The AI Exhale
Cam LynchJez Rowe
The AI Exhalewith Cam & Jez
Xero Holds the Ledger, But Not the Price
EP 10 · 5 MIN · 3 DAYS AGO · five minutes a week to stay ahead of the AI that actually affects your business
Built for small to medium business · Governed, secure and out of the box

Now you know.

You do not have to know what to ask for. EVA reads what you already run, learns what you are aiming at, and builds what you should have been looking at.

Start your 14 days

Set it up yourself, or take the guided 14 days with our team at no extra cost. Nothing charged until Day 15, and only if you continue.

Your own database, row-level governedShe learns your goals, not just your numbers
EVAEVAEXAMPLE 1 OF 5
Professional services
NORTH STARBill 15% more without hiring
Trusted by 800 growing businesses · Australian-made, onshore in your own region since 2018
SIXTY SECONDS

Watch EVA do it.

One business, five systems, one answer. No dashboard, no analyst, no waiting on month end.

IN THIS DEMOXeroXPMFYI EliteShopifyDeputyblended into one answer, with the North Star she already learnedJezWalked through by Jez
CREDIBILITY & SECURITY

Common questions we get asked?

These four come up on almost every call, in about this order. Straight answers, and then the people who have already checked them for you.

Where is my data stored?
AUNZUKUSCA

In your own region, and it never leaves. Your own database, not a shared one, and removed entirely when you go.

Are you training on my data?
NO

No. Not our model, not anyone else’s. That holds whichever model sits underneath, and Xero’s annual assessment checks it.

Can I put confidential data in this?

Yes. Every client is a separate database. EVA reaches one instance at a time through its own credentials. There is no master key, so there is no path across.

How am I assured of any of this?
ISO 27001ISO 42001underway, Sept 2026

Contractually, not by a settings toggle. Plus row-level security you control, down to the group and the individual.

Amazon Web ServicesBuilt on AWS, which is why we can put a region under you rather than a promise. Encrypted at rest and in transit, backed up continuously, weekly automated vulnerability scanning, GDPR-aligned.The full security page

Vetted, not just connected.

Anyone can point an API at Xero. Being an official partner means they audit us - our security, our data handling, our support - and they do it again every year. That is the part you cannot replicate by wiring it up yourself over a weekend.

Xero App Partner
Xero App Partner
Listed, and security-assessed every year
4.8 out of 5
MYOB Developer Partner
MYOB Developer Partner
Certified integration, annually assessed
QuickBooks Solution Provider
QuickBooks Solution Provider
Inside the Intuit partner ecosystem
FYI Elite partner
FYI Elite partner
Document and practice data, at row level
WorkflowMax partner
WorkflowMax partner
Jobs, time and WIP, reconciled nightly
Reapit official partner
Reapit official partner
Real estate: property, tenancy and trust data
AND THE FIRMS ALREADY STANDING ON IT
William BuckPKFWalker WaylandShineWingNational Audit GroupHalkinCarbon GroupHood SweeneyAgriLabourEnspira

It used to be a monthly project.

Now the whole firm's reporting runs off Practice Manager and consolidates across every Xero file we touch. It is just there on the Monday.

Clare Jonas
Chief Financial Officer
Hood Sweeney

Row-level security is what made it usable past two partners.

Consolidated across Xero and MYOB, and every person only sees their own clients. Without that we could not have put it in front of the whole firm.

Rick Hemphill
Director, advisory
ShineWing

Venues live or die on wages to revenue.

Weekly and fortnightly, across Xero, Deputy and the POS at once. Nothing else we tried could read all three and give me one number.

Jo Arlaud
Bookkeeper, hospitality
HospoBooks

Half the firm is on XPM. Half is on FYI Elite.

EVA consolidates the reporting across both, and we did not have to hire a data person to do it. That was the part I had budgeted for.

Steven Watson
Partner, audit
National Audit Group
Cameron LynchJez RoweMichael FoxAccountants, not a venture studio. Building this since 2018, with an advisory board that has run the firms we are building for.Meet the team and advisory board
WHAT EVA KNOWS

Every business is heading somewhere.

Most businesses your size have never had anyone who holds the whole picture. Tell EVA where you are going, and the North Star is how she knows - so the answers are about progress, not just movement.

A LIVING DOCUMENT

Your North Star is not a form you fill in once. Things change, so you add, edit and delete, and she keeps up. The more you feed her, the more she knows.

She finds the levers already working. The lines in your live data that are genuinely moving you toward the goal, so you know what to double down on rather than guessing.

She catches the drift early. Costs creeping, a margin sliding, a trend that will miss the target - named while there is still time to act, not confirmed three weeks after the quarter closed.

Which is when it flips. You stop opening a general AI to ask about your own business, because she is the only one that gets it.

North Star & KnowledgeDemo Co
Getting to know you45%
North star
The business
The money
The people
How you operate
11 business facts · 3 private notes · 2 about you
YOUR NORTH STAR · LOCKEDedit

“An online home for comfortable clothing that older people can afford, without the burden of a shop front.”

SHE ASKED WHEN YOUR CUSTOMERS PAY
They pay at point of sale, all of it
EVA
Good, so no debtor risk to model and cash lands the day you sell. While we are here, when you think about gross margin, what do you count as cost of sale?
in xero we have revenue and cogs segmented by product already
EVA
Good, so Xero already splits revenue and COGS per product line for you. Locked in.
Let me file itMy notesAbout meshe tells you which memory it went to
HOW SHE WORKS

Anyone can show you a number.
The hard part is underneath.

Surfacing an answer is the easy bit. Being sure it is right is the whole product.

WHAT YOU ASK
“Which clients churned last month, and which are growing?”
4
churned
11
new, net +7
6
growing
THE EASY BIT
THE HARD BIT  ·  EVERYTHING BELOW IS THE PRODUCT
LAYER 1
CONNECTIONS
Everything she can reach
Your accounting system, and every operational system around it.
LedgersJobs and timeRosters and payrollStockEcommerce and POSYour own databasesDocumentsAction MCPs
WHY IT MATTERS
Your ledger says what happened. The systems around it are the only place that says why.
LAYER 2
EVA KNOWLEDGE
Everything true about your business that is not in the ledger
She builds it by asking. Every answer joins a graph that links where you are going to what your numbers are doing - starting with your North Star.
Your North StarWhat you count as churnYour financial yearThe fifteen spellings of one clientWhy last March was not a real dropWhich budget replaced whichEvery correction you have ever made
WHY IT MATTERS
Ask two businesses the same question and the right answer is different. This is the layer that knows which one you are - and the only part of this that gets more valuable the longer you stay.
LAYER 3
EVA COMPOSER
A profit and loss is a visual. An analysis is a report.
Anything can draw you a P and L. “Build me a detailed profit and loss analysis” is a different job: a whole bucket of visuals, and a dozen decisions nobody asked you to make.
Which date range, and why that oneWhat to compare it againstYour tracking categoriesCustom dimensions, or creating the ones you lackAn edit grid where only you know the numberWhich visuals belong in the bucket together
WHY IT MATTERS
This is the moment people sit up. “That is exactly what I wanted - and I would not have known to ask for half of it.”
P&LMarginCashOccupancyVISUALSBUCKET+ your knowledgeThe report you asked forGetting that grouping right, every time, for a business you have never seen before, is the hardest thing here.
BEDROCK
BUCKETS AND GOVERNANCE
Where it lives, and who may see which rows
Related data grouped into buckets, with access rules attached to the rows themselves.
Balance SheetWIPPayrollJob StatusBillingChurn
WHY IT MATTERS
The rules run before the query, not after it. Nothing is stripped out on the way back because it was never selected. That is a permission rather than a filter, and it is the one auditors ask about.
AccurateGoverned per clientSourced, not inferred

This is the plumbing. It is not a speed contest. It is the difference between an answer and a guess.

The more you put in, the more you get out.

She will get things wrong. When you correct her, the correction goes into Layer 2 and stays there. Nothing has to be re-explained, so the answers keep getting sharper on their own.

It works like a good marriage. Year one is fine. Year five is the point, because by then she knows the things you were never going to think to say out loud. That is the part you cannot export.

A PULSE FIRESMON 08:00

Partner revenue for A. Lovelace is running 18% below budget.

No EVA, she has moved into the CEO role. Her budget changed in July.
EVA
Filed. Her target is the CEO budget from July, and I will read her against that from here. I will not raise this again.
One correction. It now applies to every report, every Pulse and every answer about her.
PULSES

Not an alert. A shift of work, already done.

Pin a report into a bucket and you can put a Pulse on it. A Pulse is not a threshold that pings you. It is a standing instruction EVA carries out end to end, then sends to whoever needs it.

01 · YOU DO NOT THINK THESE UP
She notices, then offers
EVA
“You open the WIP report every Monday and the debtors report every second Thursday. I can watch both and only speak up when they move. Want me to?”
Set both upJust the WIP one
OR YOU JUST TELL HERA threshold
Watching your cash positionCHECKED ON EVERY REFRESH

You guide, she recommends. She reads what you actually open, and what you never do.

02 · YOUR LIBRARY
32 ACTIVE
They stack up quietly
Cash falls below $50kon refresh
Any invoice passes 60 daysdaily
Gross profit under 20% for the monthon refresh
Weekly WIP to each partner, their clients onlyFri 16:00
Stock that has not moved in 90 days, by categoryMon 07:00
Labour over 34% at any site, name the siteon refresh
Monday 8am, read @productivityTeamReport, run @createPDF with your analysis, email @UserGroup Team AMon 08:00
Month end, consolidate all nine entities, eliminate intercompany, build the board pack and email @Directors3rd, 06:00
+ 24 more runningsimple threshold → multi-step instruction
03 · WHERE IT LANDS
Your phone, not your inbox
VIBE CFOTRIGGEREDnow
Gross profit fell to 18.4%
Under your 20% floor. Comparative P&L built, three material variances called out.
Review the report
VIBE CFOSCHEDULED8:04am
Team Productivity is out
Read, written up and emailed to Team A. Recoverable rate down 4 points on last week.
Open it

You find out the day it happens. The work is already done by the time you are told about it.

Download on the App StoreGet it on Google Play

Pulses run on a clock or on a condition met at refresh. How both kinds work →

THE HONEST COMPARISON

Almost all of this is achievable.
The question is who builds it.

Point Claude at Xero and you will get somewhere. Point Power BI at it and you will get further. Both of them are asking you to start a software project and keep it alive. So this table grades who does the work, not who could theoretically manage it.

Included - works on day one, somebody else keeps it aliveYour project - achievable - you build it, you maintain itNot on offer - the product does not do this, at any budget
WHAT YOU ACTUALLY NEED
VibeCFO
VibeCFO
ClaudeReplitLovable+1
Build it yourself
no ETL of its own - you write every connection
Cheapest if you enjoy this
Power BIExcel
Power BI & Excel
front end only - the pipeline is yours
Unbeatable on bespoke control
FathomSpotlight ReportingSyft Analytics+3
Off the shelf
ledgers only, plus the XPM, WFM and FYI pair
Proven, switch on today
SyncHubDataSights
The warehouse
real ETL, then it hands you a database
Serious pipelines, done properly
WHAT IT CAN SEENobody except us and the warehouses has a pipeline of their own. The rest is yours to build.
Your accounting ledger
Operational systems, not just the ledgerjobs, rosters, stock, ecommerce, point of sale
Your own databases, files and documents
WHAT IT DOES WITH ITA warehouse stops at a database. A template stops at the template.
Hands you an answer, not a dataset
Composed for your business, not a template packdate ranges, comparatives, your dimensions, your input grids
Knows your goals, not just your numbersa knowledge graph built by asking, and it keeps growing
Does the work and sends it, unaskedreads it, writes it up, emails the right people
WHO IS ALLOWED TO SEE WHATThe bit that decides whether it survives past two partners.
Row-level security, enforced before the query runs
Many client workspaces from one placefirms, virtual CFOs, franchise and group finance
WHAT IT COSTS YOU TO LIVE WITHMost builds get made once and refreshed forever. The bottom two rows are where we lose.
Nobody needs SQL, DAX or M code
Still standing in eighteen months, unmaintained
Total control of every visual and formulaours comes via the Power BI add-on - theirs is native
Cheapest for one ledger and one willing persongenuinely theirs, and we will not pretend otherwise
Off-the-shelf coverage was checked against each vendor’s own site in August 2026. None of Fathom, Spotlight, Syft or Futrli connects a single job system, roster, stock platform or point of sale.Opponent by opponent →
Compared one on one:FathomSpotlightSyftFutrliPower BI & ExcelClaude & ChatGPTFloatCalxaJoiinReach

The difference was never the model. It is everything underneath it.

SETUP ASSURANCE

Your numbers are already telling a story.

DAY 0
You sign up
We connect your first integrations with you.
DAY 1
She has read it all
First Look builds your starter reports before you ask.
DAY 7
She knows your business
North Star set, Pulses running, reports where you want them.
DAY 14
The greenlight
Everything you built and everything you taught her carries over. Nothing is lost at Day 15.
Start your 14 daysBook a call with Jez

Nothing charged until Day 15, and only if you continue.

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