Tech news: Certinia unveils major AI update

Published September 11, 2026 12:50 PM

Updated September 11, 2026 1:26 PM

1 Min Read

Certinia unveils major AI update, 14 new agents, 71 new actions; Cherry Hill Advisory launches set of free AI tools; Datarails launches finance ticketing system; and other accounting tech news.

Certinia unveils major AI update, 14 new agents, 71 new actions

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Professional services solutions provider Certinia announced a major update to its platform, launching 14 new agents along with 71 new actions, shifting into what the company called a "System of Action." The system operates through three integrated components. The first is the foundational platform itself, which combines formal professional services, customer success, financial management and CRM data with the unstructured data such as calls, threads and meetings to create one single unified source of truth for the entire enterprise. The second is the accumulated data drawn from over 17 years of real projects, timecards, resourcing decisions, and estimates processed across its workflows. The third is agentic action, which uses that accumulated knowledge to perform action throughout the services lifecycle. Certinia's Veda AI Suite now sports new agents and intelligent actions. They include Deal Coach, RFP Responder, Call Summary, Call Coach, SOW Drafter, PMO Quality, Solution Architect, Implementation Plan, Project Manager, PMO Leadership, Knowledge Base, Business Analyst, and Customer Story. These agents can use Veda Intelligent Actions, described as bite-sized, reusable capabilities. Agents can now automatically parse résumés into skills profiles and surface ranked resource recommendations within reallocation workflows, summarize account health, build business review decks from live data, surface ranked expansion signals, post, cancel and reverse general ledger transactions, allocate inventory, generate and recognize revenue schedules, and more. Through Certinia's AI Your Way capabilities, users can employ purpose-built agents while standardized on Salesforce Agentforce, which run natively inside that framework. Users can deploy agents inside tools and platforms already in use. Veda Intelligent Actions are callable from Slack, Claude, Microsoft Copilot or wherever a team already works. Certinia's AI can be used whether an organization is standardized on Agentforce, building on Claude or Microsoft Copilot, or wants Certinia's native AI platform to do the heavy lifting. Certinia plans to have 40+ agents and 300+ VIAs and 100% agentic capability coverage by year-end.

Cherry Hill Advisory launches set of free AI tools

Cherry Hill Advisory

Cherry Hill Advisory, an internal audit and risk advisory firm, announced CHA Labs, which offers access to free AI-based tools. The available tools so far include a IIA Topical Requirements Scanner, Quality Assessment Manual Self-Assessment Visualizer, Charter Conformance Scanner, 10-K Risk Radar, Audit Committee Simulator, Fraud Scheme Generator (for defending against fraud schemes), Board Question Predictor, Emerging Risk Brief, Emerging Risk Brief, CAE Copilot, Control Test Generator, and AI Governance Health Check. CEO Mike Levy said the tools demonstrate the firm's larger capacities, but are completely free and open to everybody; other tools on the site represent additional services. The tools used both vibe coding and professional development and were run through what Levy said in an email was a "fair amount of security evaluations that went through the architecture and development." The tools do not store what users paste, and the inputs are not used to train models. Levy said the company plans to add more tools in the future, with the next likely centered around learning and development.

Datarails adds finance ticketing system

Datarails co-founders (L-R) CTO Oded Har-Tal, Datarails' mascot (Bob Sheetner), CEO Didi Gurfinkel and COO Eyal Cohen

Datarails, a finance operations solutions provider, launched Datarails Desk, a ticketing system for finance teams that connects every incoming request directly to the financial data needed to resolve it. Rather than support escalation, Datarails Desk supports a single-owner, start-to-finish resolution model. Desk centralizes finance requests from email, Slack, Teams and other channels into a single structured queue, then uses its FinanceOS connection to bring the relevant financial context into every ticket automatically. Core capabilities include direct connectivity to ERPs, HRIS, CRMs and other financial systems through FinanceOS. AI-drafted, data-backed responses use Desk's embedded AI agent to identify the records behind each request, pull the supporting files and draft an evidence-based reply for review before it's sent. It offers automated routing and service level agreements, with tickets assigned by team, request type or priority, and configurable timers; team-based permissions and a SOX-grade audit trail; and per-team dashboards giving each team, and finance leadership, a real-time view of open tickets, response times, bottlenecks and workload across the organization

AI Accountant launches WhatApp-compatible AI accounting bot

Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Bengaluru, India-based AI Accountant announced AiA Bot, a WhatsApp accounting assistant that allows founders and business owners to access key financial information in about 10 seconds by asking questions in natural language. Instead of logging into accounting software or waiting for someone to prepare a report, founders can simply ask a question on WhatsApp and receive an answer from their live accounting data. The information provided through AiA Bot is as current as the company's accounting books. As long as the books are updated, founders can access the latest available numbers rather than depend on periodic reports. AiA Bot also allows businesses to upload or forward purchase bills directly through WhatsApp. AI Accountant plans to expand AiA Bot from providing financial information to helping founders interpret and act on it. The roadmap includes daily financial briefs covering revenue, expenses, receivables and cash positions, alerts on overdue collections and upcoming payments, and conversational access to P&L and cash flow reports. Anomaly detection for unusual spending, margin slippage, vendor overcharges and overdue invoices are also planned.

Adobe Acrobat upgraded with AI document management capacities

The Adobe headquarters in San Jose, California.

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

Adobe announced new document management capabilities powered by the Adobe Productivity Agent in Acrobat. Users can now turn dense documents into interactive visuals, including reports and summary slides, with the AI analyzing files, asking clarifying questions to understand intent, and surfacing interactive reports with charts, images and built-in navigation. People can also bring documents or weblinks into a PDF Space and ask Acrobat to summarize the information as a podcast. They can access Knowledge Base in Acrobat, which lets teams get answers pulled directly from document collections across PDFs, Microsoft Office files, web pages, text and email; they can also access Analyzer in Acrobat and turn unstructured data into structured insights that finance, procurement, operations and IT teams can use to make decisions. The new Stylize feature in Acrobat helps people polish resumes, invoices, reports and more, turning plain documents into branded deliverables.

AskFirmBrain launches to answer questions using firm data

Artificial intelligence and future concept

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AskFirmBrain, an accounting-focused AI answer platform developed by Washington-based Belltech Systems, officially announced its launch. Described as an "AI knowledge workspace," it uses a firm's internal procedures, checklists, templates, policies, reference materials and other documents to answer natural language questions. Responses include source citations for professional review. It also serves as a document management solution, as users can manage procedures, templates, policies, checklists, and reference materials in one library. Users can also access a dashboard outlining questions asked, documents indexed, and questions that may need further attention.

Partnerships and integrations

Long-term holding company Pine Services Group announced a partnership with enterprise AI implementation solutions provider Superglue. The collaboration brings agentic ERP implementations to Pine's portfolio of ERP and technology-enabled services companies. Work is already underway with The Vested Group, one of Pine's NetSuite firms, and with i-Tech. … Centri Business Consulting, an accounting and advisory firm, has partnered with audit and advisory solutions provider Fieldguide to strengthen the delivery of its Risk Advisory services. Through the partnership, Centri will leverage the Fieldguide platform to further standardize client engagements, increase collaboration and provide clients with greater visibility into ongoing engagements and into each client's own control environment and risk posture. … Big Four firm KPMG has been selected to help lead cloud computing solutions provider ServiceNow's global HR transformation and serve as the implementation partner for ServiceNow's deployment of EmployeeWorks and HR Service Delivery, while also expanding its own use of the ServiceNow AI Platform. The initiative will create a single AI-powered destination where ServiceNow employees can access HR, payroll, workplace and IT support to find answers, complete requests and get help without navigating multiple systems. At the same time, KPMG is expanding its deployment of ServiceNow AI capabilities, including AI governance tools designed to help organizations manage and scale AI responsibly. … SignWell, an eSignature platform, announced a native integration with small business accounting platform Xero, enabling users to send Xero quotes and invoices for signatures directly from SignWell. With SignWell, signed quotes can automatically convert to draft invoices in Xero and signature events sync as notes for recordkeeping—backed by SOC 2 Type II-certified security and full audit trails. … Accounting and advisory firm association PrimeGlobal launched a technology advisory partnership with its member firm Sikich, a Top 50 firm. Through the partnership, PrimeGlobal members will gain access to practical resources, specialist expertise and collaboration opportunities to help them strengthen and expand their advisory offerings. The initiative includes a dedicated Technology Advisory resource hub designed to help firms understand the opportunity, explore approaches to building capability and access specialist support where required. Resources cover areas including data and AI, cybersecurity, cloud services, automation, business applications and technology strategy.

New hires and appointments

Intuit announced the appointment of Dixie McCurley as its first managing partner in residence, a new role designed to bring the voice and perspective of accounting firms directly into Intuit's strategy, innovation, products and services for the accounting profession. She joins Intuit from Cherry Bekaert, a Top 20 accounting firm, where she built and scaled the firm's national client advisory services practice. … Top 50 firm LBMC has named Charlie Apigian as shareholder and practice leader of its AI and Data Transformation practice. Prior to joining LBMC, Apigian spent 25 years in higher education, building two data science institutes from the ground up, at Middle Tennessee State University and Belmont University, where he led each as director. … Dext, a provider of AI-powered bookkeeping automation, announced the appointment of Nicole Bello as chief revenue officer. She will lead and grow Dext's revenue organization globally, with regional teams spanning Canada, U.K., France and Australia. Bello will be responsible for creating greater consistency across regions, sharing best practices and putting the right foundations in place for Dext to continue scaling worldwide. She joins Dext from Dayforce, where she served as group vice president, EMEA, leading the region's sales efforts. She previously held senior sales leadership roles at UKG and ADP across both EMEA and North America.

Other news

CertQuestUSA, an exam prep company for regulated professions, finished practice-question coverage for all six of the 2026 CPA exam sections: the three Core sections (AUD, FAR, REG) plus all three Discipline options (BAR, ISC, TCP). Combined, this totals about 1,400 MCQ practice questions, so a candidate can now prep their whole real exam path, Core plus their chosen Discipline, under one account. The company clarified this is for MCQ practice and is not a full exam simulator.