(This column originally appeared in Forbes)
Intuit Expands Intelligence Platform to Power the Next Era of Accounting Firm and Business Growth
At this year’s Intuit Connect event in Las Vegas, the company announced a major expansion of the Intuit Intelligence platform. New features include: AI-Powered Accounting Automation: Intuit’s new Agentic Books Close automates much of the monthly closing process, including following accounting firms’ procedures, tracking activities, and flagging exceptions for human review. Smarter Cash Flow and Invoicing: QuickBooks uses AI to identify overdue invoices, compare business performance against industry peers, and automatically follow up with customers, helping businesses collect payments four days faster on average. Industry-Specific ERP Capabilities: Intuit Enterprise Suite is expanding functionality for manufacturers, construction companies, and nonprofits, including inventory management, production workflows, multi-level bills of materials, and grant accounting. Automated Sales Tax Compliance: New QuickBooks features identify discrepancies, streamline sales tax calculations and preparation, and enable businesses to electronically file returns and make payments directly to state agencies. Integrated Financial and Business Management: Intuit is expanding its platform with automated billing and collections, revenue recognition, multi-entity financial reporting, integrated financing, and enhanced employee management capabilities.
Why this is important for your small business:
One thing about Intuit is that this is a company that doesn’t stand still. 2027 is going to be the year where many small businesses start testing the water with agentic AI. It will take a bit of time before SMBs are relying on AI to do their processing and make decisions but, like the cloud, ultimately they will adapt. Companies like Intuit are rolling out these features now and will be fixing/upgrading/improving them until they’re taking as matter-of-fact by their customers. My recommendation: speak to a QuickBooks partner, or someone from Intuit and get a tour. Then lean in.
Vensure Employer Solutions Launches AI Orchestrator to Help SMBs Manage the Digital Workforce
HR services and tech company Vensure has introduced AI Orchestrator — a new platform that helps SMBs create, deploy, monitor and manage artificial intelligence agents alongside their human employees. Key features include agentic customization that allows businesses to use no-code and low-code tools for employees without extensive programming experience. (Source: PR Newswire)
Why this is important for your small business:
As I mentioned above, SMBs in 2027 are going to be seeing a lot of agentic AI. Tools like the AI Orchestrator may be essential in helping them manage the agents that providing the most value for their companies.
Smart Clerk Helps More Than 10,000 Companies Annually Prepare Bookkeeper-Ready Financial Reports
Smart Clerk — a Delaware-based tech company — announced that its AI-powered bookkeeping platform now helps more than 10,000 businesses annually automate financial reporting. Businesses can connect their bank accounts or upload statements, and the platform converts those items into organized financial reports, including profit-and-loss statements and balance sheets. The platform also supports other currencies when producing financial reports. (Source: PR Newswire)
Why this is important for your small business:
This makes so much sense to me. For most SMBs the accounting is in their bank statements, so why not just connect to the bank and do the books automatically with AI? According to Smart Clerk’s internal measurements, the platform achieves more than 99 percent end-to-end accuracy in processing statements, categorizing transactions and preparing financial reports.
NetSuite Helps Construction Businesses Protect Margins and Improve Cash Flow
ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) platform NetSuite announced plans to launch NetSuite for Construction Businesses — a new AI-powered financial management solution that assists general contractors, subcontractors and specialty-trade companies with improving profitability, managing project costs and strengthening cash flow. The announcement was made at the NetSuite’s SuiteWorld conference in Las Vegas. NetSuite for Construction will integrate accounting, project management, billing and financial reporting into a single system — along with AI agents to automate administrative tasks. (Source: PR Newswire)
Why this is important for your small business:
Good to see NetSuite getting into the construction industry, which for now is dominated by just a few big players. Construction companies need more options.
Introducing GPT-6.1 Terra
Another major update from OpenAI: Its latest artificial intelligence model GPT-6.1 Terra has officially launched. According to the company, Terra delivers faster performance, improved accuracy and more affordable AI automation for businesses and developers. The model specializes in visual reasoning, computer-based tasks and professional writing. (Source: OpenAI)
Why this is important for your small business:
If you’re building an AI solution for your company, or you’re an AI developer GPT 6.1 is a significant step forward. OpenAI says it “excels at communication and computer-based tasks,” and performs better in the reasoning department compared to GPT-5.6 Terra — “15 percentage points higher,” the company stated. Regarding operating costs, API pricing starts at $1 per million input tokens and $5 per million output tokens, making the model more economical for businesses running high-volume AI applications. Its combination of improved speed, accuracy and lower costs is an attractive choice for companies that are evaluating which AI platforms to use.
Note: Have a technology story that small business owners should know about? Don’t mind me sharing my opinion? Share it with me on X @genemarks.
