Meet your new digital team: Intuit introduces AI agents on QuickBooks

Small business owners know that managing a business often means juggling dozens of disconnected tools. Intuit wants to change that. 

Starting today, QuickBooks users will be able to call on their virtual assistant-like AI Agents to help with tasks across major business functions, including accounting, customer management, finance, and project management. 

Built on the Intuit platform, QuickBooks introduces AI Agents, a Customer Hub, a redesigned interface, and a reimagined suite of connected tools to help businesses run and grow smarter and faster. 

On average, leaders lose seven and a half hours a week switching between tools. Intuit says solving those challenges could translate into an extra $178,000 in annual revenue for the average Canadian business.

“What we heard from our customers is that fragmented tools to get a consolidated view of their business is a major pain point, it’s like going to six grocery stores to make dinner,” said Hamilton Jones, Staff Product Manager, International Platform at Intuit. “We wanted to reimagine the platform as a whole and bring together everything a business owner needs, with AI and human intelligence to alleviate manual work holding them back.”

The problem was not just anecdotal. Intuit’s recent report, The Growth Gap, found that nearly half of Canadian SMBs miss out on growth opportunities due to inefficiencies and decision fatigue. 

On average, leaders lose seven and a half hours a week just switching between tools. According to Intuit, solving those challenges could translate into an extra $178,000 in annual revenue for the average Canadian business.

The new QuickBooks experience directly targets these pain points, bringing accounting, CRM, and project management together in one platform powered by automation, AI and trusted human expertise.

“We’re hoping to give users more power in their hands to focus on work that they actually want to spend time doing; that grows their business,” said Jones. “There is so much time lost and wasted because of highly administrative and often very repetitive tasks, it can be hard to see the big picture, so a big part of this is being able to help users spot the things they might not be seeing themselves.”

The new AI agents are the stars of the new platform. Think of them like a team of digital assistants that work behind the scenes for you or your accounting professional and get smarter over time, but with the business owner always in the driver’s seat. 

The Accounting Agent automates bookkeeping and categorization to help keep accounts clean. The Customer Agent finds leads directly from your inbox, prioritizes high-value opportunities, drafts responses, books meetings, and tracks customer opportunities across the full sales cycle. 

The Finance Agent compiles real-time summaries of profit and loss, cash flow, and balance sheets. And the Project Management Agent auto-fills key details for draft projects to cut down on manual data entry.

But the update goes beyond AI agents. QuickBooks also introduced a redesigned interface and menu that make it easier to find what you need, an AI-powered business feed that suggests tasks to improve efficiency, and access to human support  whenever you need it, which make the platform feel like there’s a larger team behind you.

For users, that means less time spent clicking between tabs and more time spent on strategy, clients, and growth.

Mike Libbey, Partner & COO at accounting firm YBL, says that in his 16 years at the company, they have never not used QuickBooks. 

“We’ve been using QuickBooks for many years, and the platform has grown and is far superior today,” said Libbey. “We’ve got a team of about 35 across Canada and 1,000 clients, so being able to have all of their information in one place, where I’m already hanging out on a daily basis, allows us to be much more informed and able to provide insights in a timely manner.”

He also sees the AI capabilities as a potential game-changer for his clients, who range from realtors and healthcare professionals to construction companies. 

“The agents will provide them with a level of insight, from a deeper perspective, before they even ask,” he said. “Having that information at their fingertips will help them transform their businesses.”

In Intuit’s research, 80 percent of business leaders said AI could help them delegate more effectively while staying in control. Four in 10 leaders say that AI is already saving them up to a day a week. Intuit calls this the “AI Dividend”: the productivity, focus, and confidence regained when technology automates the work that slows businesses down.

And it seems Canadian SMBs are ready to cash in. Forty-six percent of those surveyed fall into the “high-readiness” tier for using technology to grow, one of the strongest results among global markets. 

With the global rollout of QuickBooks on the Intuit platform, Intuit is betting that better-integrated workflows and AI-powered insights will help small businesses close the growth gap, and even reclaim a few hours along the way.

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QuickBooks on the Intuit platform is available today at: quickbooks.intuit.com/ca/

All images provided by Intuit