What’s new in IRIS Elements: AI, accounts production, and the road ahead

IRIS Elements continues to become more powerful – with this quarter’s update delivering a leap in AI functionality and improvements to accounts production.

Let’s look in detail at the great things our engineers have delivered over the last couple of months. At the end, we’ll also have a quick FAQ – answering the biggest questions our community has.

The key takeaways: IRIS Elements update summary, July 2026

• IRIS Elements now includes two new AI tax features – improved anomaly detection and AI document import. Both are currently free and uncapped for IRIS Elements Tax users as of July 2026.
• We’ve added four new features for Professional Tier and Enterprise Tier customers using IRIS Elements Accounts Production: group accounts (Enterprise), multi-currency (Enterprise), lease schedules (Professional and Enterprise), and a QuickBooks API import for trial balances (Professional and Enterprise).
• The IRIS Elements roadmap has been set out to April 2027 – with bulk AI document import due October 2026, and Sage and IFM integrations due January 2027. Months later, in April, Company Secretarial Professional plus an AI virtual assistant are set to arrive.

IRIS Elements AI features: helping you go faster and stay accurate

AI is only good if it makes you more efficient, so our engineers have continued to build this newest tech directly into your tax workflow. The aim is to reduce as much time as possible spent on repetitive data entry and manual checking.

Two IRIS Elements AI features are live right now, and we’d urge you to make use of them during the feedback phase, during which they will be free for existing users and uncapped. So please, enjoy what’s been added, and let us know what you think – your feedback shapes what comes next.

IRIS Elements anomaly detection

Our AI anomaly detection functionality first arrived in November 2025 and has since been used by more than 8,000 practices, analysing over 60,000 returns. This version laid the groundwork for AI in IRIS Elements, comparing the previous year’s return against the current one to flag what’s gone up, down, missing, or has newly appeared.

However, our upgraded anomaly detection goes much further – it also draws on HMRC rules, HMRC help sheets, legislation, and IRIS’s own internal knowledge bases. Ultimately, it achieves three things:

• It cuts HMRC bounce backs – IRIS AI anomaly detection catches rejection risks. These include any missing capital gains schedules, absent PAYE references, and similar gaps.
• It stops problems sneaking up on you – IRIS AI anomaly detection flags the things HMRC might query later. An example of what it might flag includes dividends present last year but absent this year with no corresponding capital gains.
• It helps you make the most of a client’s financial position – IRIS AI anomaly detection highlights tax optimisation opportunities. Examples might be a client just over the £60,000 child benefit threshold who could make the most of Gift Aid, or property expenses that come in under the property income allowance.

Firms have told us the real value is being able to have the conversation with a client before a draft goes out, rather than discovering something’s been missed after a filing.

AI document import

We always try to stop accountants retyping information whenever possible, because that’s where time is lost and errors creep in; our AI document import function is another big step in that direction. It lets you drop client PDFs into the interface, including dividend vouchers, bank statements, employment documents, and more. From there, it extracts the information and gets it ready for you to check. After that, you update your client account with the click of a mouse.

Of course, with anything that helps you work faster, it’s important that we put in some safeguards to prevent slip-ups. Before importing, the AI uploader checks the documents against the client you have open; it stops you loading data for the wrong person or the wrong tax year. It also gives you a review step so you can amend anything that looks wrong, or prevent the data being added to the system altogether. For business bank statements, it goes further, categorising outgoings into the right tax return category. For employments and trades, it checks whether the document matches information already in your database.

IRIS Elements Accounts Production: four updates

Four major updates to IRIS Elements Accounts Production have arrived and, because the platform is cloud-native, they’re already in your system if they apply to your Tier.

IRIS Elements group accounts (IRIS Elements Enterprise)

Enterprise Tier users now have a new, clear workflow for creating groups – we have moved everything out of the accounts production area and instead provided a dedicated button in the client relationships tab.

The system now handles groups within groups (up to three levels deep) and multiple subsidiaries, with a condensed, single-screen workflow for adding undertakings, ownership percentages, effective and cessation dates, and business type. Any group that has a “parent” now sits with it in a single client record – the feedback we heard from you was that this is easier to maintain.

The system automatically prevents group accounts being submitted to Companies House before any subsidiary information is complete. Meanwhile, a new group trial balance report breaks figures down into unspecified, parent, and subsidiary columns.

All the major reports are covered:

• Consolidated P&L
• Consolidated and company balance sheets
• Consolidated statement of changes in equity
• Cash flow statements

Lease schedules (IRIS Elements Enterprise and Professional)

This gives you a comprehensive set of lease schedules with both overview and drill-down visibility. It separates source data (what you receive from the client) from adjustments (your modifications), so the audit trail is visible, includes the comparative figure for reference, and highlights by default where a variance exceeds 10%. Reports download to PDF or pull into Excel for further analysis.

Multi-currency accounts production (IRIS Elements Enterprise)

Enterprise Tier customers can now denote accounts in the currency of their choice: pounds, dollars, euros, Swiss francs, yen, or Emirati dirham.

QuickBooks API import for trial balances (IRIS Elements Enterprise and Professional)

A connection to QuickBooks is just the start; KashFlow integration for API imports is due very soon, which will let firms using this software draw trial balances straight into Elements for statutory accounts preparation.

Get involved

We’re actively looking for firms to talk to about our AI features – the good, the bad, and the “needs work” – to help shape where investment goes. If you’d like to be an IRIS AI champion, the contact point is irisinsights@iris.co.uk.

FAQ: The big questions firms are asking us about IRIS Elements

Does IRIS Elements use my client data to train AI, and where is it kept?

This is the question that comes up most around AI. Client data stays within the EU and doesn’t leave that jurisdiction. It isn’t used to train any model and doesn’t feed the wider AI landscape. The data is “transient”: it goes in, the analysis is done, and it’s deleted, so it exists only for a very short time. Your data is ring-fenced and protected; no AI tool elsewhere could learn from your clients’ data.

Do we need to do anything to switch new features on?

No. Because IRIS Elements is cloud-native, all customers get the appropriate functionality without having to do anything.

If a client submits MTD updates through other software, can we still get the data?

Yes. Wherever MTD submissions are made, HMRC makes that data available to IRIS. Open the client in Elements, go to the MTD tab, and you’ll see the status of obligations, regardless of who submitted them. Where an obligation has been fulfilled, clicking it retrieves the data from HMRC, and that data can then filter through onto the tax return for your end-of-year work in Elements.