Half of Small Vendors Now Use AI. A Quarter Have No Plans To.

We surveyed 417 small and mid-sized vendors across construction, property improvement, janitorial, security, and facility maintenance about how they run their back office, and AI turned out to be one of the most divided answers in the data. Half of respondents, 50%, now use AI or automation for at least one back-office task. That's real adoption, not hype. But almost as many, 24.9%, say they have no plans to adopt it at all.

This isn't a slow, uniform shift happening across the board. It's a split, and the data shows exactly where vendors are leaning in and where they're holding back.

Where adoption is happening

When vendors do use AI, they start with the tasks tied most directly to getting paid. Generating or sending invoices leads at 26.9%, followed by scheduling jobs or estimates at 23.3%. Bookkeeping and categorizing transactions comes in at 20.4%, and customer communication and marketing content each sit at 19.9%.

The pattern holds: vendors reach for AI first on the tasks that touch cash flow directly, invoicing and scheduling, not the tasks furthest from it. That tracks with the rest of this survey. Late payment is the top complaint vendors report, so it makes sense that invoicing is where automation shows up first.

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"Go full AI with human final approval. It would make things much faster."

-Construction vendor, 11 to 25 employees

Where vendors are holding back

The other half of the picture is just as clear. 26.1% of vendors say they're exploring AI but not using it yet, and 24.9% have no plans to adopt it at all. Combined, that's roughly half the panel that hasn't committed to any form of automation.

That split doesn't mean the holdouts are behind. Most run lean: 64% of respondents operate with 25 or fewer employees, and at that size, a new tool has to earn its keep fast. For a solo operator or a small crew, AI has to solve a specific, visible problem. It can't just be a feature on a pricing page.

What this means

Adoption in this market isn't stalled. It's concentrated. Vendors are picking AI for the tasks with the clearest payoff, invoicing and scheduling, and skipping it everywhere else until the case is just as obvious. Any tool built for this audience should meet vendors where adoption already is, rather than trying to sell them on automating everything at once.

AI adoption is just one of six themes we found in the 2026 Vendor Payment & Portal Report. Want to learn more? Check out the full report, or read the recap of all six findings.