Summit Agenda 2026

Facilitator: Colin Walker, Chair of ICB

Panelists: ICB Directors Roslyn Van Welie, Pamela Taylor, Martine Hoosen, Rob Marshall, Matthew Addison & Amanda Linton

Governance, Leadership and Making an Impact

What makes an effective Board—and could board service be part of your leadership journey?

This practical session will demystify governance and explore the purpose of a Board, the difference between governance, strategy and operations, and how good decisions are made. It will also examine the mix of skills, experience and personal attributes that effective Boards need, from strategic thinking and sound judgement to curiosity, collaboration and constructive challenge.

Bringing these principles to life, current ICB directors will share their own experiences of serving on the ICB Board—the perspectives they bring, what they have learned and the value they have gained from contributing at a governance level.

Whether you are considering a board role in your local community, a not-for-profit organisation, a professional association or another setting, this session will help you better understand what board service involves and how your experience could make a meaningful contribution.

Presenter: Zoe Kittel, Customer Lead at Xonboard

Superannuation compliance is often something dealt with after the fact - a contribution bounces, an ATO fine lands in your clients unsuspecting letterbox. As compliance expectations rise, that traditional reactive approach is quickly becoming your biggest liability.

This session unpacks what proactive super compliance actually looks like in practice. We'll cover the key superannuation touch points every bookkeeper should be tracking for their clients' employees, and why having an ongoing, centralised audit trail matters just as much as getting the right details from day one.

You'll leave with practical insights for building proactive compliance habits into your onboarding and payroll processes, so you're never caught scrambling to reconstruct what happened after something's already gone wrong.

Presenter: Rutland Smith, Co-Founder, Harvey Norman Technology for Business

Technology has never been easier to buy — or harder to manage.

Businesses can end up with:

37 SaaS applications + 8 passwords + 4 copies of customer data + 3 AI platforms + no idea who has access to what.

Technology has never been easier to buy — or harder to manage. Small businesses now have access to AI, automation, cloud platforms and enterprise-grade cybersecurity once reserved for large organisations. But adding more technology doesn’t always make a business better. It can create complexity, duplicated data, security gaps and disconnected systems. In this practical, thought-provoking session, we’ll explore the Great Technology Paradox: why digital transformation is not about buying more software, how AI is accelerating both opportunity and risk, and why the businesses that thrive will be those that make technology simpler, more connected, more secure and deliberately designed.

Presenter: Sam Allert, CEO, Reckon

Why Standing Still Is No Longer An Option.

Bookkeeping has never stood still. And today, the pace of change is faster than ever. Evolving legislation, rising client expectations, and new technology, including AI, are reshaping the profession. Practices making the biggest impact are the ones leaning into that motion rather than resisting it.

Sam will share practical ways bookkeepers are putting AI to work in their practice today. Not as a way to take on more clients and do more of the same, but to free up time for what actually grows a business: deepening client relationships and delivering more value. Because the tools might be getting smarter, but trust, judgement and connection are still what set great bookkeepers apart, which no algorithm can replace.

The real opportunity isn't the time AI gives back, it's what you choose to do with it. This session is about turning that time into meaningful, sustainable impact, without the burnout that comes from simply doing more of the same. Come away with practical ideas for where AI genuinely helps, where people remain irreplaceable, and how to keep your practice moving forward as the profession keeps evolving.

Presenter: Charlie Sheppeard, EGM of Strategy and Operations – ANZ at Xero

The bookkeeping profession has just come through one of the biggest years of compliance change in a decade, with Payday Super, AML, and new AI capability continuing to roll out at pace. Australia's bookkeepers didn't just adapt; leading practices came out of it better positioned than they went in.

In this keynote, Charlie Sheppeard, EGM of Strategy and Operations at Xero, shares fresh findings from Xero's Modern Practice Playbook research. He'll uncover where AI is genuinely helping bookkeepers today – and why efficiency lifts the value of your expertise rather than eroding it. Automation is the toolkit; you're the expert, and the final authority in every client relationship. You'll leave with concrete steps you can take back to your practice next week.

Presenter: Matthew Addison, Executive Director, ICB

More details coming soon

Presenters: Rob Marshall, ICB GM Community Engagement & Grace Occleshaw, ICB Support & Resources Manager.

Panelists: Natasha Simpson-Ly, Founder of Tashly Consulting; Roslyn Van Welie, Founder of Curly Girl Numbers & Katy Johnson, Founder of AFI Balance.

The time for Bookkeepers who constantly hear the pounding message - "what is AI" ... is now over and the next phase ... AI Productivity for Bookkeepers is where the ICB believes Bookkeepers need to be. In this session, ICB General Manager, Rob Marshall and ICB Support & Resources Manager, Grace Occleshaw (along with some special guest Bookkeepers from around Australia), will examine what are the tools, the ideas, the innovative ways as well as the guardrails and areas of AI to be cautionary with as we all look at the road ahead for the future of our profession.

No matter where your journey is at with AI - perhaps still at ground zero, or just starting to dip your toe or possibly really gaining traction with AI, this session will fill in missing gaps and areas you may be second guessing yourself with as well as allowing for you to take the "next small steps" when it comes to AI playing its part in your evolution as a Bookkeeper here in Australia.

Presenter: Martine Hoosen, Founder, The Bookkeeping Academy
This is a hands-on workshop. Please bring a laptop or tablet. You will be accessing two online tools during the session, the Pricing Strategy & Policy Builder, and the Profit Goals Calculator. Both tools remain available after Summit so you can finish anything off.
Hourly billing caps what you can earn. When your fee is tied to time, the only way you can grow is to work more and take on more clients.
Pricing based on value breaks that link and allows you to price your services based on the outcomes you deliver, and what it's worth to your clients. This means you can work smarter, not harder, and scale your business by building efficiencies.
This workshop covers scoping, positioning and communicating value so your fee makes sense to the client, the difference tiered fee options make, and how to move clients onto a fixed fee model.
You'll be accessing the Pricing Strategy & Policy Builder to get your own pricing strategy underway and start writing the policies that back it up, with a fully downloadable report to take with you and add into your QMS.
We will also be talking about your profit goals. You'll have access to the Profit Goals Calculator to reverse engineer your numbers, determine your break-even, your minimum viable fee and your average revenue per client, and calculate how many more clients you need to reach your profit goal.

Presenters: Stephen Dixon, Partner, HM Advisory (Registered Liquidator and Bankruptcy Trustee) & Emma Grant, Chief Operating Officer, HM Advisory.

Bookkeepers are often the first to see a client's financial position change, frequently months before the client, their accountant, or the ATO does. This session gives attendees a practical framework for recognising the early indicators of financial distress and insolvency risk in a client's business, and a clear, no-nonsense workflow for what to do next. What to raise with the client, when and how to escalate, and how to work constructively alongside an insolvency practitioner rather than fear the referral.

We will use real case studies, including trading businesses that expanded beyond their means, and situations involving unpaid superannuation and ATO debt, to show how early identification changed the outcome for the business and its owners.

Key learning outcomes

By the end of this session, attendees will be able to:

• Identify the key financial and behavioural red flags of insolvency risk in day-to-day bookkeeping work (cash flow patterns, payment behaviour, ATO/super arrears, director conduct).
• Apply a simple decision framework for when and how to raise concerns with a client.
• Understand the practical options available to a distressed business (informal restructuring, small business restructuring, voluntary administration, liquidation) in plain English, so they can better support client conversations.
• Know how and when to bring in a qualified adviser, and what information to prepare beforehand to make that engagement effective.

Presenter: Will Gilbert, Head of Channel & Strategic Partnerships, APAC

AI agents are moving into inventory, purchasing, and supplier management - making autonomous decisions rather than just producing reports. For bookkeepers advising product-based clients, this isn't a new tool to learn. It's a new advisory service: helping clients define the rules that govern what an AI agent is allowed to decide on its own.

This session skips the hype and gets practical. We'll look at where agentic AI already sits inside everyday inventory and purchasing workflows, then focus on the specific questions bookkeepers can bring into their next client conversation to start defining those rules - covering reorder thresholds, approval limits, and supplier-switching conditions.

Key Learning Outcomes

By the end of this session, attendees will be able to:

• Explain the shift from reporting to acting - describe in plain terms, to a client, what changes when software moves from producing insights to making autonomous decisions.
• Identify where their own role changes - recognise which parts of their current inventory/reconciliation work are being replaced by automation, and which advisory tasks are emerging in their place.
• Recognise guardrail decisions in practice - through worked examples such as reorder thresholds, approval limits, and supplier-switch conditions, understand what a well-specified AI decision-making rule looks like versus one that's too vague to action.
• Open the conversation with clients - leave with a short set of questions they can use in their next client meeting to start the guardrail-setting discussion.

Presenters: Dale Dixon, General Manager – Practice & Advocacy, MYOB & Sonya Prosper, Partner Engagement Manager, MYOB

BAS does not have to be the high-stress, high-friction service it has become in many practices. This session explores how better client setup, cleaner workflows and AI assistance can reduce rework, cut write-offs, improve review quality and help bookkeepers process more BAS without adding headcount.

You will see why the biggest gains come from fixing the work upstream, not just working harder at quarter-end, and how AI can act like a trusted co-pilot by surfacing issues early while keeping you firmly in control of review and sign-off.

If you want to turn BAS into a more scalable, profitable and client-friendly service, this session will give you a practical view of what that looks like and why now is the time to get started.

Presenter: Siobhan O'Sullivan, Project Lead FSO National Skills AI Skills Accelator

Hands on AI Roundtable for SME Business Owners 

Want to start using AI in your business but not sure where to begin? This small-group, hands-on session, run in partnership with the Future Skills Organisation (FSO), gives you a clear, practical starting point. 

Using the SME AI Coach, a free, government-backed tool, you'll assess your AI readiness, get tailored coaching, identify two or three safe use cases to trial straight away, and draft an AI policy for your business. You'll leave with a personalised summary and clear next steps.

Presenter: Matthew Addison, Executive Director, ICB

More details coming soon

Presenter: Grace Occleshaw, Support & Resources Manager, ICB

The advice you give others. The conversation you owe yourself.

We give clear advice for a living, and we are far less willing to take it ourselves. This session is about the voice we are least convinced by: Ours. You will use that voice twice on a screen and once on paper, and leave with one conversation named and a date beside it.

Presenter: Sharon Francisco, Director

Technology, AI and automation continue to transform the bookkeeping profession, creating fantastic opportunities for bookkeepers who are willing to evolve the way they run their practices.

Most bookkeepers already know many of the practical changes they need to make. They know they need stronger systems, better processes, the right app stack, greater delegation, a capable team (if growing a team is in their plans) and more time to lead the business. Yet knowing what to do does not always mean it gets done.

In this session, I will introduce The Bridge from Knowing to Doing, a framework that explores why strategy alone is often not enough and how both strategy and identity influence whether lasting change occurs.

We will look at the practical changes required to build a more profitable, efficient and sustainable practice, while also exploring the less visible factors that influence implementation, including our values, beliefs, attitudes, skills and environment.

Attendees will leave with practical ideas they can begin applying in their own practice, together with greater clarity about what may be preventing them from taking the actions they already know will make a difference.

Key Learning Outcomes

Attendees will:

• Understand why knowing what to do does not always result in action.
• Explore the two bridges required to create lasting change: Strategy and Identity.
• Identify the practical areas in their practice that may need attention, including systems, technology, delegation, team and leadership.
• Recognise how values, beliefs, attitudes, skills and environment can support or sabotage implementation.
• Leave with clarity on the next most important change to implement in their practice and what may have been preventing them from taking action.

Presenter: Elizabeth Picker, Assistant Director, OPF Consulting.

Beyond the Spreadsheet: Using Canva to Make Your Bookkeeping Practice Look as Good as Your Work - BYOD Session 1

You don't need a design background or a marketing budget to make your practice look professional. In this hands-on session, we'll walk through Canva step by step, using examples built for bookkeepers.

You'll learn how to set up a brand kit so everything you create looks consistent, then build client-ready materials in minutes: onboarding packs, service menus, quotes and proposals, and simple visual reports that make financial data easier for clients to understand. We'll also cover social media posts, email graphics and lead magnets that help you attract and keep clients, and how Canva's AI tools can speed up the process.

No prior Canva experience is needed. Bring a laptop or tablet if you'd like to follow along.

Attendees will learn how to:

• Set up a brand kit (logo, colours and fonts) and apply it across everything they create
• Customise and reuse templates to save time on recurring client documents
• Turn numbers into clear charts and visuals that clients actually read
• Create a month's worth of social content in under an hour
• Use Canva's AI features to speed up drafting and design

Presenters: Rob Marshall, ICB GM Community Engagement; Matthew Addison, ICB Executive Director & Amanda Linton, ICB CEO

ICB celebrates its 20th year in 2026 and for this session, we want to take a trip down memory lane as ICB's Heart of the Bookkeeper Host - Rob Marshall, chats with ICB Australia Founder, Matthew Addison, about all the moments, the challenges, the behind the scenes and key changes that affected Bookkeepers and Bookkeeping here in Australia ... that played their part in shaping ICB to what it is today. We will also consider in this session, what the next 20 years may look like and how Bookkeepers and Bookkeeping will continue to evolve.

Presenter: Pauline Walton, Senior Support Supervisor, ICB

More details coming soon

Presenter: Mike Sommerton, Head of Industrial Relations, COSBOA
The Government’s Workplace agenda, employee v contractor and more…
Workplace relations never stands still, and the year ahead is shaping up to be a big one. COSBOA's Head of Industrial Relations, Mike Sommerton, unpacks the Government's IR agenda and what it means in practice for bookkeepers and their small business clients - the proposed non-compete legislation, the new Fair Work Court, changes underway at the Fair Work Commission, the review of the National Employment Standards, and the right to work from home. Mike will also tackle the perennial employee-versus-contractor question, and give a live demonstration of Small Business Peak Ai Chat Bot (smallbusinesspeak.org.au) - so ICB members can get answers to their own workplace questions on demand.

Presenters: Mel Novak, Small Business Engagement Senior Adviser, Beyond Blue, Matt Hill, CEO of ABRT & Corrie van der Keyl, Cognitive Behavioural Therapist.

A conversation with a small business owner and a Beyond Blue mental health coach

Small business owners are operating in an increasingly challenging environment, often navigating economic uncertainty, workforce pressures, rising costs, and the day-to-day demands of running a business. Over time, these challenges can contribute to increased stress, worry, overwhelm, and fatigue, making it more important than ever to prioritise mental health and wellbeing.

Join this Beyond Blue moderated session for an insightful and practical conversation with a small business owner and a Beyond Blue NewAccess for Small Business Owners (NASBO) mental health coach. Together, they will share firsthand perspectives on the realities of small business ownership, the impact that ongoing pressures can have on mental health, and the importance of seeking support early.

This discussion will provide valuable insights from both someone who has experienced these challenges and someone who has supported small business owners to regain confidence, reduce stress, and better manage life's pressures. Attendees will also learn about Beyond Blue's free and confidential NewAccess for Small Business Owners program, including how to access support for themselves, a client, colleague, friend, or family member.

The session will conclude with an interactive Q&A, providing audience members with the opportunity to ask questions and explore practical strategies for maintaining wellbeing, supporting others, and navigating difficult times.

Key Learning Outcomes

• Understanding the unique pressures and stressors faced by small business owners
• Recognising common signs that mental health may be deteriorating
• Practical self-care and wellbeing strategies for managing stress and uncertainty
• Real-life insights from a small business owner who sought support
• How and where small business owners can access help
• Five practical tips to support positive mental health and wellbeing
• An introduction to Beyond Blue's NewAccess for Small Business Owners (NASBO) program
• How to refer a client, colleague, friend, or loved one to appropriate support services

What You'll Take Away

By attending this session, you will gain a deeper understanding of the mental health challenges affecting small business owners, practical tools to support wellbeing, and knowledge of the free support services available through Beyond Blue to help individuals thrive both personally and professionally.

Presenters: Matthew Addison, Executive Director, ICB & Peter de Cure AM, Chair of the Tax Practitioners Board, Chair of the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

In Conversation with the Chair of the TPB

The Tax Practitioners Board is set to have a much wider range of responses available to it when a registered agent breaches the Code — infringement notices, enforceable undertakings, and two new suspension powers — alongside the return of criminal offences for people preparing BAS without registration. The Bill is before Parliament at the time of writing.

Peter de Cure AM, Chair of the Tax Practitioners Board, joins Matthew Addison to talk about how the Board intends to use them.

This session is not an explanation of the law. Your Summit manual covers that in full, and Matthew works through it earlier in the program. This is the conversation that sits on top of it: where the Board sees the real risk, how it will choose between the responses now open to it, what it expects of a practice of one or two people, and what it can now do about operators working without registration.

For most bookkeepers the practical question has never been what the rules say. It has been how the regulator will apply them. This is the session where that gets asked directly.

Presenter: Evan Lucas
Synopsis coming soon

The pace of change at Reckon has never been greater.

Presenter: Michelle Bridgford

Join us as we explore the innovations, enhancements, and strategic investments that are shaping the future of the Reckon ecosystem. Driven by customer feedback, industry trends, and emerging technologies, we're transforming the way businesses and advisors manage accounting, payroll, compliance, and growth.

From significant product enhancements to exciting innovations on the horizon, this session will provide an exclusive look at what's driving Reckon's evolution. Gain insight into our product direction, the role of AI in our future, and how we're investing in solutions that help customers work smarter and achieve more.

Learn what's new, what's next, and how Reckon is unlocking the future of business technology.

Presenter: Anthony Cipolla
Synopsis coming soon

Presenter: Matthew Addison, Executive Director, ICB
Synopsis coming soon

Don’t Just Add AI – reimagine the profession

Presenters: Dale Dixon, General Manager – Practice & Advocacy, MYOB & Leanne Berry, Partner Engagement Manager, MYOB

What happens when AI can handle almost every rules-based task in a bookkeeping practice?

In this thought-provoking session, Dale Dixon and Leanne Berry invite you to step into 2035 and imagine the bookkeeping profession from a blank sheet of paper. Together, they’ll challenge the assumption that the future is simply about moving from compliance into advisory and explore what clients may truly value when machines can process, analyse and recommend at speed.

Through practical provocations and audience participation, discover the capabilities that will matter most: professional judgement, commercial context, AI supervision, critical thinking, trust and accountability. You’ll leave with a sharper question to take back to your practice: are you building a business around the work AI can do, or the value only you can bring?

Presenter: Cassandra Scott, Industry Specialist, XBert
Your practice is already using AI. The question is what you're pointing it at.
Connect Claude or ChatGPT straight to a client ledger and you'll get fast, fluent, confident answers built on unchecked data — duplicate bills, miscoded transactions, contacts entered three different ways. The AI won't tell you that. It will just answer.
This session shows what changes when your own AI sits on top of a trusted data layer instead: books already checked by 150+ continuous data quality checks, alerts already triaged, tasks already in your workflow, capacity and time data already live. Then you can ask real questions — Who's over capacity next week? Which clients are more complex than we're billing for? Which files are actually BAS ready, and what's still outstanding? — and act on the answer.
Same assistant. Same plain-English question. A very different answer.

Presenter: Gareth Salomon, Founder, Xenon Connect
In this practical session, discover how bookkeeping health checks can help you deliver a more valuable, efficient and profitable bookkeeping service.
Using Xenon Connect, we’ll explore what a bookkeeping health check report is and how it can be used throughout the client journey, from building trust and winning new clients, to accurately pricing fees based on the true condition of their bookkeeping.
You’ll also learn how health checks can act as an “extra set of eyes”, helping you review bookkeeping faster, identify issues and maintain quality across your client base. Finally, we’ll look at how the insights from a health check can provide clear evidence to support and communicate client fee increases, helping you get paid fairly for the work you’re actually doing.

Presenter: Mike Sommerton, Head of Industrial Relations, COSBOA
The Government’s Workplace agenda, employee v contractor and more…
Workplace relations never stands still, and the year ahead is shaping up to be a big one. COSBOA's Head of Industrial Relations, Mike Sommerton, unpacks the Government's IR agenda and what it means in practice for bookkeepers and their small business clients - the proposed non-compete legislation, the new Fair Work Court, changes underway at the Fair Work Commission, the review of the National Employment Standards, and the right to work from home. Mike will also tackle the perennial employee-versus-contractor question, and give a live demonstration of Small Business Peak Ai Chat Bot (smallbusinesspeak.org.au) - so ICB members can get answers to their own workplace questions on demand.

Presenter: Angad Soin, Managing Director, Australia and New Zealand, and Global Chief Strategy Officer, Xero

Synopsis coming soon

Presenters: Rob Marshall, ICB GM Community Engagement & Grace Occleshaw, ICB Support & Resources Manager.

Panelists: Natasha Simpson-Ly, Founder of Tashly Consulting; Roslyn Van Welie, Founder of Curly Girl Numbers & Katy Johnson, Founder of AFI Balance.

The time for Bookkeepers who constantly hear the pounding message - "what is AI" ... is now over and the next phase ... AI Productivity for Bookkeepers is where the ICB believes Bookkeepers need to be. In this session, ICB General Manager, Rob Marshall and ICB Support & Resources Manager, Grace Occleshaw (along with some special guest Bookkeepers from around Australia), will examine what are the tools, the ideas, the innovative ways as well as the guardrails and areas of AI to be cautionary with as we all look at the road ahead for the future of our profession.

No matter where your journey is at with AI - perhaps still at ground zero, or just starting to dip your toe or possibly really gaining traction with AI, this session will fill in missing gaps and areas you may be second guessing yourself with as well as allowing for you to take the "next small steps" when it comes to AI playing its part in your evolution as a Bookkeeper here in Australia.

Presenter: James Gillard, Founder, Insurance Made Easy
Synopsis coming soon

Presenter: Matthew Addison, Executive Director, ICB
Synopsis coming soon

Presenter: Elizabeth Picker, Assistant Director, OPF Consulting.

Beyond the Spreadsheet: Using Canva to Make Your Bookkeeping Practice Look as Good as Your Work - BYOD Session 1

You don't need a design background or a marketing budget to make your practice look professional. In this hands-on session, we'll walk through Canva step by step, using examples built for bookkeepers.

You'll learn how to set up a brand kit so everything you create looks consistent, then build client-ready materials in minutes: onboarding packs, service menus, quotes and proposals, and simple visual reports that make financial data easier for clients to understand. We'll also cover social media posts, email graphics and lead magnets that help you attract and keep clients, and how Canva's AI tools can speed up the process.

No prior Canva experience is needed. Bring a laptop or tablet if you'd like to follow along.

Attendees will learn how to:

• Set up a brand kit (logo, colours and fonts) and apply it across everything they create
• Customise and reuse templates to save time on recurring client documents
• Turn numbers into clear charts and visuals that clients actually read
• Create a month's worth of social content in under an hour
• Use Canva's AI features to speed up drafting and design

Presenters: Dale Dixon, General Manager – Practice & Advocacy, MYOB & Sonya Prosper, Partner Engagement Manager, MYOB
BAS does not have to be the high-stress, high-friction service it has become in many practices. This session explores how better client setup, cleaner workflows and AI assistance can reduce rework, cut write-offs, improve review quality and help bookkeepers process more BAS without adding headcount.
You will see why the biggest gains come from fixing the work upstream, not just working harder at quarter-end, and how AI can act like a trusted co-pilot by surfacing issues early while keeping you firmly in control of review and sign-off.
If you want to turn BAS into a more scalable, profitable and client-friendly service, this session will give you a practical view of what that looks like and why now is the time to get started.

Presenter: Sharon Francisco, Director
Technology, AI and automation continue to transform the bookkeeping profession, creating fantastic opportunities for bookkeepers who are willing to evolve the way they run their practices.
Most bookkeepers already know many of the practical changes they need to make. They know they need stronger systems, better processes, the right app stack, greater delegation, a capable team (if growing a team is in their plans) and more time to lead the business. Yet knowing what to do does not always mean it gets done.
In this session, I will introduce The Bridge from Knowing to Doing, a framework that explores why strategy alone is often not enough and how both strategy and identity influence whether lasting change occurs.
We will look at the practical changes required to build a more profitable, efficient and sustainable practice, while also exploring the less visible factors that influence implementation, including our values, beliefs, attitudes, skills and environment.
Attendees will leave with practical ideas they can begin applying in their own practice, together with greater clarity about what may be preventing them from taking the actions they already know will make a difference.

Key Learning Outcomes
Attendees will:

- Understand why knowing what to do does not always result in action.

- Explore the two bridges required to create lasting change: Strategy and Identity.

- Identify the practical areas in their practice that may need attention, including systems, technology, delegation, team and leadership.

- Recognise how values, beliefs, attitudes, skills and environment can support or sabotage implementation.

- Leave with clarity on the next most important change to implement in their practice and what may have been preventing them from taking action.

Presenter: Grace Occleshaw, Support & Resources Manager, ICB

The advice you give others. The conversation you owe yourself.

We give clear advice for a living, and we are far less willing to take it ourselves. This session is about the voice we are least convinced by: Ours. You will use that voice twice on a screen and once on paper, and leave with one conversation named and a date beside it.

Presenter: Melanie Shortland-Power Head of Partner Channel, Australia — PaySauce
Payday Super is live. Your clients need to be compliant, and they need it sorted without adding another job to your week.
This session shows you exactly how. We'll walk through the one-button payday: one click takes payment from the bank account, distributes super, files STP, and finalises payroll. Award interpretation is built in, and you'll see the Award rate sitting right next to what was actually paid, every payday. No spreadsheets. No manual lookups. No waiting for quarter-end to find an error.
Then we get practical. You'll see how PaySauce plugs straight into the workflow you already use, and you'll learn the two ways to work with us — refer clients and we handle the rest (at no cost to you or your clients), or get hands-on with implementation and support - we will work with you and your clients every step of the way. Either way, it's a new revenue channel sitting on top of the work you already do either directly or indirectly through efficiencies.
We close the session with a live certification: a short quiz and a hands-on walkthrough, done on the spot. Walk out the door as a certified PaySauce Partner, with a free partner account and a listing on the PaySauce partner directory, ready to start recommending and setting up PaySauce for clients immediately.

Key Takeaways
How Payday Super compliance works and how to keep clients on the right side of it without extra admin

How the one-click payday run works, start to finish

The two PaySauce partner pathways, and which one fits your practice

Certification as a PaySauce Partner, completed live in the room

Why This Session Matters for ICB Members
Bookkeepers are being asked to do more for clients on compliance, with less time to do it. This session gives ICB members a concrete, fast way to add payroll value for small business clients — and a new revenue stream — without a lengthy training commitment. Certification happens in the room, on the day. It’s hands on. Live in product training.

Presenters: Rutland Smith, Co-Founder, Harvey Norman Technology for Business

Technology has never been easier to buy — or harder to manage.

Businesses can end up with:

37 SaaS applications + 8 passwords + 4 copies of customer data + 3 AI platforms + no idea who has access to what.

Technology has never been easier to buy — or harder to manage. Small businesses now have access to AI, automation, cloud platforms and enterprise-grade cybersecurity once reserved for large organisations. But adding more technology doesn’t always make a business better. It can create complexity, duplicated data, security gaps and disconnected systems. In this practical, thought-provoking session, we’ll explore the Great Technology Paradox: why digital transformation is not about buying more software, how AI is accelerating both opportunity and risk, and why the businesses that thrive will be those that make technology simpler, more connected, more secure and deliberately designed.

Presenters: Amanda Linton, Chief Executive Officer, ICB
Synopsis coming soon

Presenter: Siobhan O'Sullivan, Project Lead FSO National Skills AI Skills Accelator

Hands on AI Roundtable for SME Business Owners 

Want to start using AI in your business but not sure where to begin? This small-group, hands-on session, run in partnership with the Future Skills Organisation (FSO), gives you a clear, practical starting point. 

Using the SME AI Coach, a free, government-backed tool, you'll assess your AI readiness, get tailored coaching, identify two or three safe use cases to trial straight away, and draft an AI policy for your business. You'll leave with a personalised summary and clear next steps.

Presenter: Martine Hoosen, Founder, The Bookkeeping Academy
This is a hands-on workshop. Please bring a laptop or tablet. You will be accessing two online tools during the session, the Pricing Strategy & Policy Builder, and the Profit Goals Calculator. Both tools remain available after Summit so you can finish anything off.
Hourly billing caps what you can earn. When your fee is tied to time, the only way you can grow is to work more and take on more clients.
Pricing based on value breaks that link and allows you to price your services based on the outcomes you deliver, and what it's worth to your clients. This means you can work smarter, not harder, and scale your business by building efficiencies.
This workshop covers scoping, positioning and communicating value so your fee makes sense to the client, the difference tiered fee options make, and how to move clients onto a fixed fee model.
You'll be accessing the Pricing Strategy & Policy Builder to get your own pricing strategy underway and start writing the policies that back it up, with a fully downloadable report to take with you and add into your QMS.
We will also be talking about your profit goals. You'll have access to the Profit Goals Calculator to reverse engineer your numbers, determine your break-even, your minimum viable fee and your average revenue per client, and calculate how many more clients you need to reach your profit goal.

Presenters: Amanda Linton & Colin Walker