Accounting Apps Podcast

Guest: Daniel Little, Co-founder and CEO of Link My Books What happens when an entrepreneurial e-commerce seller discovers that inaccurate bookkeeping could derail the sale of his business? For Daniel Little, that realisation helped spark the creation of Link My Books, an automation platform designed to simplify e-commerce accounting. In this episode of the Accounting Apps podcast, Heather Smith speaks with Daniel about his remarkable journey from selling Coca-Cola from his school locker to building and selling multimillion-pound e-commerce businesses, and eventually co-founding Link My Books. Together, they explore the complexities of reconciling online marketplace transactions, the importance of accurate tax reporting, and how automation can transform the way accountants and bookkeepers support e-commerce clients. Daniel also shares practical examples of AI agents working inside his business, insights into Link My Books' acquisition by Visma, and opportunities for accounting professionals to build profitable specialist practices. Key Discussion Points From school locker entrepreneur to accounting technology founder: Discover how Daniel progressed from selling Coca-Cola and sweets at school to creating successful Amazon brands, including swimming goggles, sporting goods and beauty electronics. Hear how an unlikely friendship with a competitor led to the creation of Link My Books. Making sense of e-commerce bookkeeping and tax: Understand why marketplace payouts rarely match actual sales revenue. Daniel explains how refunds, fees, withheld taxes and marketplace reserves complicate reconciliation, and why accurate transaction-level accounting matters for compliance, profitability and business valuations. AI agents, automation and financial accuracy: Explore where Daniel trusts AI for data analysis, brainstorming and business intelligence, and why he favours rules-based automation for financial accounting. He shares practical examples of AI agents handling weekly competitor research, customer follow-ups and employee performance review preparation. Scaling Link My Books and joining Visma: Learn why Daniel and co-founder Peter Morin chose Visma as their acquisition partner in January 2025, despite receiving other offers. Daniel discusses the advantages of remaining founder-led while accessing the collective knowledge, marketing expertise and experience of Visma's wider accounting technology portfolio. Building a profitable e-commerce accounting specialisation: Discover how accountants and bookkeepers can replace time-consuming spreadsheets with automated workflows, develop specialised industry knowledge and provide meaningful advisory insights. Daniel explains how monitoring refund trends helped him identify a costly product fulfilment problem, illustrating the value of turning financial data into actionable business advice. Final Thoughts E-commerce accounting presents significant opportunities for accountants and bookkeepers willing to specialise, embrace automation and understand the operational challenges of online sellers. Daniel's experiences highlight the importance of getting the fundamentals right. Accurate financial records support tax compliance, cash flow management, profitability analysis and ultimately the value of a business. The conversation also offers a useful perspective on AI adoption. Creative brainstorming, market intelligence and management reporting present opportunities for AI-assisted workflows, while financial accounting benefits from dependable, rules-based systems and appropriate oversight. For accounting professionals looking to grow their e-commerce client base, the message is practical: automate repetitive processes, understand the industry, and use the resulting financial insights to help clients make better business decisions. Listen to the Accounting Apps podcast to hear Daniel's entrepreneurial story, his practical approach to AI agents and his advice for building a scalable e-commerce accounting practice.   Episode resources and links: Link My Book : https://linkmybooks.com/ Daniel Little : https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-j-little/ Travis Marziani's YouTube video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3YxwWyrLIM    If this episode helped you, the best way to support the show is to leave a review somewhere as it helps more people find us. And if you want to continue the conversation, come find me Heather Smith | Accountant and Storyteller on: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/HeatherSmithAU/ Accounting Apps newsletter: http://accountingapps.io/ Accounting Apps Mastermind: https://www.facebook.com/groups/XeroMasterMind YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/ANISEConsulting X: https://twitter.com/HeatherSmithAU

Reporting from SuiteWorld and AIWorld 2026 in Las Vegas, Heather Smith shares insights from Jack Harrington, Head of Technical and Performance Partnerships at Oracle Red Bull Racing, and Matt Lord, Group Technology Director at SailGP. The discussion covers race strategy, equipment maintenance and talent development, alongside Heather’s question: with so much technology involved, where does that leave a young person dreaming of becoming a sporting superstar?   Key points AI agents: Red Bull Racing engineers can query racing regulations, while SailGP is developing tools to help coaches interrogate performance data. Data sharing: Formula One teams closely protect their performance information. SailGP gives competing teams access to shared data to help improve performance across the fleet. Equipment maintenance: SailGP uses sensor data and anomaly detection to identify potential component failures before they disrupt racing. Race strategy: Red Bull Racing runs billions of simulations to assess pit-stop timing, changing conditions and competitors’ possible responses. Talent development: Sim racing creates alternative routes into motorsport, while both organisations explore how technology can support training and widen participation. The session offers a practical look at technology already being used in elite sport, alongside projects still in development. Engineers, coaches and athletes use these tools to inform decisions, with human judgement central to how the information is applied. Heather attended SuiteWorld and AIWorld 2026 as hosted media, as a guest of Oracle NetSuite.   Episode resources and links: https://www.oracle.com/ https://www.netsuite.com/portal/home.shtml https://www.redbullracing.com/int-en  https://sailgp.com/  https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-lunsford-2a401a1/    If this episode helped you, the best way to support the show is to leave a review somewhere as it helps more people find us. And if you want to continue the conversation, come find me Heather Smith | Accountant and Storyteller on: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/HeatherSmithAU/  Accounting Apps newsletter: http://accountingapps.io/  Accounting Apps Mastermind: https://www.facebook.com/groups/XeroMasterMind  YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/ANISEConsulting  X: https://twitter.com/HeatherSmithAU 

AI and automation are changing accounting, but the bigger opportunity is not simply automating individual tasks. In this episode of the Accounting Apps Podcast, I speak with John Munden, Chief Strategy Officer at Cloud Office, about rethinking workflows, connecting fragmented data and preparing accounting firms for a world where more compliance work happens automatically. We explore why successful technology adoption starts with understanding the problem you are trying to solve. John shares his perspective on change management, including mapping workflows before introducing new software, involving the team in the process and developing internal champions who can support adoption. Key discussion points: Rethink workflows before adding AI. Rather than bolting AI onto existing processes, firms should understand how work moves through the practice, identify the problem they are solving and redesign workflows around the capabilities of their technology. Connected data creates a stronger foundation. John discusses overcoming data silos through integrations, APIs and two-way syncing, with the goal of creating a reliable single source of truth across the practice. Experimentation needs a path to production. Vibe coding, bots and AI-powered automations can accelerate ideas and create useful prototypes, but firms also need to consider maintenance, security, data storage and what happens when the person who created an automation leaves. The accounting career pathway is changing. As more junior-level production and compliance work becomes automated or completed offshore, firms need new ways to help emerging accountants learn what good work looks like and develop professional judgement. Communication, advisory and professional judgement become increasingly important. As technology handles more repetitive work, accountants have an opportunity to spend more time interpreting information, communicating with clients and providing meaningful advice. The conversation ultimately comes back to what accountants can do with the time technology gives them. Automation may increasingly handle repetitive compliance and administrative work, but professional judgement, relationships and responsibility remain important. The opportunity is to use AI, automation and connected technology to create space for accountants to have better conversations, deliver stronger advisory services and spend more time being accountants.   Episode resources and links: John Munden https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmunden/  Cloudoffis https://cloudoffis.com.au/    If this episode helped you, the best way to support the show is to leave a review somewhere as it helps more people find us. And if you want to continue the conversation, come find me Heather Smith | Accountant and Storyteller on: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/HeatherSmithAU/  Accounting Apps newsletter: http://accountingapps.io/  Accounting Apps Mastermind: https://www.facebook.com/groups/XeroMasterMind  YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/ANISEConsulting  X: https://twitter.com/HeatherSmithAU

Are You Proud to Call Yourself an Accountant? As AI and automation become increasingly embedded in accounting workflows, we spend a lot of time asking what technology can do. But perhaps there is another question worth exploring: what does using AI do to us as accountants and bookkeepers? In this thought bubble episode of the Accounting Apps Podcast, I explore professional identity and why being proud to call yourself an accountant matters. Inspired by Professor Megan Hess’s work on accounting ethics, professional identity and the public interest, I consider how our connection to the profession influences scepticism, integrity and our willingness to question what is put in front of us. Technology can remove repetitive work and give us more time for valuable conversations, investigation and critical thinking. But when systems increasingly recommend, calculate, analyse and explain on our behalf, we also need to make sure we retain the knowledge and confidence to challenge them. Key Takeaways Professional identity matters: Being proud to identify as an accountant or bookkeeper connects us with the ethics, integrity and responsibilities of our profession. Beware of automation bias: When technology confidently produces an answer, there is a risk we trust it simply because “the system said so”. Professional scepticism remains essential. Understand the accounting behind the technology: Accountants need enough foundational knowledge to recognise when a balance sheet, GST calculation, spreadsheet or AI-generated output simply does not make sense. Human conversations remain incredibly valuable: Client conversations can uncover significant information that might never surface through a standard workflow, automated process or routine questioning. AI can strengthen the profession: Removing repetitive tasks can create more time for judgement, investigation and critical thinking. The challenge is ensuring we continue developing the skills required to question technology and take responsibility for the outcome. Ultimately, this is not an argument for keeping humans manually involved in every accounting process. It is about making sure that as technology takes on more of the work, we continue to understand, question and exercise professional judgement. AI, automation and spreadsheets are tools we work alongside. Our professional identity is something different. Whatever part of the accounting and bookkeeping profession you belong to, understand the value of what you do, own your expertise and be proud to call yourself an accountant. Episode resources and links: https://www.sir.advancedleadership.harvard.edu/articles/accounting-ethics-professional-identity-public-interest  https://www.alexandriabrief.com/dash-overspent-its-budget-by-3-7-million-a-spreadsheet-error-hid-it-for-months/   If this episode helped you, the best way to support the show is to leave a review somewhere as it helps more people find us. And if you want to continue the conversation, come find me Heather Smith | Accountant and Storyteller on: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/HeatherSmithAU/  Accounting Apps newsletter: http://accountingapps.io/  Accounting Apps Mastermind: https://www.facebook.com/groups/XeroMasterMind  YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/ANISEConsulting  X: https://twitter.com/HeatherSmithAU 

Is AI Making Accountants Less Intelligent? AI is helping accountants and bookkeepers work faster, automate repetitive tasks and reduce cognitive load. But as AI moves beyond calculation and automation into writing, analysing, explaining, brainstorming and reasoning, an interesting question emerges: what happens to the thinking skills we developed by doing those things ourselves? In this episode of the Accounting Apps Podcast, I explore how AI may be changing the way accountants and bookkeepers think. I look at neuroplasticity, the “useful struggle” involved in developing expertise, and why professional judgement becomes even more important when AI can produce a polished answer in seconds. Technology has always allowed accountants to shift attention away from repetitive activities. Spreadsheets removed much of our manual arithmetic. Accounting software automated processes that once took hours. AI is another step along that path, but there is an important distinction between using technology to remove cognitive clutter and allowing it to do the valuable thinking for us. Key Takeaways 🧠 Neuroplasticity and accounting expertise: Repeatedly completing tasks such as bank reconciliations builds pattern recognition and experience. When we stop practising particular cognitive skills, the way we use and develop those skills can change. 🤖 AI can remove cognitive clutter: Summarising information, drafting routine correspondence, extracting information and preparing meeting notes are examples of where AI can reduce workload and create more space for professional thinking. 🔍 Don’t outsource the useful struggle: Investigating something that doesn’t look right, testing ideas and forming hypotheses are part of developing accounting expertise. Rather than immediately asking AI for an answer, spend time developing your own view first. 💡 Use AI to challenge your reasoning: There is an important difference between asking AI, “Tell me what’s wrong,” and asking it to test a hypothesis you have already developed. AI can act as a second set of eyes while you remain actively involved in the thinking. 🎯 Professional judgement becomes more valuable: Materiality, professional scepticism, ethics, context, relationships and knowing when something simply doesn’t smell right become increasingly important as AI produces more of the first draft. Episode resources and links: Debunking Brain Myths: What’s Really Holding You Back from Change with Sarah McKay https://podcasts.apple.com/bm/podcast/debunking-brain-myths-whats-really-holding-you-back/id792555885?i=1000700760179    Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/392560878_Your_Brain_on_ChatGPT_Accumulation_of_Cognitive_Debt_when_Using_an_AI_Assistant_for_Essay_Writing_Task   Exam Study Expert https://examstudyexpert.com/dr-sarah-mckay/  Dr Sarah McKay home page : https://drsarahmckay.com/ (Neuroscience for real life, with a focus on women’s brain health. For women, professionals and organisations.)   If this episode helped you, the best way to support the show is to leave a review somewhere as it helps more people find us. And if you want to continue the conversation, come find me Heather Smith | Accountant and Storyteller on:   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/HeatherSmithAU/  Accounting Apps newsletter: http://accountingapps.io/  Accounting Apps Mastermind: https://www.facebook.com/groups/XeroMasterMind  YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/ANISEConsulting  X: https://twitter.com/HeatherSmithAU