Is HMRC about to spot your clients' problems before you do?

Indi and John are joined by Kendrick from Fishbowl, inventory and manufacturing software for businesses that have outgrown spreadsheets but aren't ready for a full ERP. Kendrick brings a US perspective to a week dominated by AI agent launches, a major tax authority investment and a string of Sage announcements. Anthropic has launched ten ready-to-run agents aimed at finance operations, covering general ledger reconciliation, statement review, journal preparation and KYC screening. The hosts debate whether these genuinely displace specialist close management tools or simply make existing model capabilities more accessible, and where the line between "human in the loop" and "human who gets sued" actually sits. Campfire has officially opened its first London office, adding VAT support and UK-specific functionality as it builds out boots on the ground ahead of the conference season. John covers the story and explains why a US ERP with existing UK clients making this move matters for the market. HMRC is rolling out 28,000 Microsoft Copilot licences with a target of 50,000, positioning itself as the world's most AI-enabled tax authority. Kendrick contrasts the approach with a far more cautious IRS, while Indi makes the point that a faster, sharper HMRC changes the maths for accountants who rely on year-end reconciliation as a safety net. Sage had a substantial week. Indi covers the expansion of its developer platform across Intacct, X3 and Sage Active, including the launch of Sage Agent Builder, an AI gateway and usage-based revenue sharing for partners. John follows with Sage's acquisition of Doyen AI, a data migration tool founded in 2024 that Sage moved quickly to bring in-house. NetSuite has released SuiteCloud Agent Skills, knowledge packages that help AI coding assistants build and customise inside NetSuite without breaking things. Kendrick, coming from the ERP world, gives his take on why guardrails in AI-assisted development matter more than the speed gains. Digits has launched an MCP server connecting its agentic general ledger to tools including Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor on a read-only basis. John and Kendrick discuss what the read-only decision signals about where Digits thinks the value of its product still sits. The episode closes with a story that cuts against the week's optimism: Google's AI overviews are serving UK users outdated government information pulled from unmaintained gov.uk pages. One example, the cost of registering a charity, returned answers ranging from free to over £183, against an actual fee of £100 online. Indi makes the case that before anyone hands autonomous agents the keys, it's worth checking whether they're working from data that should have been retired years ago. This episode is sponsored by Advancetrack, the outsourced accounting and tax service trusted by UK practices for over 20 years.  00:00 Introduction to DigiTools and Fishbowl 03:27 Claude Coming for Accountants? 10:30 Campfire opens in London 12:43 HMRC rolls out 28,000 Copilot licences 17:43 Sage expands developer platform for AI tools 26:21 Sage acquires Doyen for data transfers 28:30 NetSuite brings AI speed for SuiteCloud developers 32:11 Digits MCP expands AI utilisation 36:16 AI giving wrong Gov data to UK users 38:00 Nominate your candidates for a Digital Disruptor award!