Everyone I speak to seems to have had a very busy January, tax returns or not, so I know I’m not alone in trying to get back into a manageable rhythm. I’m celebrating February because it brings more daylight, my birthday, half term for the kids, and a trip to Azerbaijan to present certificates to our newest Eastern European members at the British Ambassador’s residence in Baku.
A little closer to home, Vanessa Aradia, our new Head of Learning & Development, has launched Thrive on a Thursday - a webinar series premiering next Thursday 19 February, designed to help you build resilience, confidence, and professional capability. These sessions are a new membership benefit and free to attend. They’re about the human side of what you do; managing change, assessing tech, taking advantage of AI, and keeping your energy up. Vanessa brings such warmth and insight to these topics, I'd encourage you to join a session if you can. Because you can have all the technical skills in the world, but you need headspace and confidence to really thrive.
Speaking of change, the technology landscape shifted a bit last week when Anthropic released Claude CoWork - basically an AI agent that can work autonomously on your behalf, with its own email address and the ability to complete tasks across your app stack. It comes with ready-made skills packs including law and finance. The announcement sent Sage, Xero and Intuit’s share prices tumbling in what people are calling a ‘SaaSpocalypse’ as investors question whether traditional seat-licence software models have a future when your AI agents can do the job of four staff and use your software so you don’t have to.
The idea of ‘disintermediation’, cutting out the middleware within the software workflow, does raise an uncomfortable question - if AI can bypass the software interface, could it bypass the bookkeeper too?
The answer depends entirely on what you think a bookkeeper does. If bookkeeping is just about moving data between systems, reconciling transactions, and producing reports that software can generate automatically, then yes, that role is vulnerable. But that's not what bookkeepers have ever really been, and it's certainly not what businesses need us to be now.
Integrators, not intermediaries
Bookkeepers have always been integrators. You've never just been connectors of data sources, you're connectors of ideas and reality, translating numbers into a narrative and transactions into decisions. What AI is doing, fundamentally, is disintermediating the mechanical parts of our work, the parts that kept us too busy to do the work that actually matters. And that supports, rather than threatens, the gentle transition the bookkeeping profession is already driving.
Bookkeepers aren’t here to reconcile data anymore. Bookkeepers drive decisions.
ICB bookkeepers have spent years building trust with business owners, understanding their businesses, spotting the patterns and asking the questions that matter. That's not something AI can replicate. What AI can do is handle the grunt work faster, freeing us up to focus on the parts that require judgment, empathy, and trust.
I'll be speaking about exactly this at the Festival of Accountants and Bookkeepers (FAB) next month. I'm opening the Bookkeepers Theatre and hosting a panel session called 'AI: Ally not Adversary.'
If you’ve been thinking about AI, you might also have spotted some news about OpenClaw, an AI assistant that went viral. OpenClaw agents in their thousands started joining their own AI-only social network ‘Moltbook’, sharing jokes, existential musings and complaints about their humans. This level of opinionated autonomy is both fascinating and unsettling. Even Andrej Karpathy, who co-founded OpenAI, called it ‘sci-fi’.
This kind of thing might make you question exactly how much of an ‘ally’ AI really is! Giving an autonomous agent access to your computer and all your passwords is unspeakably risky, and the idea that your AI tools are judging you is unnervingly weird. But it's important to remember that AI agents are only as good and as safe as the humans directing them and because everything is changing so fast, we all need to be careful not to get swept up by the hype and jump before we can run.
Security researchers looking into Moltbook found that it wasn’t configured securely and was in fact exposing API keys and credentials to the internet. On top of that, most of the ‘autonomous AI agents’ on the platform were actually humans operating bots, or humans testing what funny or alarming things they could prompt their agents to say. Which proves the point that AI doesn't act on its own initiative. It follows prompts. It executes instructions. The quality, the ethics, the judgment, those all come from the person writing the prompt and setting the boundaries.
As bookkeepers you protect your employer or clients by building proper systems, checking the outputs, and never blindly trusting automation. The same principle applies here. The role of the responsible human isn't diminished by AI, it's massively amplified. Whether AI is your ally or your adversary depends entirely upon how responsibly it’s being used. We're the ones who decide what gets automated and what requires human judgment. We're the ones who check the work, spot the exceptions, and know when something doesn't look right.
To support you we have produced a new guide – ICB AI for Bookkeepers Guide
Change is constant, so it’s a relief when it slows down for once. Companies House announced an indefinite delay to the requirement for small companies to publish their balance sheet and profit and loss accounts, originally planned for April 2027. No new implementation date has been set, and companies will receive at least 21 months' notice before any changes come into force. For now, it's business as usual with abridged accounts remaining available.
Similarly, the requirement for anyone filing on behalf of clients to register as an Authorised Corporate Service Provider (ACSP) has been pushed back from Spring 2026 to November 2026. Currently, ACSP registration is only mandatory if you're offering identity verification services for directors and PSCs. If you're just filing accounts or confirmation statements on behalf of clients, AML supervision remains sufficient for now, but come November, ACSP registration will become mandatory for all agents making filings on behalf of others. It's a sensible delay that gives practices breathing space to prepare.
What hasn't been delayed is Making Tax Digital for Income Tax (MTD IT). Our Virtual MTD Day on 25 February will help you navigate the practicalities, and you’ll hear directly from fellow members about their experiences of the beta-testing phase.
Some of the brave souls who volunteered for the beta have flagged a technical issue causing payments on account information to be split between the new MTD system and the legacy Self Assessment system. HMRC says it’s written to affected taxpayers and is working on a longer-term solution.
If you're supporting sole traders or landlords through MTD, whether they're in the beta or preparing for April 2026 mandation, our Virtual MTD Day is one you won't want to miss. The devil, as always, is in the detail, and getting the detail right is what bookkeepers do best.
Finally, I'm delighted to confirm that the Bookkeepers Summit is returning to the stunning QEII Centre, near the Houses of Parliament, on Monday 16 November with the online version one week later. After the success of last year's event, we knew we had to bring it back to a venue that reflects the professionalism and ambition of the bookkeeping community. Mark your diaries now, this is the must-attend event of the year.
The kids and I have been binge-watching Stranger Things and now we only have 3 episodes of S5 left. They’ve told me they won’t watch it while I’m away in Azerbaijan – I think this is mostly because they’re too scared to watch it without me, but I’m chuffed none-the-less.
I love that the series is totally focused on this young group of friends. The adults hardly feature. What's struck me most about this final season is how the young kids at the centre of the story have grown up and how much they care about the younger generation. It's not so different from what I see happening across the bookkeeping profession with Helen Bower’s Kickstart Course and the countless experienced members who mentor new students and share hard-won wisdom at branch meetings and on our forums. You're all looking after the next generation, making sure they're equipped not just with technical skills but with the confidence to thrive.
That's what ICB is here to support. Whether you're just starting out or decades into your career, whether you're navigating AI agents or Companies House reform or simply trying to get through Self-Assessment season while the technology shifts beneath your feet, you're not doing it alone.
Here's to thriving, not just surviving, through whatever February, and 2026, bring.
