How Intuit is designing embedded AI agents in QuickBooks to serve SMBs

Running a small and medium-sized business (SMB) means making a hundred decisions before lunch and dealing with the fallout if one goes sideways. The pressure isn’t just about doing more with less; it’s about doing it faster, with precision, and at scale. 

Traditional automation has promised relief for years, but most SMB-focused tools still leave too much on the table. While they work well for rule-based, repetitive tasks, they tend to break down when faced with edge cases, unexpected inputs, or workflows that fall outside predefined structures. In addition, these tools tend to silo key data away from where real decisions happen. 

That’s where Intuit has stepped in by bringing its embedded AI agents into QuickBooks. These agents assist businesses with important day-to-day functions like payments, accounting, finance, and customer support.

Whether it’s the Payments Agent, which identifies non-traditional invoicing patterns and adapts reminder schedules accordingly, the Accounting Agent, which avoids misclassifying outlier transactions by flagging them for review, or the Customer Agent managing leads and follow-ups without the daily chase, the focus is the same: less overhead, more momentum. 

I sat down with Ashok Srivastava, Intuit’s Chief Data Officer, to explore how Intuit’s AI agents are engineered to maintain a balance between automation and human oversight, while adapting to the needs of scaling businesses.

AI agents now power every corner of Intuit’s product suite

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