Intuit Intelligence is the AI layer across QuickBooks Online in 2026: a chat that answers questions about one company file, and agents that categorize transactions, chase invoices, flag sales tax anomalies and, on the top tier, comment on your KPIs. What you get depends on the plan. As of September 2026, Simple Start at $38 has the chat at limited capacity, Essentials at $85 adds the accounting and payments agents, Plus at $140 adds sales tax and customer agents, and Advanced at $340 adds the finance agent, KPI dashboards and 25 chat questions a month, with a $10 add-on for more. None of it works across more than one company.
The names, sorted out
Intuit has renamed this more than once, so the first job is vocabulary. Intuit Assist was the earlier name for the chat and the suggestions inside QuickBooks. The umbrella is now Intuit Intelligence, per the help article Intuit updated in August 2026, and the individual agents, which had names like Accounting Agent and Finance Agent when Intuit announced them, appear on the pricing page as "Accounting AI", "Payments AI" and so on. They are the same things.
An agent, in Intuit's usage, is a feature that does a job on its own inside your company file and hands you the result: categorizing a bank feed, drafting a reminder for an overdue invoice, flagging a sales tax filing that looks off. It is distinct from the chat, which answers a question and does nothing else.
The connector to ChatGPT and Claude, released on 28 July 2026, is a third thing and not part of Intuit Intelligence at all. It lets an outside AI read, and in some cases write to, one QuickBooks Online file at any tier, and the QuickBooks connectors for ChatGPT and Claude covers what it can see and change. Owners conflate the three regularly, and so do some reps.
What each plan includes
Intuit's pricing page, read in September 2026, lists the plans below. Every price is Intuit's list, before the 50% discount for three months that the page advertises, and the plan features are as the page and Intuit's August 2026 product update describe them. Squire's September 2026 summary of the year's changes notes the new prices applied to Essentials, Plus and Advanced renewals from 1 August 2026. Simple Start did not move.
| As of September 2026 | Simple Start, $38 | Essentials, $85 | Plus, $140 | Advanced, $340 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intuit Intelligence chat | Limited capacity, beta | Limited capacity, beta | Limited capacity, beta | 25 questions a month; $10 add-on |
| Accounting agent | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Payments agent | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Sales tax agent | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Customer agent | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Finance agent and KPI dashboards | No | No | No | Yes |
| KPI scorecard | No | 2 custom | 2 custom | Unlimited custom, 10 standard |
| Books Upkeep | No | No | No | Yes |
| Users | 1 | 3 | 5 | 25 |
The 10 standard KPIs on Advanced, against 48 and up in Intuit Enterprise Suite, come from Insightful Accountant's coverage of Intuit's release. The August 2026 product update also put invoicing automation, conversational reporting and cash flow scenarios on every plan at limited capacity, which is why the Simple Start column is not empty.
The usage caps, quoted
The chat is marked "Limited capacity, BETA" on every tier of the pricing page as of September 2026, and Intuit does not publish what the limit is below Advanced. Intuit's Finance Agent page, as of the same month, says Advanced includes "Chat for instant insights – 25 questions per month". The help article introducing Intuit Intelligence, updated 27 August 2026, says every plan has "monthly usage limits that reset each billing cycle" and describes the add-on as "$10/month for a significant increase to your monthly prompt allowance", adding that it "does not provide unlimited prompts". Intuit does not give a size.
Twenty-five questions a month is under one a workday, for one company. That is enough for an owner who asks a question about the file on Friday afternoons. It is not enough for the way most owners use a chat once they trust it, which is in bursts, six questions in a row about one bad month. The add-on will help by an amount Intuit has not published, which makes it a hard thing to budget for.
The accounting agent, and one setting to ask about
The accounting agent categorizes bank transactions, flags reconciliation problems and looks for anomalies, on Essentials, Plus, Advanced and Intuit Enterprise Suite, according to Intuit's help article on its features, updated 18 August 2026. VentureBeat reported that Intuit claims the agent lifted categorization accuracy by 20 points, and also reported user complaints, which is the usual shape of a feature that is better on average and wrong in particular cases.
Auto-post is the agent's second mode. In the first, called ready to post, the agent categorizes each transaction and leaves it in a queue for a person to accept. In the second, it books the entry itself. The difference matters to an owner because an auto-posted mistake, a $3,400 equipment deposit coded to repairs, looks exactly like a correct entry on the P&L, and nobody accepted it. Ask your bookkeeper which mode each company is on. Most say ready to post, and some are surprised by the answer.
The finance agent, honestly
The finance agent is the Advanced-tier feature that reads one company's file and writes comments on the KPI dashboard, and, since the August 2026 update, produces a forecast through the next quarter in conversation. Intuit's Finance Agent page says it is "currently available to QuickBooks Advanced and Intuit Enterprise Suite users". The 27 August 2026 announcement, covered by CPA Practice Advisor, added an Intuit Intelligence chat aimed at CFOs and controllers, Books Upkeep on Advanced, and multi-entity close drafting in Enterprise Suite as a beta, so the multi-company work stayed in the product that is sold by quote.
Inside one file it is decent: it will tell you gross margin slipped two points and that the customer concentration rose. Intuit's product update claims customers were "paid four days faster on average", saw a "30% reduction in manual work" and a "nearly 20% increase in revenue"; those are Intuit's own figures, with no method given, and we would not repeat them to a lender. What the agent cannot do is see a second company, cancel a management fee that one of your companies charged another, or point to the specific entry an answer came from. It works at report level.
Three companies on Advanced
The rep's pitch is that the AI is the reason to upgrade. The owner hearing it has three companies on Plus, paying $420 a month at September 2026 list. Three Advanced files cost $1,020 a month at the same September 2026 list, or $12,240 a year, and buy 75 chat questions a month split three ways, three finance agents each commenting on its own file, and no view across them. The question she has, which is "did the three of us together make money in September, and which one didn't", cannot be asked in any of the three chats. She would need to ask each one for September net income, write the three numbers on paper, remember to remove the $6,000 of management fees HoldCo charged the other two, and add. Intuit's help article says cross-client comparison is available only in Intuit Accountant Suite, which is the accountant's product, not hers. QuickBooks Advanced, Enterprise Suite or a reporting layer works through the same arithmetic for the consolidation question.
Navigator connects to each of those QuickBooks Online files read-only and answers questions across all of them at once, with every figure in an answer opening to the company and the entry it came from. AI is included on every plan with no monthly question count and no add-on; the base plan is $299 a month for the first entity and half that for each additional one, so three companies run $598 a month. It does not replace the accounting agent, because it does not write to the books, and it does not replace the bookkeeper. Plans are at navigatorhq.ai/pricing.
Who it is right for
The usual advice is to take the AI features as the reason to move up a tier. We would count first. If you have one company, already on Advanced for the users, the custom reports or the Spreadsheet Sync add-in, the finance agent and the 25 questions are already yours and worth switching on. If you have one company on Plus and ask fewer than a question a week, the chat you have at limited capacity is probably enough, and Advanced versus Plus is a decision about users and reporting, not AI. If you have more than one company, no tier of QuickBooks Online answers the question you actually have, and the money is better spent on something that reads all the files, or on a person who does, which AI CFO, fractional CFO or bookkeeper prices out.
The agents and the chat read only what the bookkeeper posted, so a file three weeks behind gets confident answers three weeks old. And Intuit changes this page most months; the tier table above was true in September 2026 and should be checked against Intuit's pricing page before anyone signs.
Questions owners ask
What is Intuit Intelligence?
Intuit's current name for the AI across QuickBooks Online: a chat that answers questions about the company file you are in, and a set of agents that categorize transactions, chase invoices, watch sales tax and, on Advanced, comment on KPIs. It replaced the Intuit Assist name. Which parts you get depends on the plan, and every part works inside one company file.
Which QuickBooks plan has AI?
All of them, in different amounts. As of September 2026, Intuit's pricing page shows the chat on every tier at limited capacity, the accounting and payments agents from Essentials at $85, the sales tax and customer agents from Plus at $140, and the finance agent, KPI dashboards and Books Upkeep on Advanced at $340. Simple Start at $38 has the chat only.
How many AI questions does QuickBooks Advanced include?
As of September 2026, Intuit's Finance Agent page says Advanced includes 25 chat questions a month. Its help article, updated August 2026, says every tier has monthly usage limits that reset each billing cycle and that a $10-a-month add-on buys a significant increase, not unlimited prompts. Each company file is its own subscription, so the questions do not pool across companies.
Does the QuickBooks accounting agent post transactions automatically?
Only if someone switched it to auto-post. Intuit's August 2026 help article describes two modes: ready to post, where the agent categorizes bank transactions and leaves them for a person to accept, and auto-post, where it books them. Ask your bookkeeper which mode each company is on, because auto-posted errors look identical to correct entries on the P&L.
Does Intuit Intelligence work across multiple companies?
No. The chat and the agents work inside the company file you have open. Intuit's help article says cross-client comparison is available only in Intuit Accountant Suite, and the multi-entity close features announced in August 2026 sit in Intuit Enterprise Suite as a beta. An owner with three QuickBooks Online files gets three separate answers and no total.
Related
For the wider map of what reads a QuickBooks file, the best AI for QuickBooks compares Intuit's own layer with the connectors and the reporting tools. If the question is whether a general chatbot can do the books at all, can ChatGPT do my accounting is the place to start. And for the tier decision without the AI, QuickBooks Advanced vs Plus sets out what the extra money buys.
If you would rather ask the question across all your companies and see the entry behind the answer, the trial connects read-only in two clicks and needs no card: navigatorhq.ai.
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Published . Last updated . Reviewed by a CFO on the Navigator team.