How much should we trust AI with our critical financial processes?
In a recent episode of The Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast, hosts Alicia Katz Pollock and Matthew “Spot” Fulton break down the August 2025 “In the Know” webinar from Intuit, where AI agents take center stage alongside major Enterprise Suite enhancements and ProAdvisor Academy improvements.
From payment collection to payroll processing, QuickBooks is pushing automation further than ever before. But as Fulton and Katz Pollock discuss, the technology that saves you hours today needs careful oversight to avoid compliance nightmares tomorrow.
ProAdvisor Academy Gets Smarter
Before diving into the AI updates, the hosts highlighted some welcome improvements to ProAdvisor Academy. You can now filter courses by length and CPE credit amount—perfect for those moments when you think, “I have an hour, what can I learn right now?”
Even better, the system finally saves your CPE certificates in the “My History” section. As Katz Pollock notes, “They used to email them to you and you had to save them, and that was it. So the fact that you can actually now track your CPE is pretty darn awesome.”
Intuit is also launching a new quarterly series called Solution Spotlight, where support experts will tackle complex challenges and deep-dive into underutilized tools. The first topic? Bank transactions and reconciliation—the community’s most requested subject.
Enterprise Suite: The Multi-Entity Game Changer
Fulton and Katz Pollock spent considerable time discussing Enterprise Suite’s powerful consolidation features, and for good reason. These updates address long-standing issues that have plagued multi-entity businesses for years.
The Shared Chart of Accounts feature uses AI to standardize accounting across all your entities. As Fulton explains it, “You choose which chart of accounts you want to be your primary one, and then you can use the AI to say, okay, we think these accounts are going to match up with those accounts. You still have the ability to review and say, yep, you got this right.”
The time savings are massive. Fulton speaks from experience, “As an accountant, the time and energy it takes to try to normalize a chart of accounts is extensive. There’s a lot of thought and knowledge and wisdom that goes into it.”
Multi-entity transactions are even more impressive. When you invoice another entity in your organization, the system automatically creates the corresponding bill in that entity, complete with a PDF attachment. Fulton recalls the old way: “You would pull up two browsers, you’d have both companies up, and you look at the intercompany exchanges between one company and the other, and you go line by line to make sure both sides are there.”
But Katz Pollock raises an important point about accessibility. She has clients with multiple small entities—”literally QuickBooks Ledger or Simple Start”—who desperately need these consolidation features but can’t justify Enterprise Suite’s price tag. Her suggestion? “I think they should make an Enterprise Lite version focused solely on multi-company functions.
The Payments Agent: Getting You Paid Faster (and Smarter)
The Payments agent analyzes customer behavior to optimize your collection strategy. When you create an invoice, it shows you how long they’ve been a customer, their payment history, open invoices, and average payment time.
But here’s where it gets interesting. The agent suggests payment methods based on what will get you paid fastest. It even calculates total time to receive funds, including your customer’s typical delay. When Katz Pollock saw “ACH 14 days” in the demo, she clarified, “It wasn’t that ACH takes 14 days to clear. It’s that the customer takes on average nine days to pay, and then you have the three to five days it takes to clear.”
Fulton cuts to why this matters, “As business owners, all too often we rely on small margins to where we are super sensitive to cash flow. If it’s going to take somebody longer to pay, we need to know that.”
The system can also parse invoices from text, images, or PDFs, though Katz Pollock admits it “doesn’t do the line items yet. But you know, it’s just the infancy of the technology.”
One limitation bothers Katz Pollock: Reminder settings apply to all customers universally. “I have placeholder invoices or agreements with customers where it’s okay that they’re not going to pay for another 90 days,” she explains. Her workaround? Adjust due dates to match actual payment expectations.
The Payroll Agent: Convenience Meets Controversy
The Payroll agent’s text-message time collection generated the most heated discussion. Employees receive texts asking for hours, overtime, and tips. They respond with simple messages, and the system compiles everything for manager approval.
Sounds great, right? Not so fast.
“If they’re not keeping a time card, you know they’re going to overestimate how much they actually worked,” Katz Pollock warns. Fulton agrees, “How many employees are always completely honest with their hours and their overtime and their tips?”
The system is heavily restricted during beta. It’s only for US customers who don’t use auto payroll or QuickBooks Time, have one pay schedule, and use basic pay types. Fulton sees wisdom here, “Let’s make sure this is working before we give it to all the crazies out there.”
Still, there are safeguards. The system flags anomalies, requires manager approval, creates audit logs, and needs employee consent for each payroll period. Fulton even sees potential for construction companies where daily time certification is required. “They’re having to certify by responding back to this the amount of time they worked.”
Katz Pollock’s verdict? “The technology is going to be great. It’s the humans that you can’t trust in this particular issue.”
Customer Leads: Your Email Becomes Your CRM
Currently in Gmail-only beta (Outlook coming soon), the Customer Leads agent scans your email for customer interactions and organizes them into a sales pipeline: inquiry, negotiation, finalization, contracted, or lost.
Fulton’s excited about consolidation. “I’ve been using 17 Hats, but the challenge I’ve always had is the integration piece. I can handle all this stuff up to the estimate and invoice somebody, but it’s always been external.”
Katz Pollock uses Method CRM currently and sees the appeal, “This will be really nice to be able to just keep it right inside QBO and not have to go to another app.”
The hosts admit they’re still learning this feature, and Katz Pollock has a future episode planned to dive deeper.
More Updates Worth Your Attention
A few other updates the hosts are looking forward to include:
Scheduled Compensation Changes
This might be the sleeper hit of the updates. You can now pre-program raises and bonuses with effective dates. As Fulton exclaims, “This is sunlight shining down onto us so we can take a vacation at the end of the year, too!”
Katz Pollock shares a perfect use case: “I had a client whose employee broke their field service iPad and was reimbursing them out of their payroll, $150 per month for six months.” With scheduling, that deduction would automatically end on the right date.
Sales Tax Automation Expands
QuickBooks now handles sales tax filing for Iowa, Minnesota, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, and West Virginia at $40 per filing. While the hosts debated the price, Fulton notes it’s actually market rate compared to services like Avalara.
Looking Ahead
The hosts emphasized community feedback throughout the episode. As Fulton puts it: “Are you using Enterprise yet? If you are, what features are you loving? If you aren’t, what features are most enticing?”
They’ve even started a LinkedIn group for the podcast where listeners can discuss episodes and share experiences.
Katz Pollock is launching her “Great QBO Refresh” training series in September, completely rebuilding her curriculum to address all the interface changes.
Don’t miss Intuit Connect (October 27-29 in Las Vegas) or Reframe Conference (November in Florida), which Fulton calls “by far, hands down, the best conference I’ve been to in years.”
The Bottom Line
These AI agents aren’t replacing accounting professionals; they’re redefining the role. The firms that thrive will leverage AI for efficiency while maintaining the human judgment that ensures accuracy, compliance, and client trust.
As Katz Pollock wisely advises about the payroll agent’s rollout, “Intuit, go slow on this one. We want to actually see use cases before it becomes universal.”
The future of accounting isn’t human versus machine. It’s human with machine, each doing what they do best. Ready to dive deeper? Listen to the full episode above and join the conversation in the Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast LinkedIn group.
Alicia Katz Pollock’s Royalwise OWLS (On-Demand Web-based Learning Solutions) is the industry’s premier portal for top-notch QuickBooks Online training with CPE for accounting firms, bookkeepers, and small business owners. Visit Royalwise OWLS, where learning QBO is a HOOT!