After two days at the Digital Accountancy Show, one thing became very obvious to me.
Accounting doesn’t have a lack of technology. It has too much technology that doesn’t talk to each other.
There are brilliant platforms for bookkeeping, accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, audit, tax, client management and almost everything in between.
Individually, they solve problems.
Together? It can still feel fragmented.
What if there was a Zapier for accounting?
Instead of building another piece of accounting software, what if there were simply a layer connecting the best ones?
A firm could keep Xero or Sage. Keep its favourite AP and AR tools. Keep its payroll, audit and practice-management software.
But everything could communicate through one connected system.
That’s the opportunity I kept seeing between the stands.
Connecting everything isn’t enough
If twenty systems contain twenty slightly different versions of the same information, connecting them doesn’t magically make the information correct.
It just makes the wrong information travel faster.
That’s where verification becomes important.
Auditi for example, helps firms manage things such as balance confirmations, client information requests and secure document sharing.
One technology can move the data, while another helps prove the data is right.
Then there’s AI
I also came across AIVS Software Limited which is offering private AI hardware for UK accountancy practices.
And that opens another possibility.
Imagine a firm’s existing accounting software connected together, with private AI sitting across that information and helping accountants spot differences, missing documents or unusual numbers.
Not AI replacing accountants.
AI helping accountants make sense of an increasingly complicated technology stack.
The pieces are already appearing.
The opportunity is connecting them.
Because after walking around a show filled with accounting technology, my biggest takeaway was surprisingly simple:
Accounting doesn’t need another software.
It needs everything we already have to finally talk to each other.
Cindy Wong Mitt, Founder of WxM Media.
Independent editorial analysis. Companies mentioned have not sponsored or commissioned this article.
