Tech news: Intuit announces Intuit Assist for QuickBooks

November 22, 2024 10:24 AM

Intuit announces Intuit Assist for QuickBooks; Deloitte releases four new accelerators on Workiva marketplace; KPMG invests $100 million in Google Cloud Alliance; and other accounting tech news.

Intuit announces Intuit Assist for QuickBooks

Intuit announced the release of the AI assistant Intuit Assist for QuickBooks. Among other things, the assistant is capable of capturing updates in various places such as email, electronic documents or even paper notes to automatically turn customer conversations into estimates or invoices. By forwarding an email from a customer or uploading a photo of a handwritten note or document in the QuickBooks app, Intuit Assist can auto-generate an estimate or invoice for business owners to review, send and close deals with clients. Similarly, with the Intuit Assist powered email-to-bill feature, business owners can forward emails, drag and drop files, or scan a QR code to upload images, and Intuit Assist will enter the details into a bill form. The AI also detects past due invoices and automatically drafts personalized invoice reminders that are uniquely generated based on the client history and invoice status. Intuit Assist also extracts details from receipts and auto-populates them in QuickBooks by expense category, payment account and vendor. Additionally, Intuit Assist can automatically match transactions made through other products across the QuickBooks ecosystem, such as invoices paid using QuickBooks Payments or bills paid via QuickBooks Bill Pay, with the corresponding bank transaction. It also helps streamline the setup process for customers who are new to QuickBooks, showing them how to connect with a live human expert who can walk them through the platform and help customize it for their business needs. These live experts can also help customers personalize their chart of accounts and guide them through monthly categorization. From the QuickBooks home page, customers can access a new Business Feed offering a dynamic proactive view of their business, highlighting the work that Intuit Assist has done for them to review.

Deloitte releases four accelerators on Workiva marketplace

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Big four firm Deloitte announced, as an extension of Deloitte and Workiva's existing alliance and environmental, social and governance accelerators, the release of four new sustainability-focused accelerators to help organizations streamline regulatory compliance activities required under the European Union's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. The new accelerators include CSRD Double Materiality Accelerator, a workspace accelerator preconfigured in alignment with Deloitte's double materiality methodology, designed to help enable implementation of CSRD double materiality assessments. Financed Emissions Calculator, a Deloitte-built calculator accelerator, sits on the Workiva platform that helps organizations streamline Scope 3 greenhouse gas Category 15 financed emissions. The calculator tool leverages the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials' framework for GHG emissions reporting to increase transparency in calculations. European Sustainability Reporting Standard Mapping Accelerator enables clients to conduct more efficient ESRS gap assessments on the Workiva platform. After completing a double materiality assessment, the accelerator can be used to map existing Global Reporting Initiative disclosures to ESRS reporting requirements outlined within the CSRD to identify gaps in disclosure requirements that may require future remediation. The Activity Log Analyzer provides a workflow tracker accelerator designed to maintain a complete log of workspace-specific user information and activities from the Workiva platform to help organizations monitor and track ESG activities. The accelerator can be tailored to a range of use cases to help clients identify and monitor user activities across other initiatives. Available now in the Workiva Marketplace, the new Deloitte-built accelerators are offered along with Deloitte's advisory services and are designed to help expand and enhance organizations' sustainability-focused governance, risk and compliance controls and automation functionality within the Workiva platform.

KPMG invests $100M in Google Cloud Alliance

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Big Four firm KPMG expanded its partnership with Google through a $100 million investment in the Google Cloud Alliance, which KPMG estimates will drive $1 billion in incremental growth for the firm. KPMG noted that bookings for its Google Cloud practice have increased tenfold in the past two years, and in April 2024 the firm created a Google Cloud Center of Excellence to centrally align its product development, industry expertise and technical resources for enterprises. With the new investment, KPMG and Google Cloud will collaborate on new solutions that will help clients solve complex business challenges, focusing on data modernization and responsible AI adoption across industries. To support this initiative, KPMG will focus on increasing both its Google Cloud and gen AI certifications and will make Google training and certifications available throughout the firm. The expanded alliance will focus on bringing Vertex AI and Gemini models to financial services clients, enhancing patient support for health care providers via Google Cloud's Healthcare API to improve the detection and treatment in areas like disease detection and care management, and optimizing consumer and retail experiences with new gen AI use cases, such as creating a 360-degree view of data using Google BigQuery.

BlackLine announces BlackLine Studio360 Platform

Finance operations platform BlackLine unveiled the BlackLine Studio360 Platform, designed to unify financial operations, streamline processes and deliver actionable insights across all financial functions. The platform is composed of five key components: Studio360 Integrate offers capabilities for unifying, cleansing and transforming data through pre-built connectors and APIs; Studio360 Orchestrate offers process automation and workflow management capabilities, connecting BlackLine applications, ERPs and other financial applications (e.g., procurement, payroll, treasury) with real-time tracking and event-based scheduling; Studio360 Visualize provides real-time, AI-powered insights, anomaly detection, exception handling and KPI monitoring through customizable dashboards and reports; Studio360 Blueprint offers an extensive library of process design templates, grounded in customer-informed industry best practices and updated by BlackLine and its partners; and Studio360 Control provides a centralized hub to manage financial data hierarchies, policies and certifications for governance and risk management. The platform is bolstered by a partnership with data cloud provider Snowflake, which supports real-time data sharing and scales to handle billions of transactions.

Financial Cents releases billing feature

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Practice management solutions provider Financial Cents launched a new billing feature, designed to expedite the payment process for accounting firms. Users can bill clients for individual or recurring services; sync invoices and payments to keep financial records accurate and up-to-date; offer ACH and credit card payment options to clients; store client payment information securely; set up recurring payments; and send automated client reminders that keep clients informed about upcoming or overdue payments. For more information, visit https://financial-cents.com/billing/.

Amfori releases ESG due diligence tool

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ESG solutions provider amfori is launching amfori SustainaPass to guide companies on their sustainability journey and facilitate ESG due diligence and reporting. The product is composed of three interconnected and user-friendly modules to help companies identify their material ESG topics (double materiality), manage their risks and impacts, and conduct their reporting. A fourth module will be released in 2025 to support stakeholder engagement. The product synchronizes with other amfori solutions, such as amfori BSCI and amfori BEPI, to provide insights for risk and impact assessment. The product also gives an estimation of risks at country level for various ESG indicators based on aggregated data and external research, captured via the amfori ESG Risk Compass.

Foxit releases AI tool in admin console

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PDF and e-signature solutions provider Foxit launched its AI Assistant in the Foxit Admin Console. Users can automate key administrative tasks like license management, user account updates and domain verification; navigate directly to task-specific pages; and access instant support for troubleshooting and FAQs, whether they need guidance on technical issues or answers to frequently asked questions. Foxit offers smart commands that can execute tasks directly within the admin console, enabling enterprise administrators to manage team members, their assigned plans and product usage.

Avalara releases content for hospitality and lodgings

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Tax solutions provider Avalara released Avalara Tax Content (ATC) for Lodging, which uses AI-infused technology to gather, process and organize lodging tax data
for the lodging and hospitality industries. The software offers intelligence automation capabilities, access to researched and regularly updated lodging tax content, and both full and partial updates of tax data. The software works with Avalara's other compliance products for lodging and hospitality customers, including Avalara AvaTax for Hospitality and Avalara Returns for Hospitality.

Partnerships and integrations

Cloud-based accounting solutions provider Caseware announced a strategic partnership with Validis, an accounting data extraction and standardization solutions provider. This collaboration will provide audit firms with data ingestion tools that deliver audit-ready data from diverse sources for analysis. Through the integration, Caseware customers will be able to access Validis' capacities for automated data collection, cleansing and standardization within Caseware's own platform. … BillingPlatform, an enterprise revenue lifecycle management platform, announced that grocery company Instacart has selected BillingPlatform's Billing and Revenue Recognition solutions to streamline its billing and subscription management. … Human capital solutions company ADP and payments software provider Fiserv announced a strategic partnership that brings together Fiserv's small business solutions, including Clover and CashFlow Central, with the small business payroll and HR solution RUN Powered by ADP. Through this partnership, ADP and Fiserv will offer U.S.-based small businesses access to an integrated, all-in-one solution combining the full power of RUN Powered by ADP and the Clover small business management platform. In addition, CashFlow Central, an integrated accounts payables and receivables management platform, will be available to RUN and Clover clients.

Other news

Accounting software company TrinSoft has achieved the Small and Midsize Business Management Specialization from Microsoft. This recognition highlights TrinSoft's ability to deliver cloud-based business solutions, including Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, tailored to meet the needs of small and midsize businesses. Awarded to select Microsoft partners, the Small and Midsize Business Management Specialization acknowledges those with a proven track record of success in deploying cloud solutions that help smaller organizations optimize processes and fuel growth. ... Insightsoftware announced that its Logi Symphony announced its embedded business intelligence (BI) solution is now available on Google Cloud Marketplace. Logi Symphony leverages the advanced tools of the Vertex AI platform, Gemini models, and BigQuery, organizations to harness AI-driven insights and real-time data analysis, all within the trusted Google Cloud ecosystem. This streamlines digital transformations by integrating analytics with Google Cloud-hosted apps, enabling deeper insights, optimized performance, and smarter decisions on a secure, scalable platform.