Kyelie, on the accounting workflow AI will reshape fastest in 2026:

Accounts payable. I think we’ve already seen that happen, but I think that that will really cement in as people become much, much more comfortable with the process. You know, really, accounts payable we’ve seen a lot in automation. But I think the artificial intelligence will really be bringing it to the forefront, as far as, okay, it’s automated, and it’s now in the system. But the intelligence will say, right, that bill has a due date of this, and there’s this much in the bank account, and we can forecast that we’ve got that bill coming in. So now’s the time to pay it.

— Kyelie Baxter, FCPA & Managing Director at IQ Accountants

In this episode, Kyelie Baxter discusses how artificial intelligence is transforming accounting firms, client expectations, and internal workflows, without replacing the human element.

Key discussion points include:

• Kyelie’s journey from accountant to firm owner and governance leader
• Volunteering, advisory skills, and building confidence outside the firm
• How AI is being used safely inside an accounting practice
• Setting guardrails and values around AI adoption
• Digitising client admin and finance workflows
• Why accounts payable will become highly automated
• Why payroll still needs strong human involvement
• Paying staff based on outputs, not tools used
• Using AI to reduce mental load and prioritise tasks
• How AI is reshaping the competitive landscape for firms

Key takeaway: AI is a powerful tool for efficiency and capacity, but accountants who apply judgment, governance, and strategy will remain irreplaceable.

Kyelie and I were guests of the LYD Unstoppable Growth Conference held at the JW Marriott Gold Coast Resort & Spa in one of the most amazing places in the world, Surfers Paradise!

LYD stands for Light Year Docs, a platform for creating verified legal documents, including companies, trusts, and commercial agreements. If that’s of interest to you, I’m sure the team would be happy to speak with you.

Hello, Kyelie, welcome to the Accounting Apps Podcast. Can you share with our listeners who you are and where you work?

Kyelie Baxter  

Where I work?

Heather Smith  

What you do. What do you do?

Kyelie Baxter  

What do I do? You know, someone asked me that the other day, and I thought, What do I do? It’s such an interesting question. So if you asked me that 20 years ago, I would have said, I’m Kyelie Baxter. I’m an accountant. What do I do these days? I do many, many things. So I am the owner of an accounting firm, IQ Accountants, located at Burleigh Heads.

I am an accountant, technically, but is that all I do? Absolutely not. These days I feel like I’m the jack of all trades. So yes, I am an accountant, but I would say more these days I run an accounting firm. I love being an accountant because it allows us to put all of our skills, transferable skills, to use, and I spend lots of my time volunteering and doing some governance style work and really putting all of those advisory skills that we’ve got into place in some governance style roles, I suppose.

You do a lot of volunteering, and it seems to be through things your children are involved in. Is that correct?

Kyelie Baxter  

Yeah, look, all of the above. So about five years ago, I decided that I was going to try and volunteer 20% of my time. So ideally, it would be Fridays, right? One day a week. It’s not how it works about 20% of my time, because I got my business to the stage where I was like, okay, I can have one day a week roughly where I can give back. I’ve got skills that I can give back. Everyone’s looking for finance skills, right? 

Some of it was kid stuff. Some of it was so you know, I volunteered and started with PNF. I taught Sunday school, you know, I did that sort of thing. Helped at netball da da da da da, and it just evolved into college council, finance and risk committees. I do a lot with CPA. I’ve sat on their Centre of Excellence for digital transformation, which will forever be one of my favourite volunteer roles I’ve ever done.

I am currently the Deputy President for CPA, Queensland divisional Council. I sit on the appointments Council and nominations committee for CPA. I also judge the Telstra Awards. I think this year will be my fifth year judging them, yeah, and the seven years young achiever awards. There’s a whole host of things I do. I don’t keep a list intentionally, because it’s just one of those things that sometimes I find overwhelming. But I am a real yes person. If I have capacity to do something, I will say yes, and a lot of it is out of the office and has nothing to do connected with IQ accountants, but I’ve got some fantastic staff that really and a fantastic husband and house set up that allows me the opportunity to go and do these things. And look, I will say, while I started off doing a lot of volunteer work, that’s turned into some paid opportunities as well. And as you know, Heather, I do some speaking things as well.

Heather Smith  

Absolutely, you do.

For people listening in, how would you suggest they get into volunteering? And how would you suggest they do it effectively? Because a yes person can become a used person.

Kyelie Baxter  

A yes person can become a used person that feels burnt out and also resentful. I would say, analyse your skill set and put yourself in the best place that works for you and the organisation. So really think I used to work at McDonald’s, right? Fun fact about me, McDonald’s was my first job. It’s also the place I met my husband. Big McDonald’s fan. So I’ll use one of their analogies that I learned way back in the training days, and that’s aces in their places. Be an ace and put yourself in the best place for you. Now, if you have really strong finance skills, don’t go and be behind the barbecue. Be the person that counts the money at the end of the day. Be really smart and strategic about where you’re volunteering your time. Don’t volunteer in a position that you hate. So just be really smart about putting yourself in the best place for you.

Heather Smith  

Very good. I used to volunteer at the swim races where I was supposed to click the stop button, but I would get so nervous I couldn’t. It’s such a simple class, and I could never click it. It was just, it drove me insane. I was just, I was like a nervous wreck. My hands would shake. 

But to what you’re saying, and for people listening in when I was younger in my career, I looked at becoming a bookkeeper, and I volunteered as the treasurer with skills, but open to learning, and it gave me the full scope, so I had the time and the space and the capacity to learn how to do a full tuck shop Treasury for a year, and then another year, and then another year. And did the Treasury, I think, for seven or eight years, and I found it such a good learning mechanism for then going and starting my own business.

Kyelie Baxter  

100%. What we give as volunteers, I have received back tenfold. It has given me such wonderful confidence to go out and be involved in some amazing organisations, you know, like, I sit on the finance and risk committee for the National Asthma Foundation, which I never, ever thought that I would be involved in. I’ve got no connection to asthma. I have, you know, other than having some clients that are medcos, I’ve got no health experience whatsoever. And it’s just so fascinating to be involved in an organisation like that. And I’m a lifelong learner. To learn all about that sort of thing is fascinating to me. So I’ve received, you know, I’m getting back as much as I give. 

Heather Smith  

It sounds like it’s very cup filling. And thank you so much for sharing that with me, and it sounds a lot more than 20% you manage it. And a lady gave me her philosophy was, I walked into the school yard on day one, and the PNF teacher, PNF representative came up to me. She goes, Heather, I need one out of one hour out of you every week, but you can work out how you give that to me, that can be a full day every quarter or one hour every week. And I was just like, okay, that’s manageable. And I kind of absorb that, that philosophy.

But I’d like to take the conversation to talk about artificial intelligence.

Sitting as the owner and manager of your firm, looking over your staff and clients, what is the conversation you are having around artificial intelligence?

Kyelie Baxter  

It’s a really mixed conversation. I am one of those people that is early to market. I always want to try things, see things, touch things, so that I know what I’m talking about. I’m not someone that sits back and observes. So our clients are always pretty much on the tech journey with us early on, because that’s who we are and what we do at IQ. It doesn’t mean that we don’t set guardrails, though. 

So the conversations that we’re having internally are about, how do we use this to help us be efficient, but how do we stay within our safe area, keep to our values, make sure that we’re meeting our own expectations, our client expectations, and what guardrails do we need to set in place? So they’re the conversations that we’re having internally. 

From a client point of view, some of my clients, I’m really pulling in the reins. Other clients, I’m like, Okay, we’ve got these pain points. Have you considered AI? So it is a full mixed bag, but what I will say is one of my revenue streams over the last few years has really been helping clients digitise, mostly their administration offices, to be honest. There has been a real opportunity there, because we’re already so trusted, we already know absolutely their finance systems back to front and inside out, if not so much more, in their business. So there’s this real opportunity for us to say you’ve got this problem with you know, as simple as their phone systems, you’ve got this problem with your phone system. Have you thought about da da da.

As your new clients come into the business, are they aware that you’re forward-thinking when it comes to technology? For your existing clients, are you promoting that you are offering digitisation services?

Yes, yes to all of the above. New clients are very aware, because it’s like that from the get go. One of our new clients recently said to us that joining IQ Accountants was like starting with a personal trainer. You really hate it at first, but then you get used to it and realise that the benefits pay off. And it was actually a really good move, because it was so different for them. 

You know, they had not come from an old school firm where they were physically signing tax returns or anything like that, but they weren’t so they were digitally signing returns, but they were not used to a, you know, they had a client portal, but they were not used to complete digitisation. They were not used to no-paper whatsoever. They could still drop off documents. They were not used to being offered a teams meeting every single time, you know. So it’s a real shift for them as far as it goes.

Heather Smith  

For people listening in, listen to what Kyelie’s saying in that her clients know when they’re joining her that she is tech forward. 

Is your marketing and is your branding reflecting that if that is the type of clients you want. So that’s something, an easy exercise that you can do right now. 

But I have a question for you: What’s an accounting task or process that you think will see substantially less human involvement in 2026 than in previous years, thanks to AI?

Kyelie Baxter  

Accounts payable. I think we’ve already seen that happen, but I think that that will really cement in as people become much, much more comfortable with the process. You know, really, accounts payable. We’ve seen a lot in automation, but I think the artificial intelligence will really be bringing it to the forefront as far as, okay, it’s automated, and it’s now in the system, but the intelligence will say, right, that bill has a due date of this and there’s this much in the bank account, and we can forecast that we’ve got that bill coming in. So now’s the time to pay it.

Heather Smith  

That’s exciting, and it’s also going to filter through into cash flow analysis.

Kyelie Baxter  

Absolutely.

Heather Smith  

And when we can actually do our payments.

Kyelie Baxter  

Absolutely.

Heather Smith  

So there’s Kyelie’s answer accounts payable. 

What is an accounting task or process you are confident will still mainly be done by humans in 2026?

Kyelie Baxter  

Payroll.

Heather Smith  

Poor old payroll. 

Kyelie Baxter  

Yeah, look, I think it’s going to be…we’re talking this year, right? So it’s very, very soon. I think the introduction and the reaction for people and the education that needs to happen around Payday Super shows us that payroll is still quite human, and even though we’ve got single-touch payroll, and it’s very, very systemised and as automated as it can be, we’ve still got humans dealing with humans when we dig deep into payroll systems, while the payroll process might be happening in quite a digitised manner. When you dig deep and peel off the layers, a lot of the information to get into the system is actually not that systemised and digitised yet, so I think there’s still a lot of work to go in that space.

Heather Smith  

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And it’s needed, and it’s unfortunately complex. 

Imagine a scenario, and you have two identical staff members, one who regularly is using AI, and the other one who’s not using AI, who’s reluctant to use AI, but their skills are the same. Their qualifications are the same. Are you paying them differently?

Kyelie Baxter  

As at the end of last year, I would expect no, because I do my annual pay reviews in February. So they’re coming up.

Heather Smith  

I guess is more theoretical.

Kyelie Baxter  

No. Look, theoretically, I would be paying them differently, yes, because I pay on outputs. Okay, I would assume that the person using AI would be more effective in their outputs and their outputs would be higher. So I would assume I would pay the person with the most higher outputs more money.

Heather Smith  

Yeah, it’s certainly something you need to think about, especially when embracing something with AI, pushes the output out. Can potentially push the output out much faster.

Kyelie Baxter  

And Heather, I think we need to just equate that to it doesn’t matter why the outputs are more. That person could just be faster at their job. You know, it doesn’t matter, as long as those outputs are accurate and they’re within our guardrails and they meet standard and blah, blah, blah. Doesn’t matter how they do it. You know, AI is merely one of the tools that we have in our toolbox that we can use. I don’t know why people aren’t using it.

Heather Smith  

Yeah, totally agree. 

What parts of your own job, which you’re actually physically doing yourself, have now largely been automated by AI, and what are you doing with the time you’re saving?

Kyelie Baxter  

Excellent question. I love this. So in the olden days, pre-AI, I used to come in and make myself a task list every morning. I’m a real task-oriented person, and we use Slack because Teams did not exist, but when we introduced Slack. We have AI in Slack, and my tasks are automated in Slack, as far as we set them up. Slack prioritises my tasks for me, so I don’t have to really think about that. My task list is not only done, but it’s also prioritised for me, I can also sync that with my calendar.

Heather Smith  

Oh, wow. I didn’t know Slack could do that. Oh, that’s amazing.

Kyelie Baxter  

Yeah. I do, like, it is an extra feature, but I can sync my Outlook calendar in there, and it can and do that.

Heather Smith  

That’s fantastic. Like, you just come in and go overview of the task, happy with these tasks, and I presume you can categorise them in terms of, this is a five minute task. This is a 15 minute task.

Kyelie Baxter  

Yeah, look in the tasks, you do need to have the amount of time it will take and the due date and a few other things like that, but as long as all that’s put in there, yeah, it works beautifully for me.

Heather Smith  

No, that’s fantastic. And I work in Gmail, and I aim for Inbox Zero. 

Kyelie Baxter  

Me too. 

Heather Smith  

And the new Gemini feature, which allows you to open up a side panel, you can ask it what tasks are sitting in my Gmail inbox. It’s not perfect, but it is. It’s going down that route of getting there.

Kyelie Baxter  

Copilot also does the same in the Office Suite. 

Heather Smith  

Yeah.

So getting AI to generate our task list, love it, love it. And generating a task lists means you’re no longer all of those tasks actually aren’t weighing in your head. That’s about capacity and free mental load.

Kyelie Baxter  

Mental load. 

But we did want to know what you’re doing with the time you’re saving (using AI)?

Kyelie Baxter  

Oh, this is a really good question, and I’ve actually been thinking a lot about this, because if you don’t use that time wisely, it will get lost. 

Heather Smith  

Yeah.

Kyelie Baxter  

This is a capacity thing, right? So this is where, you know how you said before, kindly, that sounds like a lot more than 20%? That’s where my time goes. 

Heather Smith  

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Look, I know when cloud accounting, which I no longer call cloud accounting, came on the scene, and bank feeds came on the scene, and automation came on the scenes, I tripled my client base overnight.

Kyelie Baxter  

Yeah,.

Heather Smith  

Which was great, but then when payroll came around, it was a nightmare, because it was still the same amount of work exactly. And I thought, yeah, I’m so smart. Oh, I made a big mistake. And I think it’s the same thing. I’ve got to manage how much I take on for smart, strategic reasons.

Kyelie Baxter  

Exactly, exactly.

How has AI affected the competitive landscape between other accounting firms, and do you think that is going to continue?

Kyelie Baxter  

This is a really tough question for me to answer, because I don’t look around like I don’t look sideways. Not that I’m not aware of my other competitors, but I don’t actually see other people as competitors. I’m not good in the marketing space in that point of view, but I’m one of those people that think there’s enough work for everyone. 

What I will say is, we’re here at the LYD conference at the moment, and Grant Abbott stood up on stage before, and he put this triangle up, and he said, if you’re not embracing AI, then basically you’re going to lose 30 to 50% of your clients in the next three years. I don’t know if I necessarily agree wholeheartedly with that, but I think he’s on to something. Okay? So I think if you’re not, if all of my competitors were not embracing AI in some way, shape or form, it’s got to put me at some sort of an advantage, right?

Heather Smith  

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for that. 

What would need to happen to get you genuinely worried that AI could replace you, Kyelie?

Kyelie Baxter  

Nothing, because I genuinely think AI can also be dangerous if you’re not putting if you don’t understand how to apply it, and if you don’t have guardrails in place for safety.

Heather Smith  

Thank you so much for being on the Accounting Apps Podcast. 

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our listeners before I let you go?

Kyelie Baxter  

I want to share that Heather has a microphone that she has bedazzled that you don’t get to see because this is a podcast, and it perfectly matches her dress today. 

Heather Smith  

Oh, thank you.

It’s so that when I go and do the unpacking, I don’t get confused about which recording is on which one.

Kyelie Baxter  

I love this. Thank you for having me.

Heather Smith  

Where there’s friction, you put in solutions, and bedazzling is always the solution.

Kyelie Baxter  

See, there you go. Hot tip. Be solutions-driven.

Heather Smith  

Thank you so much, Kyelie. 

Kyelie Baxter  

Thank you.