A tax advisor came to our workshop. Now she builds her firm's own AI tools.

What was slowing the work down?

Everything went into Claude by hand. The firm already had a Claude project set up for each team, but every file had to be added to those projects manually. Reports from Xero Practice Manager were pulled by hand once a week, run through Claude and sent on to whoever needed them.

Preparing a client's financials was also a relay. Marcella described it as a job that takes three people: one gathers all the information, one drafts the working papers, and a manager reviews everything and checks that it balances.

Marcella had already gone further than most on her own. She had connected Gmail to Claude and built a task tracker that refreshed itself through the day. But she had never used Claude Code, the tool you use to build apps and automations, and she told us she had no one to guide her. Without that, she felt she was "just burning my time".

What happened at the workshop?

Marcella came to our one-day AI workshop in Perth on 27 August, where people bring a real job from their own work and build it on the day. Before the day, on an onboarding call, we installed Claude Code on her computer and connected her apps so Claude could work with them.

The goal she brought was a big one: connect Xero Practice Manager so reports could be pulled and processed without anyone touching them. That connection needs Xero to approve access first, and at the time of writing that approval is still pending. By the end of the day she had an app working on her documents, and we stayed on hand with follow-up support while she kept building.

As that support period neared its end, she asked whether she should simply come to another workshop, adding: "I don't mind coming to that again because it really helped me."

What has she built since?

Two things: a client onboarding form, and three AI agents for preparing a client's work. By 11 September the form was built and tested on her own machine, and the agents were set up by our follow-up session on 14 September.

• A web form where a new client enters their personal details, income and assets, and uploads their documents
• On submit, the form creates a PDF summary and saves it with the client's details and documents
• One agent that picks up all of a client's information
• One agent that starts the draft
• One agent that reviews everything

How did the form get onto the firm's own server?

Through their IT manager. In a follow-up session we agreed the form should run inside the firm's own environment, under his control, rather than on an outside service. On 15 September he had it running at its own AustAsia web address.

Submissions follow the firm's existing rules for client documents: where they are stored, who can open them and how long they are kept. That was Marcella's requirement from the start, and it is the kind of decision that belongs with the firm, not with us.

It is not in front of clients yet. The form is being tested with dummy data only, and the firm will settle its final security checks before a real client is sent the link.

How will the three agents hand work to each other?

Through shared folders. Each agent drops its finished work into a folder, and a new file there starts the next agent. That hand-off is the part being wired up now.

Her first version checked the folders on a timer. She wanted each agent to start the moment a file arrives instead, so nothing waits and nothing runs when there is no new work. In the follow-up session we gave her a build guide for exactly that.

What is next?

Finishing what is in testing, then connecting the rest. None of the items below is live yet.

• Finish testing the onboarding form and settle the security steps before real clients use it
• Connect the three agents end to end with folder triggers (in progress)
• Have each new form submission create the client and the opportunity in the firm's CRM (planned)
• Connect Xero Practice Manager once Xero approves access (waiting on Xero)
• Build similar tools for Marcella's own clients, many of whom have already asked about it (planned)

Could this work for other accounting firms?

Yes. Accounting work is full of hand-offs and documents moving between people. When the person who knows the job learns to build, and the firm's own IT team decides where the tools run, what gets built fits the way the firm already works.

That is how we run our training: hands-on, on your real work, with support while you build. If your team already uses Claude, our Claude training covers the step from projects to apps and automations. If you would rather we build it for you, see document processing.