Accountex 2026: what we took away from the UK’s biggest accounting event

Every year, Accountex London brings the accounting profession together under one roof, and this year was no different. Our MD Jason and Senior Manager Dan made the trip to Excel this month with a clear focus: find efficiencies for our clients, keep up to date with the ever-changing world of AI, and deepen the connections we have with the software we use day-to-day.

What is Accountex?

If you’re not familiar with it, Accountex is the UK’s largest dedicated event for accountants, bookkeepers and finance professionals. This year, more than 300 software and service suppliers exhibited across the two days, with seminars running across 13 theatres covering everything from AI and automation to practice growth, cloud technology and the ever-evolving regulatory landscape.

New for 2026, Accountex was co-located with the FD Show – a dedicated event for finance directors and CFOs looking at strategic finance tools and senior-level decision-making. It’s a sign of where the profession and our business is moving. Accounting isn’t just about compliance anymore. It’s increasingly central to how businesses are run and how growth decisions get made.

Why we go

We don’t attend Accountex to tick a box. We go because staying close to the best tools available is part of how we serve our clients well.

Owner-managed businesses are under more pressure than ever to get timely, accurate financial information, and the software landscape is moving quickly.

Knowing which platforms are genuinely improving, which integrations are worth implementing, and which new features are relevant to the businesses we work with isn’t something you can pick up from a product update email. You need to be in the room, asking questions, seeing demos, and talking to the people building the tools.

Familiar faces, useful conversations

It was good to catch up with our friends at Xero – who kindly hosted a breakfast for partners – and to see the teams at FreeAgent and Bright Software too. These aren’t software providers to us. They’re platforms our clients use every day, and the relationships we maintain with the people behind them matter when it comes to getting the best out of the tools in practice.

FreeAgent and Xero in particular are core to how many of our clients manage their bookkeeping, VAT, and day-to-day financial admin, and we’re proud to be Gold partners with FreeAgent and Silver with Xero, but working towards Gold. 

The better we understand what’s coming next from these platforms, the better we can set clients up to benefit from it.

What it means for clients

The themes running through this year’s event – better visibility, faster reporting, smarter automation, finance as a growth lever – are things we’re already working on with clients across Suffolk. Accountex reinforces that direction, and usually sends us back with a few specific ideas worth exploring.

If you’ve been wondering whether your accounting software is working as hard as it could be for your business, that’s a conversation worth having.

Get in touch with the team at FWD Accounts to find out more.