Matan Bar

The accounting and bookkeeping profession is at an inflection point. Across the US, practices are navigating no shortage of pressure: AI is changing how work gets done, client expectations are rising, and competition is evolving fast. But if there’s one takeaway from Xero’s latest Modern Practice Playbook, it’s this: the firms pulling ahead aren’t necessarily the biggest. They’re the ones making deliberate choices about how they work. That’s what stood out most to me in this research.

Managing a small business means keeping track of many moving parts. When payments, payroll or expenses sit across different systems, owners and their advisors often spend valuable time moving between tools and piecing together the full financial picture and keeping their books clean.

The 2026 FIFA World Cup gave local restaurants a rare opportunity to reach new, global customers during an uncharacteristically busy period. Early excitement, visitor projections and activity in host cities, of course, suggested demand would increase, prompting many businesses to prepare well before the tournament began. For many restaurants, those expectations proved accurate. Dining rooms filled, first-time customers walked through the door and sales spiked.