FYI came out on top. We trialled FYI, Karbon, XBert and SyncHub, tested each against Xero Practice Manager (XPM) and, where it was possible, against Claude, and FYI gave the best combination of price, ease of use, change management and AI agent connectivity. The others either had limited external AI connectivity or cost too much.
Reviewed September 2026 — we recheck this comparison quarterly as vendors update their AI roadmaps.
Don’t consider any software that has no MCP, API or CLI connection into an external AI. We apply that test before price and before features, and it disqualifies products quickly.
MCP stands for Model Context Protocol. It’s a standard way for a tool like Claude to connect directly to another piece of software. An API does the same job in a more general form.
Software is moving towards connectivity. Run an AI-native workflow for a couple of months, and going back to copying data between screens is painfully slow. The gap is wider than you’d expect before you’ve felt it.
Within that filter, the distinction that matters is read versus write. A read-only connection lets the AI plan the work. A read and write connection lets it action the work.
For example, an AI agent connection will get you the most efficient utilisation of your team possible. Do this by first having a practice management platform that can integrate with your AI. Give your AI a description of your team and a resume for each team member. Have it read and categorise your job list out of the practice management platform, and then it can allocate jobs on continuity (who handled the client last year), job difficulty (you can set up some basic job classification rules) and each person’s skills, and it will return the most efficient staff utilisation the team can produce.
That’s an AI practice manager, and it needs both directions of the connection to work. Read-only gets you as far as the ordering of jobs and the recommended job assignments, but someone still has to key the jobs back into the practice management platform. With your AI connected, it will automatically assign the jobs and tasks inside the software to your team.
And job allocation is the tip of the iceberg.
I’m an accountant and a former account executive at a publicly listed accounting software company. At JSK Advisory we help local accounting firms grow online, including firms turning over between $300,000 and $500,000 a year that have gone on to more than $200,000 in annual growth without paid ads and without anyone becoming a social media influencer. We’re currently helping a handful of firms update their internal software stacks so they’re better suited to AI.
I trialled each product below personally. Everything here reflects where these products stood in September 2026.
FYI covers both document management and practice management in one system. It won on the combination of:
The interface is decent. It would be nice to have a timer on the job tracker so staff can easily click a timer when they do the task. Overall it was the best combination of price, features and AI connectivity. FYI has strong integration with XPM.
Karbon has a genuinely user-friendly interface, good task management and document management sitting alongside its practice management. It integrates with XPM and has a roadmap for an MCP into Claude.
We disqualified it on cost. Compared with other solutions on the market, it’s expensive. So if you have a larger budget, Karbon is a viable option that has the combination of document and practice management features and AI agent connectivity.
XBert has a limited integration with XPM and a limited integration with Claude. As practice management it’s quite basic, though it does give you task management.
The dealbreaker is client onboarding. You can’t bulk import clients who aren’t using an XBert ledger — every one of those clients has to be migrated into an XBert ledger manually. This was far too cumbersome for us to consider, so we disqualified them on these grounds.
The ledger side is the interesting and primary part of the product. It reviews your Xero and QuickBooks files and flags potential errors. However, this can be accomplished via an MCP from your Xero and QuickBooks files into Claude without having to pay for every individual ledger. It does require a bit more custom development, so if you’re inexperienced with software, XBert may be a good option for your ledger reviews.
SyncHub is a connector that brings XPM into Claude. At that job, it works well, and getting your practice management and job list in front of Claude to plan work is a real benefit.
But the problem is that the connection is read-only. Every recommendation the AI provides has to be written back into XPM manually, which puts the data entry straight back where you started. We disqualified it for that reason.
We disqualified Accountkit at the outset. It had no AI agent connectivity and no roadmap to add it. That may have changed since this was written, so check the current position before ruling it out yourself. The pricing was also not as competitive as FYI’s.
| Software | AI connectivity | Read/write access | Cost | Verdict |
| FYI | Flexible MCP/API | Read & write | Reasonable | The pick — best combination of price, features and AI connectivity |
| Karbon | MCP into Claude on the roadmap | Not yet available | Expensive | Best interface, but disqualified on price today |
| XBert | Limited MCP/API | Limited | Priced per ledger | Strong ledger review, basic practice management |
| SyncHub | Connector into Claude | Read-only | N/A | Good for planning, but write-back is still manual |
| Accountkit | None | None | N/A | Disqualified — no AI connectivity or roadmap |
Overall pick: FYI. It has the best combination of price, features and AI connectivity for most accounting firms. If you’re not price-sensitive, Karbon is a viable alternative, and the MCP on its roadmap means you’re not buying into a dead end — although the full capabilities of the integration weren’t fully explained to us.
If you’d like help working out which of these suits your firm, and you’re a local accounting firm that wants to scale and grow online, get in touch.
Once your software and data are AI-ready, the natural next question is where to invest your marketing budget. See our breakdown of what marketing costs for an accounting firm in Australia and the best marketing channels for accounting firms.
An MCP, API or CLI connection into an external AI like Claude.
Read-only lets an AI read your job list and plan the work, but someone still has to key its recommendations back in manually. Read and write lets the AI action the work directly – assigning jobs and updating records inside the software itself.
Based on our September 2026 trial, FYI. It combines document and practice management in one product, reasonable pricing, and flexible read/write AI agent connectivity, with strong integration into Xero Practice Manager.
Yes, if budget isn’t a constraint. Karbon has a user-friendly interface and an MCP into Claude on its roadmap, but it’s the most expensive solution and we disqualified it on price.
Yes. FYI offers flexible MCP/API access with both read and write permissions, which is why it topped this comparison – an AI can action work directly inside FYI, not just read it. However, you must contact the developer team directly and provide them with the scopes that you want.
It does, but you have to pay $1,500 per month for the custom integration capabilities.
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