered by DonorPerfect. So, a lot of stuff and very exciting stuff in the UK regarding AI, but they are spreading their releases and have a lot in the US that aren't. Good old Tess. Tessitura. Yeah, I think that was right. My old mate. Tessitura. My new co-pilot name. Exactly.

[00:13:26] A little bit more exciting and diverse and, you know, inclusive. Big news in the payments world. True Layer just hit a record-breaking milestone, processing over 10 billion in payments in just one month. This isn't just about big numbers. It's about real-time, secure, low-cost payments. And it's becoming the go-to choice for businesses in all sectors like e-commerce, food, finance.

[00:13:52] For accountants, I think this shift is fairly big because as businesses have moved more towards pay-by-bank in recent years, they're not only improving cash flow but also cutting down on card fraud. True Layer's platform, for those who don't have as much experience with it, enables faster payments, instant refunds and smoother overall customer experience when it comes to the payment side.

[00:14:16] And for clients in high-volume industries, that means lower costs, better payments, security and potentially higher checkout conversion rates. So if you're advising clients in e-commerce or finance, now's the time to get them on board with real-time payments. The wave is clear and no longer are instant payments going to be something of the future. They are the present. And I think it's important to help clients navigate these changes and help them to stay ahead of the curve. It looks like True Layer is leading that curve.

[00:14:47] And congratulations to them on such a massive amount of growth. Yeah. And I think instant payments is definitely right here, right now. If you are not talking to your clients about integrated payment solutions using payment routes such as True Layer, I think that you're now behind the curve. And £10 billion in one month. Huge amount of money. Moving on. I've got something from Briefcase.

[00:15:12] So this is, if you've not come across Briefcase before, they're an AI, AI again, powered data collection tool. So similar to the likes of what Dext, AutoEntry and DataMilino were. You know, there's other players in the market that do this as well. But I guess those were the three that were the originals in this space. Briefcase and Genesis and now I think Artifact AI as well are all making ways by using AI powered,

[00:15:43] an AI powered engine to extract the information in a more in-depth and faster and more reliable, in theory, manner. And what Briefcase have recently launched is the ability to not only extract information from PDFs, but also from Word and Excel documents. Now, what is interesting about this is that although these may be quite rare, they're really hard for traditional tools to extract relevant information from. So the fact that they are broadening their tool set to ingest, I guess, more varied documents

[00:16:10] is assumes or, I guess, leads into the fact that they should, in theory, over time, be able to extract relevant purchase information from pretty much any document. And this follows on the wave of Briefcase already releasing prepayments and automating a lot more of the purchase process. So I believe that, I guess, Briefcase and Genesis are now, won't be the right term,

[00:16:36] challenging the likes of Dext and AutoEntry and DataMilino, as well as the other players, traditional players in the space. And just something from Alicobank. Alicobank has just posted a record-breaking year, and the numbers speak for themselves. In 2024, they nearly doubled their pre-tax profits to £29.9 million, up from £16.1 million in 2023. Gross revenue surged by 68%, reaching £293 million.

[00:17:05] Their total lending hit £3 billion, marking a 54% increase, while customer deposits grew to over £4 billion, a 68% rise from the previous year. What set Alicobank apart? They built a proprietary technology platform tailored for established SMEs, more the M size of SMEs, with businesses typically having between 5 to 250 employees

[00:17:34] that form a third of the UK economy. In 2024 alone, their in-house team delivered over 3,500 technology releases, including integrations with platforms like Sage, Xero and Wise. Their flagship product, the Business Rewards account, has grown rapidly, attracting over 6,000 SME customers by the end of 2024. The account offers no monthly fees, cash back on card purchases, and a dedicated relationship manager,

[00:18:03] combining digital convenience with a whole personalised service, and something that allows Alica to remain at the forefront of their customers' mind. Their strategic acquisition of Tuscan Capital, who we reported on in the last year, I think actually it was last year, a specialist in bridge financing, has expanded their lending capabilities, particularly in the property sector. And we've seen that with the launch of their new commercial property loans

[00:18:33] in the last few months alone. They've got a Trustpilot rating of 4.6%, a net promoter score of plus 67, and recognised as Europe's fastest growing startup by Sifted. Alica is clearly redefining the business banking for SMEs in the UK, and we can safely say that they are on to the winner. So congrats to them. And it's a really interesting report. I think that there's a lot that you can garner

[00:18:59] in terms of how they've released or what their plan is for the release of different types of lending products. And they've given some nod to exactly how that will continue to establish itself over the coming year. So yeah, really congrats to all of the stuff that they've achieved. And yes, sounds like a good one, really. Ryan, what do you think? It does, yeah. They've achieved great things in a very short amount of time. It really does kind of show what can be done

[00:19:29] if you get everything right when you're growing and growing at a significant rate, getting to the profitability level they're at. I mean, if you compare that to what some of the other banks that were launched not too long before Alica, the speed is taking them to get to profitability, then really does show things in a positive way. And I've got a final one as well from me that's a game changer for the mid-market businesses using iPlicit.

[00:19:58] And it's going to make your financial work clothes a lot smoother. In a major move, iPlicit has extended its partnership with GoCardless, rolling out an in-app direct debit functionality for their users. It means one-click automated payments that save your client hours and reduce the risk of missed payments. We've had iPlicit on the podcast a number of different times. And here's why we think that accountants should really pay attention to it. There's a few reasons, actually. So there's streamlined payments. Users can schedule one-off or recurring payments

[00:20:26] to be automatically collected when invoices are due. So there's no more chasing for late payments or manually entering data. It reduces the admin burden. So with the automatic payment collection reconciliation, iPlicit users can sync payments with over 350 GoCardless partners, which cuts down a lot of that financial admin that eats up time. and enhance cash flow. Direct debits are bank-to-bank payments, no card networks, no high fees. It's all in one place, which means a smoother cash flow, fewer headaches for your clients.

[00:20:56] And it's not just for one sector. iPlicit's platform is catering to SaaS, fintech, educational recruitment, non-profits, and quite a few others, giving accountants quite a solid, reliable solution to manage the recurring, the one-off payments, and how they're actually focusing on, again, the way that you can efficiently collect payments for all clients while keeping the costs low and operations efficient. So if you're helping clients in that mid-market space navigate those changes,

[00:21:26] this integration could be exactly what they need to also simplify their payment processes. And it goes a long way to what we were talking about earlier with True Layer and the fact that there is a lot of merit in making sure that you can get those payments managed in something that's very neatly joined up to your system. Yeah, and I think this is a testament to the fact that iPlicit are building out more of their integrations out of the box and automating a lot of the process. Their automation workflow internal is incredibly strong.

[00:21:53] So having now other tools that connect in and be part of that is huge. I guess I'll wrap this up with my last bit of news from Iris, in which the Iris Elements now is fully FRS 102 compliant for its accounts preparation. So essentially they've brought into Iris Elements, the enterprise suite, a range of customizable reports, streamlined compliance disclosure and iXperial tagging ready for digital submissions

[00:22:23] across full FRS 102 for limited companies and limited liability partnerships. Now, not a huge, I guess, announcement in the fact that you think that that is where the Iris Elements platform would get to anyway. But, you know, as we move through and Elements builds out, it's a good milestone for them. Essentially that brings us to the end of app news this week. And that brings another Digitools and Accrual World podcast to a close.

[00:22:51] Hopefully this has given you insights and information that will help you move your accounting practice, digital transformation business or business in the space that uses the app technology we talk about forward. If you want to get more information from us or get it quicker, then please do subscribe to our newsletter, which comes out a few days before launch the podcast in which we cover the same articles but in more detail with some critique as we talk for it in the show. We also have the Digital Digest,

[00:23:20] which is a live weekly event every Thursday morning at 9am, which we pick the biggest news topic in any given week and bring on a guest and just dissect it, dive into why this is critical, why this is important. And also you can join in, ask your questions and we'll put those forward to our guests and see what their opinions are. Plus we've got the launch of the Digital Disruptor Awards Mark II later on in the year, so keep tuned for that. But we're also always interested in hearing your viewpoint,

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