Tech news: CLA launches CLA One Digital service

Published May 15, 2026 10:11 AM

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Updated May 19, 2026 3:40 PM

1 Min Read

CLA launches CLA One Digital service; Xero announces XeroForce custom AI agent builder; Emburse releases new AI purchasing agent; and other news and updates from the accounting tech world.

CLA launches CLA One Digital service

CLA's New York office

Gus Wiltse

Top 25 firm CliftonLarsonAllen announced CLA One Digital, a unified digital services offering that brings together analytics, AI and automation, cybersecurity, software modernization and change enablement into a single connected approach. At the core of CLA One Digital are six integrated service areas: AI and automation; analytics; cybersecurity; software modernization and integration; change management, governance and skill-building; and strategic digital consulting. Clients engage CLA One Digital through a guided experience that moves from assessment to action, including digital readiness assessments, practical roadmaps and prioritization tools, integrated delivery teams across digital disciplines, and ongoing advisory support to scale and sustain results. CLA One Digital is industry-agnostic yet informed by CLA's experience serving organizations across industries.

Xero announces XeroForce, a custom AI agent builder

Xero CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy

Small business accounting plaform Xero debuted XeroForce, a natural language custom AI agent builder for the financial workflows of small businesses and accountants. Custom AI agents designed through XeroForce can be built in natural language and used across Xero and a variety of third-party tools already used by small businesses and accountants, connecting apps, actions, rules and schedules into automated processes shaped for their firm, a specific client or a specific industry. The agents also support always-on processes or workflows as businesses wait for events or actions, such as email replies or filing dates, completing tasks in the background over days or weeks. They have domain-specific accounting and financial logic and workflows — such as month-end close and ongoing reporting to organizing tax documents, purchase order validation, payrun approval and more — baked in. The program also includes logged and traceable audit trails, as well as bulk action across clients. The launch is in alpha, available to invitation-only customers, with plans to bring XeroForce to general release later this year.

Emburse releases new AI expense agent

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Travel and expense solutions provider Emburse announced an AI agent that automates travel and expense workflows. The new AI agent autonomously analyzes transactions, receipts and itineraries to prepare expense reports that are ready for review. If any details are missing, the AI agent prompts the user to add them, either by typing or speaking in natural language, and automatically applies the updates. The resulting reports are meant to be fully compliant with company expense policies and context-aware across every expense. For example, it understands when flights and hotel stays belong to the same trip, which local tax rules need to be applied, and whether a meal should be charged back to a client. With full automation transparency, the AI agent shows the rationale behind every decision. Additionally, Emburse ingests receipt and transaction data from across the travel and spend ecosystem through hundreds of integrations, including major providers such as American Airlines AAdvantage Business, DoorDash for Business, Uber, Lyft, Amazon Business, Hertz, Renfe and The Parking Spot, as well as leading travel management companies including AmTrav, FCM, CTM and more. It also features mobile capture, email forwarding, calendar integrations and document uploads. The new agentic expense experience will be available beginning in fall 2026 as part of Emburse Enterprise Expense, with additional capabilities rolling out in the coming months.

Spendflow touts autonomous procurement workforce

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Procurement solutions provider Spendflo has launched Flo AI, an autonomous procurement workforce designed for mid-market companies. Flo AI runs the complete procurement lifecycle: intake, approvals, vendor management, contract review and accounts payable, as a single connected system. It does not assist procurement teams but acts on their behalf. Flo is made up of three agents, each covering a distinct phase of the procurement lifecycle. Flo Procure handles every purchase request from first submission to approved purchase order and does things like routes requests, checks budget and policy, collects vendor documentation and drives approval workflows to completion. Flo Contracts, meanwhile, reads, redlines and tracks vendor agreements, surfacing nonstandard clauses, extracting key commercial terms and flagging upcoming renewals. Finally, Flo AP (Accounts Payable) matches incoming invoices against purchase orders and contracts, routes exceptions for human review, and processes payment. Because Flo AP shares context with Flo Procure and Flo Contracts, it verifies invoices against what was actually agreed at sourcing, not just what the vendor submitted. The three agents work as one system. The context carries forward at every stage. What Flo Procure learns about a vendor informs how Flo Contracts reads their agreement. What Flo Contracts extracts from the agreement informs how Flo AP handles the invoice.

Vena launches financial consolidation solution

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FP&A platform Vena introduced Vena Financial Consolidation, which orchestrates people, data, processes and agents across planning, decisioning and financial close. The AI-enabled product supports processes including intercompany eliminations, foreign exchange translation and ownership structures within a governed, Excel-native environment. It includes Planning Agent, now generally available, which enables users to generate forecasts, update plans and apply scenario logic using natural language within Vena. Also generally available, Vena MCP Server connects tools like Claude, ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot to live, governed Vena data, allowing teams to analyze and update plans while maintaining permissions, approvals and audit trails. Meanwhile, a unified data layer across Vena and Acterys (which Vena recently acquired) enables real-time data flow between advanced operational planning in Power BI and finance-led planning and decisioning in Excel.

TaxPlanIQ launches weekly tax strategy hour for tax pros

Watching a webinar online - online CPE - online learning

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TaxPlanIQ, an accounting firm-specific tax planning platform, announced its weekly Strategy Hour, a free virtual educational series now open to all accountants and financial advisors. Each session runs Wednesdays from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. ET, beginning Wednesday, May 20, and is eligible for one CPE credit. The Strategy Hour brings in a different specialist each week to walk through a single, high-impact tax planning strategy in depth. Sessions include a focused presentation followed by extended Q&A, giving attendees the chance to pressure-test the strategy against real client scenarios. The first session in the series will focus on the Mega Backdoor Roth, followed by 1031 Exchanges, Charitable Gift Financing and Defined Benefit Plans in the weeks that follow. People can register here.

Accountests launch staff accountant test for industry

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Skills assessment solutions provider Accountests announced the launch of a Staff Accountant Test for use in the industry, corporate and SMB market. The Staff Accountant Test for Industry measures a candidate's knowledge of the practicalities of accounting in an industry setting, including debits and credits, review of financial information and concepts. The tests always focus on issues candidates will experience in day-to-day work. While Accountests had previously focused on evaluating public accounting skills, over time the company saw a need to create one specifically for use by those outside public accounting.

Partnerships and integrations

Big Four firm Deloitte, via Deloitte Tax, and legal AI solutions provider Legora, announced an expanded strategic alliance to accelerate AI-driven transformation across legal, tax, compliance and risk functions for U.S. organizations. The collaboration now combines Legora's AI platform with Deloitte's tax, legal business services, and other professional services offerings and implementation experience. … GruntWorx, a tax automation solutions provider, and The CFO Project, a training platform for accountants and CPAs ready to launch CFO Advisory practices, announced a strategic partnership designed to help firms reduce compliance workload and accelerate their transition into recurring CFO advisory revenue. The partnership will include co‑developed resources, webinars and implementation guides that help firms streamline tax workflows, introduce advisory services and build recurring revenue without disrupting existing operations. … Onboarding and credit management solutions provider Nuvo integrated with tax automation platform Avalara. During the credit application process, Nuvo Intelligence automatically classifies uploaded tax documents (including state exemption certificates, resale certificates and W-9 forms) and identifies document type, jurisdiction and expiration status in real time. Validated certificates are then transmitted to Avalara's Exemption Certificate Management platform, where they're stored in a centralized compliance repository linked to each customer's tax profile. … Small business accounting platform Xero announced its live integration with Anthropic, the company behind Claude. Building on a multi-year partnership announced in late March, the partnership brings Claude directly into Xero and Xero's financial data and tools into Claude.ai. Today, users with an active Xero subscription can bring their financial data directly into their Claude conversations to solve immediate business challenges and provide financial clarity without switching tools. The insights generated in Claude link back to Xero for customers to take action, such as reviewing the full report, contact record or invoice detail.

Hires and appointments

Sovos, a tax compliance solutions provider, announced that Christiaan Van Der Valk, who serves as the Global Exchange Network Association chair, has been named chief regulatory and industry affairs officer. Van Der Valk's executive appointment is expected to place proactive regulatory influence, tracking and communications at the center of Sovos strategy. The company also announced several new senior leadership roles, including Alex Pavel, who will assume the role of SVP, industry and regulatory intelligence, on Van Der Valk's team to drive global regulatory thought leadership and external engagement; Gautam Mahanti, who will step into the role of managing director for APAC, lending local expertise to scale Sovos as the definitive compliance partner across the region; and Andrew Hocking, who will step into the role of VP, channels for APAC, building and scaling a channel ecosystem across the region. … Accounting ERP provider Sage announced the appointment of Krish Vitaldevara as chief product officer and Anand Swaminathan as chief strategy officer. Vitaldevara has worked at companies including Salesforce, Google, Microsoft and NetApp and will lead Sage's global product and platform strategy. Swaminathan joins from McKinsey and Accenture Digital and will drive Sage's corporate strategy and value creation agenda. Both will start in the coming weeks and be based in the company's San Jose, California office.

Other news

Tax automation solutions provider Instead has completed government testing to electronically file and print tax returns across 100% of U.S. federal, state and local jurisdictions. Instead's coverage spans individuals (1040), trusts and estates (1041), C corporations (1120), S corporations (1120S) and partnerships (1065), covering almost every U.S. taxpayer and entity type. … MyWorkpapers, a cloud-based workpapers software provider, has rebranded itself to BrightWorkpapers. The rebrand brings MyWorkpapers' identity in line with the Bright name that stands behind it, giving Australian customers greater visibility into the organization responsible for the product they use every day. The software itself, the team that builds and supports it, and every aspect of the customer experience remain unchanged. … Office Timeline, a leading provider of timeline and project visualization software, announced its rebrand to Lucen Software. The shift combines existing products and new offerings under a Microsoft-native clarity platform. As part of the transition to the new brand, Office Timeline is now Lucen Timeline, and the company's previously acquired time-tracking software, Timeneye, is now Lucen Track. Both sit within the Lucen platform along with two new products currently in beta, Lucen Plan and Lucen Flowchart. … Digital Asset Clearing Center (DACC.HK), a financial market infrastructure for the tokenized economy, announced $10 million in funding from strategic partners including Conflux, Transaction Technologies Limited and Global InfoTech.