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Q1 2025 has been chock-full of accounting technology events, and feature releases. Grab a cuppa and let me catch you up.
Q1 2025 accounting tech update
07 May 2025
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9 minute read
In February LightYearDocs held their 2025 Unstoppable Growth conference on the beautiful Sunny Coast, the Xero Summer Series ran across the country. Then in March the ERP Acumatica community attended MYOB Discover Live overlooking the spectacular Sydney Harbour. My co-host Tyler Caskey and I presented a taster of our quarterly Accounting Tech update podcast at the popular Accounting & Business Expo in Sydney.
With so many events, you might have missed the technology updates. Let’s start with small business accounting software. Easy Business app has released the ability to Pay employees with ABA files, bulk categorising, and multi-line product descriptions. Intuit QuickBooks has lots of minor releases. Users can now filter the Client list to show only those with a QuickBooks subscription, The Projects feature is now automatically enabled and the Work area now allows accountants to track and filter both practice projects and standalone tasks. MYOB has a Screen Lock Reminder notification feature, and a display reminder about incomplete bank accounts. Xero now allows you to drag and drop multiple bills into Xero, from which data is populated into a draft bill. Within Practice Manager, there is a Client Insights dashboard with an up-to-date snap shot of clients performance, and quick click to the Business Snapshot dashboard. And classic invoicing was controversially retired in February.
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In the ERP world, NetSuite has released “Text Enhanced” which uses generative AI to automate content creation tailored from the company data.
Let’s talk about Practice Apps. Xonboard automates basic Xero employee onboarding, creating the user, collecting TFN declaration, superfund and bank details. This feature is available for free. Tyler added that if you have a client not using Employment Hero, you should definitely use XonBoard. He praised it as free, simple, and very effective – “worth its weight in gold” despite being free!
The Dext platform is evolving, click the banner at the top of the screen to switch to the modern enhanced experience. This includes the ability to customise the dashboard, automate workflow with flexible rules, and various other enhancements. The reporting solution Fathom has released Portfolio, which if you subscribe to Fathom, offers oversight over ALL clients, not just your current Fathom clients. There’s a TAGing feature allowing you to group client files, by industry, advisor or something else of your choosing. Thresholds allow users to set red, amber, and green status indicators for different financial metrics. Utilising both options users can create customisable threshold collections for different industries or company sizes. This enables you to monitor all client accounting files regardless of the platform they are on.
Spotlight Reporting and notably its solution Sustain have released a white paper on how accounting firms can champion ESG advisory services.
Tyler described the financial modelling tool Modano as the most comprehensive online budgeting tool he’s seen in his lifetime. He shared an example of how you could assign hours to staff, build that into revenue, and build out detailed driver-based forecasts. It had long been Excel-based, but now it’s fully online making it a major upgrade to mid-market budgeting tools.
Tyler Caskey shared that he uses MayDay for the multi-entity groups in his own business and recommended it for automating intercompany recharges, particularly when one entity employs people and recharges out costs.
The multi-entity solution Translucent has released the ability for 6 additional Tracking Categories or Data Dimensions that can be used within Translucent. Translucent has also introduced a Deferred Revenue App designed to streamline the management of deferred revenue for finance teams. This app automates the creation of Deferred Revenue Schedules and journal postings to accounting software.
Employment Hero has enhanced the organisational chart visualisation, the flexibility of the expense approval process and there is new functionality to enable you to publish charts of accounts across multiple entities.
I like that the practice management solution Karbon produces an annual Top 10 feature recap. All accounting technology should do this if they want to give us a chance at keeping up with their releases. A few of the 2024 feature releases include Exporting client requests as PDFs, Improvement to Insights reporting, KPI reporting integrated within Karbon, Improvements to the Triage feature, including list and swipe view options. Check out this Chrome extension for Karbon my friend Brian Clare created.
Creditorwatch has improved its IP address validation capability and checks the domain age.
The AP & AR automation solution ApprovalMax has released the ability to capture Purchase Orders, the option to put requests On Hold, and the ability to Nudge approvers, to remind them to take action.
WorkFlow Max by BlueRock has released improvements to custom reporting, quoting and estimating. Plus it now has a SuiteFiles integration.
Let’s shift gear and cover some updates in the vast ecosystem.
The stock portfolio tracker solution Sharesight has released a Drawdown Risk report, upgraded its Contribution Analysis report and improved its Historical Cost Report.
Tyler shared that his team had been helping a small construction business implement Fergus the job management software for builders. They found it easy to implement, and integrate with Xero. They also connected it with Reece Plumbing, giving them access to their pricing.
The AutoShop Workshop Software now includes complete booking management in its mobile app.
The rental software solution EZRentout has released enhancements to streamline order management with in-line actions in the Opportunity Pipeline, recommended Webstore items, and customisable order fields.
The QTR 1 accounting technology updates are coming in thick and fast. What’s happening in QTR 2? Catch Tyler Caskey speaking at the CFO event Stacked 2025 on 8 May in Sydney. I’ll be heading north to celebrate innovation, entrepreneurship, and investment in Far North Queensland at the Tropical Innovation Festival, and I shall be watching with FOMO the Accountants Daily Accounting Conference and Australian Accounting Awards in Sydney on 20th June - make me proud!
If you represent Accounting Technology and are missing from these updates, feel free to send me an RSS active blog feed to monitor.
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