From QuickBooks Connect 2019: QuickBooks Brings AI-Driven Innovations to Small Businesses

Intuit Inc. 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. 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.

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.

This year, QuickBooks builds on this momentum with three key areas to accelerate the benefits for our customers: Smart Money, Smart Decisions, and Smart Connections.

Smart Money

Money is like oxygen to small business owners. They can’t survive without it. In fact, in 82 percent of small business failures, cash flow problems are a contributing factor. QuickBooks is unveiling new innovations to help small businesses get paid faster, get access to the capital they need and better understand their cash flow, allowing them to stay ahead of challenges.

  • Coming Soon: Cash Flow Planner – Small businesses need a full view of their cash flow in order to make the best decisions. Leveraging the power of AI, this tool will enable small businesses to predict their daily cash flow over the next 90 days. The planner proactively alerts business owners when a negative situation is on the horizon and provides recommendations around how to navigate the situation. QuickBooks leverages anonymized data across millions of customers with more than 26 billion touchpoints to generate predictive scenarios with accurate cash flow forecasts. In addition, the planner can be used for scenario planning to help users answer questions such as: “Is it safe to hire another employee now, given my forecasted cash flow in the coming few months?”
  • New: QuickBooks Payments - QuickBooks Payments currently enables next day payment and will soon enable instant deposit payments, giving small businesses access to funds after getting paid, whether through bank transfers or credit card, rather than waiting several business days. Businesses can create a payment-enabled invoice in less than one minute, with their hours, expenses and mileage added automatically through AI. They can also customize their invoice, take a deposit or structure installments and allow customers to pay in a variety of formats, enhancing their customer service while improving their cash flow. Additionally, QuickBooks now ensures that small businesses get paid wherever they are with the introduction of a new set of features in GoPayment. With GoPayment, business owners can set roles and permissions for staff that enable the ability to accept and get paid at a job site. As a result of these new capabilities, small businesses that use QuickBooks Payments get paid three times faster than those who do not.
  • Updated: QuickBooks Capital - Using machine learning to assess risk by leveraging 26 billion transactions and data points, QuickBooks provides loans to small businesses that otherwise might not qualify. Since launching, QuickBooks Capital has given small businesses credit for their business story beyond the credit score, and QuickBooks today announced the opening of the availability of loans to certain QuickBooks Desktop customers in addition to QuickBooks Online.

Smart Decisions

Too often, small businesses and the self-employed are making decisions about their business without the right information or expertise. QuickBooks has seen millions of similar decisions across its ecosystem and through the power of AI, QuickBooks provides insights to help businesses be smarter.

  • New: Receipt Capture - The new QuickBooks Mobile app now includes Receipt Capture, which allows small businesses to upload, email or snap receipts for improved expense management. Receipt Capture extracts relevant data from the receipt so small businesses can either create a new transaction or find a match between the receipt and an existing expense transaction in QuickBooks.   [For more about the 'new QBO Mobile App' see Insightful Accountant's latest QBO Monday Minute: QuickBooks Mobile App is Getting a Redesign!]
  • New: Mileage Tracking in QuickBooks - QuickBooks first introduced its patented mileage tracking technology in QuickBooks Self-Employed and has now expanded the offering to QuickBooks Online users so they can track and separate business mileage from personal to identify more potential tax deductions and savings. Leveraging AI, QuickBooks Mileage Tracking automatically recognizes frequent trip routes, allows users to mark locations as “favorites” and can proactively recommend rules to ensure trips are consistently marked as business or personal.   [For more about the 'QBO Mileage Tracker' see Insightful Accountant's QBO Monday Minute: QBO Mileage Tracker Has Arrived!]
  • Updated: QuickBooks Online Advanced - QuickBooks Online Advanced was introduced in 2018 to serve a gap in the small business market, providing high-growth small businesses with a cloud-based solution that leverages AI, automation and data innovation to deliver more ways for them to grow. New features coming soon in QuickBooks Online Advanced include the ability to automate transactions and workflows and an integration with a leading cloud-based organization and customer relationship management tool. Additional robust QuickBooks Online Advanced features designed for high-growth businesses include advanced reporting, the ability to process more transactions, and increased in-product support, as well as the integration with 700 apps.
  • New: QuickBooks Online Accountant Business Performance Dashboard - The new Business Performance tab in QuickBooks Online Accountant provides key metrics, trends and ratios with the click of a button. Specifically designed for accountants, the powerful technology inside QuickBooks automatically calculates ratios and displays key trends from their client’s data that can help accountants identify areas their clients should focus on to improve business performance.

Smart Connections

As the world’s leading small business ecosystem, QuickBooks now intelligently matches small businesses to experts to help them grow and prosper with the launch of QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping.

  • New: QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping – Announced today, QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping is a platform of assisted professional services that connects small business and self-employed customers with on-demand accounting experts inside the QuickBooks product. Through a one-way video conferencing capability, small business owners can connect to a virtual bookkeeper to get the help they need and ensure their records are accurate and up-to-date, giving them the confidence and freedom that their books are done right so they can focus on other aspects of their businesses.

[For more about QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping see Insightful Accountant's companion story: From QuickBooks Connect 2019: QuickBooks Offers Live Bookkeeping On-Demand.]