The Accounting Podcast

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Blake Oliver: This is the disconnect at Intuit Connect, which is they want to go up market. And so they are talking with practice leaders at big firms. But their current customers are small firms and independent ProAdvisor. And that is why the vibe was not right. It's because they don't feel heard. That's my take. Just walking around and talking to people.

David Leary: Coming to you weekly from the OnPay [00:00:30] Recording Studio.

Blake Oliver: Hello and welcome back to The Accounting Podcast, your weekly roundup of news in the accounting profession. I'm Blake Oliver.

David Leary: I'm David Leary.

Blake Oliver: And we are joined today by Alicia Katz Pollock, queen of QuickBooks at Royal Wise and host of the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast. Alicia, welcome to the show.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Hey, thanks for having me.

Blake Oliver: Thanks for joining us. Uh, we are really looking forward to talking with you about Intuit [00:01:00] Connect, where we all just were this past week, and in Las Vegas, learning about all the developments, all the news from Intuit and all the product updates about QuickBooks. Uh, and, uh, I understand you took copious notes.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I came back with 42 pages of notes from all the things that I did.

Blake Oliver: All right, so it's going to be an episode dedicated to QuickBooks and Intuit, which, uh, I think is, is worth doing. It's worth dedicating an episode to QuickBooks because, uh, it's so important [00:01:30] to all the small business accountants out there and there's like some major changes this year. I mean, like, we've got this new accountant suite coming out that's going to be replacing QuickBooks online accountant. Like, that's a big deal. Um, we've got like this, I mean, QuickBooks moving to becoming this all in one platform like an ERP. It's giving me NetSuite vibes or Sage Intacct vibes? Um, I [00:02:00] guess let's start AI.

David Leary: What's that? Everything. A lot of AI AI everywhere.

Blake Oliver: Yes. Suzanne's keynote all about AI. Um, and so we're going to dig into all of that. Alicia. You're going to share all the all the key updates for us. Yeah. But first let's talk about the vibe, like the feel of Intuit Connect, because it's changed a lot in the last few years since they renamed it. So like Alicia, how would you how would you describe like the feel [00:02:30] of Intuit Connect this year?

Alicia Katz Pollock: It was really different. I mean, I've gone to every single, um, from one from when it was QuickBooks connect all the way now to Intuit Connect. And it used to be a celebration of all things about QuickBooks specifically. And then it became upscaling. The ProAdvisor was moving us from data entry to advisory. And now with the Lean In on Intuit Enterprise Suite and moving into mid-market, it was very, very clear [00:03:00] that they were targeting the conference at a whole new audience. I met tons of first time attendees who were all employees at firms, and the family reunion of 500 of my best friends and the relationships that have developed over the last 15 years. There were only a few dozen of us, so it was really different.

Blake Oliver: Yeah, not.

David Leary: A lot of.

Blake Oliver: Independent ProAdvisor, right?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Not a lot at all.

David Leary: And I think the vibe, if I go back to the old QuickBooks [00:03:30] connects, it was always a celebration of accountants, bookkeepers and small businesses. They would put up a list of every ProAdvisor that's been a ProAdvisor for seven years, ten years, 15 years, whatever it is, it was a celebration. There was a ProAdvisor of the year award. It was a celebration. And now it's like it flipped from being about you, the attendees, to being about us. Intuit. And it just didn't. You didn't get like you used to get the chills because you're like, I love all these people. These are people I know, and they're being recognized for all the hard work they've done. And now it's like all about Intuit. And you didn't get the [00:04:00] warm and fuzzies that you've had previous years.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, no. They used to treat us like kings. They used to, you know, it was, you know, swag and development and excitement and enthusiasm. And this was much more about professional upskilling, like like a normal conference.

David Leary: You mean when you're leaving, if they're if they have pom poms as you leave the event that doesn't do it. That's not that's not pushing enough. Love to ProAdvisor. And it.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Was a drum corps this year.

David Leary: A drum corps and. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: Well, let's, uh, let's start the discussion with Suzanne's keynote, which [00:04:30] was all about AI very, very forward looking some some kind of out there stuff. Alicia, what stood out to you?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, the things that stood out was his very first statement that the best way to predict the future is to create it. And it's really clear that, you know, he said that seven years ago, they bet the farm on AI, so the whole platform is moving to AI. There is a really strong emphasis on ROI [00:05:00] based on consolidation. Turning QuickBooks into an all in one platform so that you didn't have data siloed off in different apps, and you didn't have to move data from place to place in order to use it.

Blake Oliver: So, so like, what does that actually look like? The all in one platform. I mean, I remember last year or the year before hearing about the acquisition of MailChimp CRM features, right. The marketing features now in QuickBooks for small businesses is like, is that what we're talking about, or is there more?

Alicia Katz Pollock: That's a perfect example of it that in QuickBooks [00:05:30] itself, there's a new customers hub. We have an episode of it about it in the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast called called The Customer. Hubba hubba. So you can go check that one out. But they're using MailChimp and CRM tools right inside QBO, which is actually really cool because it's way more cost effective to remarket to your existing clients than it is for new client acquisition. And the new tools, for example, send [00:06:00] a survey and then ask, when do you want us to book our next appointment together so that they say, oh yeah, call me in three months and make referrals and recommendations and, um, give you feedback and reviews that you can use for marketing. And so there's a lot of really cool things happening in that realm. And that's just one example of how it's being consolidated.

David Leary: I think a point of view, the vibe was we're going to have AI and it's just going to do stuff for you. So now you don't have to get these other apps. You're going to pay more for Intuit enterprise or [00:06:30] QuickBooks in general. You're going to pay more, but you'll actually quote unquote, spend less because you'll need to buy less apps, which is a weird vibe considering you have, what, 75, 80 vendors that are third party apps that tie into QuickBooks paying to be there. Um, this mindset of we don't need apps anymore. It's kind of an interesting point of view. And he basically said it. He literally quote unquote, you'll pay less because you'll need to pay for less apps. He literally said that. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: I mean, how do you feel about that, David? You spent a big chunk of your career at Intuit [00:07:00] building up the QuickBooks marketplace, the app marketplace, those 600 apps that integrate or more that integrate with QuickBooks. And I don't know, for me, it's kind of sad to see Intuit moving away from that, because that ecosystem was what powered all of these small firms that, like mine, that, that, that, you know, piece together these apps to build a system for helping small businesses manage their money. [00:07:30] And I don't like the idea of it all becoming all in one, because I know what happens when an app tries to do everything. It does everything, but it does it in kind of a mediocre way.

Alicia Katz Pollock: It's like a multifunction printer, right? You've got the printer that copies and faxes and prints, but you're not going to be able to put out a poster that you can put up on the wall. And so I've, you know, I kind of see QuickBooks that same way that it'll do a little bit of everything. And depending where [00:08:00] you are on your journey and depending on what your role is, it may do exactly what you need it to do. But when you really, really need a robust solution, we still need those.

Blake Oliver: I just don't know if it's like what's best for the customer in the end. I mean, it might help intuit raise their prices and make more money, but is this really what a small business owner wants? Do they want to be paying hundreds of dollars a month for QuickBooks to [00:08:30] have everything in one place?

David Leary: I chose QuickBooks to begin with is because it's way cheaper than the alternatives than the enterprise space to jump. And we talked to jump to Sage Intacct or to jump up to Oracle NetSuite. You're spending 40, 50, 60, $100,000. And it's just a big. It's just such a gap for small businesses to do that. And, um.

Blake Oliver: I wonder if like, this is a, like potentially enormous strategic mistake for Intuit because and here's why. Uh, and Alicia, I'd love to get your opinion on this. Intuit [00:09:00] is one of the only companies only like large public companies that has, you know, become like, you know, multibillion dollar companies serving exclusively small businesses. There are not many, like, software providers, uh, developers that do this. And Intuit has always just owned that market. And they've done really well. They've they've served that market really well. And so, for instance, when Xero tried to come to the United States and break in into [00:09:30] it, successfully defended against that and continues to have something like 80% or more of the market, this push up market, um, while it might increase revenue, I feel like it has the potential to leave into its flank exposed when it comes to small businesses, and create an opportunity for a QuickBooks replacement to to enter the market. I mean, we we see these AI powered [00:10:00] GLS like digits, um, you know, pushing forward. Like, do you think that, like, Intuit could lose its hold on small businesses as it tries to go after the the mid-market?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, one of the things that I've been kind of the analogy that I've been using that I've been long talking about is the fact that Intuit has gone from a table with a single post in the middle of QuickBooks, that they've diversified it out, you know, TurboTax, MailChimp, Credit Karma. So now it's a table of four legs. But the QuickBooks leg was exactly, as [00:10:30] you said, built on the small businesses, both the small businesses that are running their businesses, running their company on the software, and all of the bookkeepers supporting them. And now that they're moving up market, the the table leg, if the table leg gets wobbly, if that table leg collapses, the table's going to fall over. And so I am really worried about that. And it was interesting to me to to hear how they were kind of positioning and rationalizing that move forward, that, [00:11:00] uh, one of the, one of the speakers was David Graham was talking about Qbi live, but he only mentioned Qbi live once, and all the rest of it was about how you can meet with your clients and make chats with your clients and videos with your clients and all of that. But he was talking about Qbi live, not the bookkeepers. I mean, those features are there for bookkeepers. And so they were kind of I see them as they're strategically taking that the that low end of [00:11:30] the small business market and trying to serve them as well as part of this machine.

David Leary: And that was an observation I had to this gray area of like, you don't need employees anymore. You don't need a bookkeeper. You're just going to have an AI agent doing this stuff. But then if you ask a question, you stump the agent. In theory, they're going to now connect you to a ProAdvisor. And I don't know, like, is this a I mean, obviously all the images and everything we saw was simulated, but I'm trying to think, is that a real thing? Are they really going to like, ah, [00:12:00] it's too hard for this AI and just kick it over to ProAdvisor? Or is this just a way to train the AI? It just felt like.

Blake Oliver: Well, how does that even work?

David Leary: Feel genuine?

Blake Oliver: How how does that even work? Like what?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, so here's one of the things that I've been thinking about is, well, where does that leave us as ProAdvisor that we are the millions of people that they've been courting over these years? And where does where does AI and Qbi live leave us? And even the AI is still in its infancy, and Qbi live [00:12:30] is kind of sketchy in their expertise, and they're still going to still be a role for us, as ProAdvisor was one of the themes that they talked about over and over and over again was AI versus high human intelligence, human human intelligence. Yeah. And because the AI can't at this point still distinguish if that if that coffee receipt was owner draw meeting employee benefit [00:13:00] like, you know, what was the purpose of the meal. People are still needed. But as ProAdvisor says, the best thing that we can do is really upskill ourselves for setups, cleanups. They talk about advisory, but the advisory is not going to be inside the software. So that's going to be kind of well, we know that our business owners are still not going to understand it. And so that's where we come in in that interpretation. But I really think that the cleanups and the consulting and the troubleshooting is the best [00:13:30] direction that we can take.

David Leary: That's really an interesting pivot on this as AI. It's going to make mistakes. And there's probably basically for 25 years, small business owners messed up the QuickBooks and ProAdvisor would have to go in and fix it. And that was a great way to grow your firm, grow your business. And now AI is going to mess up QuickBooks. And this gives you a chance to take those cleanup jobs.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So we still have job security. The job is just changing a little.

Blake Oliver: So I have a message from a listener about [00:14:00] QBO AI agents that I would like to read. And Alicia, I'd love to get your take on this, David as well, because this was one of my takeaways from the conference. And this is this is the message from our listener, is that they're not very happy with the quality of the work that these AI agents are doing. And David raised you raised your hand there and, and and you can't turn it off like it's this is one thing that Intuit does with these features is they they roll out these like AI [00:14:30] features and and you don't get to opt in.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, the thing the thing with AI is that it still has to be trained. And so when I'm hearing from people who are using the banking feeds and they're like, well, the AI in the banking feed is making all these weird suggestions. Well, the banking feed has always had to learn from your company. It had to see how you're doing things in the past and learn how you how you operate to make its suggestions more accurate. And so we're kind of going back to [00:15:00] ground zero on that. And now you of course, of course, it's not going to make good recommendations because it's still artificial intelligence. And it has to be trained.

Blake Oliver: And it.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Lacks.

Blake Oliver: Context.

Alicia Katz Pollock: To use it. Exactly. As you add context, it will become more accurate. You know, you have to give it one of everything. So and that's not just one month of data that's going to take you a quarter of data and probably a year of data until you've got one of everything in the system for it to process.

Blake Oliver: So here's the email from Christine. Okay. [00:15:30] Good morning, Blake and David. I heard the episode this morning where you discuss the AI agent Intuit global rollout and asked for feedback from accounting professionals. And I can tell you that if I could switch from Intuit, I would without hesitation. I can't get over my anger and frustration with this forced rollout. Without input from accounting professionals that use the product, I have vented my displeasure to Intuit and their stock response is always quote. We understand it takes some time to adapt to new software, unquote. Know the [00:16:00] product, the rollout, the agents. The updates are wrong, causing errors, not efficient, and has caused me hours of headaches trying to troubleshoot and also fielding numerous calls from clients that have lost their ability to do their job. Why can't we opt out? Lose time? Myself and my team spend hours troubleshooting instead of strategic work, lead gen, client growth, design, etc.. Increased risk mismatched or miscategorized Categorized transactions mean inaccurate job costing, incorrect margins, [00:16:30] errors in reporting, which undermines my offering to clients or your own business. Reduced confidence. My clients, myself as the business owner, have lost trust in Intuit's accounting reporting system, which undermines strategic decisions e.g. pricing, remodels, bundling, memberships lose leverage. I've been counting on automation to provide insights e.g. membership churn, job profitability, the system delivering less means. I need to build manual workarounds which increase costs and [00:17:00] draws attention away from growth.

Blake Oliver: And then she's got a list of five key issues that I'd like to share. Number one, AI agent and automation failures. The AI assistant and so-called smart matching features are not functioning correctly. Transactions are being miscategorized, matching rules are inconsistent, and automation that previously worked flawlessly now introduces errors requiring manual review. This has increased workload rather than reduced it. Two. Reporting instability. [00:17:30] Many standard and custom reports no longer render correctly or reflect accurate data. Filters, memorized reports, and exports are either malfunctioning or producing incomplete data sets, compromising accuracy and client deliverables. Three. Bank feed and matching errors. The new system routinely fails to match transactions that were previously recognized automatically. This has led to double entries, reconciliation discrepancies, and, in several cases, incorrect financial statements. Four. [00:18:00] System slowness and UI inefficiency. The updated interface is slower, less intuitive, and requires multiple extra clicks to complete basic tasks. The workflow improvements are, in reality, workflow disruptions. And finally, five forced global rollout without consent. The decision to impose this rollout globally without giving users the ability to defer or decline was deeply irresponsible. Accounting professionals and small business owners rely on QuickBooks online for daily operations, [00:18:30] compliance and reporting, not as a testing ground for unproven interface experiments or unstable AI features. And that's from Christine, Christine. And I'm just going to give her first name because I'm not sure if she wants her whole name known. So thank you.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Christine. I can speak to so many of those that you know it. Take me about two hours to address a lot of those. But one of the first takeaways from that is that [00:19:00] the AI, again, like I just said, still needs to be trained company by company, by company in order to improve. And so it's not to expect it to.

David Leary: Be an employee and train my employee. I should just train an employee.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Should.

David Leary: Hire.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And it takes, you know, it takes months to train an employee. It's going to take time to do it, too. And yes, it means that we have some lost productivity. But the gains in the in the long run will will pay off in that component of it. Um, the, um, [00:19:30] what was the other part of that?

Blake Oliver: Um, well, we had, uh, the automation failures reporting the bank feeds, UI inefficiency and then the.

David Leary: The first rollout.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. So the reporting there painfully conscious of the places where the reporting has failed. And they're actually rolling out a bunch of improvements this month, in November that's going to address a lot of those things, like the fact that you couldn't drill in on an AR report to get the next level reports and [00:20:00] the auto refresh. So a lot of that is, um, is being addressed. And if you find a report that is not accurate, they have a canny board. They have a board where you can submit those so that they can fix the programing on it. So they are committed to fixing that. Um, and you know, I remember meetings with Intuit ten years ago where I was saying, well, you know, like the software is always buggy and we lose productivity as we're troubleshooting the software instead of serving our clients. But they always beta test on us. And so that's always [00:20:30] just kind of the way of it. They don't want to say use the words beta test. I was told not to use those words beta test. But that's really what it all is is minimal viable product. But they are listening now more than they've ever listened in the past, and they're developing more quickly than they ever did before. So if you have feedback and you're finding problems, this is the time to get those in there so that they can fix it.

David Leary: And the big feeds. And this I tweeted this out because [00:21:00] I'm still kind of waiting. When do the agents start working in my QuickBooks? Every time I go to the bank feed screen, my pending just keeps going up 31 the next day I tweeted it out. Now it's at 33. It just keeps going up. When are the agents turn on? When there's 100 unmatched items like nobody's doing the work. And so the only way I got it to go down is I had to use human intelligence. I had to first go and fix the broken feed or connection from Expensify to sync the transactions. And then I had to go [00:21:30] into the register and change all the transactions Expensify synced, move them to the checking account because it just puts them into cash so I can actually match them up in the checking account bank feed. But that's human intelligence. Like the agents aren't aren't gonna be able to do these types of things. They don't have the context. They're not going to problem solve.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, you're asking it to know what to do before you've trained it, and you're asking it to auto enter all of those climbing there is the way this is.

David Leary: Presented to me.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Auto enter for you. They want to be able to at least double check the data going in. [00:22:00] So your complaints a little.

David Leary: Intuit just spent $1 million in a conference, and I sat in the audience and talk about how magical this is. You don't have to do the work the agents are doing. Nobody said, I need to train the agents. You're the only person saying this, Alicia. The marketing says it's just going to do it.

Blake Oliver: But here's the thing even if you train the agent, the agent still has to have access to context about the transaction that is not in QuickBooks. It's in your email or on your calendar or calendar, or in a document that's sitting on your [00:22:30] desk. And I don't have an answer to that question of how do you give the agent the context it needs that a human would have? A human can also go and ask you about the transaction. Are these do these agents do that yet? Like do you get like a message from the agent saying, hey, here's a transaction that I don't know what to do with and tell me what to do with it. Or are they just.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Expecting a brand new technology to be magic? Isn't fair to the bookkeeper or the the technology [00:23:00] that you know that. And that's why Intuit kind of kept surfacing high, high human intelligence. We our jobs are not going away. So to expect it to be magic and to solve it all for us when we're literally in the first year of the software, in the first few months of the software is a lot of this is managing expectations that a lot of people even just backing away from all of what we've been talking about and just talking about the fact that they [00:23:30] changed the interface, that the the code name for it is fusion, but it's in the technical name is QuickBooks on the Intuit platform. And the logic behind it, I've had I've been doing these workshops called QuickBooks online before and after and and calling it the Great QBO refresh. And actually, I have to rerecord 75 classes in the new interface in order to keep up with the software. But what people are telling me is that when they hear me talk [00:24:00] about like where the buttons are and where the logic goes, and they get that context of the why for it, then they're like, oh, okay, I get it. A lot of this is change management and attitude management. That part of the human intelligence is also developing us as people and learning where to look and why it is that way. And I've had almost universal like after I give these before and after sessions, people are like, oh yeah, okay, Alicia, thanks, I get it, we're [00:24:30] good. Let's go.

David Leary: But it's not reconciling in my brain. We have this entire world saying, accountants are going to lose all their jobs because of AI, and it's telling us how great this AI is in their product. I have yet to have one transaction ever just get off my plate and handle itself in QuickBooks. Maybe. Maybe one. I don't know if it did it, I didn't notice it.

Alicia Katz Pollock: That's what rules are for. It never did that. And it's not going to do it now because that's not what the technology is designed to do. If you want it to auto.

David Leary: Ai, it's supposed to. That's what they promise. It's to do it. That's ridiculous. [00:25:00]

Alicia Katz Pollock: It's ridiculous misinterpreting it and calling it to the floor. That's just not fair.

Blake Oliver: All right, let's move on.

David Leary: And I'm just going to post this on Twitter every day I'm going to post my bank feed number and what happened the day before, and we'll just see if it ever goes down to zero. If it ever gets.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, it's not going to because the software is not designed to do that. So that's just you trying to make a point.

David Leary: The bank feed agent, they talk about a bank feed agent. All right.

Alicia Katz Pollock: They don't talk about doing it. That doing it doing it doing that.

Blake Oliver: All right. Let's talk [00:25:30] about this Intuit accounting suite. So currently the situation is we have QuickBooks online accountant that's been around for ages. And it's going to get replaced with something new Alicia give us the overview.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So just in the same way that we've gone from QuickBooks classic with the black navigation bar to the new the new platform, they're doing the same thing with Qbo, and they freaked people out a little bit. The way that they explained it from [00:26:00] the stage of like, QBO A is going away. Well, no, they're just refreshing the interface just like they did before. And they're actually introducing paid tiers. They're introducing new features that you can choose to use if you want. And it totally reflects on like what you were saying earlier about the about the new the oh, about the new features, um, and the all in one platform that QBO is [00:26:30] still going to be free, just like it has been with the feature sets that it has. The ProAdvisor Academy is being worked in. They've got these new dashboards where you can see what's happening in all your clients all at one time, but then what they're adding in is management across the clients. There's a new books review that looks, um, this is specifically not specifically suspiciously like our friends at [00:27:00] um, at Double That. It's got the closed lists and you go down and it allows you to see what's happening in your clients files and manage it and fix it from inside QBO or this new what they're calling it as Intuit Accountant Suite. So in IAM not to be confused with IBS, but in IAS you can actually do client work on your client files without going into your client file. So that's one of the technologies that they're working on. And for the first year [00:27:30] it's going to be free because they have to develop it and design it and see if we like it and troubleshoot it and develop it. And then they they gave it the end of 2026 is when they're formally sunsetting QBO. And that's when some of these new features that they're developing will become paid features that you can choose to use or not.

Blake Oliver: And we do. We know what features will be paid or not or what the pricing will be.

David Leary: So they have a timeline. So they said in January of 2026 they'll start doing testing and feedback. [00:28:00] And May of 2026 they plan to have the announced the tiered requirements, which I guess I would probably tie to pricing of some type. Then they'll retire like Alicia said. Retire QBO December of 26, 2020 6th January 2027 launched the new program. That's right. That's the march.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So basically there's going to be a free version, which is all the existing functionality that we're used to. That's still going to be free. So if you just want to use it like it is, no changes. Um, then there's two new SKUs, two new versions that they're [00:28:30] introducing. One is called core and one is called accelerate. And the core is going to have a customized home screen where you can flip it and the the books close. And some of these things that are really cool about it is like, you can pull up a dashboard of all of your client KPIs and pick which dashboard you want, like a PNL dashboard, where it will talk about your gross profit and your margin and your cost of goods, and show you those KPIs, along with the agents that they've already introduced for [00:29:00] anomalies, so that if one of the numbers is unusual for that company, it will surface. It and actually tell you which transactions are different. And that helps you identify. Do you have bad data that was miscategorized or do you have a trend in the company that you need to look at? But what's cool? It's all on one screen so you can scan all your clients at once, or you can change it to a balance sheet view, or you can change it to a bank feeds and a reconciliation panel. And then so [00:29:30] that is really cool. And that's all I think that's in the core.

Blake Oliver: So I agree with you Alicia. That's like interesting in theory, but I'm not sure if I would ever want or need something like that as a practice leader. I'm, I, I wonder who's asking for it because here's why. Like, I'm just thinking back to, you know, when I managed 200, 300 clients in my firm, None of them were ever [00:30:00] all, like, closed at the same time, right? The books were always in various stages of close, and for some we might be a few months behind because we only do it on a quarterly basis. Some we might be doing it every week. And so for me to see all my clients in one place with KPIs would be kind of meaningless. Because if the books aren't all closed and up to date, it doesn't matter. Um, you know, and also, we would do the analysis when we exported the financials, not like [00:30:30] at some other time. And so I always wonder when Intuit goes and builds something like this, who's asking for it? Who's actually using this. And then as they move up market with larger firms, like I would expect a larger firm to actually use something like this less because they're more likely to have clients on a variety of accounting systems and need something that is, uh, that plays nice with others.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, I think what they did is they looked at the big apps that are out there [00:31:00] that are doing things that QuickBooks natively didn't do. You know, we're talking carbon double.

Blake Oliver: Which used to be keeper.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Keeper financial sense and all of the the canopy and all of the things that were managing your practice and saying, well, if you had to go out to this external tool, let's save your ROI by building it into Qbo at a lower price point than you're paying for those. But it QBO like we were talking about, the multifunction printer QBO is never going [00:31:30] to do all of it as well. And so I don't think anybody's going to leave carbon or Canopy or double tap to go to this tool. But for a small practice. And now we're back to the pro advisors. This is a step up without having to commit to something larger than what you need.

Blake Oliver: So see that's the disconnect for me is I see into its high level messaging being we're going up market really. Right. But but upmarket. Bigger firms don't need this. They already have practice management [00:32:00] and they're not going to abandon, like you said, what they have. That's really robust.

David Leary: But I think big firms do. Blake, but with the big firms don't have in general is Cass practice management. A lot of the bigger firms are still like early in their cash journeys. And I think Intuit is targeting Intuit probably did market research because Intuit is a high priority. Is the big firms, right. It wants to get these big firms to Casper. So I imagine they had lots of discussions with big firms. And the big firms don't have any of these solutions for their cash practice.

Blake Oliver: Right. So think about it this way. You're talking to [00:32:30] a potential customer that is not a current user of any product in this space and asking them, what do you need? And then building that. But that's like asking an idiot what they need because they have no experience. They don't know what they need because they've never done this properly. Does that make sense?

David Leary: Well, yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. I mean, one one of the features that they're building in is task management with with checklists and SOPs. And you can when you assign your team [00:33:00] members to the things the paid version, the accelerated version is actually going to have capacity management as well. So you can see how many tasks are assigned to different people and reallocate according to hitting getting people in their percentage range.

Blake Oliver: But to build something like that, to build an actual practice management app that can do task management, that can do capacity planning, I mean, they're going to have to be able to do time tracking because there's all these firms that are still making people do time tracking. Uh, that is like and that's that is a massive product to [00:33:30] build. And to do it well, Intuit would have to invest an incredible amount of money and basically starting from scratch. So like, I just I just wonder about this strategically, how they can continue to invest in QuickBooks and also invest in building an entire practice management solution that they think is going to be robust enough for like top 400 firms to want to use.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Right? Yeah, it does seem like kind of a cross in market that the tools that they're [00:34:00] building are for are technically really for the people coming up from the bottom, but they're kind of, as we've been talking about, leaving the people from the bottom to go to the top. So they're sandwiching in the middle with nothing in the middle, I think.

David Leary: And there's a good.

Blake Oliver: Well, I was going to say last thing and then I'll let you go, David. But it's I feel like this is the this is the disconnect. This is the disconnect at Intuit Connect, which is they want to go up market. And so they are talking with practice leaders at big firms. But their current customers are [00:34:30] small firms and independent ProAdvisor. And that is why the vibe was not right. It's because they don't feel heard. That's my take, just walking around and talking to people.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. The David go ahead.

David Leary: So I'm glad you brought up the firm capacity planning. So I imagine smaller or smaller firms aren't going to be using that feature as much. And I think they built this for bigger firms because some part of it, as they were demoing it, were like, if you're going to be short [00:35:00] capacity, you can hire an Intuit expert. Yes. Is Intuit going to be like the middleman? Is this basically hiring independent pro advisors? And now basically Intuit going to supply take the Intuit ProAdvisor. It's almost like a QuickBooks Live model and treat you the independent QuickBooks ProAdvisor as labor for these bigger firms.

Alicia Katz Pollock: You actually nailed it because in their demo and in the the keynote, that's one of the things that they actually said is if you're hitting capacity, you're going to see an ad up [00:35:30] there for, hey, assign this client to QuickBooks Live, their $50 service where they can ask any little questions that they have. So they I really do think that they are trying to build their own QBO labor force. And that's where it does get a little more competitive with the pro advisors. And what they are saying is, hey, experienced pro advisors come work for QB live. And I, you know, considering all [00:36:00] of the staffing issues that we're having, I would way, way, way rather have US based bookkeepers go work for QB live than see them outsourcing to people overseas. I'm personally not a fan of offshoring because I believe in intellectual capital as part of our economy in this country. And so if people are so, I can see how that can be positioned as a win, a [00:36:30] win win by developing QuickBooks Live. But oh my God, they need definitely better training and more experience.

Blake Oliver: So as Intuit moves up market, like I said, I think they're leaving their flank exposed, perhaps to, uh, competitors at the lower end. And you know who that could include? You're going to love this, David. Quicken. Quicken has added features for self-employed [00:37:00] workers. I spotted this in CPA Practice Advisor. Can you imagine if a quicken full circle. Full circle, right. If quicken came back and started to eat QuickBooks lunch. So, uh, Intuit spun off quicken, I don't know, when was that? Uh, I sold it to private equity. Right. Uh.

David Leary: It's been a while now, years ago.

Blake Oliver: Right. So they can focus.

David Leary: On I don't remember. That's how long ago it was.

Blake Oliver: Well, so, you know, uh, that quicken, which is now independent, might be coming for the, the self-employed [00:37:30] market. Um, you know, 27.6 million Americans work as full time independent professionals. And I don't think they need all these features that QuickBooks is adding with Intuit Enterprise Suite and QuickBooks has gotten pretty expensive. Um, you know, relatively. So, um, what has, uh, quicken added, they have now added estimates. Those are available now. You can create, send and manage estimates with a client portal for approvals and change requests. Sales receipts are coming soon so you can document and [00:38:00] provide work, uh, proof of work for non invoice payments received at the time of service. They've added mileage tracking that's available now, that's in-app. And they've got a quarterly tax planner and reminders available now as well. So it's called Quicken Business and Personal unified solution for uh solopreneurs, freelancers and small business owners. I'm wondering if they'll start an accounting program.

David Leary: So this is interesting because there's all these new AI startups, but [00:38:30] they're kind of going for the enterprise space. I don't think they're going to come in and take that bottom of the QuickBooks market away. But you're right about.

Blake Oliver: That.

David Leary: David. Apps like Monarch Monarch Money is a personal finance app who they took a big raise and they plan on building business features and monarch money so that that, that that entry level business accounting market. I think these personal finance apps are going to go after I just don't see these big AI plays because they're expensive puzzle. Everybody's like, oh, puzzle is going to solve this. Puzzles 300 bucks a month. If you want to have like an [00:39:00] equivalent set of features of QuickBooks. Digits.

Blake Oliver: Digits is 100 100 a month. So I don't know what QuickBooks is these days for your typical small business owner at least, should you like offhand? Like we're.

David Leary: Paying 125.

Alicia Katz Pollock: On the version, but you're looking around 50 on the low end to 275 in that in that range. Plus, for example, is 125 right now.

Blake Oliver: So digits, digits, uh, could come in and offer like a tier for 50 bucks a month and [00:39:30] give people AI powered, you know, cash basis bookkeeping and go for it. Alicia. You're laughing.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Well, yeah, I'm laughing because the grand irony here is it's the people who are like, I don't want all this AI stuff in my QuickBooks. I just want a general ledger. And the alternatives are all AI forward. Yeah. So, like, where are you gonna go? You kind of have to get on board with the AI components of it.

Blake Oliver: Yeah. I mean, to me, it's not an AI issue. It's not [00:40:00] the problem is not AI, it's just the implementation of it. Like I've said on this show over and over again, developers should not build. They should not replace rules with AI because AI is statistical and probabilistic and is not 100%. And the best use of it is to automate the creation of rules. So go through my GL and look at what I've done in the past, and suggest creating hundreds [00:40:30] of rules that will auto categorize transactions 100% accurately every time. And then I can go and tweak the settings like I don't know why Intuit didn't do that. Like they should know better.

David Leary: Ramp kind of did it right. I think with some of the ramp rules, the AI, the.

Blake Oliver: Ai creates the rules. Yeah.

David Leary: Rules.

Blake Oliver: Yeah. And that's because David Weiss is over there and he's an actual accountant who knows how to advise product leaders. I just feel like, I mean, this is just my hot take, but I feel like the Intuit product people do not talk to enough real accountants. And [00:41:00] they could do they could do more.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, mostly they're talking to the the well, it used to be talking to the small business owners. Now all their talk is to the Cass firms. I mean, to be fair, I spent most of my time at connect in the Intuit Innovation Circle. I went to a couple workshops, but that's where I spent all of my time. And that 42 pages of notes full on 30 of them, are literally lists of what [00:41:30] has been just released, what what they are working on. And a lot of them were really cool. I have to say, a lot of the features were problem solving and really neat uses of the technology. But, you know, I would say, well, when is this going to be released? And the answer was coming soon, coming soon. And when pressed, some of them are November, some of them are end of 2025, some of them are first quarter, some of them are going to be developed over time. And it's going to take a [00:42:00] little while to get there. But I really actually did respect a lot of the the tweaks that they're making to the to the software and the functionality.

Blake Oliver: Hk geek in the livestream says, uh, isn't that what QBO rules does in, uh, response to the discussion we're having about AI.

David Leary: Does or did?

Blake Oliver: Well, HK says if you code something the same three times in a row, they suggest creating a rule for it.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So they actually, I think they took away the rule suggestions, but you can manually create the rule. They were getting people who [00:42:30] were making.

Blake Oliver: Why did they take away the rules?

David Leary: We went backwards.

Blake Oliver: Exactly so.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Because. Because people were making bad rules.

Blake Oliver: So what you should be able to do is like, this is how I would design it, right is if if QuickBooks notices like a trend in how you've previously handled transactions or how you're doing it now, it suggests to create like an AI rule. And the AI rule would basically be like a custom, like a prompt that says when a transaction comes in that looks like this, you [00:43:00] know, take the following actions. And you could actually like, like expose the prompt to the user so that they can customize it. The problem right now is that all of that is obfuscated behind the scenes, as that's my understanding of it. So you can't actually like you can't. The only way you can fix it is to keep correcting it, but there's no way to guarantee that it learns exactly what you want it to do. And, and I and again, the lack of context is the problem. So if they [00:43:30] really want to make these agents work. They've got to connect it to your email so that you can say, like when this transaction comes in, go search for the latest invoice related to this vendor and then add in the details. And you know, all that sort of thing. I don't know, whatever it is that you would ask a human to do.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, I do know that it's on their radar to also take a look at the industry that you select on your setup and that you have in your settings, and take a look at what's common for that vendor in your industry and [00:44:00] add that in there. And so that's where the AI does come into play. Yes. And you know but again they still have to program it. So let's be patient.

Blake Oliver: Well and this is an interesting, uh, technical hurdle for Intuit. And this is based on my interview with the digit CEO. Um, um, Jeff. Uh, Seibert and he said, um, that like the way the digits database [00:44:30] is set up, they can look across all the transactions, across all the vendors, across every entity. And the way that I believe that, you know, Intuit their database works with QuickBooks is that it's very much more siloed, right, that it's not as easy for them to look across all of the vendors and all of the companies and see how they've been coded across every entity. So that's a big disadvantage [00:45:00] when your database for QuickBooks online is, you know, how many decades old. At this point, it may be difficult to apply AI learning across the whole QuickBooks world. By the way, uh, going back to this discussion about quicken, do you know how much quicken is per month? This is crazy. I just went to the pricing. Quicken business and personal is $8 a month.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, if your needs are [00:45:30] super simple, then yeah, you've got an alternative.

Blake Oliver: I mean, if you just want to use it as like a gel, right? If you just want to use it to to code your transactions and do your taxes. Right. This is this is like, I don't know, this is like a pet peeve of mine is that I feel like a lot of accounting firms overengineer solutions for our clients. Like we need to look at what do they actually need, what do they actually need? And those, you know, tens of millions of small businesses that are mostly independent people and freelancers, all that they really need [00:46:00] is like a PNL cash basis and a tax return.

David Leary: Once a year.

Blake Oliver: Once a year. And there are so many successful firms that are doing that. But there's also a lot of firms that are doing that on QuickBooks and like paying for a lot of stuff they don't need.

Alicia Katz Pollock: But that's where a ledger comes in. And Simple Start, which is now being rebranded as QuickBooks Lite. If all you need is a glorified checkbook, those options are there. You don't need all the bells and whistles.

Blake Oliver: How much is the. I'm just curious. How much do you know offhand how much those [00:46:30] are these days?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Like, I could look it up real quick.

Blake Oliver: All right, well, you do that. Um.

David Leary: And I've argued that too. But like the there's all this focus on finishing your clothes. Finishing your clothes. Finish your clothes. I don't think there's one small business owner, probably a QuickBooks user, a small business QuickBooks user that cares about the clothes being done every month. Yeah. They want you need the clothes when you have to get a loan and do your taxes. That's it.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So simple start is right now at 38 bucks a month, which is. Yeah, [00:47:00] I mean I remember when plus was $40 a month. Right.

Blake Oliver: So you know, it's like, you know, this is the problem I have is that Intuit is is going after maybe 100,000 businesses that are of the size that could use Intuit Enterprise Suite or QuickBooks advanced. Probably 100,000. There are tens of millions of small businesses that don't need that. And, um, I've sort of [00:47:30] like when I, when I talk to accountants about, you know, who do you want to serve and what kind of market do you want to enter? I like to point out that, um, like my firm did very, very well serving the low end of the market. And it's because we streamlined and we automated, and we were able to offer a really great service at a few hundred dollars a month to start. And I don't see how we could do that if we're paying that much for software. You know, you need lightweight solutions. And so, um, like, [00:48:00] sometimes it's better not to try and compete with everybody in the same small pool and go to that bigger one that's underserved and figure out how to use technology to serve them better and more affordably. And, you know, we just totally were able to, like, beat any accounting firm, any CPA firm on pricing, and we could offer better service at the same time. So, you know, that's that's the trick is don't do what everyone else is doing. And I feel like that's what Intuit is doing by going up [00:48:30] market.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, somebody in the in the comments just uh, just put the pricing snapshot up that QBO is 38 a month. Um, puzzle is 25 a month and digits base plan is 65 a month. Got it. So QBO is actually like right in.

Blake Oliver: Right in the middle.

Alicia Katz Pollock: There in the center for for simple start. We're just talking about the basic functionality, but that's about where those other AI platforms are as well.

Blake Oliver: So I wanted to highlight a little bit of news from digits since I mentioned it. Um, I don't think it's a coincidence [00:49:00] that this came out during Intuit Connect. Digits has launched a free API that lets you plug directly into their AI powered accounting system. No partner fees, no usage limits, and no marketplace lock ins. Uh, that might be a dig directly at Intuit for now. Charging for access to their API, and that that could be a really great thing for this whole marketplace of apps that Intuit is now squeezing out or reducing. [00:49:30] Um, because I like, I like as a firm owner, you know, being able to build my own ERP and not have to take what is handed to me and do everything in an all in one system. I don't I don't like putting all my eggs in one basket.

David Leary: And that's why I think Intuit has an opportunity here to launch a vibe coding platform. Because if you think about it, Alicia, you have 25 small business clients. They all have these unique little problems that there's no third party third party apps are ever going to solve. But if if Intuit could give a third [00:50:00] a vibe coding platform, that it can interact with the QuickBooks data very easily and you could create a custom solution, that's how Intuit wins enterprise long term. You have all these people with these custom solutions, and they'll never leave, and they'll never leave the ProAdvisor who built it for them either.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, um, Alex Belhaj, in his keynote address, talked about Intuit intelligence. And one of the things he did actually say is that you're going to be able to use vibe coding to program your own dashboard widgets, and so you will be able to and this is [00:50:30] he didn't give a when on this, but you will be able to take something specific for a company that you want and create a widget for the dashboard that gives that specific information so that they are actually working on that.

David Leary: And that was yeah. So if you have a AI chat chat bot right, you're going to talk to it. What were my weekly sales last week. It would give it to you. Would you be like, would you like to put this on your dashboard and would create a widget and give you the widget? So yeah, there is some, but you're not going to solve problems with that, right? All you're going to do is you're, it's a it's [00:51:00] a fancier. It's just a reporting widget. It's reporting at the end of the day, not actual business process solving.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, A agreed. And I personally I think that where they're leaning in with all of the dashboards and raising insights about the data, I think is a really cool value added that has never been there, that up until now, accounting and bookkeeping has been taking data, getting the data in and then humanly looking at it and doing your mental comparisons to find the [00:51:30] intelligence that you need in order to grow your business. And that's specifically where this is actually a huge benefit. Is all of the AI doing that analysis and surfacing, surfacing that information from you and Intuit is really, really, really leaning in on the goal of cash flow. That that's their number one, is designing the AI to to decrease your time to get paid and increase your or decrease your HR, increase your, [00:52:00] um, all of the strategies that you need to to find new customers get paid faster. That is their primary focus. And I the dashboards I think are actually really cool. And the fact that they're customizable, especially when you go up to advanced because you can fully design what you need. All of the clients that I've been bringing over from desktop who are moving into QBO right now, especially the ones in the last month or two with the new interface, they've been blown [00:52:30] away at how amazing QuickBooks is, and that's something that we kind of you and we, the three of us have been in this industry for 20 years or more. And so we're complaining about the evolution of it. But the people who are coming in fresh are blown out of the water with being able to actually understand what's happening in their company, like delight, like I've had people going, oh my God, Alicia, why did I wait so long? And so it's a very different perspective [00:53:00] from people coming in new versus people who have watched this whole process evolve.

Blake Oliver: I think that's a great way to summarize our discussion today. Alicia, thank you so much for joining us and for doing this crossover episode of The Accounting Podcast and the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast. It's been so much fun.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, I've really enjoyed this conversation. Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Blake Oliver: Uh, thanks to everyone who listened. Don't forget, you can get free Continuing Professional Education [00:53:30] for joining us today or listening to this podcast on the feed or watching it on YouTube. Go to earmark in your web browser or download the free earmark app on the App Store. Create a free account. Find the accounting podcast channel. Take a five question quiz about this episode and you'll get a CPE certificate, all for free. And if you want to support our work, consider subscribing to get unlimited CPE every year and subscriber only courses. All [00:54:00] right, that's all I got. See you around here next week, everyone.