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Plain-English pieces on AI and compliance work for business owners, accountants, bookkeepers and advisers, by Michael, TobyAI.
Xero stays where you keep the books. Toby connects to the file read-only, checks it, works out the BAS and payroll figures that depend on it, and shows the working and the source, so you can fix anything in Xero before you lodge.
Before you connect a Xero file to an app, ask what it can read and change, where the data goes and who else receives it, whether it trains a model, what it keeps, and how you switch it off. The OAIC's guidance is that outsourcing to a provider can leave the duty to protect that information with you, so get the answers before you authorise the connection.
A citation should let you open the exact source, go straight to the passage, confirm it is the version that applied to your period, and read words there that support the answer. If a citation cannot get you that far, the checking is still left to you.
The free Health Check reads a Xero file without changing it and lists what in it would not survive review, ranked by risk, with where to fix each finding. It leaves the corrections, and the judgement on which findings matter for this client, to the bookkeeper.
An answer about tax, super or payroll is right only for a particular period, because the law and the published rates behind it change. A date on the answer tells you which version it used, so you can check that against the period your question is about.
Core launches on Monday 12 October, not 6 October. We moved it so the BAS tool is complete first. Core works out figures in code from the law it holds, shows the working, cites the source and date, and does not give advice, lodge returns, keep a ledger or write to Xero.
Training on your data means a provider uses prompts, uploads, outputs or feedback to improve a model for future use. Check your exact plan, settings and retention terms before sharing client information.
When you ask a chat assistant about a client, the question, anything you paste or attach and anything a connector reads go to the model provider's servers. Which plan you are on decides what happens to it there, and that is what to ask a vendor about.
A language model writes each answer one piece at a time, choosing what is likely, and nothing in that process measures whether it is true. That is why it sounds equally confident when it is right and when it is wrong.
Thirteen acronyms from vendor pages and security questionnaires, what each stands for, and the question each one should prompt.
A guide to reading the figure, working, citation and date in a compliance answer.
A plain-English glossary of twelve AI words for business owners, accountants and bookkeepers.
Four different technologies are sold under one word. Which one is already in your bank feed, which one writes the email, and why the difference matters when the question is about tax.