“Coco does the first pass which allows me to spend more of my time on the complex parts of tax and the judgement calls.”
The two parts of tax work
Tax work has a pattern to it. There's the technical bit - the research, the legislation, the computation - and then there's the judgement: knowing what applies, what to flag, what the client should actually do.
Most of the time, in practice, goes on the first part, which leaves less room for the second.
Blu Sky Chartered Accountants use Coco, an AI coworker built by Combinely, to assist across their tax workflows: from returns and R&D claims through to SEIS applications and client advisory.
How the tax team uses Coco
Bob Appleby is the firm's Tax Manager. He uses Coco to speed up the process of reviewing tax returns, checking computations, and to do first-pass research on things like treaty analysis and relief claims.
On the R&D side, their specialist Davide Di Maio uses it for similar processes: reconciling eligible costs against the accounts and reviewing the tax computation.
In both cases, Coco helps to pull the groundwork together faster, allowing the adviser to focus on the judgement calls.
Enabling junior team members
Henry Cotson is a tax accountant at the firm. Coco supports day-to-day junior work: P&L and EBITDA calculations, (S)EIS applications and tax research.
But with Coco handling the groundwork on those, he has more time to tackle something you wouldn't usually expect at his level: proactively identifying tax planning opportunities across the client base.
“The models Coco produces are detailed enough that I'm tweaking assumptions, not building from scratch.”
AI across the whole tax function
What stands out about Blu Sky isn't any single use case. It's that AI runs through the whole tax function, acting as another member of the team and making time for the more complex, human work Blu Sky is known for.
Each person on the team uses it differently depending on what their role needs.
