They open on Cortea, the Berlin audit AI startup that has raised over £10m from Dawn Capital, with Larry Bradley, the former global head of audit at KPMG, in as an angel investor. It sells Audit Quality Agents that check reports, disclosure notes and financial statements before sign-off. John is not convinced that is where audits actually fail, and reckons any time saved gets sold straight back out as more audit work. Alastair makes the point that sets up the whole episode: vendors are taking more and more of the workflow, but nobody is taking the liability. You do 99.9% of the checks this month, then 99.9% of that next month, and one day you look up and you are barely checking anything.
Then HMRC's timely payments consultation, which would move income tax self assessment towards in-year collection through payroll from April 2029. John thinks the outrage is misplaced, on the grounds that the money was never the client's to spend. Alastair counters that a real working capital squeeze is coming for businesses that have grown used to holding the cash. Vipul settles it with a story about a Range Rover on the drive.
Six banks and UK Finance are working on a voluntary digital verification service, letting customers prove their name, age and address from inside their banking app. It could take a lot of friction out of client onboarding, if the regulators get behind it. It also raises the liability question again, because somebody has to carry the can when the bank has your client's old address.
On e-invoicing, 2029 is looking crowded. MTD, e-invoicing, timely payments and Companies House reform are all landing in the same window, and John wants VAT simplification to come as part of the deal. He also asks the question nobody has answered: when you receive an e-invoice and it is wrong, what actually happens next?
Also covered: Digits deepens its partnerships with Ignition, Karbon and Reach Reporting, which Alastair reads as a signal it wants to work with firms rather than around them. Croner Intelligence goes on general release, built only on Croner's own decades of guidance, which opens up a good argument about what a moat even is now the barrier to building software has collapsed. AccountsIQ and GoCardless launch a native integration. Socket adds Forms. And the ICAEW rounds up AI agents behaving badly, including the coding agent that deleted a car rental firm's entire database and put them out of action for a week.
Chapters
00:00 Intro
03:00 A word from Fishbowl
04:07 Cortea raises £10m to point AI at audit quality
11:26 HMRC wants your clients' tax collected at payday
17:08 Six banks and UK Finance on a digital verification service
21:53 Peppol confirmed as the UK's e-invoicing network from April 2029
25:32 Digits partners with Ignition, Karbon and Reach Reporting
30:00 Croner Intelligence launches
37:46 AccountsIQ and GoCardless launch a native integration
39:30 Socket adds Forms
42:19 ICAEW on AI agents behaving badly
46:14 Outro