QuickBooks unveils AI-driven innovations to level the playing field for small businesses

To succeed as a small business owner, you need the right tools to help you automate most of your day to day tasks so you can focus on core business. Unfortunately, most of these tools are only available to the big corporations. That’s about to change. Intuit, the company behind the popular accounting software Quickbooks, today announced new product innovations designed to leverage the latest in artificial intelligence (AI), bringing technology typically reserved for the world’s biggest companies directly to small businesses. The new product innovation will help level the playing field for small business and improve worldwide overall survival rates for small businesses.

Being part of QuickBooks now means being part of the growth of one of the most advanced AI-driven, expert small business financial platforms in the world, giving small businesses the advantage they need to succeed. QuickBooks now includes three innovation areas to accelerate the benefits for small businesses. The areas are: Smart Money, Smart Decisions, and Smart Connections.

Announced at Intuit’s sixth annual QuickBooks Connect conference, more than five thousand attendees were the first to see the advanced capabilities of QuickBooks’ AI-driven expert platform. New innovations help simplify and automate work, while eliminating drudgery and tedious tasks by identifying patterns in the billions of transactions that flow through the QuickBooks platform. QuickBooks takes the guesswork out of being a small business owner or self-employed by being the single source of truth for their business. QuickBooks Online now uses AI to automate certain repetitive back-office work, reduce friction in getting paid, and improve forecasts of cash flow. This makes small businesses smarter, more successful and free to focus on the important work of delighting customers.

“The reality of running a small business is hard, and often owners are left to figure out how to leverage and take advantage of AI by themselves. QuickBooks is changing this by leveling the playing field, giving small businesses access to data and insights they’ve never had before,” said Alex Chriss, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Small Business Self-Employed Group at Intuit. “By turning data into meaningful and useful insights, QuickBooks will be able to help small businesses make more data-driven decisions, spotting mistakes that would otherwise cost time and money.”

QuickBooks has delivered innovations in all areas of running a small business. At last year’s QuickBooks Connect, QuickBooks showcased its first look at smarter ways to add payment capabilities to invoices. As a result of those innovations, QuickBooks customers on average get paid within five days of sending an invoice, three times faster than those who don’t use QuickBooks payments.

In regards to payroll, employers using the QuickBooks flagship online payroll products can now hold onto their money until payday, instead of tying up funds several days in advance. This allows business owners to hold onto $22 billion in funds for days longer each year. Finally, with QuickBooks Capital, $1.7 billion in funding has been distributed to small businesses, including $1.3 billion in marketplace funds and $441 million in direct lending.