We have demonstrated that tert-butyl acetate is a very effective solvent for B(OCH2CF3)3-catalysed direct amidation reactions. These conditions were found to be particularly effective for challenging pharmaceutically relevant substrates including carboxylic acids containing polar heterocycles, as well as electron-deficient anilines and aminoheterocycles. The reactions can be run at 1 M concentration, and the amides can typically be purified using a simple resin-based filtration process which has low solvent requirements. A 100 mmol synthesis of an amide yielded >20 g of product with process mass intensity of 8. tert-Butyl acetate is a readily available low-cost solvent, produced industrially from acetic acid and isobutylene, which has a good safety profile 8 making it potentially suitable for widespread use in catalytic direct amidation reactions.