A Revenue Share Program. Books Review and Transaction Collaboration. A new QuickBooks Online Windows app. These were just some of the innovations across the QuickBooks ecosystem on display at Intuit’s seventh annual QuickBooks Connect. The innovations, rolled out by Accountant Segment Leader Ted Callahan, are designed to help accountants better serve their small business clients, grow their practices and scale their impact.
Following is a snapshot of the key innovations:
New Revenue Share Program
The new program, which enables accountants to grow revenue through work they’re already doing, will expand ProAdvisor Preferred Pricing via the launch of Revenue Share. Instead of adding clients through QuickBooks Online Accountant (QBOA) and paying for their QuickBooks Online (QBO) account, the program soon will let accountants get out of managing billing, provide clients with a discount, and compensate them for bringing clients on to the QuickBooks Online platform.
With QBOA, whenever accountants start a new QBO or QBO Payroll subscription, they will choose revenue share as the billing option. Clients pay Intuit each month, while the accountants receive 30% of the billed price for the next 12 months.
Revenue Share Signup
This option means accountants spend less time managing client billing and gives them more time to serve as strategic advisors to clients. Of course, should an accountant prefer to continue receiving the ongoing discount by paying for a client’s QBO account directly, the ProAdvisor Preferred Pricing program will continue to support that.
Intuit is preparing to open Revenue Share up to accounting professionals. Anyone interested in being an early adopter can sign up here.
Books Review and Transaction Collaboration
Introduced last year, Month-End Review is the first end-to-end workflow built inside accounting software specifically to deliver the books each month. The software breaks the bookkeeping flow into three steps: transaction review, account reconciliation and final review.
Intuit’s fastest adopted accounting feature ever, Month-End Review, is being adapted so it can be applied to more processes and further help accountants deliver client books—even outside of the monthly window. Now called Books Review, new capabilities have been added to the workflow, including Bookkeeping Setup and Bookkeeping Wrap-up. Transaction Collaboration is coming soon.
Books Review
- Bookkeeping Setup — Until now, there was no industry standard for how to correctly set up books, even though it is a crucial first step in delivering accurate, high quality books. This new feature allows for easier adjustments to the opening balance, sorting out issues like disconnected bank accounts and redundant accounts on the chart of accounts, all in one place—preventing annoying rework.
- Bookkeeping Wrap-up — Helping clients understand the behind-the-scenes work, Wrap-up allows accountants to prepare a set of tailored reports that provide insight into a client’s business and serves as a tangible work deliverable of accountants' value. Accountants can edit, customize and send these tailored report packages to clients—all from within QBOA, positioning them to advise and guide clients in strategic decisions that will power business success.
- Transaction Collaboration — Coming soon, this feature addresses one of today’s accountants’ biggest monthly challenges: getting missing information from clients. Within the QBOA workflow, accountants can request information. Clients will get a notification, as well as see transaction collaboration requests in the “My Accountant” tab when they log in to their QBO account. They can open the request and provide the information for review, all without leaving QuickBooks.
QuickBooks Online Advanced App for Windows
Earlier this year, Intuit unlocked QuickBooks Online Advanced for accountants for free. Now, going a step further, accountants will have access to the QuickBooks Online Advanced app for Windows—all completely free for their practice.
The free app—which is available for download—is designed to help all QBOA users manage their QBO clients, no matter what version of QBO they are using. To get the app, go to the QBO Advanced Books via QBOA, click on the gear icon, look for the link for the app to download it, and log in.
App for Windows Dashboard
Accountants can access their full client list and even have multiple accounts open simultaneously, enabling bookkeepers to navigate quickly without having to constantly switch back and forth between clients. Additionally, because this is installed software, not a web browser, sessions can be longer, which makes it easier for accountants to get work done without getting interrupted to sign back in.
ProAdvisor QuickBooks Online Payroll Certification
Now available in ProAdvisor's portal is the new QuickBooks Online Payroll Certification. This payroll training will help accountants with live and on-demand product and compliance training, plus a certification prep course and the qualifying exam. Providing a huge growth opportunity for accountants, the training and certification allows accounting professionals to not only develop knowledge, but also confidence about Payroll.
ProAdvisor Support
A number of updates on ProAdvisor support were outlined, including bringing it back to the United States. Four focus areas for improving ProAdvisor support include:
- Decreasing wait times
- Connecting ProAdvisors to knowledgeable agents
- Routing calls to the right agents, and
- Hiring more US.-based agents.
Already, 100%t of ProAdvisor support for Elite and Platinum ProAdvisors are in the US. All Gold ProAdvisors will experience US-based support by December, and Silver members by early next year.
For more information on these innovations, and to check out on-demand and timely webinars throughout the year, visit: https://quickbooksconnect.com/.