Skip to main content
2diff.io home

BizAnalyzer AI Insights Guide

How to Get the Most from BizAnalyzer's AI Assistant

Last verified against the app:

What is AI Insights

AI Insights is BizAnalyzer's built-in financial analysis assistant. It reads your actual accounting data and answers questions about it in plain language, with observations, calculations, and short explanations. It is included on every paid tier at no extra cost.

Ask "what changed", "what's outside a healthy range", or "what should I worry about" in your own words, and get an answer that references your numbers directly. It closes the gap between generating a statement and understanding what it means, especially when you have the data but not the time to dig through it.

This content is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, tax, accounting, or legal advice. Consult with a qualified professional for advice specific to your situation. AI-generated insights may contain errors; verify information before taking action.

Where to find it

Open BizAnalyzer, look in the sidebar for AI Insights. That opens the chat panel. Type a question at the bottom, get an answer above it. Simple as text messaging. To start over, select Clear chat history next to the Send button.

The settings live in the sidebar's AI Insights group, in two items: AI Model (the model and the response length) and AI Context (what data the AI can see). A card at the top of the chat shows what is selected.

The first time you open it, a short Before you start note says what to expect: this is AI, it can be wrong, and important figures should be checked against the statements. Tick I understand and want to continue. and select Continue to AI Insights to open the chat. Once you are signed in, you are not asked again unless the note changes.

Turning it on: Financial Context

The Financial Context toggle, inside AI Context in the sidebar, controls whether the AI can see your financial data. It defaults to ON, and unless you have a reason to turn it off, leave it on: with context off, you have a generic chatbot; with context on, you have an assistant that reads your books.

Sub-toggles let you include or exclude specific data types:

  • Profit & Loss: revenue, expenses, net income by period
  • Balance Sheet: assets, liabilities, equity
  • Cash Flow: operating, investing, financing activities
  • Ratios: the 23 tracked ratios
  • Forecast: your projected periods
  • Goals: your Goal Center targets
  • Valuation: your valuation inputs and results
  • Industry & fiscal year: your industry context and fiscal calendar (sent with your question, like every other data type here)

Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, Ratios, and Industry & fiscal year start ticked. Cash Flow, Forecast, Goals, and Valuation start unticked, so tick them before asking about cash, your forecast, your goals, or what the business is worth.

Turn one off when you want the AI to focus somewhere else and leave more capacity for the data types that matter to your question.

Below the checkboxes, the same item shows which years the AI is reading, sets the trend detail (annual, quarterly, or monthly), and, when Forecast is ticked, sets the forecast method and horizon. On BizInsights, where your figures are annual, the trend detail is annual and the quarterly and monthly choices are not shown.

Which model, when

BizAnalyzer includes eleven AI models across three providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google). You can switch models at any time from AI Model in the sidebar. The picker lists each model by name and preselects a sensible default for your plan: Claude Opus 4.7 on BizAnalyzer, Claude Haiku 4.5 on BizInsights. On BizInsights, models that need a BizAnalyzer plan are greyed out with "(Subscribe to use)" after the name.

In plain terms. The AI Models page sorts the models into three bands:

  • Budget models (such as GPT-5 Nano and Claude Haiku 4.5): fast and good for simple lookups ("what was my revenue in April?").
  • Everyday models (such as GPT-5 Mini and Claude Sonnet 4.6): good for most everyday analysis ("explain my gross margin trend").
  • Flagship models (such as GPT-5.5 and the Claude Opus models): the heaviest thinkers; use for multi-step reasoning (DuPont, scenario modeling, "what stands out about X").

The model the picker shows is the model that answers. When you pick a model, it is saved to your account and used again on your next visit; until you pick one, your plan's default answers.

If you're unsure, the default your plan came with handles almost every day-to-day question well. Save a flagship model for the questions that genuinely have multiple moving parts.

Response length. The Response Length control, inside AI Model under the model picker, sets how long answers are: Quick (short and to the point, and the default at the start of each visit), Medium, or Thorough (longer and more detailed). It changes the length of the answer, not the model.

The full model catalog with current names and prices is at /bizanalyzer/ai-models.

Prompting tips

A few habits that get better answers:

  • Be specific. "How did my gross margin change between 2024 and 2025?" beats "how is my business doing?".
  • Ask one thing at a time. Multi-part questions get partial answers.
  • Use comparison timeframes. "vs last year", "Q4 vs Q3", "year over year".
  • Ask for a chart. Say "chart" or "graph" when you want one. BizAnalyzer will render one inside the answer.
  • Turn on Financial Context. Without it, the AI has no data to analyze.

What AI Insights can, and cannot, do

What it can do well.

  • Spot patterns and anomalies across periods
  • Verify ratio math from your data
  • Compare period over period
  • Translate financial jargon into plain language
  • Summarize long statements into key takeaways

What it cannot do.

  • Predict the future (it can explain the projections in your Forecast tab, but it does not make its own predictions)
  • Give tax, accounting, or legal advice
  • Fix bad data (garbage in, garbage out)
  • Use external benchmarks (it draws on general knowledge, not live industry databases)
  • See changes you made after opening BizAnalyzer (refresh the page to pick those up)

Data privacy

Your data is used to answer your questions. That is all. Financial data BizAnalyzer sends to a model provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) is handled under that provider's API terms, which state that API content is not used to train their models. How long a provider keeps a request is set by those terms, which we link to from our Privacy Policy and do not control. We do not store the AI conversation on our servers after your session.

For the full data-flow, see the Security & Data Protection page.

Intuit and QuickBooks® are registered trademarks of Intuit Inc. Used with permission. Second Difference Solutions®, LLC is an independent software provider and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Intuit Inc. Our applications integrate with QuickBooks® products via Intuit's official APIs.

Common pitfalls

  • Context is OFF. The AI can't analyze data it doesn't have. Turn on Financial Context in the sidebar.
  • A data type is unticked. Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, Ratios, and Industry & fiscal year start ticked. Cash Flow, Forecast, Goals, and Valuation start unticked, so tick them before asking about cash, your forecast, your goals, or what the business is worth.
  • Question is about years not in view. The Years setting in Data Controls limits what loads. Widen it before asking about older years.
  • Question is too broad. "How's my business doing?" produces a vague answer. Ask a specific question and you'll get a specific answer.
  • Expecting live data. The AI sees the data that loaded when BizAnalyzer started. Refresh the page after making changes in QuickBooks®.