This article is sponsored by Intuit. Product choices and opinions expressed are from the sponsor and do not reflect the views of MakeUseOf editorial staff.
The word “spreadsheet” is enough to send shivers up someone’s spine. Say it around a small-business owner and they’ll be conjuring up visions of tax write-off confusion, cash-flow woes, delayed invoices, and endless financial busy work that takes them away from their actual business. This is where Intuit QuickBooks shines.
The cloud-based financial management software has been a longtime staple in the small- and mid-sized business world, helping everyone from freelancers and bookkeepers to accountants and business owners. QuickBooks has always made financial management easier—invoicing, payroll, tax prep, expense tracking, and more—and now it’s evolving to meet the latest and greatest tech capabilities that AI has to offer.
Intuit QuickBooks’ new AI agents are like a virtual workforce—a team just for you—that’s always at the ready and working behind the scenes to streamline your business and make your life easier. This game-changing, foundational update to the already intuitive and powerful software will help users cut down on busywork and make smarter decisions while allowing their businesses to thrive.
“Intuit’s AI-driven expert platform is transforming how businesses run and grow with first-of-its-kind agentic AI experiences,” says Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi. “When our vast amounts of data and AI capabilities are combined with the power of trusted human experts, Intuit’s uniquely designed, integrated platform unlocks next-level efficiencies, profitability, and growth for businesses.”
Inside the New Intuit AI Agent Experience
Intuit QuickBooks
Intuit QuickBooks is a leading accounting software solution designed to help small businesses and self-employed professionals manage their finances with ease. From tracking income and expenses to generating invoices, running payroll, and preparing taxes, QuickBooks streamlines day-to-day financial tasks. With powerful reporting tools and cloud-based access, it offers real-time insights into your business’s financial health—whether you’re at your desk or on the go.
The new AI agents debuted in the US on July 1, and so far, 78% of customers say that Intuit’s AI has made it easier for them to run their business. The introduction of Inuit’s AI agents isn’t just an update; it’s a holistic platform improvement that offers a completely new level of support.
The new QuickBooks experience begins with a fully redesigned and personalized homepage layout, featuring customizable widgets and a business feed showing real-time insights, recommendations, and a summary of the tasks completed by your AI agents. The mobile app has also been redesigned with a modern interface so that you can capitalize on the AI agents and access your business insights wherever you are.
The agents, together with trusted human experts, create a powerful virtual team that proactively manages tasks across accounting, payments, financial planning, and customer relationship management.
Formerly time-consuming tasks such as categorizing transactions, tracking invoices, and forecasting cash flow can now be delegated to the AI agents while you maintain full control over your data and all decision-making. The AI agents can make recommendations and execute on your behalf, but you’re still in the driver’s seat when it comes to pulling the trigger on business decisions.
Meet the Intuit AI Agent Team
It’s time to meet the new support team! These are the various specialized AI agents that will help you and your business every step of the way.
Payments Agent
The Payments Agent is there to keep your payments and invoices on track, ensuring that your business gets paid on time while helping to optimize and grow your cash flow. Inuit’s Beta testing found that when compared to businesses sending standard invoice reminders to the same customers, the businesses using the Payments Agent were paid an average of five days faster.
The Payments Agent can deliver tailored acceleration strategies that predict late payments, it can automate invoice tracking, plus it creates and sends invoices and reminders—just more busy work that’s taken off your plate.
Accounting Agent
If you struggle when you’re in the weeds with transaction categorization, bookkeeping, and reconciliation, the Accounting Agent will be your new best friend. The Accounting Agent’s specialty is improving accuracy and reducing human error, so you end up with cleaner, more accurate books.
While you focus on more important aspects of your business, the Accounting Agent can automate bookkeeping and transaction categorization, and assist in reconciliation.
Finance Agent
The Finance Agent is there to help your company achieve its financial goals. It can help you and your team with financial forecasting, making recommendations that will allow you to make smarter business decisions for the growth of your company.
It goes beyond basic reporting by delivering advanced tools for performance tracking, KPI analysis, peer benchmarking, and scenario planning, offering a comprehensive solution for managing the financial health of growing, mid-market businesses.
Customer Agent
Within the QuickBooks Customer Hub, the Customer Agent is ready to help you manage leads and track customer opportunities and interactions in the sales cycle. This powerful AI agent can automate and streamline the sales and customer relationship management process, including sourcing leads, drafting email responses, suggesting and scheduling meetings, and more.
This agent can transform how you track interactions in your sales pipelines while capitalizing on more opportunities.
Future Intuit AI Agents
Later this year, also within the QuickBooks Customer Hub, the Marketing Agent will be making its debut. This agent will focus on automating audience management and help drive customer acquisition and retention. The Marketing Agent will also assist with campaign execution by integrating with Mailchimp to deliver powerful marketing content.
Also coming later this year are two new agents that will be ideal for larger and growing businesses. The Payroll Agent and Project Management Agent will help tackle more complex tasks and boost productivity even further by collecting employee time and attendance data, running payroll at your command, plus managing project quotes, milestones, and budgets.
The Bigger Picture and Future of Intuit’s AI Agents
Intuit’s new AI agents represent a monumental shift for QuickBooks, going from a tool and software to a proactive, powerful business partner. They will work in tandem with AI-enabled human experts in QuickBooks Live to deliver a collaborative approach to running your business and providing expert advice.
Accountants and business owners are now empowered with more insight, and even more importantly, more time to focus on strategy rather than spreadsheets.
The feedback is already rolling in, and business owners are thrilled with the new features that will help take their businesses to the next level. “I need more time to be able to invest back into my business,” says business owner Kurtis Graham, founder of COSIGN Enterprises, LLC. “Intuit’s AI can help me save several hours a month and drive revenue for my business. That’s a win-win for my business.”
The future of QuickBooks holds even more: additional agents, more connectivity within the Intuit ecosystem of products and services, and integration with third-party apps. A new standard has been set for the power and capabilities of financial management. By combining automation, expert guidance, and smart forecasting, QuickBooks is helping entrepreneurs and finance teams focus less on admin and more on growth. The software tool is now your trusted teammate.
