01.31.2024 - QB Live Updates with Intuit

Michelle and Dan will be joined by Business Strategy & Partnership Leader Jessica McCracken and Accountant Segment Leader Ted Callahan from Intuit to discuss some of the recent QB Live Announcements and what you can expect to see for your clients so you and your clients are not surprised. We will also be holding our quarterly Q&A from common posts from the FB Group.

QB Power Hour is a free, biweekly webinar series for accountants, ProAdvisors, CPAs, bookkeepers and QuickBooks consultants presented by Michelle Long, CPA and Dan DeLong who are very passionate about the industry, QuickBooks and apps that integrate with QuickBooks.

Watch or listen to all of the QB Power Hours at https://www.qbpowerhour.com/blog

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Transcript

Dan DeLong: 0:30

Welcome

Michelle Long: 0:30

everybody to another QB power hour. We're very glad to have you joining us today We've got a special one today It is QB live update in the facebook group Q& A and we're very happy to have lots of wonderful people from Intuit joining Us today for this one And without further ado, let's just go ahead and get right on into it. My name is Michelle Long. I am CPA and an MBA owner of Long For Success. Been a contract trainer for Intuit since 2007. Enough about me. We've got a lot to get into. Dan, go ahead.

Dan DeLong: 1:01

Yeah, my name's Dan Long on, I, Dan with worked that into it. Some of these folks that are, that have joined us here today for nearly 18 years, co hosting today. I was also at the workshop Wednesdays over at schoolbookkeeping. com and doing some tech editing for the QBO for Dummies series. Now we have a lot of folks joining us here today, so let's let's toss it over to Ted since he's the first one on the list, and go around the horn here.

Ted Callahan: 1:27

Perfect. Hey, Dan, Michelle, thanks so much for letting us join you. And thanks to everybody who's joined live. It's awesome to be with you virtually. As Dan said, we brought a whole crew from Intuit to talk about some of the latest developments on the QuickBooks Live side of the house. And so we wanted to make sure, as always, that you understand who we are. Why we're doing and then what we're doing. So on the who, my name is Ted Callahan. I'm responsible for our accountant partnership and strategy. I've been into it for coming up on seven years and it's always a joy to be with everybody. So looking forward to the connection and the chat and the questions and I'll pass it to Hardik, who's the leader of from a product perspective of the QuickBooks Live business tax experience we're going to be talking about.

Hardik Tiwari: 2:17

Thank you, Ted. Hello, everyone. Excited to be here. I'm a senior product manager for our QuickBooks Stacks product and been working on this product for almost and I last year and we just launched it in the market. So excited to be here. We'll pass it on to Erica.

Ted Callahan: 2:34

Hi, everyone. Great to be here. My name is Erica Trubin. I'm a group manager that's supporting the QVL BizTax offering as well as the TurboTax business offering. I am a CPA and I'm just glad to be with this group today. I will pass it over to Miranda. Thank you. Hi, everyone. My name is Miranda. I am focused internally on activating your feedback account and feedback to make sure that our teams are really building and designing with accountants in mind. I've been with Intuit for four years and focused on accountants the whole time. So I'm really happy to be here with you today, Jessica. Morning. Thank you guys for so many of you joining us on a deadline week. I know that's a big deal, so very excited that we're here and able to engage with you and Dan and Michelle for hosting us for those who don't know me, I'm Jessica McCracken and I'm focused on how we can be better partners to you guys and to the accounting

Dan DeLong: 3:25

industry as a whole. Thanks again for everyone joining us. It's quite a fireside chat. We've got going on with everyone. And there's additional folks that are asking or answering Q and a questions and the chat in the background, but a little bit about the Q and the QB power hour webinar series. It's every other Tuesday, not eligible for CPE credit. But if you can check out the website, For for upcoming topics you can always check out there. And then we have the PDF of the slides, reporting, podcasts, and other resources at qbpowerhour. com slash resources, a little bit of housekeeping. If you have specific questions about what we're talking about here today, please put them in the Q& A makes it a lot easier, especially if we can't answer them in the time allotted that we have today, we can pass those on to the folks at Intuit to follow up which is a lot easier than if you put it in the chat. It's nice enough to say things like go chief or sorry about the eagles, whatever it is that you want to say about in the in chat, but it's really hard to follow up. So we appreciate if you would put anything topical that we're talking about today in the Q and a so that we can address it if need be, or follow up. If need be as well. So something new for 2024 that we've been trying is to simulcast and get more information out there, right? Without you having to register for the QB Power Hour series. It's, you can log into our website and save your spot. And it's a biweekly webinar series, so you only have to register once. But if you would prefer just to catch it. On YouTube or catch it on Facebook or LinkedIn or any other places that we're going to be simulcast streaming you can certainly do that as well. A little point of note about the Facebook group because it is a private group and you're, if you're watching it on the Facebook group itself because it is a private group and there are Settings and security settings and privacy settings for Facebook and that group in order for us to see who you are. If you were to say something you have to allow the application that we're using to permission to be able to see your profile. So otherwise it will just say Facebook user and we won't know who you are. So that would be great. The nice part about the streaming platform that we're using is that you can comment. In Facebook and the folks on YouTube can see that comment. So you basically can be able to engage with each other on your platform of choice. Now, we're going to have poll questions and the Q& A and the chat and those types of things, and those things are only going to be available if you register for the webinar series. But if you're anti Zoom or whatever you can just watch it on your platform of choice, right? So that's just something about that. So we're going to talk a little bit about the QuickBooks Live hack updates. We talked a little bit about it last time but we wanted to, give. Init the opportunity to talk about it from their perspective because all we could see is what was available to look at that point. So we want Ted and Hardick to to talk a little bit about the that, and then we'll have some power user Facebook group q and a. So let's first start off with the first poll question, which now I can't see the poll. What percentage of your clients are currently in QuickBooks Online? So while you're answering that I just wanted to talk a little bit about the Facebook group that, that we have. And coming up on 16, 000 members, which is pretty cool, Michelle. Starting it from scratch it's pretty difficult to do that. You want to talk a little bit about the Facebook group, its journey. It is, yeah,

Michelle Long: 7:17

and one of the great things about the Facebook group is it is a closed group. We don't have it just open membership. We do try to, review the people who apply for membership and things like that. And it is an amazing one. I love that bullet there, people helping people. Because people are so willing to help one another. When somebody posts a question, have you used this app? I've got a client that needs this. Do you have any suggestions and stuff? So I just love that. And we do try to keep it, a closed group in the sense of not just letting anybody and everybody in there. We try to keep it for accounting professionals and stuff. So I just love it. It is a very active, very vocal group out there, and it is a great support group. And that's one of the wonderful things, With so many of us that are, solo practitioners or small firms or something, you may be working on your own, but you're not on your own. You've got a whole network of people out there that you can bounce ideas off of, or, talking with other people and stuff. So I absolutely love it. So it is a great way to get feedback on a variety of things out there.

Dan DeLong: 8:18

So check it out. Yep. And there is an Intuit presence in that Facebook group. But we, we don't want to use it as a mechanism to bypass talking to Intuit. I've seen that a couple of times where, they'll get some answer from from some Intuit folks themselves. And then they immediately go and tag those people in the Facebook post and then that's really not what it's there for to bypass that because as I can, I built a pretty good career of being the person that people called for help. There is a resource there available for you with chat or Ted, you want to talk a little bit about. Maybe some of the recent changes or things that you've been working on with regards to the care and service delivery that even that didn't do, it's

Ted Callahan: 9:03

been working on. So there's there's a long history there, Dan. And so the, I think the headline is. When I first got into the role gosh, it was probably going on three years ago now. Something that I was hearing from the community was that you all were not getting the support that you wanted and that you desperately needed, both for yourself and for your clients. And when we were looking at our internal dashboards, we were seeing everything was green, there was literally no problem from all of the dashboarding. And if you think about the number of contacts that we get on a month, we're very reliant on the dashboards as a source of truth of, are we delivering what we thought but thanks to the, I would say very. Persistent and consistent feedback that you all provided to us as we were just engaging. We got to learn a ton about, oh, my gosh, some of the dashboards were not instrumented in the way that we thought they were. And therefore they weren't returning the experience that you all were having. And so again, this is where I think the partnership together with all of you is so critical. And we made a ton of changes. We brought support back into the, the major support team that's. working during most of the folks business hours in the United States, North America. They are now back in the United States and we did that to be training those folks to be making sure we understand your pain. You have a portfolio of clients. This is your business. You can't afford to be sitting on hold for 10, 15 minutes an hour waiting for somebody who then doesn't know as much about you and the product. And so we vastly changed that care experience. And the one behavior that I would continue to remind everybody about is if you are logged in, we can know a lot more about who you are. And then if you ask for that callback through the care panel, we can make sure we've got an expert who understands. what you're up to, who you are, and then we can be routing you to the best possible care team to start off on the best possible foot. So that is the change that we continue to help. And so if you'll get that word out to the community, I feel like a lot of folks have experienced that. Oh my gosh, callback happens quickly and the person knows a lot more. We continue to lean into that and then we continue to look for opportunities, especially with some of the changes, Dan, that we've been making in the pro advisor program to be aligning. One of the common feedbacks we heard from all of y'all is, Hey what is the point of being a pro advisor gold versus elite status if it doesn't make a different difference for me? And so we've been working to really align and have those different tiers mean more. And part of that is to make sure. The folks that have the highest tier are getting the most trained experts. And so we've seen how powerful that is. And so we continue to enlarge who gets the best care experience deeper into the tiers. But you should also be just checking out the ProAdvisor program. We've been doing a lot to improve that and make that better. And that's also part of that care journey. So probably more than you all wanted in terms of the history, it's always a journey. And and it's one that because of the partnership that we have with y'all, we can make it better.

Dan DeLong: 12:08

Yeah, and I think I think something that you said there that kind of resonated and I got distracted by somebody needing access to the slide. So I completely spaced what I was going to, but I was going to ask you but it is an ongoing journey, right? And one of the things that we see pretty regularly from the accounting community in the Facebook group itself is, Okay. A little bit of frustration when it comes to, I have to explain I think I know more than the person that I'm talking to, or I have to explain, or I get passed around. Is there any tips and tricks or, best practices? I know you said do it from within and request a callback. Would that be the preferred way for pro advisors to

Ted Callahan: 12:52

go? Yep. That's the ultimate way to get the best care experience. And I can, I know that from qualitative your feedback and also from folks who are when we look at the dashboards that we've re instrumented, now,

Dan DeLong: 13:10

one of the things that I want to talk a little bit about in the Facebook group is because sometimes, because we are people helping people and nobody's getting paid in the Facebook group to help each other. They do it just out of the kindness of their heart, but some of the information that they provide is super valuable. They're giving up their time to be able to, provide some of this information. But we don't know what that's worth to you, right? And it's very, really weird for somebody to ask okay, I gave you that. I joke every once in a while, that'll be a hundred bucks or, or something like that. But what we're actually wanting to do is because, we're people helping people in the Facebook group, but now we want to be people helping people. And now we're going to start requesting that if you've gotten an answer in the Facebook group that you value. We're going to request that you don't you make a donation to some somebody based off of the value of the information that you receive. We're working with a donation marketplace so that you can just log in to that to be able to make a donation to the fundraising, of your choice. No political stuff. We're not going to be doing that. But donating to a nonprofit campaign is something that we're looking into do and implementing inside of the Facebook group too. Maybe we can get a, an intuit match throwing that out to you. All right. So I'm going to stop sharing. If I could stop sharing and then who's going to be sharing your your information to, to go from what's happening with

Ted Callahan: 14:38

totally, I will kick us off and then heartache. I will pass to you. So I'm going to interrupt your share. There we go. And okay, can everybody see my screen? Yes. Terrific. A key thing I think that I want to start with all of you is the power of making sure you all are connected into why we're doing what we're doing before we get into the what this is something that Brad Smith. Taught all of us, which is context before content. I like to say it's why before what. And so just a reminder, our mission at Intuit, what gets us out of bed and what I think really differentiates Intuit from so many of the other companies in Silicon Valley is that our mission is truly I think unique and transformative, which is how are we powering prosperity for all of our customers across the globe? And so that's the mission that we're on. And if you think about a lot of what we're gonna be talking about, it's how do we increase the chances of success for small business owners? We're sitting in that small business group. And so we're thinking about How do we help our small businesses and our self employed customers in the best possible ways. This Intuit strategy slide, I think it's one that you probably all have seen multiple times. The top half that says small business, self employed and consumers. Those are our customers. Those are our really, if you think about who's that mission for, it's for those three folks. The bottom ring you can see are the key partners. And as we talk a lot. You all as the accounting professional community. You are our top priority partner. That is why you can see your top left included in that partner group are also developers. So you think about all the third party apps and the way they connect into the QuickBooks ecosystem as well as financial institutions. A lot of you all who, we're at QuickBooks connect. You got to hear that, Hey, we've finally extended statement auto import now to include all of chase, right? Which is just such a broader reach, helping really power your efficiency and your workflow. And then we've got our mega platforms, educational institutions, and then governments as well. So those are all the partners. And then the benefits that we're focused in on are how do we ensure our customers are getting more money? With less work we would say no drudgery, no, no kind of work that's repetitive that isn't bringing value. And then also critically with complete confidence. And that's where the partnership with all of you comes in. And so again just grounding us in why do we do what we do? And then how do we think about our strategy? A couple of years ago, when we changed from Brad to Sasson in terms of our CEO. One of the first things that Sasson did as CEO was come out with what he called five big bets. These would be transformative efforts that would be multi year that would be taking into it to the next level in terms of how we bring that set of benefits to Even more customers around the globe. And the one that we're going to focus in on today is number two, connecting people to experts. I won't take you through the other five. If you all want to ask questions on those, I'm happy to give them. I just want to give you the context. There's five. They've been in place now. For I think coming up on five years, we've recently refreshed them, but you'll see they are durable areas of focus. So the and so just in the spirit of time, I'm just going to move off this. I was going to do a quick walkthrough, but I'll just keep moving. As I said, we're going to focus in on how we think about connecting people to experts. And so if you think about our partnership with the community, 65 percent of all QuickBooks online customers are connected to people like yourselves. So this has been a big area of focus. However, the fact that 65 percent are connected means 35 percent are not. And we've talked a lot in the past about when we dug into why we discovered there are a number of reasons people couldn't find expertise. They weren't comfortable asking they couldn't afford the current levels of expertise, et cetera. And so that's what led to, some of the reasons that led to the launch of the QuickBooks live experience, which we saw was a key way to grow the market for services. With more of our customers and in again, if you go back to that focus on powering prosperity, we actually measure ourselves in, are we delivering the benefit that we said we would do? And so if we look out in the market for small businesses, we see that in five years from when you start to five years after that date, On average, half small businesses go out of business. So literally there's a 50 percent survival rate, which means a 50 percent failure rate. We see on our platform, our small businesses. Actually have closer to a 70 percent success rate at five years. So literally a 20 point lift in success. And a big part of that is because they get connected to experts like yourselves. The reason again, then, and then, Hey, how do we power more prosperity? We want to get more folks connected to experts. So hence some of the development in the rationale for. The big bet to and the QuickBooks live challenge when we started digging into what are some of those key benefits that small business owners face or receive from getting connected to an expert. The number one is they've got a person to talk to. And if I were to play back when I was a small business owner before I came to into it, literally you all know this, you see this in your client lives all the time. It can be so lonely and it can be So I would say gut wrenching of, am I just making the right decision around? I would love to be able to talk to somebody about this, right? You all are that lifeline for our shared customers so much at the time. And we see the benefit is a boost in confidence. I've been able to talk to somebody about this decision I'm going to make. Now I've got more conviction around it. I make that not only do I make the decision, but now I make it with conviction. And so when I go back and I talk about. Awesome. We've got 65 percent of small businesses connected to folks like yourselves. 35 percent aren't. We want to be helping that 35 percent who haven't yet made that step to get connected to all of you and the development of what we call our virtual expert platform. That is the set of live experts who are pro advisors themselves that we vet, and then we hire on as into it employees to help our customers get into the right set of benefits with QuickBooks will get to what are the different QuickBooks live offerings, but just to ground you in why we're doing what we're doing. So now let's look at the QuickBooks live portfolio. There are currently three offerings that most of you probably have heard about, maybe not all of them. But if you look if you start on the left side of the screen, we've got a setup. So this is included now when people buy QuickBooks online. You get a 45 minute consultation with a, an expert who can train you in connecting your bank, getting started with categorization. Doing the right receipt work, etc. Again, just giving folks a taste of what it looks like to get set up well, because again, it's a very common problem is folks sign up, they get all excited, they get into QuickBooks online, and then they go, Whoa, I'm overwhelmed. And they leave the product, they flee, and so it's that crisis of confidence and all of those things. We found that by

Dan DeLong: 21:54

this wasn't as easy as Danny DeVito said,

Ted Callahan: 21:57

Exactly. Yeah. Surprising. Surprisingly, not right. And but with an expert. Oh, now I'm getting into benefit. We see a market boost in folks sticking with the process of getting signed up using QuickBooks and then able to move on into better business performance, getting connected to an expert, et cetera. So that's something that's been around for for four years, the far right, the full service bookkeeping that's been around for a little bit longer. That's an experience that provides a monthly set of work to organize and provide a closed book of close set of books each month for folks. You all have heard a lot about that. What has been the newer is in that center part of this column, which we call assisted bookkeeping in a simple way. I would talk about this as view this as, a trained expert in bookkeeping who's available to a small business on demand. They're not doing any kind of ongoing service, but when a small business owner who wants to do it themselves get stuck, here's the opportunity for them to have that expert to help them make a decision and get the support they need so they can go on and getting their book, keeping their financial records organized. So that's the current live portfolio that we've had in place. And then if we go to the next slide, what we wanted to share with you all something, it was an experience that we launched last year as TurboTax live for business that we've now brought over rebranded as QuickBooks live business tax and hard. I'm going to pass to you in a second. And so the reason for that was. When we started, we saw, hey, there's a bunch of folks that work together with you who then need tax help, right? Some of you provide tax services. Some of you have connections and you refer your small business clients over. But if we're honest, what we see is There's a lot of pain right now on the tax side of the house. And a lot of folks when I'm talking to members of the community, there's actually a set of customers that even if you are providing tax services, there's a set of customers you may no longer want to be providing tax services through your line of business. And so you're looking to Exit that relationship in a graceful way. That's in keeping with a bunch of the trends that we see as well. And so part of what business live sorry, QuickBooks live business tax, a lot of words is trying to do is make it easier for you to keep the clients you want and then have those who Maybe aren't a good fit for a lot of the different offerings here is a way for them to get the tax support. They need at that point of need, which is during tax time. So this year, we've launched QuickBooks Live as a business tax product. It's still powered by TurboTax. And I'm going to let Hardik get into the specifics of it. Who's the ideal customer? Because I know that's a question you all have. What does that service look like? Who are the experts? And so we can get into that. So Hardik, I'm going to pass to you and let me know if you want to stay on this slide or if you want me to transition to the next slide.

Hardik Tiwari: 24:58

Thanks, Ted. I think you explained it pretty well. So we can switch over to the next slide and get into the details of the offering. So as Ted mentioned, we at the Intuit level, TurboTax Live Business was a product that was launched last year or a bit before that. And we saw good traction with small businesses. And the biggest problem I think a lot of small businesses ran into is how I have been doing my bookkeeping with QuickBooks. Why can't you import the data from QuickBooks and fit it into your TurboTax product? And that's when we we. Took that problem and ran a small experiment in last August, where we went ahead and launched a full service solution full service solution for S Corps and partnerships. That means you come into the product, upload your documents and your QuickBooks account is already accessible to an accountant or a bookkeeper in this case very specifically, to do your cleanup year end cleanup, get your books ready for taxes, and then send over all those documents and data to a tax expert for filing. So this was a small pilot very scrappy. We launched in August, ran for a month. And I understood one, there was a need for within the QuickBooks ecosystem for customers looking to file their taxes within QBO. And then secondly, we figured out like through the scrappiness on what's an operating model that we can scale at least in year one, so this year. We actually relaunched that on January 8th, and then we also expanded our customer portfolio to not only serve as cost partnerships and multi member LLCs, but also Schedule C filers. And there are two models that we have live in our product or in the market. So the first one is QuickBooks Live Assisted Tax, which is only for Schedule C filers in QBO, where You're expected to do most of the work yourself, which is you start getting ready for taxes within QBO by categorizing your transactions, right? Reconciling your accounts and getting those year end reports out. And then through one click export, you export all of the data over to TurboTax Schedule C filing product. This is a do it with me or assisted product where you are expected to do most of the work yourself. But you have access to an expert through call, through chat, to video meetings, whenever you need. And there are specific touch points where we believe customers utilize that access to expert. One is general questions when they're filling a form or carrying out in a particular transaction. But more importantly for reviews is where we see expert customers reaching out to expert, getting that review done right before filing. This product is currently as of today, priced at 1. 69. Plus 1. 64 per state. But as we go through the season, we'll adjust our pricing based on how much, capacity that we have at that point in the season. The second product, which is live, is full service solution. And this is for the S Corps, partnerships, and multi member LLCs. This is a situation where customer has probably high level of complexity, or maybe they just don't want to do the work themselves at all. And in that case, they get connected to an expert. The expert collects the documents, they have access to the QBO account, and they start with getting you ready for taxes through a quick cleanup. And once that cleanup is done, they export all of the data back again to TurboTax. You can see the TurboTax experience right within QuickBooks. It's we call it the embedded experience. And in the TurboTax ecosystem, our TurboTax expert takes over those cleaned up books and starts filing your taxes. This is a do it for me approach as we call it internally, which is you hand it over for someone to do it for you. And both of these products went live January 8th. I think Ted had a comment about what is the customer persona that we are going after? Do you believe I think the guardrails around the, are the entities that I have defined, but typically we are looking at customer segments, which are really new early in their business. We're getting a lot of traction with zero to three year. Businesses and currently we're only targeting customers who do not have an accountant attached to their profile. So largely I think the sweet spot that we have got there is zero to three year businesses still very early in their QBO journey. And a lot of them happen to be first year filers. So that's the kind of cohort that we are seeing the most demand with. And we are adjusting and, optimizing the product for those cohorts, at least for this

Dan DeLong: 29:19

year. Now predict if I could interrupt there, and I just wanted to clarify a couple things, and if I'm, if I missed you say this because I was looking at other screens, I apologize. But even though I think it still bears repeating, what is the difference between assisted and full service? Because the terminology that we, that, that intuit ends up attaching to the different. Levels of service, when I see assisted, I think of assisted payroll, because that was something that was a term that was attached to a prior service. Actuality is just, it is a full service payroll service. So what is the distinction between assisted and full service?

Hardik Tiwari: 29:59

Sorry, I'm not as familiar with the assisted payroll product, but I'll explain what assisted is from a, from our perspective right now. How are we defining it? Assisted, or as we call it, do it with me internally, more technically is is the customer experience where the core workflows are to be completed by the customer themselves. For example, filling your tax form, categorizing your transactions, everything. You have access to on demand help. That means anywhere you, let's say you have a question, you could create a, start a chat and you'll be connected to a tax expert or a bookkeeping expert based on the context that you want to talk about. And you can ask them a question or you can, at certain touch points, you can ask them to review your work. In this case you can only review they can only review your like. Pre filing information. So Assisted is largely on demand where you either ask them a question or get a short review done. The number of calls are unlimited. So you can ask as many questions, do as many calls and the routing is smart, which is we look at the customer context. What they want to talk about, what particular screen they are on and what is their like tax or product situation, and then connect them to a best suited expert, but this expert is probably talking to this customer for the first time, so they cannot really go in depth into tackling your situation, but they can understand the context of that call and offer you that on demand.

Dan DeLong: 31:18

So very similar to your QuickBooks Online Premium payroll offering, where when it comes to setup, there will be somebody that can that's there to be able to review what you've already done, but not necessarily. Hand it off to them and they run it to you. That would be more of the elite payroll service. I see Ted shaking his head, so I think I'm on the right track there. Yeah,

Hardik Tiwari: 31:46

so full service is the component where you hand it over to someone. Like, all you do is, the starting point is, hey, Bring over all your documents, bring over every information you have. The experience starts with having a call with that expert. They understand the context. They take all your documents, they connect to a QB account and they start working on it. Take everything off your plate. And in this case, it's a more durable relationship with that expert. At least one expert will work on, let's say, just getting you ready for taxes. And then they will ensure if another expert is engaged, they do a transition and that expert, does your tax work. So full service is more handed out over to me and I'll take as an expert.

Dan DeLong: 32:25

Shoe box of receipts. Here we go. Or what have you now, a schedule, I see a schedule C is only available for assisted. There's not an option for a schedule C to do full service, or is that just not in the cards just yet. Not just

Hardik Tiwari: 32:40

yet. We, I think with Schedule C filers, we see the biggest need for customers was they have the confidence, but they need help. And that's why just a prioritization thing where we want to be first, where the customer need is the highest, but we'll keep evaluating it in the roadmap for Schedule C filers need a full service solution or not. We don't have a viewpoint yet. Dan,

Ted Callahan: 33:02

do you think, Dan, do you think there's a need for the self employed folks to have a full service solution? What's the question?

Dan DeLong: 33:10

I, yeah, I w I would pose that to the group at large, but I would imagine, the schedule C is either, the side hustle or they, Formulated themselves and there's maybe a solopreneur. So they're wearing too many hats as it is. And maybe they want, that's one last thing I have to worry about is tax time filling this out in TurboTax and then asking for somebody to review my work only to give me more things to do when I don't have enough time to do them as it is, right? That that's possible. That's a possibility. Michelle, do you have any thoughts about a scheduled year that might want to do the full service?

Michelle Long: 33:48

Yeah. Definitely a lot of these small businesses need to help with the taxes, just like they need the help with the bookkeeping. One of my concerns is things getting overlooked, and, that's just something I don't know. How robust is the checklist that Intuit has for asking these You know these small business owners, do you have this do you have this did you use Venmo? Did you use zelle? Did you use something else? Did you use cash app, instead of just asking them Did you give us everything because they'll forget stuff. Do you have a rental property that you didn't tell me about? Do you have another vacation home? Did you have this did you have that sometimes they'll have a rental property And they didn't get a 1099 on that rental property. They didn't get something. So they may just forget to tell you, how robust is the questioning or the, the tax, the tax filing, how robust is this to get all the information and everything, and I just, I don't know. I don't know, how good is that relationship that you're getting everything that you're covering everything and also too What if I what if somebody comes to you? What if i'm a small business owner and I come to you and I say hey, I did it myself I want you to review it at what point do you guys kick it over from a an assisted one To a full service one, what are the steps in there where you say? No, we're not doing assisted We're kicking you over to full service because this is too complex. You've got restricted stock units, so we're not doing it as assisted. We're kicking you to full service. Are there things in there for that as well? Or we're, or you're saying, Hey, this is beyond our capabilities. You need a real expert because you've got international tax complications in here. Yeah, you have safeguards in there to say this is beyond the capabilities of our tech deck.

Ted Callahan: 35:39

So I heard, yeah, no, Michelle, I think that's great. So I heard three questions, right? One, what's the routing flow of when we encourage a person who signed up for maybe an assisted experience to get bumped to full service? And then you, I broke it. So question one is, what's the handoff path or the path to move from assisted to full service? And then I heard a kind of a follow up part at the end of what you were just sharing is, and then is there a flow out of the QuickBooks Live experience where, for example, we would pass back to a member of the ProAdvisor community, right? So that's one set of questions Hardik maybe you can take. And then I think your other question of, hey, technically. What's that review process look like? What does that tap tax checklist? How robust is that? How do we have conviction that our customers would be getting the best experience? In that, I think, Erica, that might be one for you to take. So why don't we go hard at first to you and then Erica, if you want to jump in on the tax checklist.

Hardik Tiwari: 36:37

Yeah, I'd probably start with the second question. That's I think more clear to us right now. So we do select which customers we can work with. We have a scoping call right at the start. And we actually like right now, because we do cannot handle complex customers. We're actually scoping out 50 percent of our customers and telling them QuickBooks LiveTax is not the best fit product. You should either go to a ProAdvisor or use our TurboTax desktop product. And it's just like we are creating a service which can work at scale, but that also means we cannot handle complexity of certain, a lot of customers. And as I said, like our scoping out criteria, which we internally call a scope out, but it's essentially telling you QuickBooks LiveTax is not a great fit for you. It's a great, probably like a ProAdvisor or your local CPA or a TurboTax business product, if you want to do it yourself. It's a desktop product, if you want to do it yourself, is the right fit. So that is the approach we are taking right now. And we take across most of our live portfolio. The second question is probably I can answer one part and then Erica can get into the nuance of like, how do we, how do our experts handle. When we see full service is not a fit or let's say do it with me is not a fit and you should go to full service. So yes, during that review or any call, the expert asks some questions, get the context. And if at any point they deem like either it's too complex for you to do it yourself. We recommend it to them that upgrade to full service. But we cannot force them to upgrade to full service. It's still a customer decision. So we would recommend them, Hey, full service is a better solution. Or if they're doing something exorbitantly wrong and the product in itself, it cannot serve them. In that case, we'll again, scope them out and tell them like, this is a very complex situation and probably work with a CPA or with a pro advisor.

Dan DeLong: 38:26

Yeah. And one thing that you mentioned Hardik is that it snuck in there and it is a kind of an assault in the wounds with the accountant community is that you said something and I want to expand on it a little bit that you wouldn't market the service to someone who has an accountant connected to them. And I think we want to make sure, and that's a. We, last time when we had we asked a poll question is Intuit directly committed competing with me and twice as many people said yes, as opposed to those that said no. The largest portion of that was, it's no effect on my business, right? What we did yesterday or what we're doing today, but the fact that it does have that impression, right? That, that Intuit is encroaching On the accounting community with regards to that. And Jessica said something before, and I don't know if we want to toss it over to her, but there are specific circumstances that of a setup where you could feasibly market to. Market QB live services or this service for tax purposes to someone who is connected to to an account. Can you speak to the scenario that, that, that would happen? Or is that something that, once they're connected, because, Veronica, and I'm going to throw this another layer of question, Veronica put in the Q& A. The term expert makes it seem like everybody's an expert and it may be is diminishing the outside pro advisor. That's really, how do you determine who's an expert when it comes to connecting people with experts?

Hardik Tiwari: 40:05

Yeah, I see there are two, two questions here. Like one is, how do we what is the level of expert and who would define as an expert? And probably Erica would be the best person to answer that. She leads our overall service delivery for taxes. And I think the first question is around To account in it. Are we like how are we positioning this product to account an attached customer? I think Jen and Ted have been working very closely on overall positioning and thinking through that segment. And probably they can share out the details. As of now, we don't even show this product to anyone who has an accountant attached, but that excludes a lot of customers. So maybe Ted and Jen, if you want to talk a bit about like, how are we thinking and working closely with accountants. And the company.

Ted Callahan: 40:47

Yeah, I think so, Dan, I appreciate. I always love these conversations of Hey, let's get in on the real issues and have real talk. So thank you for moving in that direction. The if I go back to if something I would want everybody to hear again is into it as a very principle driven company. And so we've had a set of principles. That have been operating doesn't mean that the execution is always flawless, right? We make mistakes. You all help us when we make mistakes, correct them. So again, thank you for the partnership. The first principle, if I go back to that that strategy slide and empowering prosperity that I opened with is. We, our mission is make sure everybody has the best possible chance to succeed. Number one, number two, we believe in the power of choice for a small business in choosing the kind of help they get. And Dan, you had a little bit of a question of, Hey, do we. Do we show QuickBooks Live or do we show get, the find a pro advisor experience as an example. And some of those early getting to know one in the product experience. And so we've, because of that principle of choice we've had that, those experiences be side by side. So here's the find a pro advisor option. Here's the we can connect you to an expert right here through the QuickBooks live experience. So that would be an example of choice in action. The other thing that we're hearing through a lot of the partnership together with the community is the community wants to know that we're still committed to you. And again, I would say 65 percent of our of our QuickBooks online customers are already connected to an accountant. That relationship, we have a principle of saying we honor existing relationships. So we are not interested in competing with you all in that dimension, right? Full stop. Has the execution always been perfect, right? And again, that's where we need the partnership with each of you when we get that wrong. I can't tell you the number of data system surprises that I've seen on the back end. Literally, my hair has gone gray and I've lost hair because of these issues. My kids are like, dad, are we going to lose hair too? I feel it. Okay. And so let me just wait, make one more point, Michelle, and then jump right in. The other thing that I would say is we also know. That just being connected to an accountant, right? An accountant, right? We're using that term for bookkeepers all the way through to advisors, right? We're using that as a umbrella term. We also know that some of you are saying there are customers that I have clients that I have who actually I'm not providing this kind of service to. I would love them to be able to get this service. How do we make that happen? And so that's the thing that Jen and I have been together with Jessica and literally. A lot of people, a lot of names I won't throw at you is how do we move in that direction where we can start to be a little bit more nuanced and make sure we're honoring the relationship that each of you has with your client and to make sure they're getting the all of the different opportunities for help, whether it's with you or with us that are possible. And so that's something that is important. We're currently working on and so we'll have more to share with you all in that in the coming months. But the principles that I would have you all hear right from me and from all of us is number one principle of choice. And then secondly, we honor the existing relationship. And so Michelle jump, jump in now with your question and let's continue the conversation.

Michelle Long: 44:13

So first of all, the thing is, into it. Offering these services with QB live and QB live packs. You're just doing what the industry is doing I mean there's bench out there. There's pilot out there And for those of you that missed this I put the link in the chat But this is happening and dan and I talked about this. I think on the last one where there is these compliance services being offered out there for little or nothing. So y'all can look at that. We went over this last time, there's big VC money going into this because, the bookkeeping, the monthly bookkeeping services, including CFO services, including tax services. I think it was pilot. That was offering the CFO services as well as the tax services. So go out there and look at like pilot. com and bench. com. It's not just Intuit that is doing this. So if everybody's getting all upset that Intuit is competing with us, there's a lot of big companies with VC money behind them with millions and billions of dollars. That are competing with us. So it's not just Intuit that's doing that. It's just the industry because everything's get on automated with AI So Intuit's doing this because the industry is doing this. It's not just them coming against us But Ted, this is where I think Intuit has made some missteps and I love Intuit I've been associated with Intuit for a long Time and I am a stockholder with 100 shares. Not a big one. I got a few shares so I invested in you all doing well as doing well in that regard as well, but Intuit, in my opinion, and others, have made some missteps over the past few years with the relationship with accountants, and some big missteps that you've made recently comes from communication and things like that and it really You know, for example, and I'm bringing it up because it's the elephant in the room, you had QuickBooks Connect, and then you announced a whole lot of things right after QuickBooks Connect, including the Reimagine program, which is demoting in the eyes of a lot of us ProAdvisors, demoting a lot of us, so you announced the changes to the ProAdvisor program. Right after QuickBooks Connect, when a lot of people were on the way home, so a lot of people were upset that we've been demoted and this was going on in the chat just now, I've been a ProAdvisor for how many years and I'm being demoted, I'm a sole ProAdvisor so there's no chance of me ever getting to a lead is what people are saying in the chat, so the changes to the ProAdvisor program is a sore spot so I understand that. This kind of stuff, advertising to my clients when they're already there, it's Is a sore spot. It's been ongoing for several years. Dan can talk about why some of that happens, but that's a sore spot with some of them, announcing, some of these things after connect. There were several major announcements that kind of came after connect, and that was a sore spot with people as well as other things that are going on that kind of have hurt the relationship. With the accountants community, and so can you address that like yeah Obviously intuit knew about these things that it was a conscious decision to wait until after connect And can you address that?

Ted Callahan: 47:32

Happy to know. Yeah. No, thanks. Thanks, Michelle. Keep it. Keep it coming. One of my favorite words that Jessica introduced me to was spicy. So we like the spice. So the first thing was on the pro advisor changes, Ashley Sutter and I, who leads our she's the head of our us accountant sales. She and I on day three of connect actually announced the pro advisor changes. From the main stage and then we had a lot of seminars and activity on that. So that was something we we did announce that not the, yeah, no. And I recognize the, and this is where I think there's always this, opportunity to provide more detail on a main stage. You can imagine the amount of things you can get across. And Kim's been yelling at me ever since Connect, because Ashley and I went way too long in our main stage. Kim's in the room with me. So anyway, she's laughing. She's yes, you were way too. Long spoken. Anyway, so that we did announce and what I would also share is we should have the ProAdvisor team come and talk you through all of the changes because I think candidly, I think we didn't do a good job of communicating all of what is changing and will continue to be changing. So I would say the changes that you've all seen are part of the journey and there's more coming. And again, it's getting it will continue to get better for everybody. I also agree anytime we make change and in folks to the point on the tears when you get moved down, that's annoying for all kinds of reasons, right? We're all competitive. We all want to, we view tears as a leaderboard. But if I'm honest with you all, I would say the number one push I heard on the pro advisor program was that didn't have any meaning. The tears didn't mean anything. They weren't sufficient. And so I think we need to have that conversation of. Hey here's what we're doing to try to make the tiers have more meaning. And as part of that, they made some decisions on who is in what tier the pro advisor team should come talk you through the why on that. And then here, Hey, is there something that we missed? The answer is probably yes. And so then let's get, let's think about how do we roll that into the next set of changes that are coming, especially if there's a lot of, pent up, I would say feelings on that, that we're just unaware of right now. So I would say let's have that as a as a followup, Michelle, maybe you and I can talk with Tiffany Beltas, who leads the pro advisor team and just deep dive and say, Hey, is there enough there for a future QB power hour? And then let's get her and the team on to, to fully address that in the time that we've got to your point. So let me pause. I just talked through a lot up there. So that's what I would say on the pro advisor program on some of the other announcements. Here's the other reality. If I were to show you all everything that we wanted to be able to say on main stage or at connect and what we're able to say, it's literally 15%, right? Is what got there. Some of the stuff that we also would have liked to have been able to talk about, for example, like the desktop stop cell, which I know also some folks right in the desktop camp were like, Wait, why didn't you talk about this at connect? We have Constraints on when we can talk about certain things as a function of when is that actually going to be happening. And we've got a set a time window in which we can talk about it. And that was one where because it was going to be happening in the late summer. We couldn't talk about it during connect as just a specific example. On the Y, which I know feels like very inside baseball into it stuff, but it's just another one of those factors that you all probably would have no visibility into of like when we can talk about certain things. And that's everything has to go through not only our legal department, but also investor relations team and also our external communications. And so we were always balancing those different stakeholders. Which isn't maybe a great reason, but it is in that one reality. Back to you, Michelle

Michelle Long: 51:21

Dan, we got one or two minutes left. You gonna

Dan DeLong: 51:25

say anything? I just to talk a little bit about, my experience at QB Connect. Yes, you did say, did announce those things on the main stage. But of course, I'm like, I got tons of questions. Oh, there's nobody at the booth. To go talk to, because that was at the end of the, of the sessions to be able to go to the booth to to have those questions. So that, that kind of echoes what Michelle was saying there, but the bottom line is that, to dovetail off of what Michelle was talking about is that these offerings are designed for, People who don't want to do those work, that, that work, it's the, it's that compliance that, because you're going to be getting the people who want to want it for less, it's that whole thing of, good, fast and cheap. You can only choose 2 of those, right when you have an offering and when people are price driven, because, that's the way the world defines loyalty is who's got it for less. They're going to either ask you, which will devalue your service as a, as an accounting professional to do it for less, or they're going to find a way that, that can be done for less. And this is one of those things where it's, it's a full service or assisted depending on the verbiage that's going to be used with regards to the QuickBooks tax. And it, and as Hardik has said, it's not something that when you're connected to an accountant that you should see these advertisements too, but to Ted's point, you don't always get it right? So when that happens, you got to let them know. And, don't put it in the Facebook group, right? It's not a place for Intuit RAM in the power user group. But we do try to provide the best feedback channel that we can. And any closing thoughts from Hardik or Ted?

Ted Callahan: 53:10

Karthik, anything you want to share before I wrap this up? No, I

Hardik Tiwari: 53:14

think we covered most of it. Probably there was some open questions around like who we call an expert. What are the credentials? Probably we can follow async on through Erica. What kind of experts we are onboarding? What are the skill sets? And I think just want to emphasize like we know we are currently going after a very specific cohort of users. zero to zero to three years, small businesses and not as complex. And that's why as a reason, if a hundred people sign up, we only choose to serve 50 of them. Like we currently tell the rest of the 50 that you are too complex and you should be, you're better served or you can get a better outcomes by either working with a CPA or a pro advisor. So I think that's the approach where we are taking to the market. Somebody who is simple, we can serve them and really get to an outcome faster. Yeah,

Ted Callahan: 54:01

great. Thanks, Hardik. So I would say, first of all, thank you Dan and Michelle for having all of us on. It's great to be together with you. Thanks for bringing the real questions. We want those, right? We don't get better without hearing the real questions, so appreciate those. What I would say to all of you who've joined us is we on our side are fighting every day for you and for your small businesses. There's a bunch of work that goes into everything that you see and a lot that you don't see. And we love your feedback because that's how we know when we're hitting the mark and when we're missing the mark and when we miss it, we want to know how we can make it better. So please keep that coming and you'll notice in all of our communications, I'd point you all to Firm of the future. That's where we share proactive updates. We have a principle of making sure you all know before your clients know about changes that are coming. And we put articles up there and it it always breaks my heart when people say, but I didn't know about it. I was like and then others are like, no, you didn't, you see the thing in firm of the future. So sharing you all firm of the future is the place to go where we make those changes and I would go back to ultimately we want to be giving small business customers choice. And ensuring we're honoring the relationship that you have with the small businesses so that we're not stepping on the wrong toes inadvertently. Appreciate the partnership. Thanks for having us on. Any, I've been trying to keep up with the chat when I'm not talking. And I would just say anything else that you all have for us, please share it with Dan and Michelle. We'll make sure we get it answers. And then we'll follow up Michelle and Dan on the ProAdvisor program. So that we can come back and make sure everybody understands why we're doing. And then what we're doing and then what's coming next. So thank you all. Great to be together. Thank you

Dan DeLong: 55:43

all. We'll see you next time on the QB power hour. Have a great day, everyone.