Intuit WuickBooks ProAdvisor Program.
There have been many changes to the QuickBooks ProAdvisor® Program since December 4, 2014. Many ProAdvisors and non-ProAdvisors that want to join the program, naturally, have questions regarding these changes.
Many of the changes to the ProAdvisor Program are a result of how quickly the accounting industry is changing. Over the last 4 years, we have seen tremendous growth in QuickBooks® Online (QBO), and for the first time in 2014, more new customers to Intuit® chose QBO over QuickBooks Desktop. As a result, the QBO subscription base keeps growing more than 50% year-over-year, as our last Intuit earnings release showed. While Intuit understands QBO is not the right solution for all your clients, our changes to the ProAdvisor Program are intended to help you adapt to the fast-changing industry, and to run your firm more efficiently.
We built the ProAdvisor Program into the new QuickBooks Online Accountant. We are gradually migrating all of our accountant customers to the new, improved experience of QuickBooks Online Accountant, but that is an ongoing process. Our product management and
engineering teams are working very hard on this process. A related change coming during the second half of 2015 is that the ProAdvisor Member Website, www.qbproadvisor.com, will go away. Thus, instead of accessing your ProAdvisor benefits from the website, you will be able to find them only from within the new QuickBooks Online Accountant.
Moving Up ProAdvisor Levels: OR is the Word of the Day
One question we continually get from ProAdvisors is how to move up to the various levels. Now, there are two ways for you to get more benefits from the ProAdvisor Program:
- Through certification: You can either get certified or Advanced Certified, OR
- Through QuickBooks Online clients: You can do business with more QuickBooks Online-paying clients.
For example, to be a “Gold” level ProAdvisor, you have to be either certified OR have 5 QuickBooks Online clients. To be crystal-clear, you do NOT need to be certified AND have 5 QuickBooks Online clients. Not AND, just OR.
The same is true for achieving Diamond level benefits. To become a “Diamond” level ProAdvisor, you either have to be advanced certified (in either QuickBooks Online or QuickBooks Desktop) OR have 20 QuickBooks Online clients. You do not need to be “advanced certified” AND have 20 QBO clients. Not AND, just OR.
Find-a-ProAdvisor Benefit
Another area with many questions is HOW you get a profile on the Find-a-ProAdvisor directory. You can ONLY get a Find-a-ProAdvisor profile published on our directory if you pass one of our certification exams.
Conversely, you cannot take advantage of the Find-a-ProAdvisor benefit if you do not pass any of our certification exams. You will ONLY get a Find-a-ProAdvisor profile if you get certified.
Bill.com Benefit
In October at QuickBooks Connect, we launched an exclusive Bill.com benefit for all ProAdvisors. You can access the Bill.com exclusive benefit for ProAdvisors at www.bill.com/qbproadvisor. Alternatively, you can now call Bill.com, tell them that you’re a ProAdvisor and they will give you the following:
- Access to a Bill.com corporate account for your firm with up to 3 users.
- Free onboarding consultation and top-tier customer support.
- Membership to the Bill.com rewards and referral program.
- Special pricing on the Bill.com accountant console, which is usually $49/month. You will be able to get access to this console for $30/month. You do not have to use the accountant console to use Bill.com, but it’s a product that many of our ProAdvisors have found very useful.
5 More ProAdvisor Program Updates
There are 5 more program updates you need to know about:
Find-a-ProAdvisor Read/Write Reviews. One of the biggest differences many accountants noticed when we launched the program in December was that we did not enable the “read and write reviews” functionality within the directory. Simply, we had a lot of other key features to launch, and that one did not make it to the top of our list. The great news is that this functionality (the ability to read and write reviews) is now up and working. (Screenshot below)
ProAdvisor Center Progress – Certification and Training History. When we launched in early December, many accounting noticed that our new experience had a “Coming Soon” banner when you clicked on the “View certification history” link, found at the bottom of the “Certification” tab within the ProAdvisor Center. Moving training and certification history details for every single course and exam you’ve ever taken, as you can imagine, was a technical challenge, which is why it took us a few weeks longer to enable this functionality.
Since mid-January, you can now access “Certification and Training History,” which gives you access to your certification badges and certificates. Specifically, if you’re ever wondering when you passed an exam, look in this tab and you’ll be able to find that information here.
QBO Advanced Certification Exam Re-launched With Your Feedback. We’ve made some really great changes in scoring and partial credit, the design of the exam, and clarity of the instructions and the questions. If you have used all of your attempts or just made progress, yet didn’t pass any sections, all attempts will be reset and users will have access to ALL attempts for each section. If you passed a section in a previous version, we will manually mark them complete if/as needed. Just log into your ProAdvisor Member Website or into the new QuickBooks Online Accountant and go into the ProAdvisor tab on the left navigation bar to take a look at the new certification. Keep in mind that you need to have passed the QBO certification in the last 365 days to have access to the QBO Advanced Certification exam.
QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions Advanced Reporting Now Free to ProAdvisors. Yes, it’s free. You asked for it – and you got it. We will reimburse all those ProAdvisors who have already paid $65.
Training For Your Clients Now Available: QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop 2014 Training for your clients is now available by logging into your ProAdvisor Member Website or into the new QuickBooks Online Accountant & going into the ProAdvisor tab on the left navigation bar, in the “Training” section. QuickBooks Desktop 2015 Training for your clients will be coming soon.
I hope that the topics covered in this article have been helpful to you. We will keep making improvements to our program to drive growth for your practice. Stay tuned for more news from us over the coming weeks and months – We’re here to continuously improve the program and we appreciate your constant feedback!