BILL Debuts AI Agents Focused on Small Business Needs

Finance platform BILL has launched a suite of AI agents for small businesses.

The new offering, announced Tuesday (Oct. 28) includes features that autonomously collect and validate W-9s, reconcile receipts, accelerate user onboarding, and carry out routine tasks for what BILL calls “Fortune 5 Million” companies saddled with manual workflows.

“For example, more than 90% of businesses say collecting W-9s is the most painful part of doing taxes, and many spend too much time on expense management,” BILL said in a news release. “These inefficiencies force leaders into trade-offs between running the back office and growing their business. BILL AI agents eliminate these workflows, freeing teams to focus on growth and serving their customers.”

According to the release, the new agents include the BILL W-9 Agent, which the company says eliminates more than 80% of manual steps involved in collecting W-9s by autonomously requesting and pre-validating W-9s from vendors.

“It can erase most of the work associated with collecting up to 3 million W-9s, saving BILL customers an estimated 650,000 hours,” the release said.

Meanwhile, the BILL Reconciliation Agent is a “touchless receipts agent that automatically codes transactions, so receipts reconcile themselves,” and while offering “full visibility into expenses, helping finance teams stay organized and compliant.”

PYMNTS wrote earlier this year about the way artificial intelligence (AI) is allowing the “Fortune 5 million” to enjoy some of the technological perks of the Fortune 500.

“Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) across the country are embracing artificial intelligence (AI) as a way to compete against large enterprises,” that report said.

“By automating processes, augmenting talent, and accelerating decision-making, AI enables smaller firms to bypass legacy systems and leap directly into an AI-first business model — one that can rival what large incumbents offer.”

That report also included comments from Mary Kay Bowman, executive vice president and general manager of payments and financial services at BILL, who told PYMNTS that because smaller businesses can’t compete with larger ones on scale they need to compete on smarts.

“The smartest thing small businesses can do is use AI to unlock top-tier finance expertise and tools that were only ever available to enterprise companies,” she said, noting that the best AI tools for SMBs aren’t flashy tech add-ons but designed with small business needs in mind.

“Silicon Valley needs to be delivering AI that actually delivers tangible outcomes that small businesses need: saving time, improving accuracy, and freeing up bandwidth to focus on growth,” Bowman said.

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