Podcast - Intuit Assist and AI Agents in QuickBooks Online
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[00:00:00]
Introduction and Technical Difficulties
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Dan DeLong: Well, welcome to another workshop Wednesday, casual Conversations with Serious Workflows. Did you hear anything during the, uh, the, in the intro video? Do you normally [00:01:00] hear something? I heard the, I heard that.
Rachel Dauchy: I heard the phone. No, I'm not
Dan DeLong: hearing anything.
Rachel Dauchy: Oh. Are you hearing anything from me? Alright.
Dan DeLong: Can you hear me headset?
Rachel Dauchy: Uh oh. You can't hear me?
Dan DeLong: Hold on. Oh boy. We're gonna get rid of this big, we're gonna get rid of this. Be off. We're gonna get rid of this big off. We're gonna get rid of this big off. We're gonna get rid of this.
Rachel Dauchy: Uh oh.
Dan DeLong: We're gonna get rid this.
Rachel Dauchy: You're Dan.
Dan DeLong: We're rid this be we're gonna get rid of this.
We're gonna get rid of this. We're gonna get rid of this. We're gonna get rid of this. We're gonna get rid of this. We're gonna get rid of this. How about now?
Rachel Dauchy: Oh, there we go.
Dan DeLong: Okay.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. Landon saying the same thing I just did. Yeah, [00:02:00] but you know what, Dan, I have this, can you hear me? Yep. Yeah. Okay. So I have that same headset. That was doing it to me too, when I was in the meeting with Jamie and t and they were laughing at me and I was like, what am I doing?
Dan DeLong: Yeah. So if you heard the I, I assume the video played fine and you could hear it and everything, but I was hearing like silence with a little clicking.
Rachel Dauchy: Oh yeah. No, no, no. I heard this. I heard the video. I heard the song. I heard all the, the stuff.
Dan DeLong: All the things. Okay. Well. It's the, it's the curse of doing live stuff on the internet. It either works or it doesn't. And speaking of which, we're gonna be talking about AI agents and QuickBooks Online, which will either work or it won't.
So, uh, it's a common theme here. Um, yes, it's brought to you by school bookkeeping.com, where you can learn QuickBooks your [00:03:00] way.
Travel Stories and QuickBooks Updates
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Dan DeLong: How are you, Rachel? Now that I can hear you,
Rachel Dauchy: I'm good. How are you?
Dan DeLong: Very, very good. Very good. Now you just got back from a lot of traveling, and scaling New heights was one of them.
How was that? Yeah,
Rachel Dauchy: it was really, really cool. And, um. We had a really fun event for the top 100 pro advisors, which I was in. And um, I had a lot of really good sessions and I learned more than I've ever learned at scaling New Heights. It was really cool. And then I was away at dance competition for a week and a half in Myrtle Beach, and then I stopped in Asheville, North Carolina, and I saw Deb Hall, who is my very good QuickBooks friend, and now I'm back home.
Dan DeLong: There you go. Well, I'm glad you're glad you're back. And, my, uh, my vacation as well. So we, we've been away for a couple weeks off of the workshop Wednesday, and lo and [00:04:00] behold, the whole QuickBooks world turned upside down.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: While we were gone, which maybe they might have done that while there was a.
Non QuickBooks sanction conference going on,
Rachel Dauchy: maybe. But I'm telling you, this whole new U user interface is driving me absolutely insane. But, um, maybe that's a discussion for another day.
Dan DeLong: Well, we, we had, we had kind of talked about the user interface in that prior workshop. So we did, and
Rachel Dauchy: you had presented the three different.
Views or No, no, no, no, no. Maybe you did that to me another time, but I, um, I had my favorite, but now it's my favorite that is showing and it's still giving me a headache. I, I can't,
Dan DeLong: yeah. Alicia Katz Pollock and I did a little deep dive on the. The, the final version of the combined user interface on the latest, uh, QuickBooks Accountant Podcast.
Oh, unofficial QuickBooks Accountant Podcast. Yeah. Is not officially [00:05:00] sanctioned by Intuit. And thankfully we don't have to answer to, um, to what Intuit wants us to say about those things. We can give, oh my goodness. Give our own inter in, in interpretation of those things.
AI Agents in QuickBooks: An Overview
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Dan DeLong: Uh, today we're gonna be talking about the AI agents and, uh, which, which, uh, QuickBooks is using as its justification this year for its pricing increase.
Because, um, well, pretty much Sasan had made no, uh, you know, last Intuit connect that, uh, that would last. October. Um, he made no apologies or anything. He, he didn't, he didn't apologize for anything that's coming. No. And, uh, they have pretty much bet the entire company on ai spent a lot of money, laid off a lot of people, [00:06:00] uh, rehired a lot of, a lot more smarter people with all in service to.
AI and they announced this whole Intuit assist across all the Intuit ecosystems. And now we're starting to see the fruits of that labor come into QuickBooks. And the way that, uh, Intuit is packaging or branding these things is by calling them AI agents. Mm-hmm. Built inside, your, your QuickBooks.
And um, and I think it's a way to humanize. Digital assistance. I have, uh, a, uh, a subscription to, um, Sentra, uh, which basically is branded. It's separately, you know, it's not an Intuit product, but it's branded as, uh, AI employees. There's 12 little guys and they're little [00:07:00] babies.
And uh, they're very, with the whole idea of humanizing. Ai. And then of course, as you grow with these a as you feed the ai machine with the AI brain, they actually have something in there called Dan's brain that I can feed it files and things like that. And the whole idea is that these little kids are gonna start to grow with me.
And okay,
Rachel Dauchy: I just saw an episode of Black Mirror about this exactly. Literally. It didn't end well either.
Dan DeLong: Well, there's countless movies that are out there that say. AI is not a great thing, you know, eventually, no, I mean,
Rachel Dauchy: I think that the first original was what, 2001, A Space Odyssey or something like that?
Yeah.
Dan DeLong: What are you doing, Rachel? This is highly irregular.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. Yeah. I, I don't know. And plus I'm also like, you know, I'm all for, you know, [00:08:00] assistance, whatever, but just please, I'm registering states for sales tax right now. Please give me an AI agent for that.
Dan DeLong: Exactly. Come on. And that's, really kind of where we're at with, uh, this evolution of AI is that they are a helper, right?
Um, and they are, they help you do the mundane, repetitive tasks that is really delegated or relegated to. You know, your entry level employee, right? Right. Uh, so they come in, they do a lot of copying and pasting. They do a little pre-work those types of things. And that's kind of where, where it is right now with regards to, you know, intuit assist because, you know, as it does a cool some cool and nifty things that we'll kind of ta talk about and unpack here.
It's, a trust but verify type of thing. Yeah. [00:09:00] Right.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Dan DeLong: You're,
not going to just. Set it and forget it and let you know, let these AI agents just run rampant. You know, I just put together a blog article. Let me go ahead and share the QR code and the link here as soon as I can find it.
There we go. There's the QR code. And I did, I think, put in the chat already, uh, the link to the, the article. So that should have fed out, uh, all of the social channels that we're streaming onto today. And let me go ahead and share my screen so we can take a look at it here. Make sure I do the right one.
There we go. Okay. Tried to do that ahead of time, but I was so engrossed in the fact that I couldn't hear anything that now, I tried to make a one stop shop, so I comb through all of the. All of the information that's out there and tried to put it in [00:10:00] one, one place, and, um. I wish this video or this, um, image was a little higher.
'cause that's really one I, I'm just zooming a little bit. But here's the robot over on the right side saying, did I do good? And then the accountants, sorry, I didn't have a equal because I used AI to generate this image. So when I gave it the prompt, well, guess what?
Rachel Dauchy: I don't get offended by those things because it's robots and I don't care.
Dan DeLong: I'll, I'll regenerate it with a group of accountants that are, you know. Diversified. I don't know why chose two males. I don't care about
Rachel Dauchy: that stuff. I don't have other things to worry about.
Dan DeLong: Apparently when you put in accountants, uh, it means white males with a beard.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah,
Dan DeLong: right. Well, hey, that's a
Rachel Dauchy: step up from like the guy with the green visor and the adding machine.
Dan DeLong: Yes.
Rachel Dauchy: So that's, I'm, I'm cool with [00:11:00] this.
Dan DeLong: But the, the accountants are saying, nice try qbo. We'll take it from here. And that's really, that's really where AI is right now, is, doing those things. Doing the tasks that are kind of repetitive, mundane, but time, you know, that, that take time.
And then the human comes in after that. To really validate those things, right? Like you wouldn't use AI to create a first draft or I mean, a final draft of, of your blog article, which lo and behold, that's what this article is generated from AI that I've oversaw and reviewed and took a look at and I can tweak and make it better, right?
So let's first talk about like, what are these QuickBooks AI agents, right? So. The way they're [00:12:00] listed here, as you know, think of them. Think of them as the behind the scenes assistance, right? They're not here to take your job yet, right? They're here to handle the repetitive stuff like key surface insights.
Give you more time to focus on the work stuff that matters, like advising clients, not chasing down missing receipts. You know, those things that are time consuming, but not a value add. So like you just said, I'm registering people for state tax or, or sales tax, right? So those types of value added services that could be repetitive, those types of things will help you get the lion's share of that stuff done first.
Whether it's, I don't know what it, what it takes to register For, for sales tax. But those admin tasks of collecting that stuff [00:13:00] could be essentially automated. And then you just then finish it up and make sure that, you know, the T's are crossed and the D's. I's are dotted, I almost said dotted dyes were audited.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. The dyes were audited.
QuickBooks AI Agents by Subscription Plan
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Dan DeLong: So let's talk about what QuickBooks Plan gets you, which QuickBooks AI agent. Because it's not a one size fits all, and it's not one version gets all of them unless you're paying for. Advanced, which gets all, gets all so simple start, doesn't get any AI agents.
W but it does get the AI driven categorization, right? Like, so it's not really a full AI agent, it's more of what you see right now in the bank feed. And we'll talk, uh, in a couple weeks about the new bank feed that's coming. Um, so [00:14:00] we'll talk, we'll talk about those suggestions and those types of things.
So that's what you get with Simple Start is really just kind of AI driven categorization of transactions. Right now in Essentials, you get three, you get the accountant, or I'm sorry, the accounting. Now you don't get an accountant, you get an accounting agent, and then you get the payments agent and the customer hub.
Customer hub's not available yet. So really you only get two. So the accounting agent, what do they do? They help categorize transactions, reconcile accounts and flags, anomalies. And we'll, um as I scroll down on this, on this blog article, there's, there's a little deep more deeper dives, uh, because Intuit is created.
Deeper dive articles about the different AI agents as well. So again, I've just tried to make it, make this blog a one-stop shop [00:15:00] for everything right? Then Your payments agent is all in service to QuickBooks Payments and helping you get paid faster within QuickBooks, of course, by using the QuickBooks payments function to be able to draft invoice, categorize expenses, set those reminders.
This is where I think a lot of the repetitive tasks of collections and those types of things are gonna be, a real time saver for a lot of people because one, you can, you can use ai and you can use the AI that's built in to draft contextual. Communications with your clients and choose a different tone, right?
Like, you know, the, this guy's habitually late. Maybe you wanna be a little bit more strongly worded in your, email or communications with them. Or maybe it's just a [00:16:00] a slight oversight's the first time that they're late paying their invoice. You can change the tone, uh, with that and more importantly.
You can, not misspell things.
Rachel Dauchy: That's nice.
Dan DeLong: I'm horrible with that. And, you know, that's when people are gonna realize that AI is taking, you know, I'm using AI is when I don't, uh, put typos in things.
Rachel Dauchy: Exactly. For me. That's actually a huge welcome. Yeah.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. And of course the M dash is the, uh, is the dead giveaway, uh, between, whether it's been used as ai, because there, you can see right here, I, I failed to take out the M dash out of this, uh, out of the blog article. Um, and then the customer hub which is coming. But it really this is the, this is the true marriage, I guess is probably the best way to describe it, [00:17:00] of the MailChimp and and QuickBooks.
And this is where I think this is gonna take QuickBooks to. Essentially another level, right? Because you're gonna be able to use this customer hub as a way to find repeat business that maybe you didn't even realize. And create campaigns communication campaigns right outta QuickBooks so that you'll be able to get more business because it it, it takes less money.
As a business owner to get a repeat business than it does to find a new business.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, right.
Dan DeLong: So that's pretty
Rachel Dauchy: cool. I'm glad they're adding that.
Dan DeLong: And of course, you know, paying for mail, MailChimp is not a cheap endeavor. I think you can actually pay more for MailChimp than you can for QuickBooks Advanced.
Right. 'cause it's a pretty robust feature function. [00:18:00] Now in plus, uh, you get everything essentials, but you get customer a, the customer agent, and a little bit deeper AI insights. I saw this actually last night, uh, when I was running a profit and loss on my own business. And, uh, the profit and loss and the, and the balance sheet are the first reports that, that have this, uh, AI insights and, um.
You know it, and ran a profit and loss for the month and there were certain accounts that had this little AI logo or icon on it. And when I clicked on it, it said, well, you've, you've dipped down 73% from last month, and the reason being was there were two invoices the month prior that are not in this month.
I'm like, okay, well that explains it. So I, it just made. You know, it, it wasn't like it was anything [00:19:00] worth panicking about because it was an anomaly that there was an increase in May as opposed to June. Right. So it was, it was assuring and I was like, okay, well that makes sense and I can move on.
So these, these insights are, um, are something that's. I think pretty cool. As far as what what it could do, right? Again, it's not gonna take the role or the job away from the accountants or bookkeepers that are out there. It's really just something that they can look at and, I don't know what's the, what's the word I'm looking for, but it, it's something that will just be, okay, well that's it.
It's all belt relative of. Transactions being entered, and it's all relative to the transactions being entered correctly. And that's the real true value [00:20:00] of of the accounting profession in this mix, right? Then in advance, you get everything that's in plus, but you also get four more, four more agents.
Uh, a finance agent, a project management agent, an analytics agent. A payroll agent, so you don't get payroll agents if you're using simple start with payroll, you have to use advanced with payroll in order to be, to have the payroll agent. And then in the mobile app, you're gonna get select. AI agents to interact with kind of on the go.
They never did say which of those select invoice agents you get access to. But
Rachel Dauchy: maybe it's just like a random selection. Yeah. Like one day you get this one and then the next day you get a different one.
Dan DeLong: A smattering, you get a rotational agent. Surprise. Just like anything [00:21:00] that you do in the mobile app there are things that you can do and there's things that you can't do and you're likely gonna have the same kind of, experience with these AI agents.
Deep Dive into AI-Powered Accounting Agents
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Dan DeLong: So we talk a little bit about, again, a little deeper dive, but then we take each. Each one that there was an Intuit article on, and talk a bit, talk a a bit deeper into what those account or what those agents actually are designed to do. So here's the accounting agent, right? Uh, so AI powered transaction review.
It's. We're gonna see some things where it's either suggestions or ready to post or this is kind of changing the terminology between the old bank feed and, and what's coming in the new bank feed about suggestions, rules, matching, adding those types of things. The terms are just gonna change [00:22:00] to make it a little bit more user friendly for, those that might be.
Do it yourself first. Right.
The Shift from Full Charge Bookkeeping to Client-Owned Data
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Dan DeLong: Um, and when we talked last yesterday with, uh, on the, on the QB power Hour, Sarah brought up a, really great point where, you know, she was a full charge bookkeeper where she was the face of the accounting. And that shift from full charge bookkeeping to.
The customer really owning their business or, or their books with the quick, with QuickBooks online is really the aware. I mean, it's really the, the bottom line as to what is actually, the, how the shift is actually change taking place. You're, you as an accountant or bookkeeper are invited into your client's data as opposed to you [00:23:00] offering outputs.
To your clients because you're doing all the things, you're, you're doing the running, the payroll, you're running the they are, and the AP functionalities. The whole backend service offerings that accountants used to do now are a little bit more challenging to do because of the shift from the customer focus of, I own my own data as a, as a business owner with QuickBooks Online, as opposed to.
Here's my subscription, uh, or here's, here's my QuickBooks Company file locally. Now, have you Rachel, have you seen that, that shift or you, you kind of came in as that shift was happening?
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, I mean, well repeat that question just so I understand clearly.
Dan DeLong: Well, like, [00:24:00] the shift from QuickBooks desktop to the cloud, where most accountants and bookkeepers kind of built their practice around, Hey, we're gonna do all the things. Inside of the QuickBooks and then provide their clients with their financial outputs, balance sheets profit and losses and those types of things.
But they're doing everything.
Rachel Dauchy: Okay, so my practice is much, much different. I do not have a lot of clients that do the things. We're pretty much an outsourced accounting department. We do mostly everything for them got, so I do have a few clients that will enter invoices, but I do not have one client that does their own bank feeds.
It just we're a little bit different, but, um, but I do know that a lot of people have clients that will do their own stuff. Um, but yeah, I mean, I, because I use it really as, [00:25:00] with us doing all the accounting and all of the bookkeeping, I don't know. I, I, I have noticed all of the shifts and all of the things, but my clients probably don't.
Dan DeLong: Right, because you, you still kind of do the full charge bookkeeping kind of services.
Rachel Dauchy: We do everything, yeah.
Dan DeLong: But just in the cloud, right?
Rachel Dauchy: Yep. Yep. And, and, but we do a lot of people that are moving to, from QuickBooks desktop to QBO and there. Yeah. There the confusion is in that. Yeah. And that is what I'm dealing with right now.
Yeah. The,
Dan DeLong: the everything that they used to do inside of desktop and that's, and that really just depends on the, what the client was doing inside of QuickBooks to begin with. You know, like if they were doing a lot of the workflows and tasks in QuickBooks desktop, then it's where. You know, like, where did it, where did it go?[00:26:00]
Um, other things in here and we also have, um.
Cautious Tips for Using AI in Accounting
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Dan DeLong: Unlike what QuickBooks would tell you. We, we have the cautious tips, uh, in, in, in all of these sections. So for, you know, the business feed and the bank feed, right? Always scan these before posting especially for edge case or your unusual vendors, right?
Auto post. With auto with oversight, right? Check the posted tab for anything surprising, right? Because automation is powerful, but it's not perfect. And then there's advanced features of the accountant.
Advanced Features of AI-Powered Accounting Agents
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Dan DeLong: Accounting agent. And that's gonna be what's in plus in advance, where you have the AI powered reconciliation, uh, where it will automatically reconcile certain transactions, your, your bills, when you're paying with QuickBooks bill pay your, uh, payments that have been [00:27:00] sent.
From invoices and then received payments that way. And then deposited it already knows that those things are, are legitimately reconciled. It can automatically reconcile those things. And then that report analysis where I mentioned the anomaly in the profit and loss, uh, those types of things are gonna be part of the.
Accountant agent, right? So it can save you some time. But you want, always wanna review its work, right?
Exploring the Payments Agent
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Dan DeLong: Trust, but verify with these with these, uh, AI changes here, then there's a payments agent, which is an Essentials Plus and advanced. Uh, again, this is going to help with collections. Invoice reminders, uh, late fees guidance, right?
So if you're allowed to charge a late fee if you're allowed to [00:28:00] charge a per an a PR on that, those types of compliance things will be part of the, uh, payments. Be able to personalize email messages, auto-fill your invoices. These are things that, that the payments agent is going to is going to do.
Um, powerful tool, improving the cash flow, because that's what's important for a lot of businesses is having money in the bank, right? Ar looks great on a balance sheet, but it doesn't look great in the bank account,
Rachel Dauchy: right? Nope.
Finance Agent: Key Financial Insights
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Dan DeLong: and then the finance agent, now this is advanced so you only get this in advanced.
The finance agent scans the books and surfaces key financial insights, like, uh, cashflow trends expense spikes, revenue opportunities. So this is things that's gonna touch the [00:29:00] surface on advisory. But of course this is. Digital advisory and not human advisory. And that's something that, is, um, what's the word?
I'm, I'm, I'm looking for the this is really where we're at. You know, when it comes to AI taken over for accountants, right? It will automate your workflows but it will never humanize. Relationship. Right? So even Intuit realizes that, and understands the power of human connection and human re relationship.
We just don't know who, which human Intuit is talking about when it's, when a human is needed, because, uh, they'll just talk about an expert. You [00:30:00] know, like maybe you want to talk to an expert about this. Well, who's the expert? Is it you, Rachel Doci, uh, at Net deposited, or is it a badged employee?
Uh, that, uh, that, that you might wanna pay in two at an extra 50 bucks a month to talk to? That remains to be seen as to which humans, um, they are token mentioning. Talk to your accountant. And of course, um, when you do talk to the humans at Intuit, uh, oftentimes they will refer, uh, more complex things to a ProAdvisor or your, your connected accountant, but maybe they'll want to talk to you first and then make that decision.
It's always, may, may or may not be the best thing for your clients. So sometimes it's, uh, it's a matter of, battling with the Intuit marketing machine, uh, because they get [00:31:00] first dibs, uh, because, uh, this is an online product and you'll, you'll, uh, they'll be able to communicate with, with your client much faster, than you might ever will be.
And that might be. That might be a challenge sometimes, right? Yeah,
Rachel Dauchy: so
Dan DeLong: we've, we've got some things in here about the finance agent. Uh, bottom line though is the finance agent can save you time, spotlight opportunities or risks, but always apply your professional judgment before acting on its suggestions.
Right. So this is the
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah, I'm, yeah. I'm not ever gonna use that. I'm sorry. No way. Not at all. I'm getting my master's in accounting. There's no way I'm using. A finance agent in QuickBooks. It's not happening.
Dan DeLong: Well, it, sorry.
Rachel Dauchy: It
Dan DeLong: well, like it, like, we were saying earlier, right? It could be a good first draft, right?
And it could be, it [00:32:00] could it could pa could spawn or spur, that's, there's the word I was looking for. It could spur a question for your client to talk to you like, well, QuickBooks told me. You know, maybe we should change our terms or I, I don't know what, uh whatever it might be. And then that's where.
You know, you have that conversation, that value, valuable conversation
Rachel Dauchy: with your client. Yeah. God,
Project Management Agent in QuickBooks
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Dan DeLong: another agent in, in advance only is the project management agent.
Rachel Dauchy: That I'm, down for, that I'm down for. So anything that's organizing. I'm on board. Anything that's gonna do possible projections or whatever.
Uh, no.
Dan DeLong: Yeah, that really is encroaching on, Rachel's, uh, jam. Um, so project management this is all centering around, you know, the project's [00:33:00] functionality inside of QuickBooks. So you've got, uh, the, IT monitors your active projects, tracks pro progress, costs, deadlines, profitability in real time, right?
So it highlights when a project is at risk of going over budget or missing transactions, or missing the, the milestone. So you, again, you still need to do some input with that. Uh, but you want. Once that's set up, then it will, provide alerts, you know, along with that. So there's automated task suggestions, profitability, insight, so it's gonna analyze costs versus billings, uh, those types of things.
Again, it's only going to be able to respond to things that you've entered in. So if you don't categorize an expense to a job or a project, it's only gonna be able to tell you based on the inputs that you, that you put into it, it can't make things up. But it might [00:34:00] also say, Hey, it looks like you didn't categorize a whole bunch of things and offer to, to do that right.
So again, that's a, that's a powerful tool for keeping projects on track and profitable. So where do they show up?
Discoverability and User Interface Changes
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Dan DeLong: You might ask, well, there's, the business feed is gonna be the probably the best place to, to see them all right? Because that business feed with the Intuit Andys logo, uh, that's gonna be, the new home for all things that are AI related.
You'll see those within those and then within the apps. Now, remember when we had talked about The the new user interface the terminology of, workflow areas, so like customers and sales, those are now considered apps. Not your third party apps that we would typically call them [00:35:00] in the past.
Right? So within the app, so inside of customers or inside of, vendors expenses, you know, the expense app that's where you'll see, those, uh, AI agents start to show up. And then of course, front and center, right at the top is gonna be your smart search bar. So anything AI related is gonna appear there first.
So all of this in service to discoverability of these AI agents. Now you can ignore. They're suggestions, right? So it's not going to automatically do a lot of these things. It's just going to give you those suggestions. And, kind of like that robot here at the top, you know, did I do good? Right?
And as you start to interact with them and as you start to, uh, use their suggestions, [00:36:00] then of course that is going to be fuel for hay. Somebody liked what we did here, let's make sure that we offer that to other people as well. This is something that, QuickBooks Desktop is, would be infinitely harder to implement other than here on a QuickBooks online, platform.
So that in a nutshell, is. These Intuit agents, uh, that have been the, it's the release has been since July 1st. So here we are, nine days in and it's a, and it's a slow rollout, so not until the fall is, where you're gonna see it in every one of your clients.
Accountants' Perspectives on AI in Bookkeeping
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Dan DeLong: so Rachel, first thoughts of what the, um, what this is.
Rachel Dauchy: I like it. I think that it's a lot [00:37:00] unleashed all at once and I'm very visual, so the new interface has kind of thrown me a little bit. I'm really thankful that I can turn on old view, who knows how long that's gonna be available. But, I appreciate, you know, the AI agents for anything that's, like I said before, like organizational or, you know, helps me, categorize or whatever, but really anything that comes to bookkeeping is recording transactions. That's it. Bookkeeping is not. Financial projections and creating a budget that is not bookkeeping, that is accounting. And when you really need a trained accountant to do that. And so I feel like they're trying to get into the realm of, Hey guys, like here you go.
Here's this software. I can do all this for you. And from the perspective and accountant like me, I'm not saying this in a bubble. Every other account's gonna say it just like me. [00:38:00] You know, it just gives me a little bit of pause 'cause I wanna make sure that it's accurate. There's a certain way, you know, to do things to make co potential clients and current clients feel comfortable about their.
Data and their business that if I were to say to a client, like, let's say I, you know, was just doing bookkeeping, and I was like, oh, hey client, like here's this AI agent bot, like, let me press a button and like do to do some projections for you. I if some if I was the business owner and somebody were saying that to me, I would say no, thank you.
Because I don't. I, I just I don't, I wouldn't know that that person is skilled enough to do that. Yeah. Or that the bot was skilled enough to do that. I, I really value. Hard accounting skills. But I mean, having said that, if you could [00:39:00] use it, you know, to like help teach yourself and train yourself and then really coach yourself up at that point with maybe some accounting knowledge, then, then you know who's, who's to say it can't.
Be great. My first instinct though is you know, let's stick with the bookkeeping because this is mm-hmm. The bookkeeping software, right?
Dan DeLong: Yeah. That, that totally makes sense. Um, and again, you know, I think the main thing right now is, is verify the findings. Yeah. Um, you know, 'cause I, I, I don't know what Intuit is using to train.
These suggestions. Right. Are there, are there, is there a team of, of CPAs and GAP certified uh, accountants, um, using and pointing these, [00:40:00] or are they just looking at all of their subscriber base and, and, aggregating the data and say, well, 95% of the time home Depot goes to jobs and supplies, right? So that's what I'm gonna suggest for you as opposed and, and everyone else or, and you know, as well as anyone else, Rachel. Um. You've come across a lot of clients with bad data.
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah. Right. I mean, and I also like I am, I'm also coming from the perspective of I'm cool with the bookkeeping tasks and the repetitive stuff.
Like don't encroach upon my accounting knowledge that I have put. Countless amounts of hours into, so that's what I'm saying is like I am coming from the perspective of that, which I [00:41:00] know I'm not alone in that. You know, it's the reason why, you know, there's various, CPA organizations that don't want.
The reduction in required hours because it's taking away from the requirement of that knowledge. You know what I mean? So it's like there's a happy medium, I think. We're always gonna be like, ah, every time they're like, we're gonna make this software do everything you do. and and, and, and again, I'm totally open to, you know, using it as much as might help save me time.
That's where I think the key word is. And, you know, maybe what I can train it, maybe what I can do and that's fantastic, but I don't want it to do my accounting work. That's kind of where I'm with it.
Dan DeLong: And, uh, for the time being, it looks like you can ignore these suggestions or, uh, turn off, these suggestions, [00:42:00] that's the way it is today.
Who knows what it is? Don't get me wrong.
Rachel Dauchy: I mean, like some of the automations already that are in there, like the bank feed rules and mm-hmm. I can't live without those things, so, you know, don't get me wrong, there's some things that I really, really love and, and for that I am.
Very eternally grateful. And maybe once I'm used to this a little bit more too, I, you know, I might change my tune.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. And, but, um, don't expect these to go,
Rachel Dauchy: I'm cautiously, I'm cautiously optimistic.
Dan DeLong: Yeah. And don't expect these things to go away anytime soon because Yeah. You know, um. Intuit has spent an enormous amount of time and money They have bet The farm and effort.
Yeah. They, they've bet their entire company on. Yeah.
On the future of ai.
Leveraging AI for Advisory Services
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Dan DeLong: And speaking of ai, we do have, um. Our AI cohort that we've been, uh, just started, uh, this year not [00:43:00] this year, this week. Uh, so we had our first live session on Monday. We have our first follow up session tomorrow.
Uh, but it's a four week cohort with, um, with Ted McCrae from Maker Hub. He's a certified ologist.
Rachel Dauchy: Oh my gosh. He's so amazing with ai.
Dan DeLong: We've had him on the, the workshop and we've, we've had him on the QB Power Hour several times. He, he's a really great guy, uh, when, when it comes to basically being able to make the most out of ai.
And this, this whole thing is about, how accountants and bookkeepers can leverage AI to to do some of those, advisory types of services, you know, creating your own, series of prompts to be able to analyze your client's financial data, right? So that is [00:44:00] where you can leverage ai, not just the ones that are in the programs that you're using.
As they use ai, like Intuit or, Katana has a little AI dude and, and those types of things. This is something that you can use for yourself and tailor it to, to yourself. So we have this, you, you know, you didn't miss anything. If you miss, well, you did miss something. You missed our first live, live chat.
But, it's been recorded. You can always go back and, and watch these things. If, you wanna get started even late and have access to that all for a set up fee of $97. Pretty cheap because most of it was created by ai. You know, if I did all, if I did all those things by hand, uh, the setup fee might be a little bit more
Rachel Dauchy: Yeah.
Upcoming Topics and Conclusion
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Dan DeLong: [00:45:00] uh, that's what we've got, uh, this week, Tom. Uh, next week, not tomorrow. Uh, next week we're gonna be talking about customizing your sales forms inside of QuickBooks Online, uh, what you can, the good, bad, and the ugly. Uh, we'll also have our friend from, uh, Yusef, from from with Method, not with Method, but used to be with Method on how Method can basically make, the layout designer that you know and love out of QuickBooks Desktop into something that's, cloud-based and online. So hopefully you join us. Yeah, giving
Rachel Dauchy: his help. I still wanna customize my sales receipt and I, it's on my list.
Dan DeLong: All right, well, you get a freebie because you're the cohost. So we'll see you next time on the workshop Wednesday, and we hope you all have a great week ahead.
[00:46:00] [00:47:00]
