Late payments, BAS prep, and bank recs are draining small businesses. MYOB has rolled out an AI suite to tackle all three.
What’s happening: MYOB has announced a suite of AI-powered tools for small and medium businesses, including what it describes as Australia’s first agentic BAS solution.
Why this matters: The tools most likely to shift that number are not the ones that replace human judgment, but the ones that remove the administrative burden that consumes the hours business owners never get back. BAS compliance and late payment management sit near the top of that list.
Every quarter, approximately 2.61 million GST-registered small businesses in Australia face the same obligation: preparing and lodging their Business Activity Statement. For many, it is one of the most time-consuming, error-prone and anxiety-inducing tasks in the business calendar.
MYOB has announced a suite of AI-powered tools aimed squarely at that problem, and several others like it. The rollout, which includes what the company describes as Australia’s first agentic BAS solution, is currently in beta across MYOB’s product portfolio, including Solo by MYOB, MYOB Business Lite and Pro, and AccountRight.
MYOB CEO Paul Robson said the launch represented a deliberate shift in where the company is directing its innovation investment. “We are focused on investing our innovation in areas we know will drive maximum value for our customers and partners, directed by MYOB’s deep knowledge of what makes Australian and New Zealand businesses more successful,” Robson said. “This is a decisive leap in AI. We’re targeting business pain points ready for reinvention and transforming how customers and partners operate, unlocking a step-change in productivity through efficiency and insight.”
What the new suite actually does
The centrepiece of the announcement is AI BAS, which MYOB describes as Australia’s first agentic BAS offering. Initially available to sole traders, the tool makes suggestions on BAS treatments for individual transactions, flags anomalies for the business owner or their adviser to review, and produces a pre-populated report with BAS lodgment totals ready for accountant or bookkeeper sign-off.
The suite also includes AI Business Insights, which generates interactive charts and plain-language commentary to help businesses identify patterns and areas needing attention. Rather than presenting raw data, the feature is designed to tell the story behind the numbers in terms that do not require accounting expertise to act on.
Smart Reconciliation uses machine learning to automatically match bank feed transactions to categories and reconcile accounts on a user-defined schedule, learning from user behaviour over time to improve accuracy. For accountants and bookkeepers, the result is a cleaner file to review and submit.
Smart Invoice Reminders rounds out the suite, preparing suggested actions based on individual late-payer behaviour. The feature offers tone suggestions for follow-up communications and allows customisable scheduling of automatic reminders. Late payments are a persistent pressure point for Australian SMEs: according to MYOB’s own Bi-Annual Business Monitor from November 2025, 18% of respondents described late payments as a cause of extreme pressure.
Robson said the launch reflected a broader design philosophy, not just a product update. “We are focused on designing products that prioritise the responsible and secure application of AI in workflows that makes the most sense to real life business, meeting our customers where they are in their AI journey while delivering exceptional technology experiences,” he said.
The adoption gap it is trying to close
The MYOB announcement arrives at a moment when the gap between AI awareness and AI effectiveness among Australian small businesses is becoming harder to ignore.
According to the Deloitte Access Economics report, one-third of businesses not currently using AI say they do not know where to start, while around half of those using it have only an intermediate level of understanding. The barriers cited include a lack of awareness of how AI applies to their specific business, insufficient business systems and data, and limited technological knowledge.
A Reserve Bank of Australia survey of 100 medium and large firms released in November 2025 found that enterprise-wide AI transformation was the exception rather than the norm, with the largest group of respondents, nearly 40%, describing their AI use as still minimal. For smaller businesses, the picture is similarly uneven.
Embedding AI inside tools that small businesses already use for compliance and bookkeeping, rather than asking them to adopt standalone AI platforms, is one of the more practical approaches to that adoption gap. As previously reported on MYOB’s product direction, the company has been building toward this model, with its MYOB Assist mobile app launched in September 2025 already using AI-powered receipt capture and transaction categorisation to reduce admin time for owners on the move.
Where this fits in the broader picture
The BAS tool is a logical extension of that direction. Experts have consistently flagged that the biggest productivity wins come when AI handles repeatable, rules-based tasks, while a human reviews edge cases and exceptions. The AI BAS model, where the tool prepares a pre-populated report for adviser review rather than lodging autonomously, reflects exactly that approach.
The new tools are at various stages of beta rollout. More information on feature availability and trial opportunities is available at MYOB’s website. Robson’s assessment of the moment is direct. “AI will completely change the game for small businesses and their advisors, powering up productivity and accelerating innovation beyond anything we’ve seen before. This is just the start of a new era for Australia’s economic engine room, the nation’s 2.6 million small businesses, and MYOB is excited to be at the forefront of it,” he said.
More information on feature availability and opportunities to trial the technology can be found here: AI Accounting Software: MYOB AI.
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