Jaclyn Anku, ProAdvisor Training & Certification Leader: On today's episode of In the Know, we'll be exploring our new AI-driven Accounting Agent. Accounting Agent helps you easily identify transactions that are complete, accurate, and ready to post. It helps you simplify gathering necessary contextual and compliance information, and helps you efficiently ensure that the books are complete and correct.
Hey ProAdvisors, it's Jaclyn, and you're watching In the Know, where you get exclusive access to demos of Intuit product enhancements by the leaders who built them. Let's jump right in with Jason for a look at Accounting Agent.
Jason, welcome.
Jason Wirth: Awesome. Thanks very much. I really appreciate you having me. Hi everyone. I'm Jason Wirth, a staff product manager with QuickBooks. Before joining Intuit, I worked as a financial analyst, often using the outputs that are compiled in QuickBooks Online by accountants, so I've seen how your work shapes business and personal outcomes. Today, I'm excited to introduce you to the Accounting Agent to support your bookkeeping tasks. Accounting Agent is designed to take work off your plate, help you trust what's in front of you, and give you the control that you need where you need it.
Accounting Agent sits on the scaffolding of the Bank Feed enhancements that you may have seen in another video from Joe and Shushma. You've already seen parts of the technology underpinning Accounting Agent in the predictions and explanations. It uses those tools to power the four key features of Accounting Agent:
- Ready to post for fast batch, posting, and context gathering.
- To collect missing information.
- Anomaly detection and that will help you catch outliers.
- AI powered reconciliation to ensure completeness.
Ready to post and context gathering are in QuickBooks Online Essentials and up, while anomaly detection and reconciliation will be in QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced. The US launch was on July 1, but we've been building this with weekly input from our Partner Council accountants, actually, since last July.
We built Accounting Agent with three core tenants in mind. First, efficiency. In the grid, you'll see that through explanations and more accurate predictions. And now we're trying to identify transactions that are ready for you to post. In addition, we'll provide proactive support by getting you the right context that you need at the right time. And last, through review, by checking for consistency and completeness in your books.
You've told us that you spend a lot of time scanning transactions within each account and trying to figure out how long a given account might take, and what the composition of transactions might be. This is especially important when clients drop hundreds of transactions in a month. You've also told us that “ready” means more than just pre-filled suggestions. It means that those suggestions are data backed and they have a payee. So we built ready to post to surface transactions with a history of consistent posting for a given client. That means the same bank description, same category, and same payee so you can review and batch post in one click, and since it's based on history, you're central to this feature.
Ready to post is really your co-pilot, giving you the efficiency that you would have had with rules, but without ever needing to set them up or manage them. But it works with rules too. We'll never override any of your rules. You've told us that the rules are an important way of establishing control, and we will make sure to honor those, first and foremost. Ready to post will simply act as your partner, and it will evolve to reflect the evolution of your work for a client over time.
So let's take a look at it. When a company's bank account has at least three high-confidence transactions, you'll see a banner like you see here. Clicking it will show you a filtered view of the editable transactions. They'll be pre-checked, so if they're right, you can post them in one click. You're the one who will be reviewing and you're totally in control. You can make any changes necessary to make sure that things are right, and you'll always have a chance to look at them first.
We're simply scaling your existing pattern. Our accuracy here so far is over 90%. The from-to fields are always filled in, and the predictions are always data backed with transactions from this individual client. The feature is still ramping up, so if you haven't seen it yet, that's why we're really holding a high bar here for accuracy, because we know that's what it takes to have bulletproof books. You can dismiss the banner and we'll stay out of the way. You can find those transactions, though, anytime using the dropdown within the filter.
So our next tenant after efficiency is proactive support, and that's where context gathering comes in. Many of you have told us that the bank feed is off limits for clients, either by their choice or yours, but you still need that context to post those transactions accurately. That's especially difficult when you need to select a category, payee or class, and you don't have the information that you need. And for many clients, you want to have a receipt on each and every transaction.
Well, chasing that information takes a lot of time. We've spent time with a lot of you, seeing and hearing the phone calls, emails, overflowing receipt pouches, and messy spreadsheets. So we built Accounting Agent's context request tool as a to-do list of the missing information that needs to live inside QuickBooks Online. Clients don't need a login. You control all the reminders and questions, as well as how—and whether AI helps. You can select one or more transactions on which to ask questions. Use the chat column or group, and select More Info. You can ask a question on multiple transactions at one time that way, which is especially helpful for a client who might have a lot of checks. You can use the pre-fills that we have here on the bottom right for the common questions that we know you ask a lot, but you can always edit and ask your own question.
You can post the transactions now and update later. We have a lot of accountants who prefer to do it that way because it allows them to reconcile. Or you can leave the transactions in pending. The request won't be sent until you say “go,” and we'll always keep an update of your outstanding requests in both pending and posted using that chat column. So you'll always be notified of the state status of your different transactions.
But of course, we're creating a request list here, so if you click the Request, you can preview your current list. You create a single living list for each company. Your list might shrink over time as your client responds, and it will grow as you add more questions. From your list, you can mark transactions as complete, and you can also remove questions. If you click on the gear icon, this is where you can control the different elements of the feature. You can get alerts when clients reply. You can schedule messages to say only send an email out to my clients at certain times of the week. And crucially, you can turn off the AI assistant.
We know that the client communication you have really reflects your brand, and so you deserve full control. You have it here where you can toggle it on and off by your preference. And of course, since it is reflecting your communication with your client, we want to allow you to see what your client sees. Here you can turn between replies and request view. This allows you to see in the replies view what your client would see when they receive the link.
So let's take a look at how you get them the link. You can do this in two ways. One is you can copy a magic link and you can send it through whatever channel works for you. If your clients are more likely to respond with SMS, you can send them a text message, Slack teams, WhatsApp, or email. We've seen all those methods used. You're not limited to an email from QuickBooks Online, which we know a lot of clients ignore, but we also give you that option to send a QuickBooks Online email, and you can customize it as well.
The Accounting Agent context request feature is really built for flexibility, so you can meet your clients where they already are to get responses more quickly and ensure that your documentation stays organized. If you add or remove questions from your list, the link stays the same. So if your client responds to half the questions from the list and they get busy doing their work, they can then use that same link to come back in, finish the list, complete even any new additions, or any back and forth you may have with them on a given transaction. When your client clicks the link, they'll be able to land in a mobile or web friendly portal. The AI assistant will be able to help guide their responses. We find this to be especially useful for clients who might be unsure of exactly how to answer and give you the relevant information.
My personal favorite—and one that we hear positive feedback from a lot of accountants in our beta—relates to receipts. If they forget to attach a receipt when you ask for it or upload the wrong file, the Assist will gently follow up and ensure that you got the information that you need to post that transaction with documentation. But again, you choose whether the AI is on or off. You stay in the driver's seat, and we're here to be your engine. Back in QuickBooks Online inside the bank feed, you'll see which transactions have open questions and which ones have been answered. And this column, again, is available on pending, as well as posted to help keep you organized. Make sure you know it's still outstanding. Once a client responds, we'll suggest a category you review and decide, and really read predictions. The client assistance is why now is the right time for us to build this capability. We're seeking to help reduce your mental load, while we're still relying on you for that final judgment.
We're also working on multiple lists per company. Today, it's just one, but very shortly, this will be especially useful for clients that might have multiple card holders or a partnership where you need to ask questions about transactions from different people. We’ll have optional authorization so sensitive lists can stay secure, but will also ensure that just because they have a list doesn't mean they take a seat up on QuickBooks Online. This will allow this to expand to those scenarios where you're dealing directly with some of those folks who are operating within the business, but they might not have the reporting permissions to see the bank. And then refresh suggestions. We'll work on this for class, payee, and matching based on the Client Replies. These are all coming soon.
Next, let's take a look at anomaly detection. You've told us that reviewing the P&L and balance sheet for errors, especially on a deadline, is a very manual and stressful process. So we built a tool that flags significant period-over-period changes and gives you a downloadable root cause analysis at the transaction level. You can make changes on individual transactions from there.
Let's take a look at what this is on a P&L. Here on the P&L, you can see a few different sparkles, both at the report level, as well as on individual lines. If you click on them, you can see insights on one specific line item or throughout the whole report. Here, I've clicked on the one for the entire report, and what you'll see is a number of different changes or anomalies that are relevant to potentially surface. Now some of these might be a mistake. Sometimes it's a story to tell a client, but either way, it's something that's surfaced, something that's explained, and something that's traceable for you to be able to look into. This is your last line of defense. If something got into the books incorrectly, we can help you catch it before it gets to a client's deliverable.
And finally, reconciliation, this feature ensures that your books are complete; not just accurate, but really done. You upload a PDF bank statement and we compare it to your bank feed and posted transactions. We'll highlight what's missing or mismatched, and this will help you reconcile quickly and be able to move on. Let's take a look at a video of how that works.
Sushma Rathnam: The new reconcile functionality is still in beta. A key feature here is the ability to upload your bank statement. On upload of the PDF, the agent proceeds to extract the information from it. Note, this does take some time, but once done, the bank ending balance and ending date are automatically populated. This starts the reconciliation and kicks off a three-way match between the transactions in your PDF, bank feeds, and your QuickBooks Online transactions.
We clearly identify the transactions that need review and give you a summary of the discrepancies found. All transactions that are paired are marked in green. A delightful feature here shows you a single bank deposit recorded against a QuickBooks Online payment and an expense for bank fees. You can easily filter down to the transactions that need your review. This first one lets you know that you have an extra transaction posted in QuickBooks Online that you need to take care of, and you can edit the transaction right here. Here we detected a transaction that is still pending in the bank feed and has not yet been posted, similar to a transaction you might have excluded by mistake. A common occurrence is when transactions at the end of the period are not included in the bank statement. We indicate this and you can uncheck this transaction, which updates the discrepancy amount. With AI helping you find the needles in the haystack, you're still in control to correct the errors and complete your reconciliation.
Jason Wirth: So that's Accounting Agent. We're guided by three themes: efficiency, proactive support, and review. It's built to support you and scale your professional judgment. The agent is designed to make your work easier and more consistent, as well as being accurate, but it gives you the visibility and control you told us you needed. We're excited to keep building this with you, and we look forward to your continued feedback.
Jaclyn Anku: Jason, thank you so much, and thank you for watching. If you find this update interesting or helpful, go ahead and like, comment, and subscribe. That's all we have for now. For more updates, check out our In the Know hub, we'll catch you next time.
