Going going gone
Intuit is cutting benefits to QuickBooks ProAdvisors.
The News:
Intuit has either released, or will be releasing, an Alert to QuickBooks ProAdvisors advising them that two 'connected services' they had been receiving as part of their ProAdvisor Membership will be removed effective September 9, 2013. The connected services involved are "QuickBooks for Windows Mobile Companion" and "Intuit Data Protect".
Starting September 9, 2013 these components of the ProAdvisor Membership will be removed from ProAdvisors' accounts and will be deactivated. Intuit's announcement further advises that ProAdvisors can continue use of these services for the current pricing (for QuickBooks Mobile, or Intuit Data Protect) by calling 1-800-811-8943.
Editorial:
To put it simply, as a ProAdvisor after September 9, 2013, you can pay extra to have two services that were previously included in the membership you purchased the last time your ProAdvisor Membership renewed, or you can simply do without those services you may have been using for several years.
In announcing this change, Intuit indicated this was due to 'minimal usage', and direct feedback from ProAdvisors. While I might understand the lack of use for QuickBooks Mobile, since the functionality of that product has been and continues to be minimal, with little to no improvement since day one, I can not say the same for the Intuit Data Protect functionality.
In my way of thinking Intuit Data Protect, or a similar service, is an essential component of any QuickBooks ProAdvisor's practice. Perhaps ProAdvisors simply are not aware that IDP is running in the background of their QuickBooks; and in fact this has been the topic of other forums in the past when even ProAdvisors couldn't understand why there were two installed SDK applications for the Sync Manager (one of which was being used for the IDP function).
Almost every ProAdvisor I know makes use of Intuit Data Protect perhaps hundreds of files they have on their systems. ProAdvisors may not know that if IDP is set-up on their systems, that every new QBW file they add to their disk drive is immediately configured to back-up using IDP.
I for one find Intuit's new policy an inconvenience, and an inappropriate change by the Intuit ProAdvisor Program, and not only from a 'data protection standpoint' as far as my own data is concerned. I can easily make the same argument for IDP that I, and many others have made for other Intuit products that they expected us to support without having any way to use or learn them.
Without having IDP available as part of the ProAdvisor Membership how is a 'practicing ProAdvisor' going to learn how IDP works in order to support their clients who use IDP (such as Enterprise clients who receive IDP as part of their FSP membership)? The time for a ProAdvisor to learn how to set-up, configure, and most importantly restore an IDP back-up is not when a client has 'lost their desktop file' but as part of the ProAdvisor's own use of the product.
I suspect if ProAdvisors find alternatives to IDP for themselves, and their own practices, they will be moving their clients to the same solution and away from IDP in the future.