Small Businesses Dump Manual Workflows for BILL AI Tools

Businesses and their accountants continued to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) agents and other digital tools in the quarter ended Dec. 31, BILL executives said Thursday (Feb. 5) during the company’s second quarter fiscal 2026 earnings call.

BILL’s financial operations platform is used by 498,000 businesses and 9,500 accounting firms, according to an investor deck released in conjunction with the call. The number of businesses is up from 481,000 a year earlier. In addition, 8.3 million businesses use BILL’s proprietary B2B payment network.

“By spanning the critical workflows our customers rely on every day, we are driving higher engagement and more transaction volume across the entire platform,” BILL CEO and Founder René Lacerte said during the call.

The number of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) using BILL’s invoice financing offering increased by nearly 50% year over year during the latest quarter, and the origination volume increased by over 30%, Lacerte said.

“Invoice financing is a fast-growing, emerging payment solution that provides flexible capital exactly when it’s needed, addressing a critical operating need for many SMBs,” Lacerte said.

SMBs are also adopting the BILL Cash Account that was launched during the quarter. This cash flow solution enables businesses to hold their operating cash in a high APY account, the company said when introducing the product in October.

“We see Cash Account as an opportunity to bring billions of dollars of monthly offline spend onto our network, increasing our wallet share,” Lacerte said. “Early indications since launching in Q2 show that more than 70% of Cash Account users have increased their spend volumes on our network.”

BILL’s AI agents began completing tasks for SMBs during the quarter. Launched in October, the AI agents collect and validate W-9s, reconcile receipts, accelerate user onboarding and carry out routine tasks.

Lacerte said during the call that nearly 10,000 customers have activated the W-9 agent, and that agent has collected 40,000 W-9s. He added the BILL expects the agent to collect and automate 3 million W-9s by the end of 2026, “saving thousands of weeks of manual work for our customers.”

BILL has also added new features for accountants. Among them are procurement, multi-entity support, and advanced reporting in the platform’s Accountant Console. Lacerte said during the call that these tools are increasingly important as AI reshapes the accounting profession.

“As the profession adapts to a rapidly changing technology landscape, our foundational knowledge of the back office for SMBs and the accountants that serve them is unique,” Lacerte said. “This capability, combined with the breadth of our platform, is enabling firms to transform their mundane transactional work into high-value, automated advisory services.”