AI Notetaker for Accountants

Granola is the best all-rounder for UK accountants in our view. It does not join your call as a bot — it listens through your microphone and stays invisible to other attendees. That single design choice solves the confidentiality concern most practices have. The summary engine is genuinely strong, and custom templates let you tune output for MTD calls, year-end reviews, or onboarding meetings. Downsides: macOS only at the moment (Windows is in beta), and direct integrations into UK practice management tools are missing — you push notes via Notion or Zapier instead.

Fireflies is the volume option. It joins as a bot, transcribes everything, and has the strongest API surface of any notetaker in this list — meaning you can push action items directly into Karbon tasks, Senta workflows, or a Google Sheet via Zapier. If your practice is doing 20+ client calls a week and you want notes flowing automatically into client records, Fireflies earns its keep. The watch-out is the bot itself: some clients dislike seeing 'Fred (Fireflies AI)' in the attendee list, and you cannot turn that off.

Fathom has the most generous free tier in the category — unlimited recording and summaries on the free plan, which is unusual. The summaries are surprisingly good for client recap purposes and the Zoom integration is clean. The catch: customisation is limited on the free tier, and the action item extraction lags behind Granola and Fireflies. For a sole practitioner or small practice testing the waters, Fathom is the lowest-friction starting point. For a 5-partner firm running 50 calls a week, you will outgrow it.

Otter has the longest history in this category and remains the best at raw transcription accuracy, including British accents and accounting terminology. Where it falls down for accountants: the summary layer is basic, custom templates are not supported, and the action item extraction is generic. If you mostly want a searchable transcript archive of every client call — a 'compliance log' more than an action plan — Otter is solid. If you want output that looks like a partner-ready summary, look elsewhere.

Tactiq runs as a Chrome extension and never joins your meeting as a bot — same confidentiality posture as Granola but cross-platform (Mac, Windows, anywhere Chrome runs). The summaries are decent, the custom prompts on the Pro tier let you tune for accounting calls, and it is one of the cheapest no-bot options. Limitations: it only captures what runs in your Chrome tab, so desktop Zoom or Teams apps will not work. Practices that exclusively use the browser-based meeting clients will be fine; those mixing native apps will hit gaps.

If your practice already runs on Microsoft 365 and meets in Teams, Copilot is the path of least resistance. Recap, action items, and follow-up emails are baked into Teams without installing anything. Output flows into Outlook, OneDrive, and Planner natively — which matters more than it sounds, because you are not adding another login or invoice. The catch: it only works in Teams meetings, and the per-seat add-on cost is the highest in this list. For Teams-heavy practices, the answer is usually Copilot. For mixed-platform practices, it does not cover enough.