Summing it up at Scaling New Heights: 35 years of Intuit innovation

“Intuit has a 35-year track history of identifying trends – from leveraging platforms like DOS, Windows, web and mobile, to embracing technologies like the cloud, and now artificial intelligence and machine learning – and leveraging them to solve important customer problems. Intuit is a company that reinvents itself constantly. This adaptive style keeps us relevant, and it keeps us innovating and delivering more and more value to our partners and our customers.”

An example of this disruption is the recent introduction of QuickBooks Live, a monthly bookkeeping subscription service for small businesses provided by QuickBooks Online Certified ProAdvisors. Today, 60 percent of small businesses that use QuickBooks are connected to an accountant. For the 40 percent of small businesses who don’t have a pro and aren’t interested in searching for one, QuickBooks Live bookkeepers will help set up QuickBooks, categorize bank transactions, reconcile accounts and walk customers through reports so that they understand them.

“Our goal is to connect these SMBs [who aren’t currently connected to an accounting pro] with the ProAdvisor experts they need without the intimidation factor of a search,” said Misherghi. “For the industry, this could mean an unprecedented expansion in people who have access to bookkeeping experts for the first time. And because participating in this service is open to ProAdvisors with bookkeeping expertise, it is also a way for us to extend your reach to our customers.”

Ariege also shared some other updates in QuickBooks Online Accountant designed to help accountants grow and manage their practice:

Managing Leads. Soon, ProAdvisors will be able to see directly inside of QuickBooks Online Accountant each prospect who has reached out to them from the Find-a-ProAdvisor website. The goal is to increase ProAdvisors’ visibility into the leads they’re getting in order to maximize response rates and ultimately client connections.

Client Overview. In the past, it took up to four hours to evaluate how much work needs to be done, clean up a client’s books and decide what must be done to support a prospective new client.

“Imagine those four hours being wrapped up in four minutes; that’s what Client Overview delivers,” said Misherghi. “From having opening balance equity and uncategorized transactions, to negative balances in asset and liability accounts, you’ll see the common issues small businesses are facing that they don’t even know about – and you’ll more accurately be able to estimate how much time it will take to clean up their books. The goal is to give you the information you need to accurately, confidently and transparently price your services so you can win new client business.”

Statement Auto-Import. Chasing down your client for a bank statement or other source documents you need is never fun. In fact, research shows it takes up to 35 percent of your time just to do this one step. With statement auto-import, when a client connects a financial institution to QuickBooks, in addition to transaction data, you’ll also receive the source of truth – the bank statement through the same connection.

Here’s how this feature will work: Simply log into a clients’ QuickBooks Online file, go to the reconcile page and find this new button called “view statements.” Click it and you’ll see the most recent statements. Then, you’re all set. The bank statement is right there – something that will happen automatically when you connect a bank to QuickBooks.

Advisory. Misherghi said Intuit is investing in practice management tools to enable accountants and bookkeepers to be able to offer more services and grow their practices. One of those is business advisory services.

“This involves getting a clearer picture of where your clients are today and how they’re doing over time,” she said. “Using this information to educate your clients, you’ll also meet with them to decide on one or two key performance indicators to work on, and drive change and growth in the future. We’re currently exploring a next-level dashboard that would provide the key metrics you need to do just that. We’ve also taken your feedback and are now looking at ways we could offer industry benchmarks, suggested actions to improve KPIs, and training for you and for your staff to move into advisory work.”

A Focus on the ProAdvisor Program

Up next was Megia, who discussed the impact of the ProAdvisor Program and what it means for the audience.

“The program represents a community of the most engaged, enthusiastic advocates of QuickBooks; it currently stands at a staggering 400,000 ProAdvisors, with a remarkable 140,000 certified,” she said. “This would never be possible without your passion and dedication. Through your ideas, thoughts and feedback, we’ve built a partnership together based on communication and collaboration to deliver you growth and shared customer success.”

Megia said the mission has always been to grow the accountant’s skills and their business. “The program helps do that by strengthening your network and helping you engage with the ProAdvisor community, as well as amplifying your expertise and expanding your reach by connecting with more small businesses who need your guidance and expertise.”

Looking at what’s ahead

The message at Scaling New Heights was optimistic: Intuit will continue to deliver powerful solutions to help accounting pros elevate their role of advisor and expand their reach, while connecting small business owners with the experts they need to power their prosperity and succeed.