Every week I get asked by small business owners: “Which AI tools should I actually be using?” The honest answer is fewer than the vendors suggest and more than most small businesses currently use. Here are ten that I’ve seen delivering genuine value for Australian small businesses, based on conversations with dozens of actual users.

1. Xero’s AI Features (Accounting)

Most Australian small businesses already use Xero. Its AI features have evolved from novelty to genuinely useful. Automatic bank transaction categorisation saves hours of bookkeeping monthly. Invoice coding suggestions get smarter over time as they learn your patterns. Cash flow forecasting, while not perfect, gives small business owners better visibility than gut feeling alone.

Honest assessment: The AI features work best for businesses with consistent, predictable transactions. If your business is highly variable, the automation suggestions need more correction and the time savings diminish.

2. Deputy or Humanforce (Workforce Management)

AI-powered shift scheduling that considers employee availability, labour laws, demand patterns, and skills requirements. For hospitality, retail, and healthcare businesses with variable staffing needs, these tools reduce scheduling time significantly.

Honest assessment: The AI suggestions are a starting point, not a finished schedule. Expect to adjust 20-30% of suggestions manually. Still much faster than building schedules from scratch.

3. Canva (Design)

Canva’s AI features have made professional-quality design accessible to non-designers. The AI image generator, background remover, and design suggestions are particularly useful for small businesses that can’t afford a graphic designer but need marketing materials that don’t look amateur.

Honest assessment: AI-generated images are good for social media and internal documents. For anything that represents your brand publicly (website, signage, major campaigns), professional design still matters. Canva gets you 80% of the way but that last 20% often requires human creativity.

4. ChatGPT or Claude (General Purpose AI)

For small businesses, general-purpose AI assistants are most valuable for drafting emails, summarising documents, brainstorming ideas, and researching unfamiliar topics. Australian business owners report saving several hours per week on communication tasks alone.

Honest assessment: These tools generate plausible-sounding content that may be factually incorrect. Always verify important information. And don’t use them for anything involving confidential customer data unless you understand the privacy implications.

5. HubSpot or ActiveCampaign (Marketing Automation)

AI-powered email marketing that optimises send times, subject lines, and content based on recipient behaviour. For small businesses running email campaigns, the AI optimisation genuinely improves open rates and engagement compared to manual timing.

Honest assessment: These tools work best with a substantial email list (500+ contacts). Smaller lists don’t generate enough data for the AI to optimise effectively. The AI also can’t fix fundamentally uninteresting content.

6. Otter.ai or Fireflies.ai (Meeting Transcription)

AI transcription that converts meetings into searchable, shareable notes. For service businesses that have frequent client meetings, being able to search past conversation transcripts is genuinely valuable for maintaining context and accountability.

Honest assessment: Accuracy drops with strong accents, background noise, and multiple speakers talking over each other. Australian accents are handled better than they were two years ago, but still imperfectly. Always review transcripts for important meetings.

7. Shopify Magic (E-commerce)

If you’re selling online through Shopify, their AI features help with product descriptions, email campaigns, and customer FAQ responses. The product description generator is particularly useful for businesses with large catalogues.

Honest assessment: AI-generated product descriptions are a good starting point but often need editing to match your brand voice. For businesses with unique or technical products, human-written descriptions outperform AI-generated ones.

8. Tidio or Intercom (Customer Service)

AI chatbots that handle common customer inquiries, freeing your team for complex issues. For small businesses that receive repetitive questions (business hours, pricing, shipping, returns), these tools can handle 40-60% of inquiries without human intervention.

Honest assessment: Setup takes time. The chatbot needs training on your specific business and products. Budget a week of configuration before it’s useful. And always provide an easy path to human support for inquiries the bot can’t handle.

9. Grammarly Business (Writing)

Beyond grammar checking, Grammarly’s AI features now include tone adjustment, clarity improvements, and audience-appropriate writing suggestions. For teams that produce significant written content (proposals, reports, client communication), the consistency improvements are noticeable.

Honest assessment: The tone suggestions occasionally conflict with Australian communication styles. We’re more casual than the tool’s default suggests. Adjust settings accordingly.

10. Motion or Reclaim.ai (Calendar and Task Management)

AI that automatically schedules tasks, meetings, and focus time based on your priorities and habits. For busy small business owners juggling multiple responsibilities, automated time management reduces the cognitive load of constant scheduling decisions.

Honest assessment: These tools work best if you’re disciplined about updating priorities and deadlines. If you dump tasks in without proper context, the AI scheduling won’t be meaningful. Garbage in, garbage out, as always.

The Common Thread

The AI tools that work for small businesses share three characteristics. They solve a specific, repeated problem. They integrate with existing workflows. And they pay for themselves in saved time within the first month.

Tools that require significant setup, ongoing training, or workflow changes to be useful are poor fits for most small businesses. You’re already stretched thin. The AI should adapt to you, not the other way around.

Start with one or two tools that address your biggest time drains. Master those before adding more. The worst outcome is paying for six AI subscriptions and using none of them effectively.