Behind the scenes, it’s this whole mess of just cotton and colours and everything. But on the front and this, I think that analogy for what we’ve got in accounting firms and bookkeeping firms is that we present this beautiful polish. We’ve got to do that for our customers, because who’s going to trust someone that you know has sort of balancing all the, all the, all of the moving parts? But I just thought that analogy really sort of represents how we are in the industry. Is that there are so many things that we need to pull together to make sure that we’re doing what we do well. And it’s how I came up with Twine.

– Trent Yesberg, founder of Twine Apps and director of Regional Business Services in Townsville.

Lightly edited for clarity.

There is something refreshing about speaking to someone who is building technology from inside the profession rather than selling into it from the outside. That is exactly what this conversation with Trent Yesberg delivered. Trent is the founder of Twine Apps and director of Regional Business Services in Townsville, North Queensland. He is not theorising about billing pain points. He has lived them.

Twine Biller was born out of frustration. Many firms moved to fixed fees over the past decade because they were simple and predictable. Fixed fees brought structure and clarity. But over time, subscription creep quietly eroded margins. Payroll fluctuations, vendor price increases, discounted software plans rolling over, and wholesale billing CSV files that nobody had time to properly reconcile all began eating away at profit.

Trent described mistake after mistake his own firm made. Hundreds of subscriptions. Legacy discounts. Price rises missed. Margins not properly adjusted. The reality is that unless someone is checking every line item every month, revenue leakage happens. Twine Biller is designed to simplify that process. It takes wholesale billing data, maps it, applies preset margins, and pushes it through to ledger systems like Xero and QuickBooks. The concept is simple but powerful. Make every dollar count.

One of the strongest themes in the discussion was mixed fees. Fixed fees are not wrong. They are clean and efficient. But they do not always reflect the real variability in modern firms. Payroll grows. Software pricing shifts. Vendors adjust their models. Trent’s view is that separating subscription components and allowing flexible margin management gives firms more control. It also makes price increases easier to pass on transparently. In a cost of living environment where everyone understands rising costs, the bigger risk may be undercharging rather than communicating change.

Launching Twine Biller at the Accounting and Business Expo was both exciting and nerve wracking. There is vulnerability in sharing something new with peers. Trent spoke openly about wanting validation. Does this problem resonate beyond his own firm. Is the message clear. The warmth of the industry response reinforced something important. This profession is collaborative. Innovation from within is welcomed when it solves real problems.

The Pitch Fest experience added another layer of learning. Presenting to judges who were thinking about total addressable market and investor appeal was different from speaking directly to accountants and bookkeepers. It highlighted the dual reality of SaaS. You are building for users but often pitching to investors. Those lenses are not always aligned.

We also explored the second product concept under Twine Apps called End of Day. Anyone who has worked with retail or hospitality clients knows the reconciliation headaches across POS systems, payment providers, clearing accounts, Uber Eats, DoorDash, merchant fees and settlement timing differences. The promise of simplifying multi source daily data into controlled accounting entries is compelling. It reflects deep bookkeeping insight rather than surface level integration thinking.

Perhaps the most energising part of the conversation centred on AI. Trent shared how his wife Chantelle built a Python script using Claude that automated multi entity reporting for a pharmacy group. A process that once cost $1,500 per month and hours of manual handling now runs in seconds. That is not theoretical AI hype. That is practical efficiency. Payroll journals across 30 entities automated. Time reclaimed. Options opened.

This is where the conversation became bigger than Twine Apps. We are entering an AI first era. APIs, agents and automation are accelerating quickly. What feels cutting edge today may be standard tomorrow. Trent openly acknowledged that building software in this environment feels bold. Features can be overtaken by platform releases. But he also framed it differently. If you understand the problem deeply and move quickly, there is an enormous opportunity.

The key takeaway is not that everyone needs to become a developer. It is that curiosity matters. Understanding what tools like Claude can already do changes how we design workflows. It changes cost structures. It changes capacity planning. AI is unlikely to replace accountants and bookkeepers. But it will absolutely reshape the tasks we perform and the value we deliver.

Twine Apps reflects something I believe strongly. Innovation inside accounting works best when it is grounded in lived experience. When someone who has reconciled the CSV files builds the bridge, the solution feels different. More practical. More aligned. Less shiny and more useful.

It will be fascinating to watch how Twine evolves. Micro apps solving specific pain points. Agents connecting systems. Margin recovery embedded into everyday processes. For now, the invitation is simple. Stay curious. Protect your margins. And do not underestimate the power of small efficiencies compounded over time.

Try Twine Biller Beta here – https://forms.zohopublic.com.au/twineappsptyltd1/form/TwineBillerBeta/formperma/gzEEK-3RxWRY0Wuv-wtvtpjMn5ewKftgzy5Uyy7YY1Q

Heather Smith

Hello. My name is Heather Smith, and joining me today on the Accounting Apps Podcast is Trent Yesberg, the founder of TwineBiller, a SaaS platform designed to automate subscription billing, margin, recovery and compliance for accounting and bookkeeping and IT partners. You may also recognise him as the director of award-winning bookkeeping firm Regional Business Services in Townsville, and also the owner of yes property and finance, a business focused real estate and business broker, some would say, a jack of all trades, and they would not be wrong.

Welcome, Trent. How has your week been?

Trent Yesberg

Thank you so much for having me, Heather. It’s fantastic to be here. And yeah, my week’s been going really well. It still got the, for want of a better word, the hangover from A&BE last week. So it was great to see you there, but just trying to keep on top of everything, keep on swimming forward.

Heather Smith

Fantastic look. We’re going to jump right into it. And you’re in Townsville, we need a crocodile story from you, Trent. Jump in. Share us a crocodile story.

Trent Yesberg

A crocodile story. I’m from North Queensland, Townsville, North Queensland. So crocodiles are you don’t go too close to water where we live. Coincidentally, I where my family home is. We do back onto a drain way which connects to the Ross River up here, the infamous Ross River. It was two years ago. We did have a crocodile at our back fence. It was just there. We’ve got two little girls, so it was actually quite horrifying, even though, generally crocodiles, you leave them alone, they’re not going to bother you. But, yeah, way too close to home for me to think about. So, yeah, crocodile.

Heather Smith

It’s funny. As Australians, we are very, very conscious of all bodies of water. And I went and visited my friend Kelly Parks in Canada, and she had this beautiful lake, and I’m like, and she’s like, people swim in it. I’m like, I am not swimming in there. How many sharks in there? How many crocodiles? And she’s like, there’s none. There’s nothing. There’s not even a snake in there.

Trent Yesberg

That’s a dream.

Heather Smith

It is a dream. It doesn’t seem real. I don’t trust them, sure I could go in and get bitten.

Can you share with our listeners a little bit about your career journey as the founder of multiple businesses, and also living in regional Queensland?

I’m sure you have some unique journeys to share.

Trent Yesberg

Yeah, absolutely. So my background, I’m an 83 model, so right in the gap there between the Gen X and the millennials and little bit of a our own sort of wild species, for one of a better terminology. But my old man was in the banks, so we travelled across Queensland, comfortable with regional Queensland, that’s my background. That’s where I’ve grown up. So always moving every couple of years.

Trent Yesberg

Then I went through University. I was going to be a geologist at one point there. I soon realised, after I started that at university, that whilst rocks might have been a fleeting interest, as I was growing up with volcanoes and everything like that, and I got good grades, like I didn’t fail or anything, but I definitely didn’t want to pursue geology. So switched across to a business degree, and that was just based off a mum’s suggestion, because I was going to drop out and no idea what I was going to do. I was applying for any sort of job that was out there switched across to business.

Trent Yesberg

Mum’s, good old mum, her advice was, just get business. It’s broad. It means that you can consider what you want to do in the future. Finished off that. Probably the world’s longest degree, because I got a job at one of the big four banks, climbed through the ranks there, once again, in the footsteps of my old man, travelled across Queensland, took the jobs and went from there.

Trent Yesberg

Got a little bit jaded with the whole banking system, stepped out, come to work for dad for a couple of weeks, I was going to figure out what I was going to do that was back home here in Townsville. He was running Regional Business Services then, which was a bookkeeping business. He had two part time casuals with him. I joined in. I thought, wow, this is exactly the same as what we do in banking. We’re helping businesses. And from there, we grew from dad plus two, sort of five hour a week casuals, and this is back in 2012. We’ve then grown to we’ve got eight in the team now. We’ve got our ladies Desiree and Adrian over in South Africa as well, who are part of the team. And we’ve grown that I added on the broking, the commercial finance broking side of things, into what we do with the business bookkeeping and everything from there and then, everything that we do is in service of business owners. We’re a family business. My wife works in the business with us. We bought dad out, even though he is still around and loves working within the business.

Trent Yesberg

One thing that we’ve noticed is that we’re now dealing with the generational change of business owners that dealt with dad. We’re now dealing with the children of those business owners. So there’s a really nice story in how we get to sort of grow together over all these years. And that’s kind of a background into the jack of all trades concept. In my mind, I think it’s all super related. So I might know a little bit more about lending than perhaps an account of it. Lending is lending like it’s really just policy based things and understanding processes with that, similar with the business sales it’s I was working with a real estate agent in the bookkeeping capacity. I saw what they did. I thought, hang on a second. There’s nothing here that I can’t do myself. Got great training working at one of the big organisations, so that was always really fun, and it’s kind of just all moulded together from there. So even though they’re different career strands, I guess, or pathways, they’re all super related in just helping people run their businesses.

Heather Smith

You have had a really interesting career, and I could tell sort of by looking at LinkedIn, it wasn’t the typical career, and it’s lovely that you have had a really successful, embedded family business. So say hi to your mum and dad for me, they’ve done well.

Heather Smith

So you’ve been a regular identity in the Australian accounting and bookkeeping landscape for more than 13 years now, both through your business and as a multi-award winner and through the Intuit QuickBooks trainer, writers network and and perhaps the face of Intuit here in Australia. So I was really excited to see that you had launched an app at the Sydney Accounting and Business expo that was 2026.

Can you tell us about Twine Apps and the first app on the rank, TwineBiller?

Trent Yesberg

Yeah, absolutely. So similar concept in dealing with everything to do with our bookkeeping business. It’s been an idea that’s been around forever, but it really came on board about 18 months ago as software development became and I say this in quotation marks, so don’t shoot me software engineers and developers, but it’s it’s gotten easier for the layman. So I am definitely not a tech strong person, but I’ve got the ability to understand what I’d like to get from tech.

Trent Yesberg

So Twine apps was born from all of the all of the little micro aspects of our businesses that we know are really massive pain points, and trying to think of niche micro apps that are going to suit everyday business owners in the bookkeeping and accounting industry that I’ve experienced. And that I believe, from all of my travels with with travelling with QuickBooks product showcases, getting along to the accounting business expo, we all share very similar journeys in that aspect.

Trent Yesberg

So TwineBiller is our first product that has been released. It’s been in the works now for about it’s look at overall it’s been nearly 18 months, but especially with our most current developers that we’re working with at the moment, it’s been about seven months. We’re out there. We’re ready to go. We are just getting our final certification sign off, but we’re in beta, so we are really excited to be getting out there and understanding a Is it, is it a problem, that it is that I believe that it is because I know it’s a pain in the you know what in our business, in just doing billing.

Trent Yesberg

So we use Ignition, we use fixed fees. But I really think that that subscription element of software has been dramatically underestimated over the years, so historically, made a lot of sense. It then became a little bit difficult to manage. Fixed fees definitely was a very obvious pathway with that. We’re massive ignition fans, so we’re on Ignition for the majority of our clients. But we’ve also found now that it’s not, it doesn’t cover everything, and so fixed fees definitely has its its area, but we’re thinking now that the more appropriate way for us as and obviously there’s a bias to this in the software that we’re creating, but I also think as a concept wise, we’re promoting the idea of mixed fees.

Trent Yesberg

So absolutely have a fixed fee component with what you’re doing, but with your software, why not actually have it separated, so that if you’ve got payroll aspects that fluctuate or vary vary from month to month, capture that accurately. If there are price increases, capture that and pass it along. And I have no concerns with price increases, because I think that. This is a real current dilemma worldwide, with everything, the cost of living crisis, it’s really important that we recognise that we all need to raise our prices. It’s not a nice concept, per se, but being able to pass along your costs easier, I think, really does allow us to maximise our profit, and at the end of the day, we’ve all got to look out for number one. So that’s where our tagline is. Make every dollar count. We want to simplify the subscription process, and we think that with TwineBiller, that we’ve been able to do that. Thank you.

Heather Smith

Now on LinkedIn, Murakeshwari asked the question: She’d love to hear you talk about:

How does TwineBiller handle constant price changes from vendors, and how are firms deciding between passing these increases through versus bundling them into fixed fees?

Heather Smith

So I think you have actually answered that ahead of head of me asking you that question. But I just wanted to shout out thank you, Murakeshwari for your question.

Trent Yesberg

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. And it’s it is important to highlight that once you have set up TwineBiller and you’ve mapped your items to what you want in your ledger file, whether it’s QuickBooks, whether it’s Xero it we’re set up to cover that nyob is on the way as well, so that’s only a couple of weeks away. So away with your because it’s based off of your wholesale billing CSV. Automatically whatever price increase takes place, your margin is preset so it’s going to adapt and on charge that you can do it via percentage basis. You can do it as a as actual set dollar amount as well, so you can control that. And we’re also setting it up so you can customise it per client as well. One of the big things that we found with our QuickBooks subscriptions, obviously, we’ve got a couple of 100 QuickBooks subscriptions. We’ve got some of the dollar files, we’ve got some of the $5 files, but also a lot of the discounts, where you get two years for a dramatic discount, and we’ve made every mistake under the sun. So when I say this, I hope I don’t sound as if we’ve got everything solved, but this is the reason why we created the product, is that when, unless you’re checking every month, going through that whole invoice, and when you’ve got a couple of 100, even when you’ve got 15, it’s not easy to be able to go through it, compare it to last month, make sure you got the right number of payroll people. Has the base price increased. So just being able to have that aspect, and I say automated, it’s, I’ll never use the term automated, in its fully most robust process. There’s always going to be some level of involvement in my mind for us to keep on top of what we want to do. But I think we’re creating a very agentic process that’s going to suit we I believe that we’ll very shortly be able to set up an agent to retrieve your wholesale billing CSV, push it across into Biller, have a bit of review process at the end of it, and then push it across out of your ledger system, whether it’s QuickBooks or Xero, and then it’s over to your payments provider from there to collect the actual payment as well. So I think we’re creating a easier process for invoicing.

Heather Smith

Fantastic. Thank you for that detailed description of it and and I think that it’s we are bombarded with pricing philosophy. And I think that just being open to mixed is a lot easier way to a lot more practical way. It’s great to have fixed fees, but things happen.

Trent Yesberg

That’s exactly right, and fixed fees are good. They’re simple, but you can we’ve burnt lots of time and effort on fixed fees. I think the time saving is in the creation of the fixed fee. No doubts about it, that that is simple, that is straightforward. But when how many customers do we actually have where nothing changes for a whole year? It’s everyone’s got the best of intentions. We’ve got beautiful clients. We’ve got painful clients. Love them, but they’re painful, and there’s always something new that pops up. Fixed fee just isn’t enough. It isn’t broad enough to be able to capture that value for us?

Would you like to talk to us about what future apps you have within the Twine Apps family? What are you thinking about?

Trent Yesberg

Definitely, so these are in the concept stage at the moment. We’re pretty close to getting underway for development for the next project, which we’ve called end of day. So the concept of end of day is it’s going to take any retail, hospitality, anyone that has a point of sale register as part of their processes at the end of the day. It’s going to take the data from those multiple sources. So if your hospitality, Uber Eats, door, dash, whomever you might be using, if you’re a retail point, your various type of merchant providers, that you’ve got, your zip payments, your all of your different merchant providers, it’s going to map that into a very simplified controlled by accountant or bookkeeper transaction.

Trent Yesberg

So we’re toying with whether it should be invoices journals or let the middle, middle person, as in the accountant, decide how they want to map it, push it across into your ledger software utilise a proper clearing account as part of that process, so that when the dollar figure hits the bank account, it’s actually mapping to that that day or that week or that month that you want to have it to go to allocate across to it. So it’s a pretty broad concept. There’s players in the market that have got a similar process to it, but I don’t think that it’s as rounded from the accounting and bookkeeping aspect of it. So all of us have made the mistake of connecting, and I won’t name names, but you connect a particular provider and all of a sudden you’ve got 5000 transactions that don’t match, or there’s these fees that have been taken out. There’s a whole lot of those moving parts that go with it.

Trent Yesberg

So we believe that we’ve got just that little bit of extra accounting magic, bit of pixie dust, that we think that with that transaction mapping, we’re going to have a better facilitation for it to simplify that process. And I’m working on it from the basis that the 14 year old person who’s finishing off the till at the end, at the end of the shift, they can put in, if there’s a cash component, it maps. They simplify where the point of sale data is going to get mapped across. And they can complete their process and really simplify everyone’s work so that everything’s being captured too, but in a simple way.

Heather Smith

That is such an absolutely needed solution. So look forward to it coming out. And I do think that my accounting and bookkeeping heart sings when someone from the accounting or bookkeeping industry launches into developing apps because they have such a deeper understanding of it. And it’s not that they’re just looking into the community, going, how can I make money out of that community? They’re like they you know, you’re starting with the problem, and yes, you want to be commercially savvy about it, but developing a solution with that Intel and that insight so and there’s so many bookkeepers and accountants listening in, well, probably the bookkeeping side, who’ve spent so long trying to figure those things out. And you get the first day figured out, you got to do it again the next day, and then you got to do it again the next day. It’s like, oh goodness, lordy.

Trent Yesberg

Lordy, exactly. And then we all come up with the band aid approaches, which is the smartest thing to do. I get it. We’ve got it for ourselves. We’ve got a lot of pharmacy clients who have got specific point of sales that we’ve and that’s what we’re building on. We mapped it for a couple of those ones, and we went, hang on. There’s a broader approach here that we can use this for everyone, that pharmacies are actually quite easy in how they do it. You when you’ve got all of those moving parts, like a Uber Eats a DoorDash used to be Deliveroo, but all of those differing moving parts, it’s such a headache. So you can do the right thing by simplifying it, but it’s still a very manual process then too. So that’s where, yeah, that’s exciting that you, you share the same ideas. So it’s, that’s good.

Heather Smith

I my, my thing with it was like some of them would shut it 3p like the the the day would end at 3pm on some of the solutions, and then it would end at midnight on other solutions. And then it would end but it had changed. Within like, the next 36 hours, it would change and push through other things, and you’re like, going, what is happening?

Trent Yesberg

I remember being a checkout boy at one of the discount stores, one of my first jobs up here, and all of a sudden the terminal had just settle, yeah, you’re halfway through serving a customer, and I know it’s a little bit more structured than that, but that’s exactly what I think of when you say that.

Heather Smith

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I imagine, as an I don’t use Uber Eats, but I use Uber, and it’s interesting, because I’ve noticed in the last month they have changed what they have billed me four times. So it changes after the Feb and they put in things like petrol surcharge or something like that. But it’s changes to what the bill was that we agreed it was going to be. So that’s that’s interesting. So in your sub stack, you said, do. Despite my business background, business finance and accounting, it still surprised me the level of tedious processes involved in setting up a new business, this software, online business, and things like testing and development, new infrastructure for an online platform on all of the Generic Requirements, compliance, marketing and finance take time and then in capital letters, a lot of time.

How do you reconcile the tedious processes involved in setting up a new business?

Trent Yesberg

Suffering is just sort of at the beginning of it. If there is someone out there that knows the startup admin, come marketing, come compliance function, I’d love to speak to them, because it’s a real learning process, because it’s the business of software itself is so different. Even though it’s similar, it’s so different in how to go out there. And this is also a big learning from Abe. It’s, I’m still Trent from regional business services, you know, regional Queensland, but when you’re wearing a shirt with a brand on it, everyone’s a little bit like, oh, not everyone, but a lot of people like, oh, I don’t really want to get sold to and I get it right. Like, the last thing you want to do is get jumped on when you’re at an event. So, but it’s just surprising the differences, or the nuances in the hats that you wear in setting up a business.

Trent Yesberg

I used to work at a bank. I know all that inside out. Well, actually, it’s probably changed a little bit now. It’s been been out of it for a bit, but the functions that you need to set up, there’s so much more involved. We’ve got a development team that is based out of India. So shout out to the guys there. So Hal Shivam and the team loving their work. We’ve got to be able to communicate with them. Think about the product features that when my co founders, Tish and Damian, as we’re talking about the next set of features that we’d like to have, then we’ve got to be able to talk with our beta users, and we want to have it so that it’s at scale. So we’ve got big dreams, like it’s very early days at the beginning, but it’s so difficult to actually structure the automation, to be able to reach out to 25 people in a CRM with the singular or multiple email chains to be able to do it. There’s a lot of work, so a massive amount of respect for everyone that has sort of part, you know, pave that way for us to be able to do it. I definitely underestimated the amount of involvement in going through, and that’s not even touching on testing. So testing software to find bugs and to find problems is just a whole extra level of detail. So that’s where I think we’re really lucky in that our client base is such attention to detail orientated people with accountants and bookkeepers. But also, I don’t want to look like an idiot either, so I’ve got to test it a little bit before I go out. And everyone says, hang on, your maths is wrong here the GST, look at this, and it’s like a very obvious mistake, but when you deep into going through the 14th different way you’re trying to upload it or do something different, it’s a it’s been a learning curve, yeah.

Heather Smith

And the thing is, as you said, you have the banking experience. You’ve also got the bookkeeping experience, so you’ve got a lot of that knowledge, and it probably makes you quite empathetic to everyone who’s out there trying to start a business. Massively, massively. So in the sub stack, you also go on to say that you’ve learned that it’s really hard work to get people to test your software.

How can our listeners contact you if they want to be beta testers for your software?

Trent Yesberg

if anyone’s interested, we’ve set ourselves up now. So we’re on LinkedIn. We’ve got the Twine Apps LinkedIn page. We’ve only recently just got the Facebook page Twine Apps set up. And this is all part of the learning is finding where the community is and how they want to be spoken to and how they want to speak with us. I’ll also share my details with you so that we can put them in the notes, so that they can reach out. But we’ve got our web pages set up so Twine apps.co, CEO, we’ve got the beta button up in the top right there. Jump on that one. We’ve got a very swish looking Zoho form that’s got a couple of questions in there, just so we understand a little bit about our users, and then we’ll be able to send them an automated invite from there to come and join the beta. So anyone that joins up for the beta, we’re offering 12 months of free use, we’re going to do $100 gift card to say thank you so much.

Trent Yesberg

Everyone’s busy. So we’ve also got and also we’re conscious that people may not want to share their own specific data in a testing phase. So we’ve got our own test CSV files to be able to use one. We don’t have a test QuickBooks or Xero that people can use, but they can connect it to their own test files that they’re comfortable with, but we can help share as much as we can so that they get that comfort in using the software, getting a bit of a feel for it, how it’s supposed to work, and how we think it can work in with their systems of running their business.

Heather Smith

Excellent and Trent, you’re always encouraged to jump into the accounting apps mastermind group and say, Hey, we’re looking for beta testers, and put that link there and to anyone listening in, who is an app out there? You’re always that’s open. Everyone’s welcome to do that, because while your solution has really good intel of bookkeeping world, we want these apps to be developed with that really good intel and beta testing is what helps that happen, absolutely.

Trent Yesberg

And thank you so much for that, because that is such a huge help, because it’s one of the things is that it can be a problem in the way that I do it, but that’s I don’t know that, that is necessarily across the globe. Having said that, I had a really exciting phone call last night with a firm in the UK who has the exact same issues as what we had in our firm, which is amazing to hear. So it’s exactly that case of you don’t know what you don’t know. So that’s, that’s a huge help. So definitely encourage anyone to jump into that group as well, because the there’s so much good industry intelligence built into it. It’s, that’s fantastic. Thanks. Heather, yeah, no,

Heather Smith

I try and have it as a cafe that we can all come and have a similar conversation about and it’s open to everyone. That’s perfect. So what was it like launching your very own app after being in the industry for like, for a decade now, you launched it at the accounting and business expo.

Heather Smith

How did your product pitch go? What was that like?

Trent Yesberg

I’ll start with the launch party, which was a real it’s nerve wracking, like there’s no other way to position it, because…

Heather Smith

I’m going to stop you, because you are the least nerve wracked person, I know you come from regional Queensland and regional Queensland people don’t get nerve racked. You got crocodiles in your backyard. But keep going like that’s sort of the level of tension that we’re hitting here.

Trent Yesberg

And it’s, it’s part ego. There’s no doubts about it. Like you, you want. Everyone wants to do good, and you, you’re you’re being vulnerable because you’re sharing an idea, and the last thing you want is for everyone to sort of shoot down your idea. But the the nervous aspect of it was confirmation. Do we have something here that people are interested in? Does it make sense? Am I explaining it right? Am I thinking about the way that’s going to communicate to the broad market?

Trent Yesberg

But Damien had organised the champagne bar at the soffitel there at Darling Harbour. So it was fancy. It was so nice. We walked in to get set up. And it’s these beautiful sort of, I’m assuming, mahogany walls and glass and mirrors everywhere. So it was a stunning location. So I’m already out of place. I had long pants on, which is a, you know, big deal, and normally I’ve got my shorts on or something a bit more relaxed, but we, we were trying to wedge it in. There was so many events at Abe, so we’re very conscious that everyone’s sort of racing between things and some amazing events were on. So we’ve sort of tried to slot it in.

Trent Yesberg

As soon as it was the time on it at four o’clock, people started coming in, and I’m like, Oh, this is exciting. This is good. It all went so well. It could not have gone better, because the people that were in the room, you could genuinely feel their warmth and excitement and their support, and it really resonated across the whole week just how close our community really is. There’s if anyone thinks that there’s competition in this in this industry, it’s only because you’re wanting to better yourself. So never think that anyone’s out to compete against you. We’re all supporting and helping one another. When I got up to talk the I have, outside of being introduced at our wedding, outside of, like, the our girls being born, things like that, I don’t think I’ve experienced a warmer, more rousing, exciting, like, welcome to come and talk. It was the nicest thing I’ve experienced. So it’s, it was amazing, fabulous.

Heather Smith

Fabulous. And your product pitch with meltefino.

Trent Yesberg

So no, what a powerhouse. It was so good. I was actually at your talk, and I got a message. I wasn’t supposed to pitch for another 20 odd, 25 odd minutes, and so you were on stage with Chris Kiley, Liam and Tim, and I got the message saying, hey, you need to get here. You’re up next. Four people had dropped out. So pitch fest, and this was part of the accounting and business expo aspect of where we were in startup alley. As a new entrant to the industry, we got the opportunity to do a pitch. It was five minutes. We’re allocated a time. Noel introduced me. I came up. We had a screen.

Heather Smith

Didn’t you as a bookkeeper, say, Hey, four people dropped out. That means you’ve got 20 minutes for my pitch.

Trent Yesberg

Oh, that’s a, Hey, that’s a see how much pressure I was under.

Heather Smith

I’m surprised Damien didn’t do that calculation.

Trent Yesberg

Genius, genius. Well, look, I’ll counter with saying our pitch is so simple and so straightforward that we just needed the three minutes to get it sorted. But it was, once again, it was super daunting, because I haven’t done a pitch in that a competitive space, but also in the tech space.

Trent Yesberg

So I think it’s a lot different to getting up and giving a sort of Elevator Pitch around what you do there’s and this was the hindsight that we learned after it as well. The judges, they gave us a bit of feedback at the end, I went up and had a bit of a chat with them. So the pitch itself, I loved it. I thought it was great. I missed a good third of the points that I was supposed to make when I was up there. Wasn’t specific enough on certain places, but I got enough of it across that I was like, Okay, I’ve, I’ve done a good enough job here.

Trent Yesberg

And then chatting with the judges afterwards, they’re really focusing on things like total addressable market, who investors, attracting investors, and things like that. And I thought, Oh, I was just pitching to accountants and bookkeepers, because I want them to see if they like our product and if they got an idea of what we could do better. So it was a bit of a disconnect in the pitch fest concept. But it’s always amazing learning. It was a really good a really good event to be a part of, and Noel brings such good energy. It was really good to be a part of I was really excited.

Heather Smith

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I always encourage people to go and watch pictures, because it is interesting, especially when you get that feedback, whether it was public or private, what the judges are looking for and aligning that way, I’m kind of fortunate, because while I’m an accountant and bookkeeper, I’ve also done extensive writing courses, and so with writing, you’re constantly pitching, whereas as an accountant and bookkeeper, you’re not necessarily pitching something different all the time, whereas I’m always pitching for a gig on sort of some sort of content creation. So it is that muscle is quite strong in me, and I kind of see, oh, that’s why I’m getting these things, because of that, but, but I’m sure you would have done amazingly well and, and it was a shame four dropped out.

Trent Yesberg

Yeah, yeah, that’s right. That’s the it’s look, it increased our odds. So selfishly, I was, it wasn’t, you know, I wasn’t necessarily crying for them, but also it’s what a good opportunity to get up and just get that feedback, to be able to go through and do it, but also just back on your always pitching or the writing aspect of it. It’s such an important skill because that’s what I’m struggling with, is what is the best way to say to accountants and bookkeepers that we think we’ve got a better way to help with your invoicing, but we don’t have a payment option built in yet.

Trent Yesberg

So there’s, I’m not trying to just get you to have another app. I get it. Tech fatigue, it’s huge, it’s real. Absolutely get it. But also, we think we can actually make things easier for you and make money out of it for you as well. So that messaging, that writing muscle, as you’re as you’re talking about there, that’s a really difficult and impressive skill to have.

Heather Smith

Yeah, yeah, thank you. But I’m sure, because let’s go on and talk about you’ve got two, I think they’re co founders, Tish Bhagwan Dean and Damien Greathead. I’m sure Damian has a lot of skills in that space. I’m sure he’s feeding Intel into your ear. This is what, this is what we should be doing here, and stuff like that.

Trent Yesberg

He definitely is. And he is. His talk at the launch event was hilarious and warm and inspiring and emotional as well. And it’s he. Ability to slice through jargon, not waffle like I do, and just succinctly articulate it. It’s his super skill. He helps me as much as he can any sort of guys. Arthur and I just got to sort of leave you go with it. It’s his. Here’s the notes, here’s the ideas, and then I’ll try and craft it to still be authentic from my aspect. And as he says, it’s the people don’t want to hear from a marketer per se, even though it’s the right message, it’s it’s a pain point that I have dealt with personally. So I know what it is all about. Hopefully that is a better message to resonate across the wider community, to understand that, hey, we’ve we’re in the same boat. We are not perfect. We’ve made every mistake under the sun, and I know we’re still making lots of mistakes as we go along.

Heather Smith

So yeah, and I think, you know, I’ve been in the industry a long time as have you, and I think a lot of us buy from humans, it’s sort of human first, and you’ve always been an identity in the industry. You’ve always been present at events. You’ve always been active. You chaired the accounting business conference one of the digital transformation Well, no, it wasn’t that, or was it? No, which?

Trent Yesberg

It might have been day one on day two, it was the SME advisory.

Heather Smith

SME advisory. And I think the industry does recognise that, hey, you’re here. You know us. You feel us. You’re in the similar thing. So I do think I agree with Damien that he does not want you to be a polished rock. He wants you to be regional Trent. That makes sense. The story is a lot more interesting. But we, we he’s gonna listen to this. He’s gonna dress you up as the Crocodile Hunter for the next time.

Trent Yesberg

I was gonna say he did do. He set us up doing for a couple of the postcard brochures and things that we had for the event. And he, he sent through an image that he’d gotten AI to create with me with a bowl cut. And this, this amazing, little terrible haircut, but it, it was so funny to get it through and you just it’s, I really like that around the the ability to be able to poke fun and not take ourselves super seriously whilst being serious. But yes, it was a Yeah, it’s really nice.

Can you share with me a little bit about what Tish’s role is and Damien’s role is in the business?

Trent Yesberg

Yeah, absolutely. So Tish and Damien both have massive international experience. So Damien, he’s he’s worked for a couple of different software organisations in the accounting, accounting tech space, and he’s got North America exposure from all of his connections with the larger corporates that he’s got. He’s got a network across just a global network, it’s and he’s also doing some pretty amazing things with his flight labs, with his outside of thing as well. Tish, very similar South African raised, has spent time in the US as regularly, spends time in the UK as well. She’s got that broad accounting experience with an international exposure. She’s also very governance driven, and also just gets what we’re doing from that space as well. So we’ve got the accountant, the bookkeeper, and we say the marketer, but I think that’s underselling everyone’s skills in what that broad concept is about.

Trent Yesberg

But I was showing them the product as I was building it with the first iteration, and they both said, We’d love this. What? What do you need from us? And I said, Oh, do you think it’s a good idea? And they said, Yeah, this is a great idea. It’s the concept of Twine apps. Is exactly a brilliant idea. Can we be involved? And I had not thought about that aspect at all. I just kind of assumed this was going to be a line item on the P and L that was bit of software, bit of income, helping out the Australian market. And Tish was the one to say. I’m quite confident that this is an issue all across the globe, and the more that we’ve delved into it, the more it seems to be the case. So they’ve I really like all of the skills that we get to bring together. Because whilst I’m a little bit more, I don’t know the right terminology without dubbing myself in here, little bit fast and loose, we’ve got Tish, who’s really like, no, that’s not the right way to go about this. This, you know, there’s important steps that we need to do here, and then Damien’s got a very global view in how we’re looking at things as well. So it all seems to complement each other in that that differing skill set.

Heather Smith

My dad used to be on a council, and one of his best friends was a, and it was a, it was Somerset college council. So it’s a very posh private school. So for the listeners in so it’s, you know, it’s a full on, proper Council, and one of his best friends on the council was a used car salesman. And he and not that, I’m suggesting you’re a used car salesman, but he said he was just like my father was very solicitor, very proper, very upright, very English. And he said that that the used car salesman just brought such hustle and such. He took them down journeys that my dad never could have done, but the council needed that complementing skill. So absolutely, it’s definitely kind of something that, you know, we all want that governance in there, but we need to shake it in different ways.

Heather Smith

I should ask you: where does the word “Twine” come from?

Trent Yesberg

So I was as part of the pitch fest, and this is very genuinely how I came up with the idea of it, the concept and I nearly went down this angle, until Damien and Tish both said, Trent, that’s a lovely story, but this is please, let’s, let’s go in a different direction. I think that Twine represents all of the concept that we’re trying to pull everything together so we’re binding everything together with that ball of twine, an accounting practice, a bookkeeping practice. The concept of it is that I don’t like the sticky tape idea, like we’re properly linking together all of these systems, processes, everything that we do. So the Twine App was that where we’re bundling in everything into a nice, neat ball, but it’s, it’s twine, right? So it’s strong, it’s but it’s not perfect. It’s a little rough around the edges. And that was my sort of thinking of it turns out there’s 1,000,000,001 Twine App names out there already, which is, in hindsight, no surprise either. But my grandmother used to do tapestry, so she would be doing the that’s, I’m assuming, I hope everyone knows what I’m talking about when I say this, but they’d be going through, and she’d be using the thread and the different colours, and you’d sort of look at it and go, because I was obviously younger, I was like, Man, this is ugly. What are you doing? Grandma? Like, it’s, I couldn’t quite get it, but then she’d finish it up, and then you’d turn it over, and it was this beautiful image. And behind the scenes, it’s this whole mess of just cotton and colours and everything, but on the front and this, I think that analogy for what we’ve got in accounting firms and bookkeeping firms is that we present this beautiful polish. We’ve got to do that for our customers, because who’s going to trust someone that you know has sort of balancing all the, all the, all of the moving parts. But I just thought that that analogy really sort of represents how we are in the industry. Is that there’s so many things that we need to pull together to make sure that we’re doing what we do well. And it’s how I came up with Twine.

Heather Smith

So with the tapestry you’re surfacing, what needs to what the client or the viewer needs to see. Yeah, perfect. Yeah. So that is a lovely analogy, and that is a lovely story, and, and I think it also sort of, I love the fact that you’re in regional Queensland and you’re in Townsville, another I’m not sure if you know. You perhaps do know, but service mates out of Darwin, and that’s a global, very successful company out of Darwin, more crocodiles.

Trent Yesberg

Yeah, that’s exactly right. And I love the guys from service mate. We got, we’ve got quite a few of our trades. Trades are on there. And we, we, I don’t want to say we were super early, but we were pretty early in with them as well. 2015 16, I want to say, and awesome product. It’s, and that’s a big thing that I think Australia sort of underestimates is just how much firepower is in our industry and has gone down that path and is doing great things.

Heather Smith

Oh, constantly I do speak to a number of sort of people who are running these events, showcasing solutions. And I’m like, like, you’re in Brisbane, and you don’t have Fathom there, and you don’t have tender there, these solutions are bigger than what you’ve got there. Exactly. Never heard of them. They’re multi, multi, multi million dollar solutions run by brilliant people. But, yeah, it is interesting, but so, so along with that, I’m keen to ask you your view on the technology landscape. Yeah, keen to ask you what your view is on the technology landscape at the moment.

Trent Yesberg

Well, when we started talking about this podcast a week or two ago, I had one view. The industry’s changed since then, everything is moving so fast and where I think we are. Are at the moment is that we’ve gone from, you know, pens and papers onto desktop computers, we’ve gone with the internet’s come about.

Trent Yesberg

So we’ve got Claude, we’ve had the mobile aspect of things, which has really changed how we’re going through and communicating with one another and doing business. You cannot escape that, AI, you know, dare I say the buzzword of the moment, but it just really feels like that is going to be very central in the future to how we’re going to complete a lot of things moving forward.

Trent Yesberg

I was listening to Sarah and Natalie’s pod the accountants after hours just this week. They did their catch up, sort of 20 minute one, and it just resonated so much with how quickly everything is changing. And even they were talking about open claw they just a couple days ago, and Claude has brought out a competing product that actually is going to go through and control your mouse on your screen, from your from your phone. There’s so many agentic concepts that I think are going to be built into how we do things moving forward. I’m saying a lot of words that I don’t know 100% of what’s going on behind the scenes, either.

Trent Yesberg

So that’s why I need to keep on top of everything. Because I just think that that’s our that’s our superpower as accountants and bookkeepers is not knowing exactly what’s going on, but being across it so that we can be prepared to help our clients who come to us to ask what’s going on in the space. And I really think that we’re going to shift from this cloud concept across to an AI first platform in the future. It’s not here now. I’m, don’t, I’m not saying race out and go and change everything, because goodness knows what it’s going to look like next week, let alone in six months time, but I do think that there’s some dramatic changes that are that are in the pipeline, and that’s why, with our software, I think, I think touch wood, do all the those things that we’re creating, those bridges to link, and do those agentic processes with things that are just not straightforward to be able to automate. That’s very exciting.

Heather Smith

As you’re saying, there’s a lot of noise around APIs, agents and AI. So, working inside your bookkeeping practice or others that you’re aware of, what do you think is actually useful, and what should our listeners be looking at today?

Trent Yesberg

Chantelle, my wife, in the last two weeks.

Heather Smith

Your very, very beautiful wife…

Trent Yesberg

Yeah. She’s been jumping into Claude, Claude code. So anthropic Claude code. She did about six months of she kicked off doing a degree in computer science, I think, is the right terminology, way back when. But she did six months, started doing cobalt, and was just went, No, this is not for me. In the last two weeks, she has created an agent that within it’s created a Python script, so that’s an account, sorry, a programming language that will take and she’s done a couple of different ones here. So with one of our pharmacy groups, they’ve got all of these multiple entities, but with a singular, important owner across all of those entities, we it’s set up so that it’ll go to our QuickBooks files for each of those individual ones, export the specific reports, collate it into a custom made spreadsheet that Claude actually replicated from what we’ve built over years, to be able to go through and map it out to all of their specific cost of goods, percentages, all of these internal KPIs that this particular group have got, and it’ll do it in a couple of seconds.

Trent Yesberg

We had a piece of software that would do that manually, that was costing us about $1,500 a month, and still had a hours worth of work that we had to go through and complete it Now does that in seconds, our good friends at employment hero, we’ve also been able to go through with that. She’s got it where a similar entity, where we’ve got it set up within our white label. Employment hero, she can get the payroll journals loaded into this Python script, and it’ll push it across into QuickBooks and Xero as well, where there was a way that you couldn’t do it with employment error. You could only do it to one particular entity, so she can do that for the group now. And there are just so many different ways that there are these micro processes that take hours, but there’s there. Is a script that’s available to be able to go through and complete it. So to answer your question, what I think people need to be across at the moment is that what’s relevant today may not even be relevant tomorrow because how quickly it’s changing.

Trent Yesberg

So don’t race out and change everything. But I do think, and I’m getting a lot of my information on X is I find, is the one that’s probably the most high level for my capability of understanding and just be across what’s going on with these AI platforms. Because there is such a speed at how everything is developing and changing and evolving, is probably the right way of saying it. And think about, I know Sarah does it with hot toast. AI think about talking, if you are in that space and you are interested, I would reach out to some of those providers who can actually come into your business and say, here’s what I think we can do with these processes on these customers. Might cost it, and I’m going to pick a figure, goodness knows, if this is appropriate, $10,000 maybe more. But in the time saving that you’re going to get moving forward, there is going to be such efficiencies to be driven, where you can bring on new customers, do more services, expand the services that you’re offering. I just think that there’s, it’s a scary time, in a sense, but I also think that there’s massive opportunity in those of us that are interested in testing the waters. Is probably the way that I think of it at the moment, it’s very exciting.

Heather Smith

Now, can you remind me refresh just run through that again.

How long did your wife spend creating the script for the multi-entity, combining all the information?

Trent Yesberg

Four days. So it would have been about, I’ll say that 25 hours to round it out. So about 25 hours.

Heather Smith

Yep, and it’s, it’s you as the business owner, sort of sitting back and going, allocating someone to do that, and giving that them that time to tinker. And I know, for instance, growth wise, has Bo gaudron, who’s always, he’s always tinkering. He’s always sending me videos of things, but he has that it’s at least half the day is just allocated to him tinkering. And people can suggest, and it’s it’s doing that, but goodness that if, if you say you were paying 1400 a month for that that was a it’s a significant saving, once you’ve got it happening.

Trent Yesberg

Absolutely and similarly, with the payroll journals one, it’s not a big deal. We’re probably talking six minutes per payroll per month. But when we’ve got the 30 in this one group, there’s the 30 pharmacies, and that time saving just in that one month, it doesn’t cost anything now that it’s created. So there really is this beauty in the efficiency of it that we can now look at with that time saving, we can look at, do we want to bring on a new customer? Are we going to spend more time training our team in how to do these things? Do they have an interest in wanting to come along the journey with it? It just opens doors to finish early. You know that there’s the other thing as well, like, I’m not this. I’m not a midnight hour sort of that there is no in my mind, there’s, there’s nothing to be proud about for work and 800 hours a week. You know what? I mean, that that’s not, I think we’re, I hope we’re past that.

Heather Smith

It’s, yeah, absolutely. Look, I have a philosophy that, within reason, I’ll pay for anything that will save me time. Yeah, absolutely. I always go, well, six minutes multiplied by clients multiplied by the number of times a year multiplied by 10 years. Let’s just look at it that way. And then boom. And then I always go, multiplied by every Xero file in existence. And just like crazy.

Trent Yesberg

It also compounds within itself as well, because that timing saved is now being put to something else that likely we’re going to create more efficiency. So it’s, yeah, it’s never, it’s, I can’t see it replacing us, but I can see it doing a lot of things that we’re doing now. So this is where I think that there’s a huge opportunity out there to either make life easier or get more clients and grow it’s just, it’s an exciting time.

Heather Smith

Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. So we are running out of time, but I’m going to, I’ve got a couple more questions. I want to ask you the phrase saspocalypse arose in early 2026 to describe the dramatic sell off of Software as a Service stocks driven largely by fears that generative AI will make traditional SAS products rest less relevant not rest relevant. I. Or obsolete. So you made the comment to me, it’s possibly the dumbest time to be developing software. Talk to me about your thinking regard around this.

Trent Yesberg

Well, exactly that everything changes from week to week, so it’s what the problem that we’re solving is not a hard one. It’s a pretty straightforward concept. But for someone to come along, spend the time, set it up, automate it, and do those things, whereas I don’t think we’re going to charge a fortune for what we do, it’s micro apps. Is the terminology that we’re using. It’s the in my mind, I just think that the ease of which you can create things, we know that we’re creating for a community.

Trent Yesberg

There’s a lot of people that can, right now, go out and create their own equivalent concept. They’re going to need to set a few things up to be able to do it, but they definitely could do it right. And I think that these are the things that we’re going to find in six months, two years over time. What are the things that people do want to spend their time and develop their own solution? Versus someone goes, Oh, that’s a great idea. Yep, done. I can onboard in 15 minutes. I’m set up, ready to go, and it takes me 12 minutes each month to go through and take care of my subscription billing and figuring out the cost benefit of all the opportunity cost of going down and doing that process. So it could be that end of day, the what we think we’re going to create, AI sort of goes all right, who do you want us to log into today? What’s, what’s the API connections look like in the background, your chat, or your Claude, or whomever it is that you use safely and securely is given permission to all of the APIs, draws the data, maps it, which it’s pretty impressive how it can interpret and collate data.

Trent Yesberg

So the capability of it, I think, is there. It could be a feature that comes out tomorrow, which wouldn’t be a surprise. And there’s, in theory, there’s a fair bit of that functionality already out there. So it’s not new, but it could just be all of this that we’re going through, and then in a tweet goes out and Claude says, we’ve developed this. And here’s here’s the new release that’s now part of your $40 a month subscription, and off you go. And it’s everyone can do it all themselves.

Heather Smith

Absolutely Brave New World. And I will point out to our listeners, one of the big things that came out of the accounting business expo. For me was Claude, as you have mentioned multiple times, Claude, 4.6 is far further ahead than the other llms At the moment with that recent release that only just came out a few weeks ago, so I’ve signed up to Claude, and I would encourage anyone listening in to sign up and start having a start using that, but with that. Thank you so much Trent for joining us on the accounting apps podcast. It has been lovely to get to know you more and to hear the journey that you’re currently on.

Is there anything else that you would like to share with our listeners?

Trent Yesberg

No, not that I can think of right this second. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it that this has been a great conversation, and it’s always a pleasure to catch up. We bump into each other at events and whatnot. It’s always sort of a fleeting passing moment. But I really appreciate you and everything that you do in the industry, this is a fantastic opportunity for just to get to have a chat with you as well, but also appreciate everything that you do. I know the amount of effort that it goes into to to prepare these things.

Heather Smith

Thank you so much, Trent, and everyone knows how to get in contact with him. We told you the website name we told you, or find him on LinkedIn, and I’ll put everything in the show notes as well. Cheers.