The hours came back: Australian businesses using AI to lift their people up

Tish Bhagwandeen remembers the paperwork. The reconciliations, the data entry, the endless chasing of documents from clients who meant to send them last week.

"The hours I used to spend on data entry, reconciliations, and chasing documents are largely gone," the founder of InFinance Solutions told QuickBooks this year.^[1] Instead of being "heads-down in admin", she now spends that time with clients.^[1]

It's a small story. It's also the one playing out across Australian small business, far from the headlines about AI taking jobs.

Eye contact, restored

In Queensland, a GP group now uses AI to take notes during consultations so doctors can look at their patients instead of a keyboard, NAB reported.^[2] A physiotherapy practice uses Claude to sort its inbox and draft specialist letters, which NAB says saves the team around seven to eight hours a week, time that goes back to patients.^[2]

At a Sunshine Coast accounting firm, one administrator now helps build the AI workflows her colleagues use, picking up skills years earlier than she otherwise might have.^[2]

Bigger firms, same pattern

A 2025 Australian Industry Group report found companies using AI "to support, not replace human expertise".^[3] At ISS Health Services, AI monitors catering waste, "allowing staff to focus on more critical jobs".^[3] Blackmores uses it to help workers move more safely.^[3]

When the federal government trialled Microsoft Copilot across 60-plus agencies, 40 per cent of participants said they used the time saved "for higher value activities", according to Microsoft.^[4]

The numbers behind the mood

QuickBooks surveyed 3,790 Australian owners and operators. Seventy-nine per cent of those using AI reported productivity gains, and 28 per cent said their workdays were shorter.^[1] And 19 per cent said they'd added staff because of AI, against 6 per cent who'd cut.^[1]

That fits what workers have said they want. In Microsoft's global research, 64 per cent said they struggled "with having the time and energy to do their job", and "administrative tasks (76%)" topped the list of what they'd happily hand to AI.^[5]

People, it turns out, aren't asking AI to take their jobs. They're asking it to take the parts that wear them down.