Finance Intelligence

NDIS New Framework Planning Starts in 10 Months. Why Finance Teams Can't Afford to Wait. Monday, 25 May 2026  |  By Timothy, CPA — Managing Director, Professional Financelink (PFL) NDIS New Framework Planning Starts in 10 Months. Why Finance Teams Can't Afford to Wait. April 2027 sounds like a long way off. It isn't. The Australian Government has confirmed that New Framework Planning — the most significant structural overhaul of the NDIS since the scheme launched — will begin rolling out to adult participants on 1 April 2027. The transition will be staged, with all participants aged 16 and over gradually moving to new framework plans over time. That's ten months from now. And if you're a finance manager or CFO at an NDIS provider, ten months is barely enough time to understand the changes, let alone model their impact on your organisation. The budget reaction posts have been written. ...

Finance Reads of the Week: Aged Care Capacity Crisis, Nurses' Final Wage Increase, Budget SME Measures and 2026-27 Payroll Compliance — Week of 18 May 2026 24 May 2026  |  By Timothy, CPA — Managing Director, Professional Financelink (PFL) Finance Reads of the Week: Aged Care Capacity Crisis, Nurses' Final Wage Increase, Budget SME Measures and 2026-27 Payroll Compliance — Week of 18 May 2026 Four reads this week that cut across aged care, payroll, and SME finance — each with a direct operational implication for finance managers heading into FY2027. No fluff, just the pieces worth your Sunday reading time. This Week's Reads Aged Care No Vacancies: Australia's Aged Care Capacity Crisis — SBS News A well-reported piece contextualising the government's $3 billion aged care Budget announcement against the sector's actual capacity position. Residential aged care is running at approximately 94% national occ...

Weekly AI News Wrap-Up: Google I/O Drops Gemini Spark, Australia's Budget Bets on AI, Governance Platforms Rise and ERP Gets Smarter — Week of 18 May 2026 23 May 2026  |  By Timothy, CPA — Managing Director, Professional Financelink (PFL) Weekly AI News Wrap-Up: Google I/O Drops Gemini Spark, Australia's Budget Bets on AI, Governance Platforms Rise and ERP Gets Smarter — Week of 18 May 2026 A big week for AI news — Google held its annual I/O developer conference and made some significant moves, the Federal Budget confirmed Australia's AI investment direction, and two quieter but meaningful shifts continued in how AI is being embedded and governed inside finance and enterprise software. Here's what's worth knowing. This Week's Stories AI Models & Agents Google I/O: New Gemini Models and Gemini Spark — Google's Answer to the Agentic AI Race Google's annual developer conference on 19 May was ...

CFOs Are Done with AI Pilots: Why 2026 Is the Year Finance Leaders Demand Real ROI 22 May 2026  |  By Timothy, CPA — Managing Director, Professional Financelink (PFL) CFOs Are Done with AI Pilots: Why 2026 Is the Year Finance Leaders Demand Real ROI ⚠️ A note on AI tools and data privacy: If you're evaluating or running AI projects in your finance function, be careful about what organisational and financial data is being used as training input or shared with external platforms. Not all AI tools have the same data handling policies. Understand what you're agreeing to before going beyond a controlled pilot. Something has shifted in how senior finance leaders are talking about AI. Twelve months ago, the dominant conversation was about possibility — what could AI do, which tools were worth testing, how to get experiments underway without creating governance nightmares. That conversation has not disappeared, but it has been joined ...

AUSTRAC Just Warned That AI Is Accelerating Financial Crime: What Finance Managers Need to Do Right Now 21 May 2026  |  By Timothy, CPA — Managing Director, Professional Financelink (PFL) AUSTRAC Just Warned That AI Is Accelerating Financial Crime: What Finance Managers Need to Do Right Now On 12 May 2026, AUSTRAC — Australia's financial crime regulator — released a report that should have landed on every finance manager's desk. The headline finding was stark: artificial intelligence is actively being used by criminals to scale, accelerate, and better conceal money laundering, identity fraud, and proliferation financing in Australia. Most commentary on AI and finance focuses on the productivity upside — automation, efficiency, faster reporting. This report is a reminder that the same capabilities that make AI useful for legitimate finance functions also make it useful for the people trying to exploit those functions. For finance manag...

Aged Care's $3 Billion Budget Moment: Why Finance Leaders Can't Afford to Stand Still 20 May 2026  |  By Timothy, CPA — Managing Director, Professional Financelink (PFL) Aged Care's $3 Billion Budget Moment: Why Finance Leaders Can't Afford to Stand Still The 2026-27 Federal Budget delivered something the aged care sector has been lobbying for: a significant funding injection. Three billion dollars in new investment, including $1 billion directed to the Support at Home program, $200 million for specialist dementia care units, and a commitment to 5,000 additional residential beds per year. On paper, it looks like relief for a sector that has been running on empty. For aged care finance leaders, the picture is more complicated than the headline number suggests. Funding announcements don't automatically translate into operational capacity. And in a sector currently operating at around 94% national capacity — with some capital ...

Stop Waiting for Your OCR Vendor to Fix It: Why Finance Teams Are Building Their Own Document Capture Tools 19 May 2026  |  By Timothy, CPA — Managing Director, Professional Financelink (PFL) Stop Waiting for Your OCR Vendor to Fix It: Why Finance Teams Are Building Their Own Document Capture Tools Note: The scenarios in this post are based on real experiences — mine and those shared by colleagues across the finance sector. Details have been modified slightly to protect confidentiality, and I've used a first-person perspective throughout for readability. There is a particular kind of frustration that finance professionals know well. You've invested time and budget in a document automation system. The vendor promised clean OCR, accurate invoice capture, and a functional approval flow. Six months later, you're still logging error tickets. The customisation you were told would take "a couple of hours" became a formal ...