93% of Firms Now Use AI. 60% Have No Plan.

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🔧 FEATURED TOOL: Expensify

Receipts Now Talk Back Inside Claude Chat

Anthropic added Expensify to Claude for Small Business this week — one of 27 new integrations in the same rollout that brought in Xero, Shopify, Salesforce, and others. Once connected, a client's receipts, expense reports, and card spend pull straight into Claude chat, so you can ask a plain-English question instead of digging through the Expensify app for it. Why it matters: A spend question that used to mean exporting a report and building a pivot table now takes one sentence in chat — Claude pulls the answer straight from live Expensify data. Catch: Expensify's underlying MCP connector to AI assistants has existed since June — what's new is this specific packaging inside Claude's curated small-business workflows, not the data access itself. Unknowns: Pricing for plugin access isn't in the announcement, and there's no word on what happens when the AI misreads a receipt — worth asking before you trust an answer in front of a client. My take: Run it against a live file this week, but keep it away from any client conversation until you've spot-checked its first dozen answers line by line against the ledger. This is a quiet pilot, not a demo. [Read more →]

📰 QUICK HITS

Auditors Use AI, Skip the Strategy — A Gartner survey of 161 chief audit executives found 93% already use AI in some form, but 60% have no formal strategy and just 15% have defined use cases. Why it matters: This is a CAE-only sample — CAEs typically sit at larger organizations, so take it as a read on bigger internal-audit shops rather than the whole profession. Still, an undocumented AI policy is the first thing a peer reviewer or malpractice carrier asks about — write down today which engagements get AI help and which don't. [Read more →]

Audit Platforms Partner, Uploads Disappear — Thomson Reuters is partnering with Suralink to integrate its client-document platform with CoCounsel Tax, Audit & Accounting and Engagement Manager, letting audit teams pull client files straight into AI analysis without re-uploading them, though Suralink's claimed 800,000 users and 60% top-200-firm penetration is a figure the company has used in prior announcements too. Why it matters: If you're already on either platform, ask your rep for a rollout date before next audit season, since firms on Caseware or ProSystem get nothing from this one. [Read more →]

Xero Data Lands Inside Claude, ChatGPT — Xero's live financial data now sits inside Claude for Small Business and ChatGPT, letting advisors ask about a client's cash position, overdue invoices, and profitability without opening Xero — though Xero calls every output a "first pass for review," not a final number. Why it matters: Assuming you or a client runs Xero, test it this week, but confirm every dollar figure against the actual Xero report before repeating it — most US practices still run QuickBooks, not Xero, so this one won't touch the bulk of your subscriber base. [Read more →]

Pilot's AI Now Makes Accrual Judgment Calls — Pilot's Meridian platform added a Categorization Agent that decides whether a transaction should be expensed, prepaid, capitalized, or applied to an accrual. The model is now trained on 200,000 closes, up from 187,000 this summer, according to Pilot. For now, the feature only works with QuickBooks Online. Why it matters: This is Pilot's own version of the production-to-oversight shift firms are already debating — your team reviews finished judgment calls instead of making them. If you run CAS or outsourced bookkeeping, pilot it on a low-stakes client before trusting it with real accrual complexity. [Read more →]

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💡 QUICK TIP

If Your AI Cites the Wrong Code Section, You're the One Liable — Not the AI: "The AI said so" isn't a defense to a peer reviewer or a malpractice carrier — you are. Before a citation reaches a client, pull the actual code text yourself and check the effective date; AI tools often cite sections that have since been superseded, which a surface-level "does this exist" check won't catch. [Read more →]

⚠️ HEADS UP

Workiva Automates Government Filings With AI Agents: Workiva unveiled Agent Studio, a no-code environment for building AI agents, at Amplify 2026, alongside pre-built agents for BEA surveys, Census filings, Country-by-Country Reporting, and internal-audit/GRC testing. The efficiency claims are Workiva's own, with no independent data yet, and this is enterprise-tier pricing — out of reach for a small firm today. Why it matters: BEA, Census, and CbCR filings are worth flagging now as the ones to watch for a cheaper, mid-market version down the line. [Read more →]

Crunchafi Buys Its Way Into 150 Integrations: Crunchafi acquired BUCS Analytics, adding more than 150 data integrations and native MCP access, in a deal framed as deepening the data-insight tools available to firms' client accounting services practices. Why it matters: If CAS work is part of your growth plan, competitors on this platform will pull multi-source client data faster than firms still stitching integrations together by hand — factor that into any CAS tooling comparison this year. [Read more →]

PwC Merges US, India Advisory Operations: PwC US and PwC India are forming a joint venture combining consulting, technology, and AI advisory operations, partly to support US companies' offshore Global Capability Centers. Why it matters: There's no concrete new service here yet, but it signals AI advisory is becoming standard in Big Four offshore strategy — worth knowing if a client's Big Four advisor starts pitching AI-driven GCC support. [Read more →]

Platforms got bigger this week: Anthropic added 27 integrations, Crunchafi bought its way to 150, and PwC combined its US and India advisory arms. Meanwhile, a Gartner survey found 60% of audit executives have no AI strategy — for tools they're already using. Scale is outpacing documentation right now, not because anyone decided that's fine, but because nobody's stopped to ask.

—Alex