Saturday, February 14, 2026

94% of US Finance Teams Understaffed for Priority Work [US]

Robert Half's February 2026 survey of 2,000 US hiring managers found only 6% of finance leaders have adequate staff for priority projects. Sixty-two per cent report skills gaps worsened year-on-year. AI-generated applications complicate hiring. Sixty per cent plan permanent hires in H1 2026. Fifty-five per cent will increase contract hiring. Fifty-seven per cent prioritise upskilling existing staff. Twenty-six per cent outsourcing compliance work. Despite shortages, 83% of managers remain confident about 2026 growth. Interim professionals and fractional CFOs filling gaps where full-time hires aren't feasible.

Italian Tax Police Raid KPMG Over Amazon PE Probe [IT]

Guardia di Finanza searched Amazon's Milan headquarters and KPMG offices on 12 February 2026, investigating whether Amazon maintained an undisclosed permanent establishment in Italy from 2019 to 2024. Seven Amazon managers' homes were also searched. KPMG provided tax opinions on the actions being investigated but is not itself under investigation. Amazon already paid €510 million in December 2025 to settle a separate dispute covering 2019 to 2021. Italian prosecutors are running two additional investigations into Amazon covering later periods and customs fraud involving Chinese imports.

Sunday, February 1, 2026

[AU] MYOB's 2025 roadmap: what actually landed for SMBs

MYOB published its 2025 innovation recap, focusing on updates for small and medium businesses and their accountants. The post stays deliberately vague on specifics—typical vendor playbook—but signals the company prioritized SMB-facing features over enterprise spray-and-pray. Worth monitoring: If you're a MYOB user or advisor, the full Pulse blog will detail what made the cut. Expect the usual: compliance updates (likely ATO-driven), integrations, and UI tweaks positioned as "innovation." The real implication? Accounting software is increasingly commoditized. Vendors now compete on speed-to-compliance, not flashy features. MYOB's messaging reflects that reality—boring wins in 2025.

[AU] Floyd Business Services ditches the office with MYOB Practice Compliance

A local bookkeeping firm has gone fully remote using MYOB Practice Compliance, proving cloud-based compliance software can actually handle real-world operations—not just promise to. The shift matters because it shows the compliance game is finally catching up to how people actually want to work. No more tethered desks, no more keeping servers on-site, just lodgements and reconciliations happening from wherever. The practical upside: remote teams mean access to talent beyond your suburb. The compliance upside: MYOB Practice still handles ATO integration, tax compliance, and deadline tracking without needing IT support breathing down your neck. Worth watching if your practice has been eyeing the cloud but worried about the actual handover.

[AU] Payday Super lands 1 July – here's what changes

Employers need to start making superannuation contributions on each payday from 1 July, rather than quarterly. The legislative shift means payroll systems need updating and processes need tweaking to stay compliant. Key implication: Your payroll software needs to handle per-payday super calculations instead of bulk quarterly reconciliation. If you haven't started planning this with clients, now's the time—there's less than a month to sort it. Expect questions about software compatibility and timing. Most accounting software is already patched, but manual processes will break. Get ahead of it.

[AU] Xero aligns credit notes with invoice interface—one less UI to memorize

Xero has redesigned credit notes to match their invoice and quote creation flows. The move consolidates the interface across three core document types, theoretically reducing the mental overhead of switching between different screens. For accounting teams already living in Xero, this is a quality-of-life update rather than a functional overhaul. Less retraining, fewer clicks to muscle-memory something new. The standardized approach should reduce data entry friction—especially useful when you're lodging adjustments before month-end. No details yet on rollout timeline or whether this affects API integrations, so if you're automating credit note creation, keep an eye on Xero's technical updates. **The implication:** Smoother workflows reduce errors. Fewer errors mean cleaner reconciliations and faster ATO compliance prep.

[AU] Xero releases 10 app integration bundles to kill manual data entry in 2026

Xero's published curated 'App Power Lists'—pre-built integration stacks designed to automate common small business workflows. The lists pair Xero with complementary tools to handle invoicing, expense reconciliation, payroll, and inventory without manual re-entry. Why it matters: Manual data entry is still killing productivity at SMBs. These templates lower the friction of discovery and setup, so you're not spending January piecing together your own tech stack. If you're already in Xero, this saves the "which apps actually talk to each other" research tax. The catch: You'll still need to configure permissions and ensure your data flows cleanly. But Xero's essentially saying "we've done the homework on which combinations actually work." Relevant if: You're auditing 2026 workflows and sick of spreadsheet ping-pong between systems.

Xerocon Denver 2026 tickets now available [US]

Xero's annual user conference is heading to Denver August 19-20, 2026 at the Colorado Convention Center. Tickets are on sale now. Why it matters: If you run accounting workflows on Xero, these conferences are where product roadmap details actually surface before the rest of the internet finds out. You'll also catch sessions on compliance updates, automation strategies, and tax deadline prep—the stuff that determines whether your year-end close is smooth or catastrophic. Worth noting: Early-bird pricing typically expires faster than people expect, so if you're even mildly considering it, locking in tickets now beats the sticker shock later.

Saturday, January 31, 2026

Friday, January 30, 2026

Thursday, January 29, 2026