Intuit News and Updates - 11.05.24

Fresh off Intuit Connect, Matthew Fulton and Dan DeLong will be discussing some Intuit program updates as well as a discussion about Intuit's direction and how the accounting community will play a role in the direction they are heading.

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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00:00 Introduction to QB Power Hour
01:31 Meet the Hosts: Michelle Long and Dan DeLong
05:57 Intuit News and Updates Overview
08:02 Intuit Connect Conference Insights
13:18 Keynote Speakers and Highlights
19:03 Intuit's Future Plans and Announcements
25:45 AI Integration and Business Feed
37:42 Theoretical Future of AI in Accounting
40:42 Automation in Bookkeeping
42:05 The Importance of Client Relationships
46:47 Intuit Enterprise Suite Overview
55:02 Intuit's TurboTax Campaign Controversy
01:08:04 Final Thoughts and Community Feedback

Transcript

Dan DeLong: 0:30

Welcome everybody to another QB Power Hour. Today we'll be talking about Intuit News and Updates. So we have a lot to unpack with our, panel. We have three people today, Michelle and Matthew, as well as Ted McCray from Makers Hub. 805,

Matthew Fulton: 0:50

baby. Sorry.

Dan DeLong: 0:53

Helping us out of course with the CPE that is eligible for this webinar today. So today we're gonna be talking about and unpacking, for the most part, the Intuit Connect conference, which was just last week. So we have a lot of information to digest, and I think we're still, digesting some of that and interpreting. How this is how this, what this looks like for, QuickBooks, Intuit, and the accounting community in general. So we appreciate you joining us here today. Michelle. Introduce yourself like you, like anybody needs to know who Michelle Long is.

Michelle Long: 1:37

Hey everybody, and go Chiefs! We had a very tough game last night, so I'm very glad that we pulled that out in overtime at the last minute, but very glad to be back from that, so anyway, I'm Michelle Long, owner of Long for Success former trainer for Intuit for a number of years, and owner of Long for Success, recently retired but authored some books, check them out, but glad to be back. Anyway. Go ahead, Dan. That's enough about me.

Dan DeLong: 2:07

Likewise. My name is Dan DeLong, owner at Danwith and School of Bookkeeping. Worked at Intuit for quite some time. Co hosting today, as well as the Workshop Wednesdays tomorrow, which, incidentally, we'll be having Ted, not Ted, but Nick from Makers Hub to talk about some of the new advancements in, So if you want to check that out tomorrow, it's going to be very casual. We're not going to be, diving deep into into the makers hub platform, we'll save that for the power hour. But this will be talking about the purchase order matching with the It showed, at the Intuit conference. So that was I wanted to have them on to talk about that and we'll be and of course I do the the tech editing for the QBO dummies series which is interesting because it must've just got recently published because I see a lot of people come into school bookkeeping because we have a a link there for that in the book. So it must've, must be must be launched. So they don't tell me when they actually published. They just give me a deadline, right? And then Matthew. Matthew's joining us here today. Tell us a little bit about yourself

Matthew Fulton: 3:24

first. I'm gonna say i'm a 49ers fan and Watching super bowl from amsterdam in 2020 Whereas the chiefs versus 49ers was one of the most amazing experiences in my life They everybody in that bar sang the national anthem We got our butt kicked which sucked and then on to more important stuff I am the founder of parkway business solutions facebook group qb community live You And a fellow 805, 805 in Southern California is Ted here, Makers Hub, who is the true winner of all these conferences. So thank you very much.

Dan DeLong: 4:00

That's right. All right. So a little bit about the QB power hour. It's every other Tuesday. And we are eligible for CPE credit for the first webinar of each month. Thanks to our friends at Makers Hub. And if you need to access the PDFs, the slides, I did put the, links for today's these slides in the chat as well as on our, on our feeds live as well. But you can always go at, any time to qb power our com slash resources to access historical webinars or download the pod download the PDFs or the, or listen to the podcast. A couple of housekeeping, if you have any specific questions about topics that we're talking about here today, please put them in the Q and a, because it makes it a lot easier to. Follow up with those types of things, and any general comments we put those in the. We also have the links, so what in our archive and in the handouts as well also have a store. If you're so inclined to do that please help and support us that way. A little bit about the CPE credits at an hour of CPE you just need to participate answering the poll questions which will launch one shortly and then evaluate the survey at the end, if they're, if Zoom cooperates and actually gives the post post webinar survey participate in that, but as long as you answer all of the poll questions They that is good enough. I'm still working on sharing this to a group here. So I'm trying to get this into the QB power user group. There we go. Okay. so a little bit about what we're going to talk about here today is of course, into a connect was recently ended last week. We want to talk about the experience and the event that itself. But most importantly, we want to talk about what they talked about. And I went to the. To the conference, just to throw out another accounting term to reconcile, I went there to reconcile what they're saying with what their actions are. And I think that is the, way that I, went into it, Matthew, where you, did you go into that similarly? As you were just reaching for coffee

Matthew Fulton: 6:47

Pretty much the whole reason I went to connect this year. I considered canceling at the last minute But I went so I could come back and report my thoughts on it after Attending for many years. This is going to be an interesting conversation

Dan DeLong: 7:04

and this is a I mean our panel here is it's really an interesting cross section You Of those, In the in this space where I just went to into a connect, and that was my only conference this year, other than scaling new height, Michelle didn't even, and because she and rightfully and then you went to a variety of, other conferences. So you have a, different perspective and then Ted's joining us from acres hub. He attended. Into a connect as a vendor or a sponsor. So we have different perspectives. That's for sure. Ted is

Matthew Fulton: 7:51

the one person who's attended more, right? Ted's probably attended more conferences than all of us this year. Probably

Dan DeLong: 7:58

more than everybody. Probably more than everyone on the call.

Michelle Long: 8:03

Yeah, and one of the reasons I didn't attend this year, among others, was I was coming back from Australia not too many days before, and I was having jet lag and all that and, so I chose not to attend, but I did see a lot of comments from other people, like myself, who didn't want to attend this year for similar reasons to the sense that, Intuit said, Oh, only certain people are getting invited this year. And then later, closer to the date of the conference, they said, Oh wait, we have an invitation for everybody now, but Intuit changed the focus of the conference from the QuickBooks conference to the Intuit conference and changed the focus to a mid market conference. So I think they changed the focus from small business to mid market. And so I think they changed to the. Attendees and stuff. And so I'm interested in your perspective on who was there because I did see somebody say I didn't see many people I recognized and I saw a lot of names of people on Facebook and stuff saying I didn't go this year. So what was your perspective from attendees on who was there?

Dan DeLong: 9:13

Yeah, I think there were people that are that were noticeably not there. And I, think that was intentional on, both sides, right? With the change of a change in announcements and some of the things that we'll unpack today that people made the choice not to attend. I think last year with there was a lot of structure and rigor around if you can't go, what do you got to do with your, with your, pass? I ended up getting stuck with an extra ticket. But when I asked them what do I got to do to, do I, return it? Because last year it was like you got to, return it get a credit, and then they'll sell another, that new ticket to somebody else. They were like, I'll just transfer it to somebody else and whatever whatever you needed to financial part of that's between you and them, right? So that was a weird or a different. Perspective of, that process, from, last year, because I was like, Oh, gosh I got, an extra ticket. Now, what do I do about it? I know I'm going to have to go through all this process to, to offload that. And they're like, no, just there's a transfer option in the in the, attendee portal. But yeah we want to, unpack what they talked about there today and then talk about the some of the things that are outside of just in, into it in general, talk about the tax, the TurboTax breakup which was a an interesting, not an event, but an interesting happening at. Into a connect about how, it was addressed. Like that elephant in the room we'll get to that. Matthew, those thumbs down, sorry. And then there were some things that I heard repeated, several times throughout the conference AI assisted humans and virtual export platform that that we want to unpack. So first thing. Is let's launch the first poll question. Do you need CPE credit for this webinar? Go ahead and answer that. Matthew, do you have any thoughts about what we had talked about just so far that you want to?

Matthew Fulton: 11:52

How long is this poll going to run? So a lot. I know we only have an hour, so I'm going to be a little bit reserved onto it. You've got a great layout of the different topics here, and I'm interested. I'm excited. When we get to the part about the apology, let me get my dictionary out for apology I don't think that's, The one, so I guess the one thing I'll say is before we close this out is this will be a true honest opinion throughout all of this. I'm a firm believer that if you're ever offered an opportunity to have a platform to share your voice, it's our job to share the good and the bad in a positive manner. If we don't do that, we're not doing right by all of those that are joining us today.

Michelle Long: 12:44

I think the one thing everybody can agree on, including Intuit, they are not the best communicators around and they have not done well on communicating things over the past several years. And so I think again, they've not communicated well, including the apology.

Matthew Fulton: 13:04

Maybe they downsized this enough to get us back to San Jose.

Dan DeLong: 13:10

That might be the case. Maybe it's a, maybe it's all part of the plan. Let me go ahead and, close the, poll there. We'll move on here. So Intuit Connect for those of you that might not have known is a three day, three, was a three day event just last week at the ARIA in, Las Vegas. And they've been there Matthew I can't, was this the third year that they were there? No

Matthew Fulton: 13:38

third year.

Dan DeLong: 13:38

Got it. So they

Matthew Fulton: 13:41

I

Dan DeLong: 13:42

think we had some discussion as to whether or not it was going to continue there or not, or if they are going back to to San Jose, which is where the previous QB connect conferences were had. But notably, the branding was, the first thing that, that people really under you know, Notably, the branding of, the event was purposefully changed from QB connect to Intuit connect. This is on the, heels of, enterprise suite announcement, which we'll talk a little bit about as well. Intuit is being very, purposeful in the way that it is, trying to get out from underneath its own branding problem. Where, QuickBooks, MailChimp, Credit Karma, TurboTax, all of these household name brands, have its own, there's, a, parent company involved here. And that is. I think that's ultimately where Intuit's direction is. It's headed because of these suite of services that, that, that are out there. They all feed into each other. The generative AI is now branded Intuit Assist. It's not QuickBooks Assistant. It's, init assist because it can, or at least the hope is that it would be able to assist across the Intuit platform, whether it's Credit Karma, TurboTax, or MailChimp or QuickBooks. So this event was, was, a good event mean in, in Grand, in the Grand Sea scheme. They had three external keynote speakers. It was supposed to, Leslie Odom Jr., from Hamilton fame was supposed it was supposed to be Magic Johnson and at last minute, he he had to pivot because he's part owner of the,

Matthew Fulton: 15:57

Is that a basketball joke?

Dan DeLong: 16:00

He pick and rolled, to to supporting his, team he's part owner of the L. A. Dodgers, so he wanted to support his team, or at least that's the message that was delivered that way they're, put on your tinfoil hat and determine otherwise if that's the case, Matthew, you want to talk a little bit about these these speakers and what you, took away is you you posted a couple of things from, Leslie Odom that that kind of resonated with you.

Matthew Fulton: 16:35

Yeah, I didn't see Priya's keynote, so I can't speak to that one, but Mark Matthews and Leslie Odom Jr. were both phenomenal. Mark Matthews a, pro surfer, nut job that likes to go surf 100 foot waves and his whole speech was talking about addressing fear and it was really neat to see the way he came on stage and talking about it. As a person who grew up in Half Moon Bay where they have Mavericks, which is a pretty common place where they have these massive waves. It was it was neat to see that well spoken, good energy. Leslie Odom Jr. by far my favorite. He spoke for a bit, had some great honest answers to questions, but I think what everybody really will remember is the, private concert that we had where he sung sang a couple different songs, including some from Hamilton, which was just phenomenal. His voice is outstanding. And loved it. It was a good choice. It really was.

Dan DeLong: 17:45

Yeah. And the, sequence of, the flow of, those speakers like Priya, was very intentional about, setting gatherings and that kind of set the stage for for the event. Cause that was the first the first keynote, which incidentally was at the end of the first day. So it was, it was odd to have the first like there wasn't like a, kickoff. Of, where everybody gets together and then there's a you're setting the stage and kicking, kicking off the event. It was the end of the first day which was a, for me it was a little bit of a, an odd placement of that like here's here, you're setting the table, but you've already eaten here for a day or so, so it was a, peculiar placement of that. But she was really great in Engaging the audience about how you, show up for a gathering. And and that was, a really neat. Placement, I think of her, her keynotes page. So let's talk about some of the things that that Intuit did announce throughout throughout the event. There was clearly a, if you went into the exhibit hall and went to the Intuit booth. I w I wouldn't say it was a booth. It was more of a hub. They, they, put a circle and half of that circle was all about the Intuit enterprise suite, talking about that. And then smaller places throughout throughout their, hub, to talk about some of the, Initiatives that, that are going on with, within within Intuit. But some of the things that they announced, that were noteworthy is a future of QuickBooks. Where it's one platform where QuickBooks and MailChimp will essentially be in, in one one place. And the Intuit assist which again can expand or, be above all of that and allow you to do things that are pretty cool. With regards to the, ai tool that they're, working on. There was a I, don't know if you caught this, Matthew, but, when they were talking about the, in the Intuit accountant and noticed a branding change of Intuit Accountant Suite instead of QBOA. So there's. That, that's something to to look, I don't know if it's look forward to, but it's definitely a change that'll, like a branding change that'll likely happen. And then of course the Intuit enterprise suite, which will unpack their, first. So the Intuit announcements, What did you think Matthew of, when they were talking about this this one platform, like a future of a reimagined QuickBooks where Intuit Assist will, be the overarching connector between MailChimp and, QBO.

Matthew Fulton: 21:26

So I think this is where, right now we're going to be complaining and we're going to be uncomfortable for a bit of time. But I think we're going to see in the next two years. Where this all is actually heading that into it is making smart moves. It's all about the data and the connectivity of the bigger vision. And so imagine again, the whole business cycle from. You're landing page, connecting to people, handling the sales, reminding the person of a future appointment, everything else future payments, so forth. All of these different things that can be done together is gonna be powerful. I'm also excited to finally see into an assist after seven years, finally being able to do something. I think that we're actually going to start to see some AI out of that. So I, these are the things that as Caleb said, Caleb is I was talking with him in the last day and he was drawing attention to how many improvements they've made into all the other levels at this point in time. This year, it's a very aggressive year of new features and functionality throughout Android. All of the, QuickBooks online platformer into an online platform, whatever I'm supposed to call it nowadays.

Dan DeLong: 22:53

Yeah that, that, will likely be the, what we'll be finding this, coming year is it's, we'll be catching ourselves. Naming it wrong or mislabeling, the branding. Michelle, did you have something to add?

Michelle Long: 23:09

I do. I have a question for y'all. I get the integration with AI and Mailchimp and QBO and all that, and I love the concept of, hey I see you bought this or you've used our services with this in the past. Let's say for example, we've done your tax prep for years and now we have this tax advisor and we can help you with that and send you emails and all that. However, It's I think this could have been great three years ago, but is email outdated? So is MailChimp outdated? Is this form of communication outdated? Is this too late? I don't know. Because I don't know about MailChimp. Can you communicate via WhatsApp or text messaging or whatever? Is email Like, I don't know. What are your thoughts? It's

Matthew Fulton: 24:01

a really good question. It's a really good question.

Dan DeLong: 24:05

I'm not a, I'm not a power user of MailChimp like Hector would be. I wish we would've had him on. He would've probably been a better Been a good ad to add, but I know I've used MailChimp a little bit. You can use it for social posting, you can use it for, your, website. So there's, it's not just email, Jim, as though that, that, the core of their, offering but you can create Journeys and campaigns and, those types of things and have it all feed into your website or your your all of all of the above, whether that be a, I don't know if you can text, text these things to people through MailChimp. I imagine you can. That's a more deeper knowledge more intimate knowledge of MailChimp than I have. Oh, someone is saying, Sebastian, in the Yes, you can. You can text. It is a So they probably need to rebrand it instead of MailChimp to, Communication Chimp, Yeah. Every chimp.

Matthew Fulton: 25:26

I don't

Dan DeLong: 25:26

know. Yeah, All Chimp. That's right. But they certainly can't call it Constant Contact. Hold on, lemme go get some domains.

Matthew Fulton: 25:33

Before we do talk about this anymore, lemme go buy some domains and then we'll figure that out. There you

Michelle Long: 25:37

go,

Dan DeLong: 25:40

Alright, so let's talk a little bit about the the Init Assist and the Init Assist announcements. A couple of things that are going to be that you'll see if you don't see it already you'll see it in the near future there's going to be this business feed which the biggest, conversation part that I've seen on our, Facebook group is how do I turn this off? Because it doesn't, seem to hold any value just yet. But I don't see a way to turn it off, Matthew. Have you, seen an option to hide it? I don't foresee that being an option

Matthew Fulton: 26:25

to

Dan DeLong: 26:25

turn it off.

Matthew Fulton: 26:26

So that's one of the Intuit, if you go back and you listen to this, please focus in on this right now. Give people the opportunity to choose to be beta testers for you who actually want to experience all the bugs. We'll happily do it. And then. Give us the ability to shut things off at least for a good amount of time until it's legit Because it just slows down and causes so many challenges. We love the evolution of technology But don't drag us back into the stone age while you're trying to figure out your new technology, please

Dan DeLong: 27:03

Yeah I remember seeing the initial post of like things were misspelled Things like that. I was like, you spent billions of dollars on that. And, spell check was not part of that process. But what you'll see is in the business feed, if you look at it today, I was just checking it out yesterday. It, does consolidate some of the things that, that you're looking to, that are focused on your business. I went in there and there was, Hey, there's some open invoices. Would you like to, send them an email as a reminder. And I think on the next screen, I actually have that, but, On the side of your invoices now, you'll see this sidebar where you can create transactions from files or images or text. I tried, it. It didn't work out. So there's something, in the formatting of, how you do, these things, which is not communicated inside the program. It's not saying why it didn't, work right. Or how do I, format some of these things? They showed it, hey they gave the use case of, Hey, you're out in doing things on paper, you can take a picture of that and then upload it here and it turns it into magically turns it into an estimate or an invoice. I don't think I would have wrote my notes the way that they, had it in their example of here's the customer, here's the customer's address, here's the, like it was, almost formatted. Like an invoice on there. Did you catch that Matthew is like, as far as that's concerned?

Matthew Fulton: 29:03

This is where I'm going to shamelessly plug another application called maker's hub. That does a phenomenal job of grabbing the line item details. I tried it

Dan DeLong: 29:13

Dan, it's horrible. I should say it leaves much to be desired. There you go.

Matthew Fulton: 29:22

The challenge, just real quickly, the challenge with the line item detail stuff, where all applications have had so many, such a difficult time for years is it's matching when you're trying to line items, you're trying to grab the exact product or service model or SKU number and the details off of it. And you have to really have a large language model to understand what to grab and where. So will they get there? Yes. But I think it's still in the infancy of it. And so it's just not quite there yet.

Dan DeLong: 29:57

Yeah it's a nice framework. But talk a little bit about what you saw since Matthew, you love the bank feed and how Intuit Assist is, helping or enhancing the bank feeds. But you saw,

Matthew Fulton: 30:15

so the, the things that I've seen that are coming into the bank feeds now, I really would like to give credit to Hector and Mark because I feel like some of the functionality of the categorization history, search options, everything else it's, these are things that have been crowdsourced by people that are really talking about what they need to do the job a little faster. The layout's nice, but. The, news, I think the biggest difference is, the ability to do class location immediately inside of like the bank feed area. I do that part of it more.

Dan DeLong: 31:00

Yes. Here's here's something that I did yesterday. In preparation of these slides with Intuit Assist on the bank feed itself, or I'm sorry, the business feed, not the bank feed, getting myself confused on which feed I'm at, but the business feed inside of Intuit Assist, it said, Hey, you've got some open open invoices, and then it gave me a link to click on reminders and then here it gave some contact about the customer, right? Since December, 2023, they've paid 11 invoices. One time they were late. This upcoming so it gave me some history and context right on the screen and then give me, gave me the ability to change the tone, of the reminder email right there before I even sent it, right? So I could have made it stern, which which would be interesting to see how that changes the word, but you could do that right on the fly. And you have it essentially all in one screen. So it was nice not to have multiple tabs open to confirm that, hey, they maybe they weren't, late. All the time, or that late payment was not anything that. They had anything to do about or anything like that, so it was nice to see it all in 1 place and then I can turn on. The ability to accept payment because this was a overdue. Or not right, so it was. I really appreciated that it was all in one place, but the biggest, the biggest thing that that I thought was very telling of this whole, conference is the biggest. The biggest reaction from the, crowd was the little tiny things that was as this picture, illustrates, this is like a, what took you so long to do the, payroll correction went from three day, a three day window to 90 days okay, like it, it, took that long to, to expand in that window and people were audibly. Appreciative of that the payroll cost allocation by class and project that is, that was one of the biggest, obstacles for people to want to move from desktop to online. It's how well that handles desktop and how. Poorly, I guess it's a, manually, I guess not, necessarily poorly, but how manual that process is in QuickBooks online, Matthew, where are you?

Matthew Fulton: 34:03

I saw two things. One was Kim had made a comment question, which is payroll correction by Intuit, not the user is. The question for the correction part of it, and then the other part I was going to say is the cost allocation by class and project. I wonder if this has to do with their deeper integration with no, especially on their enterprise suite, if that's why, because they're really are focusing on construction and building out this project and job costing side.

Dan DeLong: 34:33

Yeah, I believe that's probably the case, right? They're building. Relationships with, other other folks who, already been there, done that thing, and, taking their learnings. And that was something that I picked up on during the during the Intuit, part of the, main stage was the, almost the, it wasn't a plea, but it was a definite ask. Hey, help us, help us make this better for you. Help us help you. And that was, definitely a, theme throughout, throughout some of the main stages. So I assume we're not alone in that ask of being asked to provide that feedback and what do you need us to do so that we can fulfill that for you. But I think the one that got the most applause. Was the third one here that Venmo and PayPal are no longer going to be categorized to uncategorized assets. That's the bar that they're setting is that and I guess the cognitive dissonance that they have to these little, tiny things, about the things that drive people bonkers about how things are, how things, how the way things are, handled inside of, QuickBooks online. That. Should have been done long ago in my opinion, right? Is that those that was low hanging fruit, for this to happen michelle

Michelle Long: 36:24

Why the heck did it go to uncategorized asset to begin with? Come on

Matthew Fulton: 36:30

to remind you to categorize it. I guess it's one of those potluck things I guess But yeah,

Dan DeLong: 36:38

right But I spent the third day trying to hunt down a solution for a customer who had migrated from desktop to online, who needed a custom column on an invoice. And there was no one that, that could help with that at the conference, that I talked into it and they explained, okay, we can't make these changes until everybody's on the new invoice formatting, But it was a, essentially a showstopper for a customer. And it's not one of those things that could be easily identified ahead of time to be able to know that this workflow was something specific that they needed going into. Going into the QuickBooks Online.

Michelle Long: 37:29

This is where the little things, this is where Hector and Mark's Write tool really just is amazing, because all those little things are just incredible and they make your life easier. I think that's awesome. Can we talk theoretical for a minute? Sure. Okay. So you were talking about AI assist and you were talking about categorizing the bank fees and all that and that's all in doing the emails and stuff. That's all kind of gimme the first wave of AI in my opinion. But if we look down the road a little bit in the near term, if you look at what intuitive is, and this is my theory, my, prophesizing or whatever, what I envision might be happening in the future with Intuit and QuickBooks and AI and how we need to be prepared for it or think about what's going to happen. If you look at what Intuit has done on the tax side, they have the tax advisor and they have the ability, they say, Hey, that or Dan, if you do tax work, Here's this tax advisor services that you can provide to your client to where you can not just do Dan's tax returns, but Dan, I'm going to give you this tax advisor package to where I'm going to recommend that you do these three things to save yourself this much money in tax. So it's tax advisory services. Tax planning to save you money in taxes, right? So it's tax advisory services. Let's translate to the accounting side Mr. Small business owner matt in order to increase your profitability I recommend Advisory service for you based on the last 12 months if you to improve your profitability Let's change your pricing by this much and if we reduce the whatever over here We can cut your costs here And if we do this we can do that and so based on these advisory services making these changes We can improve your profitability by this much. I think that pretty soon What Intuit has been doing is getting all of these with the tax, the TurboTax where they're, doing the tax prep and now they're doing the QuickBooks Live with TurboTax Live and QuickBooks Live, they're getting all of that data. You've heard of the large language model. QuickBooks has been preparing their own financial language models or financial models. They've got all that data. From doing the tax prep and now the bookkeeping prep with the bookkeeping live to where they now have Their own ai analyzing all of this stuff and you can do it yourself I've done it We've demonstrated them on coursebooks on the power hour before where you can take that and you can say look at this financial statement Give me the top three things or the top five recommendations to improve their profitability in the very near term You Term, they're going to be able to say, what do you recommend to improve the profitability of this company? And so the little intuitive says, can be recommending, Hey, small business owner, here's how you can improve the profitability. And so I think that's coming to our area as well so Right now they're just categorizing bank feed and they're helping do a little stern email or friendly email follow up on your collection But just like we have tax advisory over here and they're coming after your tax plan. They're coming after your bookkeeping plan Follow the dotting line You know,

Dan DeLong: 41:11

yeah, I I participated in Blake Oliver's breakout session on using an automation to do your month end, advisory. Basically a month end review of the. Of the financials. And he had a really neat way of, automating that, that whole process. You still need to review it and, he uses, he uses process street which combines people and. The automation to be able to streamline all of those things in corporation with chat, GPT and Zapier to make those things automated, but there were checkpoints along the way. I don't know. Go ahead.

Michelle Long: 42:06

The key thing I want to stress, okay, let's say that this can spit it out and it says, Hey, small business owner, this is what you should, it's all about the relationship. We still have to talk to our clients. The client can read that, but it still may be overwhelming to them. They still may not understand it. It's still accounting speak, financial speak. It's still business terms that they may not be familiar with. Okay. So we still need to focus on the relationships with our clients. So please focus on building those relationships with your clients. And Dan said, if you've got a process and you've got a tool to help you with that, it's still a tool. Yes, we need to review it. We need to make sure it's accurate because there can be mistakes and we need to review it with our client and say, I'm going to help you with that. I'm going to help you to understand. Here's what we've got. Here's what we're going to. It's going to help us to be way more efficient and get the job done. But we've got to communicate with that client and help them. Implement that, but I do see this is going to happen in the near future and Intuit can do this, they can do it cheaper. So can everybody else out there from the spark and the pilot and all these other companies that are also doing bookkeeping services for little or nothing we've got to know that this is going to happen. So you have got to develop those relationships with your client. Sorry.

Dan DeLong: 43:39

Yeah, I think the key takeaway from from my one day reframe, and maybe you can speak to this Matthew too is, Hector speaks to automate your workflows, but humanize the relationship and, that, that humanization of that relationship is what people value more than you. The, workflow stream, streamlining, right?

Matthew Fulton: 44:04

Yeah. If I had a mic that I didn't, wasn't expensive, I would have dropped it for you, Michelle, cause you just nailed it. Our job we always talk about continuing education as, bookkeepers, accountants, whatever your title may be, that continuing education now involves artificial intelligence. And just like our clients have a difficult time understanding a profit and loss by itself, whether it's in a graph form or in a verbal form or written form, they're not going to, some will be able to understand and interact with AI on their own. But these become the tools that we use to provide better resources to our clients. We've been doing tax projection packets for years on a quarterly basis to help bet our clients better understand what they're looking at throughout the year. Because the one thing AI is not going to know, especially if you're relationship driven, is the fact that the business owner's truck's alternator has gone out three times. He needs new tires on the vehicle. And he's got one employee who's complaining about having to work overtime. And those conversation things, AI doesn't have that ability and it doesn't have the ability to ask questions. It can evaluate data, but it can't ask random questions the same way.

Michelle Long: 45:35

And it can't think outside the box. One of the things that I heard, you remember Sully that landed the plane on the river? Yeah. The plane was going to crash. Okay? The pilot knew the plane was going to crash. He knew how to crash the plane successfully without killing everybody. So he knew he had to think outside the box. We're going to crash. How do I crash successfully? AI can't do that. So his as a pilot he had to say how can I crash this plane successfully? So I don't kill everybody and he did and AI can't do that It can't think outside the box to come up with a solution. AI can't do that. A human can do that So anyway, sorry Continue on. And let's talk about the apology or not.

Dan DeLong: 46:27

This is why, your voice and your perspective is still needed in this community, Michelle. I did, because we're running close to the top of the hour and we still have two more poll questions to get through. I did just launch that in the middle of what Matthew was saying as to whether or not you did attend. Into a connect this year or in the past. but we want to talk and talk a little bit about the Intuit enterprise suite. It is it's sexy.

Matthew Fulton: 46:58

It is sexy.

Dan DeLong: 47:00

It is, and it comes with a sexy price tag. And they won't tell us what that price tag is. So in the next year we'll find out more exactly because it is it. Because it is. A compilation of Intuit products and services potential there's a user count there's no matrix that you can put on a website to say, Hey, this is how much Intuit enterprise suite is going to cost you. But there are three main, feature buckets. I think it's where Intuit enterprise suite is, going is with multiple entities. Additional dimensions, which is a new concept, a brand new concept. And, change orders as an actual transaction. I do have a link there for my first look at at Intuit Enterprise Suite. You can take a look at that, blog. But, I wouldn't expect to see anything demo related as far as whether or not you can get your hands on a trial or a test drive, for, another year. Intuit is very, good. Aware that this is a multi touch, long, long sales cycle of people deciding whether or not they are, they're using this and there's going to be a negotiation process when they come with Here's what we feel is would, serve you best in this Intuit ecosystem. And then they're going to come back with we do a lot of, we do a lot of volume. So can we get a break on that? So they're going to, there's going to be a lot of trial and error in the next year of trying to figure out what this will be. And this framework is, is, good. But I think if you looked at it today. And said, okay this client might be a good fit for that. You probably there's going to be a miss there. And I think that was what I was interpreting as they were launching or announcing all of this stuff is that the majority of the folks who cheered at Venmo, no longer going to uncategorized asset, that is. They wouldn't have a whole lot of clients that would be best suited for something that would be in the thousands per year, with the, Intuit Enterprise Suite. Matthew what do you think?

Matthew Fulton: 49:42

Couple things. First, Janice, to answer your question, Intuit Enterprise Suite is an online product. It's not a Desktop product. So it is that next evolution. Another thing that I think is important to let people know from what I've asked, like I asked on purpose, are they changing the API? In other words, the apps you're currently using, will they continue to work or not? And it's supposed to be the same API. So same functionality, same connectivity. That's an important, thing. This is a this is their stab at the ERP world, but it's meant to be just a step below a NetSuite still, I believe. That's, not official language, so if I got that wrong, I apologize, but I do believe that's where it's supposed to be at currently. I will work real hard to get access to push buttons and try to break this if I can.

Dan DeLong: 50:41

And there I think in the their, first path at ideal fit for Intuit Enterprise Suite is the people who are already on QuickBooks online that have multiple entities that have those kinds of workflows that they're struggling to they're bumping up against the ceiling when it comes to the functionality inside of the online ecosystem, they're not making any claim. That this is QuickBooks enterprise desktop in the cloud. So they're, clearly not they're not making those any type of claim of those, types of things. But I think what they are seeing is that, there's, companies that have five QuickBooks online subscriptions or. Advanced and they're trying to do the things. Yeah. Yeah. And then, okay maybe we can consolidate those and do some multidimensional reporting and, do to do froms with with the multi entities that will, that is a big time saver for those people. And I think those are their target market, at least. Initially,

Matthew Fulton: 51:55

that was a hot one real quick. I know we're getting close on time, but that was a hot one. That one of the biggest things with enterprise is the ability for journal entries to do cross company journal entries. So you can move things from one company to another in the same journal entry, because you're assigning which company it is. Now Katie asked a great question. I didn't pick up on this one. Is enterprise online going to be a product upgrade? Will we as QuickBooks Online accountants be able to still have QBOA and access it the same way? How will that work? I don't know.

Dan DeLong: 52:30

Yeah, I you'll still have, you'll still have accountant access, to clients who have it, right? The way that the way that I interpreted it is that just like QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Online Accountant, as an accountant user, you have a feature set that sits on top of. QuickBooks online into it on or into it. Enterprise suite will be in that same vein that those feature sets that come along with Intuit Enterprise Suite will sit on top of the, foundation, which is going to be QuickBooks Online. So you're going to have this parent child relationship with your multiple entities, but those features and users that you're going to be able to invite and grant access to much you as an accountant, you have an accountant invitation to a QuickBooks Online subscription, and you can invite team members to your QuickBooks Online accountant, and they can dovetail off of your accountant invitation into your client, right? So as a user, In into an enterprise suite, they will have a user base, which is they've claimed it's up to 500 users that you'll be able to have inside of into an enterprise suite as a user, but then you can provide granular access to those entities as to what they can do. So very similar to what as a. An accounted invitation, you'll be if you have a client who's on Intuit Enterprise Suite, you will have an accountant invitation, just like anybody else there'll be in your client list and then you can access those clients and then your team can dovetail off of that. So it's like a feature set that sits on top of the foundation. So we only have six minutes to talk about the last thing I want to add real quick there. I

Matthew Fulton: 54:31

still want full access to all my custom fields through the API, please. That's the one thing I've been harping on for years. Every app would love the ability to push all that data in, and we could actually do more reporting wise. Even the enterprise would be phenomenal with that. And

Dan DeLong: 54:49

I'm going to go ahead and launch that last third poll question which I've lost it. Where'd they go? Matthew, if you see it

Matthew Fulton: 54:58

let me yeah,

Dan DeLong: 55:02

we'll launch the last one. So while you're, we're talking about the Intuit TurboTax breakup. If you have been under a rock and not aware of what's been, going on Intuit launched a TurboTax campaign ad campaign and promotion where essentially they are. They're targeting, provi taxpayers to use their full service tax tax product for, Intuit Intuit Turbo Tax. And the promotion is whatever you paid your tax preparer last year will give you 10% off. If you sign up before a certain day. The National Association of Tax Professionals. They responded pretty, I dunno, politically, I guess it's the best way to say they're, not they were not, they're their response was we're not accepting anything from Intuit, in the future because we're, trying to we're trying to protect our, members and not necessarily persuading people to not use Intuit. Products and services, but they're just. They're trying to be Switzerland in the, process, but they made a statement, to that. And during the initial first, first keynote there was a fireside chat without any fire, between, Greg Greg Johnson, I believe, and and Sasan Ghidardi, Ghidarsi, and, right at the end he decided to address the elephant in the room about, that. And he, air quotes here, apologized for the way things occurred. I think the general consensus, from those that I talked to is that he apologized for people's feelings being hurt, but didn't apologize for the direction that, they're heading. And the person I was sitting next to who was a member of Toastmasters said that he could probably go to Toastmasters, to to talk about how is his delivery of, that said apology Michelle, you had some thoughts about it as well. So you want to,

Michelle Long: 57:50

I wasn't in the room. I listened to the recording that you had posted. So I didn't see any body language or anything. I only heard the recording. And what I heard was we did this ad, we did this blah, blah, blah, blah. But here's why we did it. So tough shit. Basically, so tough shit if it hurt your feelings we did it because, we did it because there's people out here who want who can't afford a tax, provide a tax person. And so we want to help get their taxes done. And, Too bad if it hurts your feelings and we're going to stop the ad. However, I couldn't feel like they said, Oh gee, we paid for the ads to run through the end of the month. So we told them to stop at the end of the month, not to stop immediately because the ads continued and the emails continued and blah, blah, blah. So then they have said, stop the ads at this point in time. I don't think things stop immediately. Like some people do when there's a crisis. PR crisis. They may have said stop the ads, but it didn't stop immediately. The emails didn't stop immediately. We all saw them later. So

Dan DeLong: 59:10

yeah, they took it off of YouTube. That's the, that's the, immediate thing that that they did. Because I,

Michelle Long: 59:19

I had,

Dan DeLong: 59:19

the ad embedded into my blog. And then of course I went up and go look at it. And it's this video is no longer available. So I had to find it somewhere else in order so that someone would be able to see what what that's all about. And I do have a link there for the ad and the apology of my interpretation of. Of that, Matthew what do you what are your thoughts there?

Matthew Fulton: 59:42

So first off, it was a hell of an ad. It definitely like the marketing company that did it. It worked, right? Cindy said it well. This is where I always get my signals crossed a bit. It's a publicly traded corporation whose first responsibility is to the shareholders. Simple as that. The problem I have is the hot air BS apology is the way it's approached that way. The amount of time the ad was up, it did its job. It really did. It's all that was necessary. It caused the buzz, everything else. This won't be the last time it happens. I think another part of the reason these things occur again, it was a great ad. It sucked, but it was a great ad is it's external ad companies, right hand, left hand, They don't always know what's happening. If you've ever worked within the company itself, there's all these different divisions that they don't understand what the other ones are doing. And everybody, we just need to understand this point in time. This is a tool we use in our practice. We are a tool for them to continue to sell subscriptions. Recognize it and we need to stop being surprised when these things happen. It's gonna continue to happen, I think. But it was a good it was a good act.

Dan DeLong: 1:01:12

And We're up at the top of the hour. We have a couple things to chat about. If you answer the poll questions, and you, need to take off, please do. Matthew and Michelle and Ted I, think we can stick around for another five minutes to wrap this wrap this up here because I do want to talk about, Okay. The this, theme of AI assisted humans and virtual expert platform, which was one of the, I don't know if you want to call it an excuse or an explanation of, in this apology that they're, looking to create a virtual expert platform, with AI assisted humans, right? So what does that actually look like? These were common terms that were used throughout the conference. And it's really unclear of who, and this was my takeaway, is that there was a, it was unclear as to who these experts are and what those humans, who those humans are in, in that equation, right? This is what they're doing, right? They're, making a virtual expert platform, whether that's for TurboTax or QuickBooks, right? There's going to be all of these virtually, virtual experts. Now, they may be, badged employees that are the virtual experts. They may be, badged employees who came from the accounting industry or are relatively new to the accounting industry to do that. Are looking for how do I get experience if I don't have any clients? And how do I get any clients if I don't have any experience? They may have an option to be able to start to, to learn that. And you, used a specific term Matthew, and I want to, I want to leverage that it's a tool, right? They are creating a tool to leverage, right? I have, a famous not a famous, but one of my mantras is you have to find something to leverage. You can pick up a car if you have enough leverage, but by yourself, unless you are green and angry, you're not going to be able to pick up that car or shack, but if you have the right, if you have the right tool, you'll be able to do so right. And, somebody once told me you need to find something to leverage in this world. If you don't have. Something to leverage your the leverage, right? So somebody is leveraging you, whether you're an employee of a company or or, something along those lines. If you don't have something to leverage, then you are the one that has being the tool. And and that's what this, that's what this is all about to me is that they are creating tools that you can leverage to. Again, automate those workflows, but you are the one to humanize humanize that relationship. And that again, is what, people are going to value over anything else is that humanization, that looking out for them and those tools and platforms and whatever they, are those will change over time. And there will always be a new a new shiny object innovation that will help with those things. It's just whether or not you're able to leverage that to increase your value and, lift that car, that, you need to.

Matthew Fulton: 1:05:10

Real quickly, one of the things, Michelle, you just nailed it, exactly where I was going to go with this is, we talk a lot about QuickBooks Live and the people that work there, so forth. I actually suggest, if you're just getting started, Go look into working with QuickBooks Live, especially if you need benefits. It will help you get the hours. It can be part time. It's a phenomenal way to help build up your experience. All we ask in return is do the best damn job you possibly can. So when you're there doing it, if we're going to be training the AI, let's give them good training. So the tools in the future we're using are helpful to us. That's the way we can actually manipulate AI to benefit us. And again, if you need the work and you need the healthcare of those things, go apply. It

Michelle Long: 1:06:10

can be great when you're starting your practice. Let's say or somebody in my situation, if I'm wanting to retire, but yet I'm not old enough for Medicare yet. And I still need healthcare. It could be a great option for me to go work 20 hours a week, to be able to get healthcare and benefits because Intuit does offer for QB live bookkeepers working 20 hours a week. You can get healthcare. So if you're starting your practice, if you're retiring and you want benefits, yes, QBI, but they are offshoring a lot of this now as well. So because they need hundreds and hundreds of bookkeepers for QB live. Now with TurboTax live, it's seasonal, so they don't have the healthcare benefits. But yes, Intuit, as much as we're dogging on and their relationship with us as pro advisors, in the accounting community, as an employer, aside from the layoffs and the communication, As an employer, they offer great benefits. They are routinely a top company to work for. In the past, I know there's been some communication and some issues. They lay off every year. No corporate company is that wonderful. That's part of why I always head my own firm. But anyway, it is a very good option. You do get training. They will teach you things. You do learn things. They have Intuit Academy. Where you can learn bookkeeping and all this and you can take the test and so it is a very viable option in some situations. So that is something to look into as well. And yeah, exactly. You're doing a good job. So you're trimming AI the right way.

Dan DeLong: 1:07:54

I do want to really quickly share the last poll questions because it is, very telling. I think of, this community and the concerns that, they have. the biggest. The biggest answer here is what concerns do you have regarding Intuit's direction is, I don't believe that they're listening to the accounting community's feedback. I think that has, there's a lot of feedback, right? There's, There is no shortage of, feedback that they have to sort through so somebody's feedback question maybe specific like in my, case of, Hey, I really need a custom column on a, on an invoice, is, it's not something that, might not be a huge win for them to do across the board. So my feedback as it was urgent. Urgent enough for me to walk around the conference, trying to figure out the solution wasn't probably isn't as high up on the priority list as some other feedback, but definitely. The whole Venmo uncategorized asset type of thing, that, feedback should have been addressed a long time ago, in my opinion. But some of these things here are, very unique in, In this, community, and how they, I'm sorry, there's a cat, just, a clip of my webcam, but anyway, yeah Matthew Michelle any final thoughts on, on, on this poll question and how it, how it plays out in this in this community?

Matthew Fulton: 1:09:50

Michelle,

Michelle Long: 1:09:53

go ahead, Matthew. I'm sorry. I was looking at them.

Matthew Fulton: 1:09:56

I think you summarized it extremely. I think we all feel the same way. I I still believe in the brand of into it. I still plan to continue to use their software. I, there are not. I haven't seen products that really match compare apples for apples comparison wise, out there to be honest. And then there's also the aspect we have to remember, you're not talking about just changing your workflow. You're talking about retraining all of your clients on their workflows as well. So the grumpiness of they're doing this or that, if you find a product that does 80 percent of what you want it to do, you found a damn great product. If it does more than that, you built it yourself. That's what I've always said.

Michelle Long: 1:10:44

So for me the one down there, my clients are getting priced out of QuickBooks. The price of everything is going up and then raising prices every year is to be expected. However, there are a lot of small businesses out there that are struggling. So I understand that. And I wish Intuit could understand that a little bit more and try to hold the prices because Intuit is having record profits year after year. So maybe they could have a little compassion in some sense and maybe try to hold it or not have such Every year, so I think that would go a long way towards your small business community But somebody else said oh, they're starting to focus on mid market and leave the small business community behind so that kind of but on another note, i'm glad i'm retiring because Intuit has broke my heart last few years And I'm not very good at keeping my mouth quiet and I would have said a lot of things probably I shouldn't have to some people because the last few years, the way they have treated the accounting community and the way things have changed, I just couldn't keep my mouth quiet. I don't think because I just, the human aspect, we talked about relationships. They've done a lot of damage to the relationship between accountants and Intuit. We used to have a really good relationship between the ProAdvisor community and Intuit, and I cannot say that anymore. So I'm glad that

Matthew Fulton: 1:12:23

anyway, you're not going anywhere yet.

Michelle Long: 1:12:27

It was, great while it lasted. I loved my relationship with Intuit. I was at the right place at the right time. And I, loved. Everything I did with Intuit, I hate the relationship the way it is now, because it's deteriorated to such a point that breaking up is hard to do, but I did it, and I'm glad that I did, and I'm glad I didn't go, because it would hurt too much. To have that severed relationship, in my opinion. It is what it is. Breaking up's hard to do, but I'm glad I walked away because I don't like the way Intuit is now, and the way they behave now. And I don't like what I see. When I look at Intuit anymore, I don't like the way they treat us as accounting professionals. It hurts me to see how they treat us now,

Matthew Fulton: 1:13:23

so If everybody loves michelle put a one in the comments right now, please if you all love michelle put a one in the comments

Michelle Long: 1:13:31

I'm That is just sensitive though that has nothing to do with the product has nothing to do with business But that's the relationship aspect we were partners. We were working for the good of our clients And that's not the way it is anymore. And that just hurts me. So sorry, we need to look out for us and our clients and remember that Intuit is a vendor like all the other vendors at the booth,

Dan DeLong: 1:13:59

they, leverage that tool to the best of your ability. And and, it won't be so humanized, humanizing and hurtful when they play these shenanigans, as they are now expected to do. So wonderful session. I appreciate both of you joining us here today. Next time on the QB power hour, we're going to be talking about sales tax, and we're going to be having Alicia Catholic joining us here to talk about it's not such a bad thing if you set it up, so we'll talk about sales tax and QBO on next time on the power hour, we hope you joining us then, and we'll hope you all have a great day. And Go vote! Go vote!

Michelle Long: 1:14:51

Go vote!