Publisher, The Firm
24+ articles on The Firm, 4 summit sessions
Xero CFO Claire Bramley will step down on 31 January 2027, announced on 12 November 2026 alongside an upgraded outlook and an A$1 billion buy-back. The departure matters less to practices than what the result says about price rises, metered AI pricing and Xero’s US focus.
Trent McLaren · 11 Nov 2026 · 9 min read
Xero hasn’t announced Xerocon Australia 2027. The last three Australian editions ran in late August or early September, in Sydney (2022 and 2023) and Brisbane (2025), and Xero announced each one six to eight months ahead. Here’s how to plan and budget your firm’s trip before the details land.
Trent McLaren · 10 Nov 2026 · 5 min read
Xero Roadshow is back in February 2027, in five capital cities: Sydney on 2 February, Melbourne on 4 February, Adelaide on 9 February, Perth on 11 February and Brisbane on 23 February. That’s fewer stops than the 17 locations Xero visited in 2024, so regional firms will need to travel. Registration, times and prices are still to come.
Trent McLaren · 10 Nov 2026 · 5 min read
A playbook for firm owners ending a client engagement, from naming the reason to the conversation, the disengagement letter and the handover. It sets out what TPB, APESB, ICAEW, ACCA, AICPA and IRS rules say about records, liens and authorities as at November 2026.
Trent McLaren · 9 Nov 2026 · 9 min read
When AI shortens the work, an hourly fee falls automatically and a fixed fee built from hours follows it down at the next review. This guide shows how to build the price from outcome, responsibility and a cost floor, decide what the saved hours are for, scope with AI without letting it set fees, and explain it to clients.
Trent McLaren · 9 Nov 2026 · 9 min read
A six-step playbook for building a Xero Practice Manager dashboard with Claude: choose WIP, lockup days and jobs overdue, get read-only access, build one view and reconcile it to XPM. It covers the access routes that exist as at November 2026, the monthly refresh and a data-safety check, with a spec checklist and starter prompt to copy.
Trent McLaren · 9 Nov 2026 · 9 min read
A 30-day, week-by-week plan for training an accounting team on AI, starting with safe use and the firm’s policy before any prompting. It covers champions, three shared firm tasks, role tracks, training reviewers and measuring use, with the whole plan as a table to copy.
Trent McLaren · 9 Nov 2026 · 9 min read
A playbook for partners and tax managers who sign off tax work that AI helped draft. It sets out risk tiers, the four places AI tax errors cluster, a 12-point review checklist to copy, what to record on the file and the professional indemnity questions to put to your broker.
Trent McLaren · 9 Nov 2026 · 9 min read
A five-step playbook that sorts a firm’s client data into five tiers and maps each tier to the kinds of AI tool allowed to hold it. It checks the map against the TPB’s July 2026 AI guidance, the TFN Rule and OAIC guidance, and ends with a one-page rule sheet to copy.
Trent McLaren · 9 Nov 2026 · 9 min read
A practical guide for owners running or moving to a fully remote accounting firm: which costs a virtual model removes and adds, and how to set up the team, client experience and data security. It also covers how to price when clients never see an office, and where virtual firms most often come unstuck.
Trent McLaren · 30 Oct 2026 · 10 min read
An AI notetaker that joins every meeting by default is a setting, not a policy. This guide sorts client meetings into the eight worth recording, from scoping to handovers, and the three to leave alone, then turns the list into a one-paragraph recording policy.
Trent McLaren · 6 Oct 2026 · 9 min read
Recording an in-person client meeting gets you an accurate file note without typing through the conversation, provided you get consent first. This guide covers the recording and privacy rules in AU, the UK, the US, NZ, Canada and South Africa, the kit, and the workflow from recording to a reviewed file note within a day.
Trent McLaren · 6 Oct 2026 · 9 min read
The file note is the record an accounting firm keeps; the raw recording is a working file that privacy law expects you to delete once it has done its job. This guide sets out the record-keeping and privacy rules in six markets as at October 2026 and turns them into a tiered retention schedule.
Trent McLaren · 6 Oct 2026 · 9 min read
Eleven due-diligence questions an accounting firm can send any AI notetaker vendor, covering training, sub-processors, residency, retention, access, certifications, breach notice, exit, meeting bots and integrations. Each comes with a good answer, a red flag and the AU, UK, US, NZ, Canadian or South African obligation that makes it the firm’s problem.
Trent McLaren · 6 Oct 2026 · 9 min read
An AI meeting note that someone has read, corrected and signed off is one of the strongest file notes an accounting firm can hold, while one nobody reviewed can undermine a defence to a negligent advice claim. This guide covers what PI claims turn on, the five ways AI notes hurt, the review habit that fixes them, what to ask your broker and the record-keeping rules in AU, UK, US, NZ, CA and ZA.
Trent McLaren · 6 Oct 2026 · 9 min read
Vinyl, the AI meeting intelligence platform for accounting and bookkeeping firms, has onboarded its 500th firm 12 months after launch, across Australia, the UK, the US, New Zealand and Canada. It has shipped Client Brief, Studio and Scheduler, opened eight staged features to every firm, and is focusing on the UK and US next.
Trent McLaren · 2 Oct 2026 · 5 min read
AI can take on most of the paperwork in onboarding a new client: the scope note, the document request, the completeness check and the welcome sequence. Identity checks, risk decisions and client acceptance stay with a person, and client permission comes before any of it.
Trent McLaren · 27 Sept 2026 · 8 min read
Bank feeds and ledger rules already do the matching. These 15 prompts cover the work around the ledger that still eats a bookkeeper’s week, with the data rules that apply before anything gets pasted in.
Trent McLaren · 27 Sept 2026 · 9 min read
This is not a job board: it is the context a listing leaves out, from the official statisticians in the US, UK and Australia. Bookkeeping is a large occupation with flat or falling headcount where most openings come from replacement, and this sets out who employs bookkeepers, what they are paid and what the next decade looks like, as at September 2026.
Trent McLaren · 27 Sept 2026 · 8 min read
Enrolment and a program on paper were the first milestones. This is the operating guide for what comes next: running customer due diligence inside onboarding, handling existing clients, reporting without tipping off, training, records and the annual cycle, plus how to build it into engagement letters and recover the cost.
Trent McLaren · 27 Sept 2026 · 11 min read
Every regulatory date between September 2026 and December 2027 that lands on an accounting or bookkeeping firm in Australia, the UK or the US, checked against the regulator’s own pages. Each country gets a timeline and a short note on what to do first.
Trent McLaren · 27 Sept 2026 · 10 min read
Ten MCP servers an accounting firm can connect to Claude, ChatGPT or another AI assistant as at September 2026, grouped by the job they do: ledger, practice data, proposals and billing, payments, CRM and the inbox. Each entry says what the AI can read and change, how hard it is to set up, and the permission to check before you switch it on.
Trent McLaren · 27 Sept 2026 · 9 min read
A copyable website brief template for owners of accounting and bookkeeping firms, whoever builds the site: yourself, a freelancer, an agency or a template. It covers the decisions only the firm can make, from ideal client and proof to redirects, integrations, compliance lines and account access, plus how to judge what comes back.
Trent McLaren · 27 Sept 2026 · 9 min read
Whether to publish prices is a decision about which enquiries you want and which conversations you are willing to have before the first meeting. This guide lays out the trade-offs, the four positions a pricing page can take, which suits which kind of firm, and what the professional bodies and consumer law expect of anything you do publish.
Trent McLaren · 27 Sept 2026 · 10 min read
November 2026 · Day 2 · 9:00am AEDT
The intelligent firm: Strategies to set your AI strategy for 2027
June 2026 · Replay · 37 min
Stop Missing Advisory Opportunities — How AI Turns Your Meeting Transcripts Into a Growth Engine
June 2026 · Replay · 45 min
Generating AML Risk Assessments Using AI in Minutes
June 2026 · Replay · 49 min
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