Starling Says 'Job Done.' The Accountants Disagree.

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Digi-Tools In Accrual World podcast, a place to go for all your industry tech news in the accounting sector. I am your host, Ryan Pearcy, and I'm joined by the wonderful Indi Tatla today, but only Indi, it's only us two today. So we're going to be smashing through some app news. Indi, have you got any interesting bits we're going to cover?

[00:00:19] I think we're going to cover the rager that is Starling Bank. I think there should be a better way of positioning it, but I won't lie that it was very divisive. And a few points that we'll cover off from Xero, someone pulling out of the UK market, which is unsurprising because it was an app that came from Europe and maybe that was, again, we've seen that happen before.

[00:00:42] And a few points from Ignition this week. And whenever I say the word Ignition, I feel sad that I really can't sing that, what was it, R. Kelly song, Remix to Ignition. I just, we can't do that anymore. But anyway, a couple of really good points from Ignition this week. And yeah, I'm quite, quite happy about talking about all of those, actually. Cool. It's not a good sign that I have no idea what you're talking about with that song, but probably not that much of a surprise that I don't know popular culture. You are not cool at all.

[00:01:12] On Britain's Got Talent, there was a heavy metal band and I was like, oh, finally something I can get behind. So that's kind of where I sit in the music genre area. But yeah, I've got some, I've got some news also from Starling. So hopefully we'll compliment yours. And then got a similar app that's leaving the UK and a correction from our end where we've talked about something before and someone's written in and gone, actually what you said is not quite correct.

[00:01:39] And I'll talk through why we reported what we did and what actually is going on. But yeah, other news around Sage and Zero, you know, standard stuff really. Yeah, exactly. But how's life been for you, Indy? Yeah, really good. I'm very excited about some updates that we've got as the digital disruptors or maybe that will be changing. So I've been teasing you a little bit, haven't I, about the upcoming rebrand that we're going through.

[00:02:06] And also some of the big things that we've got on our, that have been off our radar that are coming onto the radar that we can talk about in less than a month now. So very excited. It's cool. And this is one of those rare occasions where you're saying things that I have no idea really what's going on at this point. So listeners, I am in the dark as well as you. So it's going to be interesting to find out what's happening now that Indy's got full reins on what we're doing and how we're doing it.

[00:02:35] But that's not exactly what this podcast is all about. It's providing you all with insights about what to look out for and to possibly explore more. So should we kick off some updates? Let's do it. We're welcoming Fishbowl to our podcast. Fishbowl is inventory and manufacturing software for businesses that have outgrown spreadsheets and bolted on add-ons but aren't ready for a full ERP. They've got over 25 years building this product in the US and 15 years in Australia.

[00:03:04] And now they're showing up properly in the UK, both desktop and cloud working alongside QuickBooks and Xero. What stands out is their manufacturing depth. There's multi-stage build of materials with sub-assemblies, mid-build component swaps without having to cancel the work order and reissue it, and capacity and production planning. True landed cost reconciliation and all four costing methods, VIFO, LIFO, standard and average, which is rarer in this category than you'd think.

[00:03:31] The other thing worth knowing, when you're quoted, the price includes the product. So barcoding AI insights, the reporting modules is all in. They're not on a list of extras. And when you call support, you get a lovely Fishbowl employee. So the accountability always stays in-house. It's worth a look if your inventory tool wasn't built for the operations you're actually running right now. Okay, so I'm going to kick off this week on Starling Bank.

[00:03:58] And I think, like I said, there was quite a lot of rage, but rage isn't about Starling adding accounting features. I think it's just more towards banks that have been moving into the space for a few years. So I know there was a lot of concern that Starling's messaging makes accounting sound like something a bank account can simply sort, if it categorizes transactions and does some clever stuff with the receipts and then submits quarterly updates.

[00:04:26] But Starling is sort of positioning the tool as bringing banking, bookkeeping and tax into the account. And then it offers some things around automatic categorization and some one-click MTD submissions, receipt matching and real-time tax estimates, which allow you to at least separate or understand how much you should be saving or keeping in reserve for the taxes.

[00:04:53] So it's convenient. But I think that, you know, we had some really great articles that came out in the last couple of weeks. I know I name-checked Lucy Cohen because I loved her article, I love her style of writing, but she did pick up some really interesting points. Brian, did you give that a read at all? I gave it a skim. It was very long. It was long. But admittedly, I get really into a lot of Lucy's stuff. And I find out I don't have enough time in the day to read all of her things.

[00:05:22] But I just go down a rabbit hole because, yeah, as you say, her style of writing is incredibly engaging, incredibly real and raw. And I think that's what makes it so good. Yeah. So for those who didn't get a chance to read it, I would highly recommend it. The crux of it seemed to be that, you know, we all know about these missing invoices, missing receipts, things that often the accountant needs to do some chasing on.

[00:05:50] And she went into some of her own data and looked at, you know, what was fully reconciled. She was saying 18% of the entries in a fully reconciled ledger had no corresponding bank entry for the same period. So if you lay on top of that things like AI categorization and incomplete bank data, then you risk, you know, the risk changes in general. So the problem is not about one client miscategorizing a transaction.

[00:06:20] It's thousands of small businesses submitting plausible, consistent, structurally incomplete records into MTD. And that was the main kind of provocative point is that, you know, MTD was obviously designed to reduce manual error. And it may depend on software architecture that HMRC has not properly stress tested for AI clarification, classifications and data completeness. And I think that's the point that, you know, Lucy was picking up on. When you look at something like a Starling,

[00:06:49] it might be a trigger for whether a bank should be or could be saying something like direct submission to HMRC, but it's not actually a complete picture of what I guess either side is trying to do. I don't think the Starling are trying to replace necessarily what the accounting role, accountant's role is in this, but it doesn't help. And rightly, you know, so they highlight it on their website.

[00:07:16] It doesn't help that as an accountant, you can't get access to that data within Starling. So it's not going about it in the right way. And then saying, okay, things like, yeah, you can, you know, we'll earmark your tax prediction and let you submit it directly to HMRC. But they have launched and that's safe. You do want to know more about it. And you've got clients that are using Starling because there were quite a few accountants that did recommend Starling to their clients.

[00:07:46] Then it's free for sole traders to have an account. And then for limited companies, you pay £7 a month until April 2020. After that, it's £14 a month. So I think, again, just something to be aware of. I think there's a lot of, I guess, controversy around whether this is the right thing in general to do for the accountant's client, because we've seen so much encroachment happening in the last couple of years.

[00:08:14] And then a separate point around banks and their commercial incentive to own compliance and whether that's really something that we would want anyone to have that kind of ownership of without having the accountant in the loop. Yeah, and I think that's the critical bit. And I think they've really, I think they've misstepped because they built up a really good accounting channel. So they were getting like partnerships and referrals in from accountants. And it feels like they've tarnished that relationship.

[00:08:42] And I know some of the uproar on social media was those accountants saying they've essentially ripped up those agreements because they feel that what Starling are trying to do here is encroach in their space rather than work in a formal partnership. And as you say, it would have been so much easier to go, we're going to gather your data. We're going to enable you to manage this, but we're going to enable you to invite your accountant in. And also, if you don't have an accountant, the ties will put forward our partners in local areas, because that is, you know, that's a positive for accountants.

[00:09:10] You're basically saying we can gather and do the simple stuff in our app, but you're going to want to speak to professional image just to clarify whether you need support or not. Because there are some that are very simple, that possibly could get away with just doing things on a very simple basis. And then there's ones where, as you say, the accrual basis is so phenomenally different to the cash basis that you need an accountant to help. And so I think it's nothing wrong, as I say, in doing something.

[00:09:34] It's maybe how they've messaged it and the way they've approached it that has riled the accounting sector. Definitely the messaging, because I think the phrase that they used was job done. So making tax digital job done. And it's just like, come on. We know for most clients that filing is the last step, but the work is really making sure that the numbers are complete

[00:09:58] and that, you know, you've got the support for all of those documents and all those information that you are submitting before the submission. So it's not just populating the boxes. Yeah, agreed. And I think this isn't the first time I've seen this. It's the first time I've properly seen it for the banking sector, but we had it for the software vendors. You know, QuickBooks were doing this messaging years ago and basically saying, you don't need an accountant anymore. And then they've kind of had to wind that back. In the UK market. In the UK market.

[00:10:28] In the UK. But not in all of the markets. No, not US. And what I will say is that there's a really good take on this from someone that said they've seen businesses roll something like this out. And then what they found is they have to provide support to their clients or queries, which then means they're going to end up going down having to provide accounting support, which they're not really tailored or designed to do. They don't have the team to do that, which is going to start creating problems and issues that they've not really planned for.

[00:10:56] Whereas the partnership route meant they would have got around that because they could have just directed them to a partner rather than going, and basically saying, we're not going to help you at all because we're going to direct you to someone that can. Hopefully there's the feedback, let's call it feedback, that they've received regarding this launch enables them to pivot and change it slightly and actually build something far better off the back of it. But that's not the only thing they've been doing. And I said I had time from starting. They have launched Tap2Pay. I say launched. It's coming. So they've announced it, but it's not quite there yet.

[00:11:25] So now Tap2Pay is something we've talked about quite a lot. As long as you've got an app and then you've got a smart mobile phone with like an NFC chip in it, someone can pay you via their card by tapping it onto your phone. Now this is utilizing the new functionality that Starling essentially released, i.e. the invoicing functionality in this accounting suite. But they're partnered with Adyen who will enable this kind of contactless payment to work. So Adyen will sit in the background. You'll not be visible. We'll be doing everything through Starling.

[00:11:53] You'll create your invoice and then you'll enable the Tap2Pay feature. And then if you have done that, there is a small payment charge essentially based on whatever an Adyen fee is. So the Starling functionality is no charge, but there is a small flat rate fee on transactions is the way Starling described it.

[00:12:10] I don't think we need to kind of go into details of what Tap2Pay is, but essentially, once again, this is kind of moving their accounting offering forward straight away into something that we only recently talked about some of the other software providers catching up and doing. So a great initial step, I'd say, from Starling and providing good functionality inside their accounting. I think I was looking the other day for someone I'm doing a little bit of work with to try and help them with their launch, launching their business. And they needed Tap2Pay.

[00:12:39] And it turns out, I didn't know this, and I should have known this, but I did know this on a subconscious level, clearly, because I did recommend it. But Pre-Agent with their Tap2Pay, which is powered by Stripe, and Xero with their Tap2Pay, also powered by Stripe. So interesting that Starling have chosen Adyen. I wonder if the fees are slightly cheaper. But yeah, again, like you said, it's a catch-up. It is indeed. And I've got something else.

[00:13:05] But it's moving us away from Starling promo. So moving on to Xero Force, which is Xero's move into accounting software and custom AI workflow automation. Who could have foreseen this? I think that we have spoken about this over the podcast for the last few months, that there is going to be, in general, a move towards a ledger pushing for workflow automation.

[00:13:33] I know we spoke about it last year, but this is really coming to your head because now this is a no-code agent builder for financial workflows. So you can have repeatable processes built for you in plain English. So things like month-end close steps, uncoded transaction chasing, things like tax document collection, PO validation, pay run approval. And Xero Force turns that into an always-on workflow across Xero and any connected apps.

[00:14:00] So the strategic point is that it's more important, right, than a feature set. So Xero wants to move from being the ledger, where the work is recorded, to the platform where work is triggered, where the work is monitored, where it's completed. And where there's something that you can, as an operator, see in one console. And the strong part is the practice-wide angle.

[00:14:24] So if agents can run across hundreds of clients with audit trails and sign-off controls, it becomes much more relevant than having like a one-client chatbot. I think there is a little bit of skepticism on this. Skepticism, not cynicism, which I learned. There is a big difference between the two. I would be the cynic, I'd be the skeptic. So no-code agent builders often sound easy until you're in a real-world example.

[00:14:53] And we've all felt that when you're asking some form of technology to perform a task and it just keeps getting it wrong. I think like, you know, I saw a really good 30-second short of, you know, a Subway sandwich and, you know, AI being asked to cut the Subway sandwich and it's like cut it in half. And it's like, it's a little bit like that. So, you know, it cuts it completely the wrong way. Lengthways, yeah. Yeah, lengthways. And it keeps turning on its head and it's just a mess.

[00:15:23] So I guess it's like, how does it handle the messy client behavior where there's poor data, where there's edge case tax rules, where there's half integrated third-party apps? It's sort of like, will it actually work? So, I mean, my main thing is they're trying to own the workflow layer and that maybe there's something there around bulk client capability.

[00:15:47] But it will be messy and it will be ugly and it will be like cutting the sandwich in half the wrong way because that's where it's fairly accountant-specific. And I guess, yeah, I guess there's some things around, you know, the promise of natural language automation with all of this stuff is, you know, it still needs approval. So it still comes back to this, like, how much do we trust it? How easy is it to build it? How predictable will it be? How accurate will it be?

[00:16:15] And is it easy to switch them off when they go wrong? Yeah, there's a lot in this, right? So, as you say, the strategic part is, I guess, the key thing that's highlighted here. But there was a few little things you pointed out that I think make it much bigger. So, firstly, the plan, from what I understand you said, is it sits more in the zero HQ anymore because I've rebranded it.

[00:16:43] I can't remember now what it's called, even though we talked about it in the last episode. The new kind of accounting layer. So it's across all clients. But also, you said, with integrated apps. And that is very interesting because my understanding would be that there'd need to be an AI connection between those apps. So an MCP server connection rather than just an API connection to enable that to work. And I was unaware of any of that being in place.

[00:17:09] And maybe this is more in how data comes in from those apps and how it then triggers and works through these workflows. But it'd be good to kind of understand more about how this is planned and how they're going to evolve this. And maybe, and I say perfect timing wise, for something as big as this, you'd expect to be a huge announcement at Xerocon around it and a lot more detail on how it's going to work.

[00:17:33] So I know there's been a lot of Xerocons over the last five, six years where people come away going, it doesn't feel like there was anything really announced. It does feel like we're building up to some big Xerocon this year. I hope I'm not wrong because I'm going and I want to be excited about it. But it does feel like Xerocon may be a defining step change in how Xero is now operated. Yeah, no, I was just double checking while you said that.

[00:18:03] Definitely third party apps. So it does imply there's an implication Xerocon is going beyond raw data to deliver blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I think it's the data there. It's a rich context layer. So it organizes how data is connected and understood to create a rich context layer.

[00:18:24] It does sort of imply with that language that, you know, they have something that's more, you know, headless API, MCP sort of orientated where they've just ingested. And depending, I guess it depends on who, which partners, because it really depends on, you know, which app has got the similar sort of DNA and the ability to work with Xero. We could probably speculate on a few. I mean, maybe we could say like a, what do you reckon, carbon? Maybe.

[00:18:52] I mean, they're very AI focused and driven. And then yes, possibly. I would expect if I was Xero, I'd probably work out in the data capture and reporting layers. But I know they're trying to own those themselves. Do they want to, you know, develop the tools that are going to work on the connection? Or are they going to want to deeply embed that in the new data capture and the new SIFT kind of reporting process? We'll only find out in due course. I have something that's not shiny and new and exciting.

[00:19:21] And I have something that's a little bit sad. So, unfortunately, Bokio, that's how I pronounce it, it might be Bukio, but Bokio, that was a Swedish-based finance ledger that came out to the UK a few years ago. They initially came out as a free-to-use software, pivoted into a pricing model. But unfortunately, as of the end of June, they will be completely out of the UK and data will no longer be available for UK users. Now, this was only announced on the 18th of May.

[00:19:47] So, essentially, clients have a month and a half or less than a month and a half to get their data out. Now, that is a, I'd say, not quite British, right? You'd want to be fair in any exit. If you're British and this feels a bit cold, you've only got that amount of time. Who has that amount of time to pivot and get the data out? And for legal and compliance reasons, that's quite a change. But they're pulling and withdrawing back into Sweden.

[00:20:15] I think, I'm not massively surprised when they came over. I don't think they really had a differentiator. The free software was a good angle, but actually the operations didn't even hit minimum level for the UK when it came over. So, it meant they had to develop a lot of specific functionality. I think they just struggled to get to the point where they could properly compete. So, not a massive surprise. I don't think there's going to be a huge amount of UK clients that will be affected by it.

[00:20:39] But if you do have anyone on Bocchio or you're aware of that, please do have a discussion with them about moving their data off onto a different system. Very sad. And it's not uncommon though, Rowan, because we've seen it before. We've seen it with a handful of other ones that have come from. Who are the ones? Come on, let's try and remember, play bingo with it. I remember Libio, because Libio has done fantastically well still in France. It's just not here. And I'm trying to think of some other ones that we can.

[00:21:05] I was going to say MIMO, but MIMO is actually not doing that. No, they're pivoted really more than anything. Which we will come on to on another episode. But yeah, I think that one's an example of a Swedish that came over as one thing and is now something completely different. Yeah, I think the main difference here, unlike Libio, which is in a very specific area, it's a ledger. And when it's the ledger, you're holding that data.

[00:21:31] Going back to your discussion around Xero, is that for compliance reasons, that's the core of where your data is. And so it becomes a lot more from a risk perspective for anyone. I think the thing to consider on any of this is that we've got this whole new wealth of AI-powered ledgers that's rolling up and being advertised and looking exciting. But we don't know how long they're actually going to be around for. So you've got to really weigh up.

[00:21:58] Do I want to try something that's new and shiny on something that's high risk as your core finance data? That's always a challenge. And I don't think that has been, I guess, I guess it's been highlighted the risks associated with that by Bocchio pulling out. I then will continue on your downbeat news pattern, which is Top Trump matching you with Intuit, who are cutting 17% of the workforce. And they're citing AI acceleration as a major signal for why this is happening. They're not struggling.

[00:22:27] And actually, they, in recent years, are still very strong. So revenue is up 17% year on year in the reported second quarter. Unfortunately, that doesn't also mean that, like, that 17% is a 17% discount to all of its clients, which would be even nicer, wouldn't it? Or a 17% something or other. But they did have another figure.

[00:22:53] The shares fell, unfortunately, because investors aren't fully convinced around the AI acceleration. Also didn't say 17%, but wouldn't it be ironic if it was some great numerology there? But the layoffs, I guess, make it quite revealing. It's an AI restructuring. We've said this for a few other technology companies in the space. I think Jack Dorsey was the first one to kick it off. The company is saying we can build support and operate differently now.

[00:23:21] So fewer people, more automation, more things around AI being embedded in the product stack. And their product stack is quite extensive because, you know, it owns TurboTax. It has QuickBooks. It has Credit Karma. And it has MailChimp. So I think for, you know, for, I guess, for the accounting market, given what we know, what they say in other jurisdictions, going directly to the business, you don't need the accountant. It's slightly uncomfortable because what does it mean that, you know, they're applying AI to their own workforce model in that way?

[00:23:49] It's likely to be, you know, aggressive at some point as to the work that people actually do. And again, that's pure conjecture and spectrum. But I guess, you know, if an investor sees that as something that could be weakness in its armor, layoffs like this, I guess, they sharpen the focus and they can also damage the product reputation. And so, but it is, it is sort of sad.

[00:24:16] It's just that we're in those times at the moment, I'd say that, you know, AI is now an operating model of a business and not a feature roadmap that we have seen in the past. This is more around those businesses that are putting AI at the core and reshaping their company around AI. It tells us where the accounting platforms are all heading in general.

[00:24:40] It means fewer manual internal processes, faster product cycles, more automation across customer facing workflows, more intuitive. So I think, yeah, stronger companies are now cutting rather than seeing it as something that they shouldn't, they should hold off doing. I think that they're being quite early in cutting the workforce now. Yeah, although if we go back two years, one year, Intuit laid off a load of people citing

[00:25:08] AI development and hired a load of AI developers. And I feel it was around the same amount of people that have now been laid off. So it's ironic. Maybe they built all the AI, the core AI and got the stuff in, it's like, we don't need you anymore. Or like you say, maybe it's other part of their workflows and they're reinvesting in the AI side. I just feel that everyone just references AI now for any tough decisions.

[00:25:33] So yeah, it's a challenging one, but they are constantly evolving into it at quite a rapid pace. They really are. On AI, on a completely different angle, Sage Copilot is now available for all users at no additional charge. Now, I don't know if this is every single feature of Sage Copilot, but this is going to be inside every area of Sage, as far as I can tell. So it does focus on getting paid faster, saving hours and controlling your VAT.

[00:26:02] So as a reminder of what these agents are, you've got a payments agent, which is obviously focusing on getting paid faster. You've got an MTD for income tax agent, very focused on obviously if you are applicable or related or need to be compliant for MTD for income tax. You've got AP automation agent, extracting data, close agent, looking at that period of close, financial intelligence, insights, assurance agent, time agent and sales intelligent agent. So there's quite a lot of agents now.

[00:26:28] And if that's all free and it all costs them money to do it, I'm not sure it's going to be free forever. Maybe this is a penetration pricing point so that Sage will essentially get you using it, get you hooked and then ramp up the price. I don't know. Once again, speculation. Maybe they have worked out pricing model. They can just in, I guess, take on all of this AI cost forever. But most SaaS businesses I've been looking at are trying to balance pricing now between a

[00:26:57] regular monthly cost and then a usage cost as well. Sage have gone the other way, got rid of the usage costs entirely, at least for now. I think this was actually released in April, although we're now in June. I think I picked this up a little bit late. So you may be, if you're already using Sage, been doing this for a while at no extra cost and you're loving it. Feedback would be much appreciated on what you think about it. That sounds great, Ryan. So you probably know more about it. Do we have many people that we can talk to about this Sage co-pilot?

[00:27:25] Let's think about someone that we want to ask about this. Well, let's name check them. Chris Downing. Maybe we'll actually ask Phil Hobton about this. Someone try and tap up for some more information. I've got two back-to-backs now from Ignition. So they have announced two integrations. One is with Vinyl and they've launched a beta for the existing customers in June.

[00:27:54] And there's some great things happening there. It's the same as what we were talking about on the podcast last week, I think it was, with Vinyl and Socket. This time you've got the ability to create a proposal in Ignition, post the meeting using the Vinyl transcript and the insights and pairing that with your service library and pricing in just under three minutes, they claim. So you can uncover out-of-scope work based on the existing agreement

[00:28:20] and measure that against the conversation and discussion in your Vinyl notes. So it's the start of their conversation to cash workflows and some of the items that Vinyl are planning to build into their product with a calendar scheduling and the email workflows and other client signals and intelligence. So a very nice little update there from Ignition and Vinyl. And then the other one is Ignition and FYI.

[00:28:48] FYI, who's been a supporter of our pod for many years, has now completed its own integration as well. And it's to close the gap between proposal acceptance and work delivery. So it will automatically create FYI jobs from accepted Ignition proposals and it will sync client information between the platforms, reduce the overall manual admin and any duplicate data entry, and also standardize the workflows right away from the initial engagement through to delivery.

[00:29:18] So overall removing friction across the board. So congrats to those two. Not sure if you've used that or come across any feedback, Ryan, because obviously you are a Vinyl user. Am I getting that wrong? No, I was a Vinyl user, but Vinyl is very tailored to the accounting sector. And now with what we do, which is very project-based, we've pivoted to a system called Avoma. Still love Vinyl. It was just, it was given very specific, very accounting-specific summaries. I was like, wow, that was brilliant if we're doing accounting and requires real compliance,

[00:29:47] but we weren't. So yeah, we pivoted. But what I do like about these announcements is that, I think it was only the last episode of the episode before, we talked about the fact that Socket had enabled the capture of AI transcripts and then bringing that in to create your proposals, which seems kind of similar to some extent, and what's going on with the Ignition side. And Socket also had an integration into FYI doing that entire flow that Ignition's done.

[00:30:13] So they're basically now on parity with Socket on the integration data flow perspective. And what I'm loving about the FYI side is they're becoming that central place for anything that's practice management. Like they're making some really good integrations so that depending on what you do and how you operate, you still have choice. So you still have FYI as the core, but you can work across multiple ledgers,

[00:30:36] multiple engagement tools, papers, et cetera, so that you're able to operate in a flexible way rather than being tied down into a single core stack, which is what a lot of the old providers were doing. I think brilliant strategic releases here rather than, I guess, high-level functionality ones, very good strategic ones. Now, I teased at the start of this episode about a correction from our side, and I feel we should dive into this slide.

[00:31:06] This is from Xero. So a little while ago, we had Heather Smith on the pod, and she was reading back that the new Xero work papers packs that had only been released, if a client was removed or if a client removed your access, as I say they moved to a firm, you could no longer access that work paper. That data was technically, the way it was worded, owned by the client, even though it was stuff that we had worked on the client and hadn't necessarily seen any of it. It's our work papers, right?

[00:31:33] This came from a support ticket that was raised and an answer that was directly given stating this. What's happened since then is that Xero had been working behind the scenes, having actually listened to our pod, so we do have some sort of influence, it appears, and found out that the advice that we provided was wrong. If a client removes your access, you can still access your old work papers. You just can't create new ones, which makes sense, right? Because why would you want to create new ones for a client that's no longer a client?

[00:32:01] But you still need, from a compliance perspective, to be able to access the old ones, reference what's gone on, and potentially even report back to relevant stakeholders. That is completely and 100% possible. So exactly as we'd need it is completely fine. And we've had that from multiple sources now. We've had that from an individual that listened to our pod and was going back and forth with Xero and then reached out to us directly to let us know. And we've also had that from Xero directly. So I'd love to do a correction when it's a good correction, and this is exactly it. What we thought and what had actually been fed directly to us,

[00:32:31] which we thought was bad functionality, is incorrect. Xero is Xero work papers are working exactly as you would hope and expect them to do. And then finally, I'm going to wrap up on the fact that I'm actually a little bit disappointed. Indeed, I'm a little bit disappointed because I was looking forward to applying for the Xero Awards this year, given that last year when I launched my new business,

[00:32:56] I did a little bit of a ranty comment on LinkedIn going, so frustrating that as I'm technically not an accounting practice, I can't apply for these awards. And Xero went, I think you can, but too late for me to actually apply. So I didn't get to apply. And since then, I've become a registered accounting practice anyway, because we need to because of weird AML-based rules for accounting practices. So I am an accounting practice that could have applied, was going to apply for the Xero Awards, can't because they're not in the UK this year.

[00:33:25] So I am disappointed, dismayed and disheartened that I feel abandoned by the opportunity or moved the opportunity to apply for these awards. I've always said they've been very good and very positive, but this does follow that trend, right? And that Xero moves, Xero cons from being every year to every two or three years. And now I feel we're getting the same thing with the awards. They're slowly pulling back from what were huge cost sinkholes for them, right? They never made any money on these things.

[00:33:56] So I think they've established themselves. They've got enough awareness out there that they don't necessarily need to do these events in the same regularity they did before. Yeah, it's a bit of a stretch. They're not doing it in Australia either by the look of it. Yeah, that's what I mean. I think they're doing the same Xero con model. They're picking different jurisdictions and then cycling around. There's been no official, as far as I can tell, announcement about that. It just looks that way to me.

[00:34:23] They've picked, I think there's three, if I'm right, there's three jurisdictions that they're in for 2026. Asia, the US and Canada. So heavily featuring North America. But their core areas, UK and the Australia area has... Or maybe they're just trying to make sure that there's enough of a budget and a song and a dance this year in North America. Because like you said, that's not where they are dominant at the moment. But clearly they're putting the... What was it? Is it putting the Woolies? Is it putting the Woolies up somewhere?

[00:34:53] No, is that one? Willies. Willies? Willies. Putting the Woolies probably helped intuiting QuickBooks in the States, I reckon. That's what they're doing. I'm not still entirely certain that it's being used in the right context. We'd know if John was here. That's the problem when John's not here. He would know any quotes regarding Woolies. He would be 100% all over. I scored it Woolies to be PG. So to be fair, you did change that. I think that though there's a huge opportunity to... There's quite a few awards that are coming on this year anyway.

[00:35:23] All at the same time, just like buses. So we've got the Accounting Excellence Awards, Luca Awards and our Digital Disruptor Awards taking place pretty much all around September. Well, that's the time to do them, isn't it? And for those that haven't been to our awards event before, it has been cited as like the early Xerocons from a buzz and energy perspective. It is not a formal sit-down black tie event.

[00:35:51] It is a party, basically, with some awards involved. And we cover those areas that I think get just ignored now, especially with Xero Awards not being around. And I think they pull back from anyway. Just recognizing those tech products that are really making a difference because we invest as accountants so much time and energy into those. We want the ones that really do a good job. We want those to be recognized. And then it helps highlight and make others aware of how good a job they've been doing. So we will be continuing our awards.

[00:36:20] We're not pulling back from the UK. We're doubling down. So, yeah, please do ensure that you have signed up for the shortlist. We'll be making a lot more of a song and dance around this over the coming weeks and months. And I guess that brings us to an end of another Digit Tools in a Cruel World podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Please do like and subscribe on LinkedIn and YouTube to make sure you catch every episode.

[00:36:44] And if you don't have the time to listen to every episode, but you want to make sure you catch all the key news, then do ensure you follow the quarterly update. And that summarizes the key topics, releases and discussion points that we have on the podcast throughout the daily posts on LinkedIn. And any just conversations that Indy, John, I and the others that join us on these shows have as well that maybe don't make the cut. So, yeah, please do ensure you subscribe to that.

[00:37:09] As I said, we'll have more information on the awards coming out and teasers from Indy on whatever we're doing that I'm learning about in due course. And we'll catch you on the next episode.