AI news & hype
Before you pay for another AI app
Six checks to run before you sign up to another AI app: the job, your bills, a test in what you have, your data, the way out, then the call.
Rory McNeil
Get Time Back
Spreadsheets gone. Typed once. Your evenings back.
No more spreadsheets, no more typing it twice, and the rest of the evening work handed over. Nothing goes out until you approve it.
Done while you worked Nothing left for tonight
- New bookingTyped once, in every system Synced
- Job registerOne place, not a spreadsheet Updated
- Quote from notesWaiting for your check Check
- Invoice sentOn the day of the job Sent
- Overdue chasedIn your words Chasing
- Monday numbersOn one page Ready
Getting time back
The things keeping you up at night.
The business takes the day. The paperwork takes the night.
- The business runs on spreadsheets.
- The same thing gets typed in three times.
- Admin eats Sunday.
- Quotes take an evening to write.
- Invoices go out late and get paid later.
- We pay for apps we barely open.
The paperwork, all day What AI changed
The admin used to be a night job. Now it is a draft you approve.
It cuts both ways.
What it brings against you
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Your competitors hired a machine, not a person
The business down the road answers enquiries in a minute and invoices the same day, without a new salary.
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You are paying for jobs it does for free
A quoting app, a receipts app, a scheduling app: each charges monthly for a drafting job the machine now does in your accounts.
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Right most of the time, wrong expensively
A machine can be wrong fluently, so anything with a price or a customer on it gets checked.
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Some of it must stay human
Preparing the BAS and deciding what you can claim are law-bound. The line is written down before anything starts.
The same machine is the fix
What it opens up for you
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Be more than one person
The admin a spare pair of hands would do, drafted while you work for you to approve.
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Type it once
One entry reaches your website, bookings, accounts and customer list.
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Spreadsheets become a system
One proper place for jobs, customers and due dates, kept up to date without copying.
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Quotes the same day
A voice note on site becomes a quote in your format, ready for your check.
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Paid sooner
Invoices go out on the day of the job and get chased in your words until paid.
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Know how it is going
Enquiries, sales and adverts on one page every Monday.
Sources & notes
The best Australian figure for admin is 541 hours a year, about 10 hours a week, and we would not lean on it hard.1
- Published, and weak. Reckon, In The Zone, 1 May 2019. More than 1,300 Australian small business leaders. Flags: seven years old, published by a company selling accounting software, and no fieldwork dates are stated. The 10 hours a week is our own division of 541 by 52, not a published figure.
Where we would start
The Get Time Back bundle, set up together.
Drawn examples, not client results.
Typed once One entry, every system
- Booking from your websiteEntered once In
- Bookings appFilled in for you Synced
- AccountsCustomer added Synced
- Customer listDetails matched Synced
One proper system Where the spreadsheets used to be
- Job registerWas a spreadsheet Moved
- Customer detailsKept in one place Moved
- Service due datesReminders set Live
- A new fieldAdded by asking Claude Yours
Site notes, typed in the ute
- Hot water unit, replace like for like
- Side gate access is tight, bring the trolley
- Old unit goes to the tip
- Both of us on it, most of a day
Quote, drafted from them
- Supply and fit replacement hot water system
- Labour, both of us, most of a day
- Removal and disposal of the old unit
- Tidy-up and test run
This week’s invoices Sent the same day, chased until paid
- Hot water replacementSent the same day Sent
- Kitchen renovationPolite reminder sent Chasing
- Deck and pergolaPaid, reminders stopped Paid
- Bathroom regroutDrafted from the job notes Check
How the business is going Against day one, every Monday
- EnquiriesEvery channel, one list Updated
- SalesAgainst day one Updated
- Money owedBeing chased Updated
- Google advertsSpend against the cap Updated
- GoogleWhere you show this week Updated
What AI may touch Written down before anything runs
- Customer detailsOnly in checked AI accounts Rule
- BAS and what you claimStays with your agent Human
- Anything with a priceChecked before it goes out Check
- Your teamOne page they can follow Shared
- Spread the payments over 3, 6 or 12 months, interest-free, depending on the size of the work.
- Three months’ support is included, the AU$499 starter too. After that it’s optional, AU$99 a month.
- Whatever we build is yours. Nothing stops working if you stop paying us.
The “from” moves with the task, how many systems have to be introduced to each other and how many people need training. You see the figure in writing first, and it does not move after that.
The line
What a machine should do, and what it must not touch.
The test is never whether AI can do a job. It is whether a wrong answer would be obvious, cheap and reversible.
The three tiers: switch it on, check it every time, or never
Switch it on
Safe, reversible, and you can see it working
- Chasing unpaid invoices in your words, stopping the moment somebody pays
- Turning a photo of a receipt into a coded line, ready for your check
- Drafting a quote from the notes you took on site
- Pulling the Monday numbers out of three systems onto one page
Only with somebody checking
Right most of the time, and wrong expensively
- Coding bank transactions, where a plausible wrong category is worse than a blank one
- Anything that reaches a customer with a price on it
- Anything touching payroll, entitlements or hours
- Anything that sounds confident and you cannot easily check
Not this, and not by us
Where the law or somebody else’s money is involved
- Preparing your BAS, or working out what goes in it, for a fee
- Deciding what is deductible, or anything that is really tax advice
- Putting customer personal information into a tool nobody has checked
- Anything designed to look like a person when it is not
The middle tier is where money gets lost. A tool that is right nine times out of ten and confident all ten times is more dangerous than one that is obviously useless.
Where the law draws the line on your BAS and your deductions
- Doing your own BAS needs no registration at all
- People get this backwards: the law turns on whether somebody is paid, so you or your own employee may prepare and lodge it.2 The moment somebody outside your business takes a fee they must be a registered BAS agent, and doing it unregistered carries up to about AU$91,000 for a person and AU$455,000 for a company.2
- Your bookkeeper now needs your permission to put your data into AI
- The Tax Practitioners Board said on 22 July 2026 that tax practitioners “must obtain permission from each client prior to divulging client information to a third party (which can include entering client information into AI models and tools)”.3 If yours has started using AI and has not asked you, that is a conversation worth having this week.
- The Privacy Act probably does not apply to you, and that is not a licence
- Most Australian businesses turning over less than AU$3 million a year are exempt, and that exemption is still in force.4 You will read that it is being removed from 10 December 2026; we went looking for the source of that and there is not one, so we will not repeat it.
- One figure nobody publishes
- There is no credible, independently published Australian figure for how long a small business spends on its BAS. We looked at the Tax Office, the Board of Taxation, Treasury and the Bureau of Statistics.
What Xero and MYOB have finished, what is still in beta, and what it costs
| Feature | Status | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Xero, JAX chat | Live | Included for Australian subscribers. There is no off switch: Xero’s advice if you would rather not use it is that you can leave it unopened.5 |
| Xero, Auto Bank Reconciliation | Beta | Still in beta as at 19 August 2026, and Xero’s own pricing page lists it as a plan feature with no beta label on it.5 |
| MYOB, AI BAS | Beta | Beta on MYOB’s own comparison table, and a paid add-on: AU$25, AU$40 or AU$70 a month on top of your subscription, by usage.6 |
| MYOB, Business Insights & Smart Reconciliation | Beta | Both carry MYOB’s beta label. Category Suggestions and Smart Invoice Reminders do not, so those two are the finished ones.6 |
None of this is a reason to avoid either product. It is a reason to know which parts are finished before you build a quarter’s bookkeeping on them.
Seven Australian sources on AI uptake, and why they disagree
| Source | Figure6 | What it actually measured |
|---|---|---|
| Australian Bureau of Statistics | 12% | Verified. A compulsory collection of nearly 7,000 businesses in 2024-25, micro and small at about 11%. The strongest provenance here. |
| MYOB Business Monitor | 40% | Vendor survey, 2026. Its market runs from 0 to 1,000 employees, so a 300-person firm counts. |
| NAB | 40% | Bank survey, 2025. It never defines what it means by SME. |
| National AI Centre | 43 to 44% | Reported, not verified. A government tracker; the site timed out on four attempts. |
| COSBOA with CommBank | about 52% | Reported, not verified. An industry survey with no published method. |
| Deloitte Access Economics | about 67% | Commissioned by Amazon. A vendor-commissioned panel, and the highest number in the set. |
| Xero | 61% | New Zealand, not Australia. It counts any AI-enabled tool adopted to add value. |
If you have not started, you are not behind in the way you have been told. On the best-evidenced Australian measure, roughly nine in ten small businesses have not built AI into how they work either.
Sources & notes
- Verified. Tax Agent Services Act 2009 (Cth), sections 50-5 and 90-10, Compilation No. 26, 21 February 2025, read 29 August 2026. Section 50-5(2)(b) turns the offence on a “fee or other reward”, which is why doing your own is unregulated. The maximums are 250 penalty units for a person and 1,250 for a company; the dollar conversions are ours, at the AU$364 penalty unit applying to conduct on or after 1 July 2026.
- Verified. Tax Practitioners Board, TPB(GS) 55/2026 The use of Artificial Intelligence and the Code of Professional Conduct, issued 22 July 2026, read 29 August 2026. It applies to registered tax agents and BAS agents, and also says outputs should be verified at every step and each step documented.
- Verified. Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) section 6D, Compilation No. 104, 4 June 2026, which still carries the AU$3,000,000 threshold. Some small businesses are covered whatever their turnover, including health service providers. On the claim that the exemption is removed from 10 December 2026: no credible source. It is not in the current compilation and we could find it only on secondary commentary.
- Verified. Xero Australian pricing and JAX pages, plus the Xero blog post What’s new in Auto Bank Reconciliation, published 14 August 2026 and last updated 19 August 2026. All read 29 August 2026.
- Verified. MYOB Australian pricing and AI BAS product pages, read 29 August 2026. Beta labels are MYOB’s own, taken from its pricing comparison table. The adoption table above is compiled from each organisation’s own published release, read between 20 and 28 August 2026.
How it works
The Switch‑On Method.
Five steps, the same every time. Switched on inside 30 days.
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Listen
A free first hour about your business, not about AI. You leave with your insight portal: a private page about your business, your trade and your area.
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Scope
One page in plain English: what we do, what it costs, what we measure.
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Build
Set up inside the accounts you already own. Nothing to migrate into.
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Train
Your people shown how to drive it, on your real work, until it sticks.
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Measure
At 90 days we measure against day one and show you the before and after.
Why us
Six reasons owners pick us.
A local practice that builds in your accounts, hands everything over, and tells you straight.
You own it, with no fees to keep paying us
We build it in your accounts, hand over every login, and show you how to change it. No licence fees or ongoing consultancy costs for anything we build: the only running costs are the tools themselves, like your AI plan, paid to them, not us.
We pick what fits
No packages. We pick the few things that will make the biggest difference, tell you what’s not worth it, and what you can stop paying for.
It costs less to start
Start from AU$499, with the price in writing before we start. Three months’ support included, then optional at AU$99 a month.
We’re where you are
We’re local. We sit down with you in your business, and you can always reach a real person.
It moves fast
Most things are set up in days or a few weeks.
Someone to ask about AI
Not sure who to ask about AI? Ask us: we’ll tell you straight, and we can set it up.
Included with every paid engagement
One hour with us, in person, on the AI you actually want to ask about.
A free workshop on Claude Code or Codex, for you and whoever you bring. Everything we build afterwards sits on it.
Ask what you actually want to ask
Whether it will replace you, what it gets wrong, what it costs to run. No question is too basic.
Say what worries you
Customer data, staff, the law, sounding like a robot. We go through each one with your business in front of us.
Set the goals for the engagement
The hour a week you want back, the enquiry you keep missing. Written down, then measured.
Learn to drive it yourself
By the end you can ask the machine to change your website, redraft an email or rerun a report.
Questions
The questions people ask before the first call.
If yours is not here, ask it in your free hour.
Do I have to take the whole bundle
No. Every service on the menu is bought on its own, and the bundle is seven of them set up together because they are cheaper and faster done at once.
Can you do my BAS
No, and neither can anybody who is not a registered BAS agent, which is a legal line rather than a preference. What we can do is make the information that goes into it arrive accurately and on time, so whoever lodges it is not rebuilding a quarter from a shoebox.
Will this replace somebody’s job
Not the way we set it up, and if that is the goal we are the wrong people. What comes back is the repetitive half of a week, and that time goes to customers and to the work that needs a person.
Do I need to change accounting software
Almost never, and we would push back hard if somebody suggested it as step one. The problem is usually that the software you already have is not connected to anything else you use.
Is it safe to put my business information into these tools
It depends on the tool and the setting, which is why the rules for it are written down as part of the work. Your customers’ details go only through AI accounts whose terms say they are not used for training, and your team gets one page it can actually follow.
How much of my time does this take
About six hours of your time, and the mapping session is the demanding part of it. Everything else happens without you, and you approve what we build before it runs.
Read more
Before you hand work to AI, read these.
What to check before you pay for an AI app, and the rules that apply when customer details go in.
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Start here, free
Start with the job that eats the most hours.
An hour about where your week goes, mapped with you. You hear which jobs are worth handing over, which to stop doing, and which nobody should touch.
Or write to hello@getaiworking.com.au, answered by the person who would do the work. What happens after
Your insight portal Prepared for you
Who else is near you
What to do first
- Fix the Google profile first
- Check what the AI assistants say
- Pick the one job to hand over
- Your business, checked
- Your trade, compared
- Your area, mapped