Accounting Software Just Grew a Brain

Welcome back apprentices! 👋

Remember when balancing the books meant coffee, receipts, and a small existential crisis?

Well, your accounting app just hired four interns who never take lunch breaks — or breaks at all.

They’re cheap, cheerful, and allegedly allergic to paperwork piles.

Wonder what happens when the bots meet your bank feed? Grab a snack and scroll on.

In today's email

• Four fresh AI assistants

• Early users reclaim 12 hours a month

• $10-$25 bump; ~$600 value returned

• Try It in 10 minutes

• + new AI tools

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Quick News 

🤖 Meet Your New Boss. In a new ResumeBuilder.com survey, 60% of U.S. managers admit they’re using AI to decide who gets promoted, demoted — or deleted from payroll. Tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot are now helping determine raises (78%), promotions (77%), and even firings (64%). Even wilder? 1 in 5 managers let AI call the shots with no human input, and most haven’t had formal training. At this rate, Clippy might be writing your next performance review. AI may be optimizing office decisions, but without proper training, your boss’s robot assistant might not know empathy from Excel.

🧬 AI vs. Cancer. Isomorphic Labs — Alphabet’s AI-powered pharma moonshot — is officially stepping out of the simulation lab and into human clinical trials. Backed by $600M and using AlphaFold 3 (DeepMind’s brainy protein-predicting system), the company’s first AI-designed cancer drugs are about to face their biggest test: actual people. With heavyweight partnerships from Novartis and Eli Lilly, Isomorphic isn’t just making meds — it’s building a “drug design engine” that aims to spit out treatments on demand. The ultimate flex? They want to solve all diseases. No pressure.

📚 Big Tech Funds Teacher Training. OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic are teaming up with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) to launch a nationwide AI training hub aimed at prepping 400,000 U.S. educators to use AI in the classroom. Backed by a cool $10M from OpenAI (plus tools, training, and API credits), the program will offer workshops, online courses, and pro development — starting in NYC and scaling across the country. Teachers, especially in high-needs districts, will get first dibs on education-focused AI features, support, and real access to the tech shaping their students’ futures.

Together with inFlow

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An inFlow specialist can show you how to simplify inventory from day one

✅ See how others are navigating change in our case studies
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QuickBooks 
These New AI Agents Aim to Delete Your Admin Hangover

QuickBooks Online just promoted four brand-new generative‑AI "agents" from beta to the big leagues. 

They don’t only chat; they pay bills, chase invoices, and model cash‑flow — claiming to gift you up to 12 extra hours a month. Yes, Intuit raised prices to cover the robo‑headcount, but analysts still call it margin rocket fuel. 

Below: the how, the why, the bigger‑than‑bookkeeping implications — and a 10‑minute cheat sheet to try them today.

What’s Up?

On July 6, Intuit announced that QuickBooks Online now ships with four task‑centric AI agents — Accounting, Payments, Customer, and Finance — trained on billions of anonymized small‑business transactions. Early pilots shaved an average half‑day of grunt work per month per business. Investors hiccuped (‑1% intraday) but recovered once it was clear Intuit would monetize the bots à‑la‑carte. 

Translation: your accounting software just went from calculator to colleague — and it’s clocking in 24/7.

Fun Facts

Meet the Bot‑Four:
🧮 Accounting Agent auto‑categorizes bank feeds and spots duplicate receipts.
💸 Payments Agent eyeballs late payers and auto‑sends polite (or spicy) reminders.
📧 Customer Agent whips up upsell emails and tracks open rates in‑app.
📊 Finance Agent builds cash‑flow scenarios, color‑coding red‑flag weeks.

⏲️ 12‑Hour Dividend: Internal testing across 3,200 SMBs found a median 12.2 hours saved per month — basically three Netflix binges, or one full payroll run.

💵 Price Tag Reality Check: Plans jump $10–$25/mo as of July 1, 2025. CFOs grumble, analysts applaud.

👥 Humans on Tap: If an agent stalls, QuickBooks pipes you to an on‑call accountant, preserving its "experts‑in‑the‑loop" shtick.

🗓️ Timeline to Today: Concept demo (May 2024) → Private beta (Oct 2024) → 80K‑user pilot (Feb 2025) → General availability (July 2025).

The Bigger Picture

This isn’t just a QuickBooks glow‑up; it’s a preview of multi‑agent SaaS — software that spawns specialized co‑workers rather than monolithic chatbots. 

ServiceNow resolves tickets the same way; Salesforce’s Einstein Copilot is flirting with multi‑agent orchestration. The macro trend: tasks are being unbundled into micro‑services you pay for by the outcome, not the seat license. Computing shifted from servers to cloud VMs; now labor is shifting from humans to on‑demand, API‑callable labor‑bots. 

Expect a Cambrian explosion of niche “agents‑for‑X” over the next 24 months, from HR onboarding to supplier audits.

What’s the Deal for You? 

Time is literally money: at a conservative $50/hour blended rate, 12 free hours equals $600/month — outpacing QuickBooks’ new surcharge fivefold. Less admin also unlocks intangible upside: faster decision‑cycles, fewer Friday‑night reconciliation tantrums, happier clients who get nudged before they ghost.

Your 10‑Minute Test Drive

Ready to see whether the bots walk the talk? 

Here’s a mini‑sprint you can finish before your espresso cooldown. 

1. Flip the switch – Settings → Labs → toggle AI Agents ON, then refresh.
   

2. Experiment with banking – Pick a gnarly uncategorized transaction; ask Accounting Agent to tag it. Watch fields auto‑fill.
   

3. Chase some cash – In Overdue Invoices, choose a stubborn payer; let the Customer Agent send a “Friendly,” “Firm,” or “Dad‑Joke” nudge.
   

4. Forecast the runway – In Cash‑Flow Planner, set horizon to 90 days and let Finance Agent redraw your runway in real time.
   

5. Stress‑test the safety net – Tag a weird double‑tax expense and hit Escalate to Human to meet the fallback team.
   

6. Count the win – Tomorrow, open Efficiency Report to measure minutes saved and corrections needed.

Watch‑Outs & Gotchas

🗑️ Garbage in = Garbage out. Give your chart of accounts a spring‑clean before turning the bots loose.

🔒 Privacy breadcrumbs. Reminder emails go out under your domain, so audit the wording if you’re in a regulated field.

👁️‍🗨️ Trust, but verify. Early pilots saw about a 2 % mis‑categorization rate; keep Review before posting on until you’re confident.

Final Pro Tip

Block one espresso‑fueled afternoon this week to prune vendors and merge duplicate expense categories. The cleaner the data, the sharper the bots — otherwise you’re just turbo‑charging chaos with an AI V‑8.

–– End of Dispatch –– 🎬

Help Your Friends Level Up! 🔥

Hey, you didn’t get all this info for nothing — share it! If you know someone who’s diving into AI, help them stay in the loop with this week’s updates.

Sharing is a win-win! Send this to a friend who’s all about tech, and you’ll win a little surprise 👀

🧪 Test the Prompt

A playground for your imagination (and low-key prompt skills).

Each send, we give you a customizable DALL·E prompt inspired by a real-world use case — something that could help you in your business or job if you wanted to use it that way. But it’s also just a fun creative experiment.

You tweak it, run it, and send us your favorite. We pick one winner to feature in the next issue.

Bonus: you’re secretly getting better at prompt design. 🤫

👑 The winner is…

Last week, we challenged you to test GPT-4o’s visual generation skills with this prompt.

Here’s the WINNER:

Congrats to Eric for his creation!🥳

Want to be featured next? Keep those generations coming!

🎨 Prompt: The Decision Summit

Design a dramatic mountain summit where major life decisions are made. A glowing decision table hovers at the peak, surrounded by hooded figures made of [symbolic material or texture]. Each figure presents a floating option, visualized as a surreal object shaped like [abstract form or metaphor]. Storm clouds swirl below, and a single beam of light cuts through the sky onto the summit.
Style: cinematic fantasy drama, mountain god-scale perspective, intense contrast lighting, epic composition.

We’ll be featuring the best generations in our next edition!

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