At the end of their fiscal year this past July 31, Intuit reported that U.S. subscribers to QuickBooks Online had grown to nearly 1.9-million, and that the subscriber base outside the U.S. had risen to in excess of 500-thousand. These number mean that the total number of QBO subscribers at July 31 was 2.38-million worldwide. And remember these numbers are not current, they are a few months old now.
Later today (November 20), Intuit is scheduled to release their numeric and financial information for the first quarter of this fiscal year. From all evidence shown at this past week's QuickBooks Connect conference in San Jose, there is no reason to believe that the new numbers will show anything but 'up-up-up'.
The QuickBooks 'Cloud' has gone from relatively low-hanging 'stratus' with numbers below 750,000 subscribers just three years ago, to 'altostratus' 15 months ago, to now 'cirrostratus'. Before long the term 'cloud' might not apply, we might be talking about Cosmic QuickBooks.
What took 15 years to do with QuickBooks Desktop in terms of numbers, QBO has accomplished in 5 years easily. The phenomenal thing is that most of this growth is not resulting from conversion of QuickBooks Desktop users into QuickBooks Online users. The vast majority of users are people who have never used any form of accounting before.
One example of this is the tremendous uptick of users for Intuit's QuickBooks Self-Employed product. First demonstrated 2 years ago at QuickBooks Connect, the product has really only been actively promoted within the market for about 18-months. It already has more than 390-thousand users, many of whom are connected to advisors, accountants or bookkeepers to assist them with quarterly tax returns and receipt categorization. A good number of those QBSE users will be pushing their financial data directly into Intuit's TurboTax Online product at the end of this year to self-file their taxes for the very first time.
As if the simplicity of QuickBooks Self-Employed, the ability to connect for meaningful assistance with an advisor, and the direct link to tax return preparation wasn't enough, Intuit is incorporating 'QuickBooks Assistant' into the QBSE product as I write this. QuickBooks Assistant will offer a conversational chat experience that allows self-employed business owners to even more quickly and easily stay on top of their finances. Conversational 'bots' are all the craze, and people on the go and on the grow using QBSE to record time, expense and travel will find the ability to chat their numbers into the product like batting 1000.
Do you remember the movie 'The Natural'1 that starred Robert Redford as a middle-age baseball rookie? His first, and only season epitomizes the ups and downs of his life-long dream of a baseball career.
Toward the end of the story he steps to home plate, and despite his injuries of old and the fracture of his favorite bat in a prior foul ball, he hits the third pitch perfectly. The ball heads high toward the outfield, flying over the people in the stands and just keeps on going, and going, and going.
All indications are that Intuit has hit not only a home run with QBO, but has indeed hit it firmly 'out of the ballpark'.
Footnotes & Disclosures:
1 - The Natural, 1984 TriStar Pictures release, Delphi Productions movie based upon the 1952 novel of the same name by Bernard Malamud. The movie, directed by Barry Levinson starred Robert Redford in the leading role of Roy Hobbs, a baseball prodigy who is sidetracked from a promising baseball career by life circumstances, only to finally make it to the game as a middle-aged rookie.