Welcome to the AI Community! I'm thrilled you're here. 👋 Watch the quick START HERE to get oriented and see exactly how to make the most out of your membership. You can find it here. Then, let's get connected—introduce yourself below! Share where you are from, what you're excited to learn about AI, and your biggest goal for joining this community. This is your place to explore, engage, and elevate your accounting practice through cutting-edge AI. I'm here to support your journey every step of the way. Let’s get started! 🎉

A few days ago I asked if anyone wanted to see the guide I put together on the five AI tools I keep coming back to. The response was clear. So here it is. It’s a short, practical guide — 32 pages, no fluff. You can read it in about 20 minutes. It covers: • The five tools that actually make a difference in an accounting firm • Where most accountants waste time with AI (and how to avoid it) • What to focus on first so you get quick wins without overwhelm • A bonus tool almost nobody talks about I wrote it because there’s so much noise around AI right now. Every week there’s a new tool, a new feature, another person telling you what you should be using. This guide cuts through that. Grab your free copy here 👉 https://ebook.the-ai-community.com Let me know which tool surprises you most. 👇

Last week at Google I/O, they announced something called Gemini Spark ... and this one is worth paying attention to. Spark is a personal AI agent that lives inside the Gemini app. But unlike a normal chatbot, it doesn't stop when you close your laptop. You give it a task, and it keeps working in the background ... even when your computer is off. Here's what caught my eye: - It connects directly to Gmail, Docs, and Slides ... so it can actually read your emails, summarise threads, and pull out deadlines without you doing anything - You can set it to do recurring tasks ... like checking your inbox for something specific every day or flagging overdue items - It asks permission before doing anything high-stakes like sending an email or spending money - It's rolling out to Google AI Ultra subscribers in the US first, with a desktop version coming this summer My honest take? This is where AI is heading. Not just answering questions when you ask ... but doing things for you in the background, on a schedule, across your apps. For accountants using Google Workspace, that's a big deal. We're still early days, but this is the kind of shift that will change how firms work over the next year or two. Have you tried any AI agents that actually do tasks for you (not just answer questions)? Or does the idea of AI working in the background make you nervous? I'd love to hear your take 👇

2026 has been extraordinary (so far)... and Anthropic are building something astonishing. They have launched so many new tools it's hard to know which one to learn first. So let's help each other... Which is your favourite (if you could only have one), and in the comments 👇 say why. And if you're not using Claude, why not? What's stopping you?

So I've done just a few things in Claude and maxed out since I'm on free account. Decided to go ahead and upgrade from the free plan to the Pro plan. Paid the $220.00 (yearly with tax included in the price). Takes me back to the login page and now says my account has been banned! Like, wth! And they've taken my payment. So I go to appeal the ban of course. The appeal form right off asks for your Organization ID which is found in your account which when you've been banned you can't access. Without this you can't appeal the ban. No email or chat with a real person only their AI bot. And it wants you to login. Can't do that but it does give you a button to push if you can't login. Do that. Gives you the option to "help troubleshoot" or "account has been disabled". So I choose account disabled. It immediately tells me how to appeal with the appeal form that you can't fill out because you can't get into your account and ends the chat immediately without allowing you to respond. Ok so go back in and tell it to help troubleshoot and tell it what has happened and that one can't fill out the form without being able to get the required info from the account. It again gives me the appeal form info and ends the conversation. There's no email to be able to send any info to, no way to contact an actual person to assist in this. So I'm out $220 and no way to get it back. Ask me if I'm interested in learning more about Claude now - ain't no way And this also means that the appeals process is in name only and no real way to actually appeal