QB Power Hour Podcast

Login Vulnerabilities and QB Pricing Updates [5.27.25]

• Dan DeLong

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Dan and Lynda Artesani discuss the latest rash of Intuit Accountant login hijackings and what ProAdvisors can do to safeguard their logins to protect their client's data.

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

Earn CPE through Earmark: https://bit.ly/QBPHCPE

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

Register for upcoming webinars at https://www.qbpowerhour.com/

Dan DeLong:

Welcome everybody to another QB Power Hour. Today we're going to hopefully be talking about spending, spend, management, managing money out of QuickBooks. But based on some recent and late Breaking Tuit news and happenings, we may never get to this topic, but hopefully we will be able to today. We may have to postpone our, topic, because I know this will be a hot topic when we get to the things that we're gonna be talking about on top of that. But my name's Dan DeLong or Danwidth and School of Bookkeeping worked at Intuit for nearly 18 years. And thankfully I'm not working there today after all of the. These things that are going on but co-hosting here as well as over the workshop Wednesdays over at School of Bookkeeping, and a feature deep dive host on the unofficial QuickBooks Accountant Podcast. Matthew's not joining us here today, but filling me in for him again is Lynda Artesani. You wanna introduce yourself for us?

Lynda Artesani:

Sure. Lynda Artesani. You probably know me from hanging around with Matthew because we are best friends, but I'm gonna cover him until you can come back. But yeah, Artesani Accounting and the proper trust. Our firms are just work only with lawyers, so it's, a great job. It keeps us busy. I really do love having that niche and specialty. We also have the Accountants Law Pod, which is a podcast that you can listen to if you wanna learn about working attorneys, especially if you only have one. It's a great resource. And also the Accountants Law Lab, where we have a mastermind group every Friday we hop on and we. Deep dive into all sorts of topics, not just law firm stuff. We could do business stuff. We're actually gonna do one in a couple of weeks where we're going to do a critique of people's websites. So that's gonna be a fun one for marketing purposes for lawyers. Fun,

Dan DeLong:

fun stuff. Again, thanks for filling in on again, sort to notice we we, wanna have everybody back. And so I, I did that video to hopefully streamline some of these housekeeping and announcements. So Blake was talking all about the CPE credit. We have our channel on, on earmark for, available for CPE Credit. Those are uploaded typically five to seven days after, so you can always check those out. And we talked about that and the door. And so let's talk about what we're gonna talk about here today. In the news. There's some, A lot of posts and discussions about Intuit login vulnerabilities. So we want talk a little bit about the Intuit login and and what you can do as an accountant to make sure that you are, you're taking as the best steps that you could take to ensure that, your gateway into your QuickBooks and your client's QuickBooks is not compromised. And then hopefully we'll get to spend management, which, which is all about expense claim. We wanna talk a little bit about expense claims and QuickBooks bill pay. And in between all of this, as we were trying to prepare an email came out this morning about pricing updates. We, I. We might get to talk about that and maybe that's what we talk about as the, login and the pricing changes to make sure that people are at least aware that the pricing is changing and that your login needs to be secure. Yeah. But so let's talk a little bit about the the Intuit news. And as far as the login vulnerability, right? So there's, a lot of more, there's more and more reports of accountants logins being compromised. The, and the, ultimately what happens is that the password reset process has some vulnerabilities that are open to the bad actors that are out there. I really wish, these bad people would actually use their talents for good, but they're really smart. And they're they're found in, the easy way is to do bad things. And and it's super important to do that, for, you to take as much steps to, do that because, because of all of the things that that, you essentially have access to. And the more, more and more that Intuit is getting involved with real money movement that makes this very enticing for those bad actors and hackers out there to try to compromise your login. so Lynda, you were ha you were saying a, horror story of, of things that were happening with it. Wasn't you it was a client, right?

Lynda Artesani:

It was the client. They. They did everything right. This client did everything right with her accountant login, having it all protected. But sorry. She was an employee working at a, law firm, but the client, her bosses tax firm did not. So they had no protection and apparently their, account got hacked and because the tax person had a login, they logged in, they changed the bank account for merchant services to their own bank account, this bad person. They did. And they, as things came in and they processed some invoices to be paid to go into their bank account, they also set themselves up as a vendor and connected their bank account so that they could be paid by the firm. To pay the bad people because they set themselves up as a vendor and they did it pretty smart smartly as far as like they set up the person's name. So they invited themselves as a user. So they hacked into the tax person, invited themselves as a user into the, one of their clients' accounts. So instead of Lynda Ani, they did Art Asani comma Lynda.'cause you can't have two names the same. And then they had a field day with the data because like you said, Intuit's now in the business of money movement, they were always with merchant services. But now with the bill pay, that makes a difference. And they were trying to extract the money. Fortunately for this client, they weren't hurt because they picked a bank account that didn't have a big enough balance. So when the money tried to move, it got, that's how they got flagged. They got a notification that it, there wasn't enough money in the account. And then they then they also, because they were doing it both sides, so they were trying to get the money coming into the firm and they were also trying to get the money going out of the firm. They also had that a CH next day where you paid extra fee. So the money got clogged into that pipeline where they never, it never reached them and they had to report it to Intuit. Intuit was helpful ish, but they had to deal with the merchant services account, merchant services team, which it's not the same as the team Dan used to be on, where it's a little more difficult to get things explained and through, but it was really horrifying for the client. And, you think you're doing the right thing. Like I'm protecting my clients. I use the pass key, which I thought was great, and instead of having to type the get the bank code and through my phone and all that. But you don't think about it, that also the tax person's an invite t on the accountants login, and that's another vulnerability. And the tax firm might not have. That's set up in their account. So I guess it's a question we should all be asking.

Dan DeLong:

Yeah. The in your particular situation, it was a client who got yes. Compromised. Yep. But imagine, your login being compromised. Now all of your clients are accessible to to that login. And the same thing can happen, right? They can log in as you access all of your clients and do exactly the same thing. So it's, yeah. It's essentially now you are now the tip of the iceberg for the conduit, right?

Lynda Artesani:

You're the conduit to all these clients. And if you have over a hundred clients like Sarah and I do, that's a lot of people. It's scary, right? It really is.

Dan DeLong:

So, one of the things that that Intuit has recently done with regards to that sort of thing long come on, go forward. So we all know about the MFA code, right? Which is the multi-factor authentication, which is that six digit code that will come typically to your phone, potentially to your email that will help prove who you are when you are when you are signing in. Now, a newer thing is this pass key and I wrote a blog about, the, what this pass key actually is, and it's actually twofold, right? There is a, there's an anonymous key but that's stored in the cloud, and then there is something that is stored on your device. And that device will typically, marry or match to that anonymous key, and then. As a, as as Apple is trying to explain, and Intuit is trying to find they're, virtually Unguessable, right? That's the whole idea with, PA keys. I have not quite figured out with you signing in on one device versus another device and, enabling this pass key how it, all works out. Especially when one device is a Mac and the other one is a Windows machine.

Lynda Artesani:

Yeah, that's what, see, I have a Mac and I have Apple everything. So I use my fingerprint. I use my fingerprint. But when you think about it, have you ever lost the key or not copied or to saved it? You're really screwed because you, have that one chance, you know that one code that they give you, unless you're using like a Google Authenticator, which is what I used to use, right? Yeah. You're really in trouble if you don't have that stored somewhere. But then how secure is it?

Dan DeLong:

Yeah. These pass keys so far what I've set it up the, pass key is, not something that you write down or Right. Save or do, anything like that. It's just stored internally into the device itself. And then you've got the additional things of the biometrics of what you were saying, like your fingerprint.

Lynda Artesani:

Yeah. Could be facial

Dan DeLong:

or your face or, I don't know blood sample.

Lynda Artesani:

Megan, Hanney is asking, have they seen this problem with platforms like zero? I don't think it's across the board No. Where everybody is vulnerable if you don't do that. The,

Dan DeLong:

you should always

Lynda Artesani:

do MFA. The

Dan DeLong:

thing of the thing about the vulnerability, I'm sure any, any website that has a login is potentially v vulnerable right to hackers. My login was, was, compromised for my bank. Many years ago. And that's when I started to learn all of these shenanigans that were, going on and the importance of an MFA code. But still, that's only as secure as where you get the code, right? Yes. Some people will have that text forwarded to Slack, right? And so yeah, if somebody goes into the Slack, they've now got access to the code, right? These codes are only as good as the setup that, that you have them on and the security that you've established around those things. Email and your phone number and those things, they can also be compromised as well, right? Yes. So if the if the individual is doing their due diligence, the bad actor and they have access to your email, then those codes are just. Being received by somebody who can access them just as well as if they were you anyway. So the real vulnerability of all of this is, and I make sure I'm on no, I don't put two slides in here. I'm sorry. I thought I had more. Hey,

Lynda Artesani:

here.

Dan DeLong:

More than that. In here. Alright. The real vulnerability to, to all of this is, in the recovery, right? When you sign in in, into QuickBooks and you get to a point where you need, you've forgot your password, right? Which technically, any bad actor is forgot, gonna click on, forgot your password, because they don't have it, right? Or at least they They that's the theory, right? As long as they have a login. The name of the login, which that's one of the best practices here is not to use your email address as your login, right?

Lynda Artesani:

Yes,

Dan DeLong:

exactly. As there's a login name and then there is a, an email address and a phone number. Those are the three pieces of contact information of that make up your login. And I'm putting in the, chat here, prior QB Power Hour that we talked about, the whole thing about logins and how you manage your logins going into camps or the, account

Lynda Artesani:

portal, oh, there's so many places.'cause I wanted to change my email with Intuit that I had from a long time ago. And it, it's. I had, I reached out to Dan Lu and he sent me the list of all the places you have to update. And I just said, I'll just keep the email. I took the lazy route. But I think when you Are, I, should you, do you think, Dan, that we should change our password like every quarter, like the banks require you to do with Intuit financial stuff, right?

Dan DeLong:

Yeah. All of those best practices are, in place, but the vulnerability here is that, it doesn't matter what your password is and how strong it is. If there is a way to recover that password and reset that password that, that has a vulnerability, then it really doesn't matter how strong your password is. It really doesn't matter if you have a pass key set up. It really doesn't matter if you have an MFA code sent to you as long as somebody can change your password. And that password process of of recovering that. Changing the email, changing the phone number that's associated with the, account only requires an id. Which is a, photo id, which can certainly be forged, by these bad actors. They're very good at data mining, right? And they may not get all the information directly from you, but they can go, ping, a login that's associated with you somewhere else, get a little bit of information. There's lots of public records that are, out there, that are tied to you. So they're really good at putting the pieces of the puzzle together to

Lynda Artesani:

Yeah, to find

Dan DeLong:

that, personally identifiable information. And I don't know that what, what steps Intuit is making to validate. ID as being authentic and

Lynda Artesani:

Yeah if you have a Florida driver's license, I had this happen where I forgot, remember when they made all the ProAdvisors redo their identity at one point and everybody was a big brew ha on, on the community about why should I have to give them my driver's license? And they sent you a link on your phone and you just had to take a picture of your driver's license. But with a Florida license, we have a weird thing on the back that's like the barcode goes across where I guess others goes up and down and it would not take my driver's license. So I had to call them and they said, you need to use your passport. So I had to go dig my passport out to be able to verify I was in fact, who I was. Also, Miriam, Wilson wants to know what happens to your past key when you get a new phone. I'm using my fingerprints, so I just set my fingerprint up, but I think you have to put your Google Authenticator or your Microsoft Authenticator on it. What, other things would you have to do, Dan to if you're changing phones?

Dan DeLong:

Yeah. Just like anything else, you just have to reset all that stuff up.

Lynda Artesani:

Yeah.

Dan DeLong:

And it's, now getting to the point where it's harder to prove who you are when you are that person Than the, other actors that are out there that, that pretend to be you. So I put in the chat a blog article that I wrote about path keys. I was gonna ask check, that out. About the change in the Intuit login about pass keys. And I tried to combine that with what Apple's talking about with with, task keys for a little bit of details about what a passkey is and, how safe it is and whatnot. But again, you know that it's interesting. That is only as secure, right? All the, all of these things of authenticator apps, passkey, strong passwords, all those things, they're, vulnerable through this intuit process of how you reset and change those things, right? Because all that requires is a, is government ID or a photo id, which may or may not be the, most proper thing. So there's things that, that Intuit really needs to to change, which is again, gonna make you, annoyed with Intuit because you have to jump through all these hoops in order to prove who you are when you legitimately need to change these things, right? It's just and as we were talking about right, right before we went live this, is all reactionary. Just like TSA, right? Like when you go fly, right? You think back 3, 9 11, how easy it was to get through security.

Lynda Artesani:

Yes.

Dan DeLong:

But then these things started happening where people started putting explosives in their underwear, in their shoes. Thank God it was

Lynda Artesani:

the

Dan DeLong:

shoes

Lynda Artesani:

though, Dan, that's easier to take off.

Dan DeLong:

Exactly. So that made it more increasingly annoying to go through security because of those bad actors that decided to, do these bad things. Yeah. And now on the flip side of that you've got, okay, how do I get through security much faster? We've got things that you can pay for and set up to, to make that a streamlined process so you don't have to take off. You don't have to take but, you have to go through a process in order to prove your identity just the same, which is

Lynda Artesani:

deep. It's a deep pro. Especially if you go like global entry, it's very deep. But as you said, you went and it happens here in Florida. You get in the line and all the old people have done pre-check and that line's longer than the other line. And you're like why did I do that? I just get in the other line, taking my shoes off. But,

Dan DeLong:

if everybody's in the express line, how exactly Fast is the express line?

Lynda Artesani:

It's faster though.'cause you don't have to do that. Roberta Holman's asking do, where do you change your unique name instead and where do you change to a unique name instead? So where do you change your login Within Intuit?

Dan DeLong:

So you would sign in to the account sign in, which is quickbooks.com/accounts or accounts.intuit.com. Either one. There's, a multitude of ways to do that. But once you're signed into the Intuit account screen, and I'm not gonna. Show this to you because that would make me vulnerable because now I'm streaming this on Facebook. But you, log in there and then there will be the, a section that will have the user id, and then you can change that. And then there is the email address that you can update that, right? And then the, next thing right is, all about this. What if you do get compromised, right? Now you're signing your log, you're blocked out of your work essentially, because you have no way to get into your, to your login while this is all being sorted out. So there's a good best practice of making a backup login into QBOA. And there is ways, there are ways like when you say, Hey, I don't have I don't have access to another email, you can create. If, it's a, most web-based emails like Google, email outlook outlook based emails have the ability to create a a plus one or a plus two or a plus, whatever you wanna call it, anything that you put after your regular your regular login, whether it's Lynda Art asani@asaniaccounting.com, if you put Lynda Art Asani plus one, or Lynda Art, Asani plus QBOA, or anything that you put after the plus sign, that email address is unique to the login server. So that the Intuit, that's a unique email address, but in reality that email gets automatically forwarded to your home to your regular email address. So that gives you a secondary login. You give it full access to your firm, right? It's not the primary. Primary email or the primary user, but it's full access, so at least you can access all the clients you're able to sign in while your other email or your other login is getting, sorted out with, all of that stuff.

Lynda Artesani:

When you were with Intuit, Dan, did you have, were you ever involved in, when there's a conversation about the owner died? And I, they're the primary admin and it's a big hill to climb to get that back and get that on and get it switched over to somebody. Oh, yeah. And you have a lot of details you have to give into it to correct that, so you should make sure I, that's one of my best practices when I work with clients is, I'll take a look. This just happened to one of mine. The lady was retiring. She was the bookkeeper, and she had herself down as primary admin. She had herself down as the president of the company for payroll, and she wasn't. Those things were big. And I got in there to start working with this client and I'm like, wow, do you know that this is that? And thankfully saw this before she left so that we could get it corrected. But it was not an easy correction. And I think that sometimes we don't think about these things. Just like not thinking about the tax professional. They only need to be in the file briefly right at the beginning of the year or whenever they're doing the taxes. Maybe kick them off every year and then put them back on. That kind of takes away some of that exposure for the client. Opens up a seat for your, for if you have two people like me and Sarah always competing for who's gonna get the file and be in charge of the adding the team. But that's basically how this person got themselves in was they added, themselves to this tax person's team and then added themselves to all the files.'cause it's really a wide open book there when you get in that to that level, if you don't have those protections in place, and security's such a big topic. And I think it's just the more you research it, especially with ai, I mean look at the things you can do with AI right now. You made a southern gentleman with some really smooth jazz in the beginning of this. Exactly. Power. But you set that up and you do all these things really quickly and it's, almost frightening to that they can take, if we have a lot of video of ourselves, they can take your video. They can take your voice. Yeah. And they can do a lot of things. So you just wanna do the best you can for your clients and protect them as best you can. It's not a lot we can do on their side, but I think some who hasn't had a client who here hasn't had a client, you can put it in the chat, that sent them your, their own personal login to their file instead of adding you as an accountant. We get them sending us bank information sometimes and it's oh my God, did they just send me the everything I needed to hack their bank? Yes, they did. So that's the stuff we have. And Guy

Dan DeLong:

text me his credit card, like a picture of his credit.

Lynda Artesani:

Oh no. It's no, don't do that. What are you doing? Yeah it's incredible. But yeah wow. I, Leslie says she changes her password monthly. God bless you. That is amazing. Should she change her login too? I don't know about that.

Dan DeLong:

No. Just, the, main, thing here is that, it's real easy to guess these things. If your login is, your login name is your email address, right? That's a, good best practice. Put something that only, you know, yes. As the, login name so that this whole problem or this exposure of the vulnerability of resetting, resetting your login is, a little bit harder, right? Making it harder for. People to be dishonest. Yes. Is a, is always a good idea. It's just the same reason that you lock your doors even though you feel like you're in a safe neighborhood. Exactly. So those things. And then I put a link in here for to send feedback because we always know, we always understand. Yes. That feedback is is something that can squeaky wheel gets the grease. And knowing that this is a, A-A-A-A-A issue this is a, potentially a, huge issue for a lot of people with contractor payment and money going out. Now that, Ben okay we'll, talk a little bit about spend management.'cause there's bill pay, there's vendor payments. There's a lot of ways for that. Money can go out of, QuickBooks and subsequently real bank accounts. It's much harder to send an invoice and those types of things and change the merchant num merchant merchant account number's real easy to go in there and set themselves up as a vendor or contractor, create a bill for themselves and then, yeah. Especially when those things are already set up. And that's one of the, my biggest concerns of Intuit getting into the bill pay scheme is now there's real money being moved. And to answer somebody else's question about zero, and we talked about it with Sarah last time

Lynda Artesani:

Is

Dan DeLong:

that they don't have a built in built in way. So their integration into the bill pay field is by integrating with accounts payable. Solutions they have a deep integration with with bill.com. But then there's all those others that are out there. So this leads to another thing that when you're connecting apps and you're using your Intuit login, right? That's another, another stepping stone to get to those things. So another best practice there would be to set up different logins, set up a login with that company as well, and not rely on the Intuit login to get to those, applications as well, especially when there's money movement involved. Those types of things.

Lynda Artesani:

I noticed, christina Lyons said that she found that when she changed her username to, from her email to something else, to just a name, she couldn't respond to reviews. She was able to respond to reviews when they changed it back. She doesn't know if there's a glitch in the Matrix, what's interesting too? So I still have this old legacy email that I have my Intuit account set up for. So every time I ask a client in our formal thing please add me as an accountant, we have this long direction so that they know accountant, user. And even though I tell them to put it towards the other email address, they always send it to the one that they came from. They don't read everything. And then I would think the same thing, right? That could happen for if you're using a login like that, I dunno.

Dan DeLong:

Yeah. And then we, and we talked about that on the Intuit account webinar that we, did, that ProAdvisor, the ProAdvisor profile is like the only, site or service that has, that, where you don't have this login and service, it's just somewhere in between. Because it is associated with a person. And your login is associated with person as opposed to a service. Yes. So it like QBO is a service and merchant account is a service, and payroll is a service and Bill pay is a service. And all of those have a realm or a company ID that is a unique identifier where ProAdvisor is the only void in that option that does not have a service or a company ID or something unique. So that may be why they were having that challenge when they changed their, user id, because that does break things. I know my, my login or my associate, my pro advisor profile is, attached to my personal email, because when I was leaving, Intuit didn't have a business established just yet. So I would know I wanted to start a ProAdvisor profile and it got to my personal email and I really can't change that at all. So when I get, yeah. So when I get a spammy request from somebody needing ta QBO training which is now another big issue, spam requests for, profile ProAdvisor profiles.

Lynda Artesani:

Yes. That was a lot of that this year.

Dan DeLong:

And then you reply to them. They now have your email.

Lynda Artesani:

Yeah,

Dan DeLong:

Because that reply doesn't stay in the portal, it actually goes to them. So now they have their directly, now they have the email.

Lynda Artesani:

So Ann said, Ann Lee said we each need the ability to remove ourselves from client files. You sh you should be able to do that. If you go you can remove yourself right from that main page on QuickBooks. The Yeah. Where your company lists are, you can go to that little dots and caveat.

Dan DeLong:

You have to be the primary admin of the firm in order to do that.

Lynda Artesani:

Oh, that

Dan DeLong:

stinks. So that, so

Lynda Artesani:

you have to be, oh, you have to be the primary on your side, not the client's

Dan DeLong:

fault. Yeah, you can. Okay. So that the primary admin of the client.

Lynda Artesani:

Yeah. So you have to be the primary to be able to get that list and be able to go in there and clean it up. But I've done that and sometimes they come back. I don't know why. I've tried to get rid of I try to get rid of the list of people. And then Lisa says, Lisa Pierpont says, I'm confused about the backup login in QB to QBOA. Should we set up another user full access with a different email address like info at Yes. Yes, you should. Yeah. Yes. That's a great tip.

Dan DeLong:

That's what I'm talking about, is that You set up another login, it could be if you have another email address to use, like info at, or hello at, or whatever your, you, another email address that you have to use. And that's why I was saying that you can, if you have a Gmail address

Lynda Artesani:

Yes. With

Dan DeLong:

You, with the pluses you could use, you could set up yeah. An email address that is a, user id. Different, but it, will automatically get forwarded. All the communications get automatically forwarded to your main, email. But if you have access to another email address, by all means, set up a smart a firm user, a team member who is you. As a as a, secondary way to get in. I am trying to sign in here just to give

Lynda Artesani:

a, visual. Yeah

Dan DeLong:

That's another screen.

Lynda Artesani:

It's actually a really good tip, Dan, because I don't think we think about that and I could use like my Mac, address or something like that. So it's completely separate from the business, but Yeah. Because you ever get stuck you want an ability to be able to get access to the sales if something happens. You don't wanna

Dan DeLong:

get un you don't wanna get unstuck.

Lynda Artesani:

Yes. And it's not easy to fix on a lot of these things. They're

Dan DeLong:

locked out, correct. There's nothing worse than when you lock your keys in the car.

Lynda Artesani:

Oh, and Jessica wants to know what is a firm user? A user through my QBO account. Yes. Not through the client's, limited number of users. Correct. Affirm use would be under your team. It's called team. Basically just there

Dan DeLong:

Trying to show. That's about all I can show.

Lynda Artesani:

Oh yeah. Go back to the left. You had it almost there.

Dan DeLong:

Yeah. So you can see that I'm in here, I'm in this demo account, time. Yeah. But lots of names, all sorts. Yeah. And you can see the, different email addresses here. And then here's what I'm talking about here on the plus one. So, this is Dan plus one at whatever the domain is, and that is a different user and a user access that's not the primary admin or the primary user of this particular firm. And do you

Lynda Artesani:

make them a company admin when you put them in so they've got Yes. Full.

Dan DeLong:

Yeah. They'll have full access, so they'll basically be doing everything that you can do other than. Modify the pri, who the who the primary is. And those, types of things. So that would be where you could set up a, at least a, backdoor,

Lynda Artesani:

yeah. Entrance

Dan DeLong:

Into, your firm so that if your login happens to be compromised you'll your work isn't necessarily prohibited and don't have a forced vacation, by, doing that. And then somebody was oh. So here I am, signed in as a firm user. So, if this is,

Lynda Artesani:

if you're primary, yeah.

Dan DeLong:

If you're the primary, it's under this edit client, you've got this delete permanently you have to be the primary admin of the firm, not of the company. To, in order to see this drop down option. So that's that's where you would be able to completely remove and that actually does sever the connection between you and the user. User, and

Lynda Artesani:

it kicks off your points.

Dan DeLong:

Yeah. That doesn't reduce your points because they're no longer an active customer. But if they're not an active client anyway why

Lynda Artesani:

not? Yeah. You want to take that exposure away. You don't ever want to. I had that happen once where, I, had somebody attached from a long time ago and I was going through my list trying to clean my list up, do like housekeeping, and I accidentally clicked on one that I didn't mean to log into, but I did. And I hurried up and got out because they weren't a client anymore. I'm like, I need to get that off. And I wrote to them and told'em what had happened and that I didn't do anything in the file. I happened to just log in'cause I clicked a name that was similar to another and that I was gonna remove them from the list. And I, and then I subsequently did that, but I wanted them to know in case I saw.'cause I've had clients come to me when they've had a problem and they go, who is this person logging in that, that was working for me before? And I don't know who this person is. I'm like, you go back to your old accountant and find out. But yeah.

Dan DeLong:

Okay. since we only have 20 minutes left and we're not gonna talk about that, spend management let's talk about the next time for the remaining time that we have here. The email that came out this morning about pricing changes. Now I made a blog about desktop pricing, not even realizing that QuickBooks online prices change or are changing as well. So I'll add that to the list of things to do. But here's, a blog and I believe I have it. I've shared it already.

Lynda Artesani:

Yeah.

Dan DeLong:

But things about the desktop pricing and what's, changing and what's coming and, biggest changes is dealing about payroll. Payroll in, in desktop, right? So here's the general idea of, oh, what's happening?

Lynda Artesani:

Oh my goodness, I just saw the bottom line,

Dan DeLong:

right? Oh my goodness. All right. Pro and premier, actively not being sold anymore, but existing customers can keep their subscription assuming that they pay these prices, right? So you can see pro, a single user was 9 99 a year. It's only going up$50. However, the additional seat is going up$110 each. So pro you can have a maximum of three users. If you do have a pro user with three seats that's gonna go up$50 plus,$110 for each additional user. That's now to. If they have a three user that's now three 200, and I'm trying to do the math here. Somebody I know has a calculator, don't ask me to count as an account just for a a, three user license of Pro and that's pro right. And then Premier is going up$70 for a single user but$160 for the additional users, which can go up to five. Enterprise already got its price update, oh my goodness, in February. So that was like 15 to 20%. Depending on the number of users. There's a blog article about that. I, should probably have one big blog article of all of the pricing increases. And accountants are not immune to this price increase either because you see desktop. Accountant, the single the, standalone where it's not part of your ProAdvisor membership is going up$600 a year. The ProAdvisor Premier bundle, which gives you the desktop accountant is going up$500 a year. So if you are a desktop, add-on with the Premier bundle, that's going up$500. And then the Enterprise Bundle, which includes Enterprise and Accountant Edition for Premier, is going up$800. So that is all taking effect October first,

Lynda Artesani:

At least they gave us some notice

Dan DeLong:

as, as far as the renewal, right? It, doesn't mean that you're gonna get charged this on October 1st, right? It'll be, it's when your, when your yearly subscription renews, whenever that is, that when the price increase will occur. And then we have the desktop pricing up update. So the base fee, and the employee per employee charges are unaffected. So it's just the base fee of basic enhanced and assisted is going up. So assisted is going up$6 a month.'cause it only builds monthly. Enhanced is going up$40 for the year and basic which is, I don't know why it's still around, but it's it's basically payroll without the form is going up$30. Now this is the, biggest, this is the out. Yeah. So gold and platinum for enterprise includes enhanced payroll. And up until August 1st there wasn't. Per employee charges. But now after August 1st, there are, so from one through nine, it's$3 for for each employee. And they calculate active employees if they got paid. So it's not like you have to go through your list and inactivate employees if they're not getting paid. They only do that based off of if they got a check during that month. But it's different than other tiered, tiered options like this. Whereas one through nine you'll, always pay$3 for per ac per paid employee. 10 through 29 is$2 and 50 cents, and three 30 through 90 is one$1 and 50 cents. And 100 to two 19. I'm not sure why that number is it? But those go to a dollar. And lo and behold, if you have more than 200 and 20 employees, that 220th employee is free. Thanks. But you, that payroll is good. You'll still for everyone up until that point. Wow. So that's, a huge difference. Yes. Which, we saw that coming, right? I could envision could have envisioned this this from taking place. Things can only be free for so long before someone figures out what's going on here. And there was I think in February there was an alert sent out where you had to go in and if you were an active subscriber and you had to accept the terms. Per employee, but they never told you the details. Now there's, details and through the form they're giving you 30 days to figure things out. Now I put down here a little payroll fee calculator. Oh, nice. Let's say I told you all this morning with ai.

Lynda Artesani:

Wow, that's cool. I like

Dan DeLong:

it. So let's say you have 50 employees and you're on Golden Platinum. What would your monthly fee be? Hit the button. Come on. Oh, I'm in preview mode. Why? Ah, geez.

Lynda Artesani:

It's hard for us as accountants, if we were doing the inclusive model from a long time ago that Intuit encouraged where we paid their software and we paid their payroll, and then if they have a revolving door of employees, how do you count and add all the people that come and go and track all this stuff? And now, especially if there's extra employees, it's gonna cost more for them. And you're gonna have to factor when you build them, which is gonna be extra work on you.

Dan DeLong:

I can't seem to click the calculate fee button.

Lynda Artesani:

Oh, it says

Dan DeLong:

your, it worked earlier today.

Lynda Artesani:

Ah,

Dan DeLong:

it's cool though. But yeah so Diamond is a little bit different in that it is$1 and 50 cents per employee per pay period. Oh, wow. And that was different regardless, right? Because they're, using the assisted payroll in Diamond. Yes. There's no way to get Diamond in and use Enhanced, and it was a dollar so now it's a dollar 50, so it's, basically gone up 50%. For, Diamond. So you can, and here's an example, right? So if you paid, if you pay 15 employees a month, the first are gonna be billed at$3 each to$25. The next one will be billed at, two 50 each. So the total monthly at that point is$42. That's what this calculator should do. I'll trouble it a little bit after the webinar and we'll figure out what what's going on there. But you should be able to put in the number of employees, choose the plan, and then is the calculate fee. When you choose Diamond, another, little popup will come up and ask you how many times during the month do you pay them, and then it will figure out the, number for you.

Lynda Artesani:

Leslie has a great question for you, Dan. Because I'm not gonna answer. It's a hot potato and I, answered it in my mind, but QB Desktop and Enterprise Solutions is a mature software, meaning that Pat, the patches, updates, improvements are not happening. So what's driving the large price increases,

Dan DeLong:

The, it's not the logic. The logic isn't, you're paying for new features you're just. This is, how it's, this is the lever that Intuit is pulling to make people uncomfortable to have the conversation. Is it now time to move to QuickBooks Online? Yeah. And then, on the, tails of all this, QuickBooks Online increased its prices as well. And this was also with August 1st the new subscriptions after August 1st we'll have a, new pricing increase. Simple Start is only going up$3. Hooray. Who

Lynda Artesani:

uses that

Dan DeLong:

though?

Lynda Artesani:

Really? It's not personal maybe, but Yeah.

Dan DeLong:

Yeah. As far as the, feature set is is pretty, pretty limited. Essentials is going up$10 a month. So that's, not terrible. Online Plus is going up to one 15. So that was 99. So that's a$15 a month increase. But make sure you're sitting down advanced, yes, is going from 2 30, 2 35, which is what it is today to 2 75. So$40 per month increase, for, online advanced

Lynda Artesani:

Is Ledger staying the same price too QB Ledger, the

Dan DeLong:

ledger is unaffected. This year. And you have the option of doing annual'cause the only way that you can purchase is through, your firm bill. So you, it's either$10 a month or one 20 a year. So you do have that option now to, pay annually for your, ledger client.

Lynda Artesani:

That got a Yahoo. Christie's asking about QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise solutions that the client pays directly for. Do you know that price increase at all? I'm sure they're gonna Oh, the enter.

Dan DeLong:

Yeah. I have it on my blog here as well. So if you go, check out the blog,

Lynda Artesani:

sign up for Dan's blog. You'll be in the know.

Dan DeLong:

Yeah. And where is it now? Let's see here. Oh, there's Matthew. Yeah. Hey, Matthew, there. It's the frustrated.

Lynda Artesani:

Yeah, it's a great picture. I saw that. I was like, that's a great graphic for this.

Dan DeLong:

So enterprise silver, gold, platinum. This was this occurred or was announced in February, which is typical the enterprise price increases has happens in February. And then all the other desktop and, updates occur in August or October. It really just depends on the, timeframe. So you 15% for one through five seats and 20% for six to 30 for enter silver, golden, platinum diamond is a flat 15% increase across all seats. So it doesn't matter how many seats that you have in, Diamond, it's 15% price increase. Yes. So that's that's all in there. On, on that blog as well, as far as the

Lynda Artesani:

You can, change from, if you're paying monthly on, on ledger, how to change to annual billing at all.

Dan DeLong:

You should be able to do that in your, when you go into, manager manage subscriptions. I don't know if you can change it. But I know that if you set up a new one, you have the option to to pay with with the annual.

Lynda Artesani:

Julie's asking, can you cancel ledger, then restart it later in the year? There must be a tax firm that's just using it for tax purposes. But I think if you do, you have to start over. Isn't that done when you close it off or is it resurrected? Like you can with QuickBooks files.

Dan DeLong:

That should be it should be a possibility, right? Because it is a QuickBooks online subscription. Just like anything else. And when you cancel a subscription, you have it accessible as read only for a year. So assuming that you pay for it one month and you're done with your writeup or, whatever, and you're not adding new, transactions, you can inactivate it which will then put in that read only state as long as it doesn't say it's actually gonna get deleted. And that date doesn't transpire. Or doesn't go past that date, then you should be able to pick it back up within that point, cancel it again. You get another year.

Lynda Artesani:

Yeah. Somebody's asking too if, is there a way to, is there any alternatives to QuickBooks?

Dan DeLong:

That's what we talked about. Week show.

Lynda Artesani:

Yeah. Call Sarah. Yeah. But there is zero, and they do raise their prices too, but not to the levels. But the products aren't exactly the same, so you really need to do your homework to figure out which product is gonna work. But it's a great product too. Oh, maybe somebody said reactivating a canceled ledger subscription has to be as simple, has to be as a simple stock. Oh, that's a good point. Jessica said a good point. Yeah. And if you're in it, like someone said, that if they're in a simple start, their client doesn't need to be in it. You could start a new file at the beginning of the year and just use it's not that hard to start a new file. Grab the balance sheet, start with the new balances, and it's, it is work. But if you're trying to save your clients, those pennies from Simple Start, it would work. It's just more work for you to get'em in there. But sometimes, you have clients that have been in files for so long, it's yeah, it may be good to start something new. It's not always a bad thing. Or changing to zero, it's the same thing. Just starting a new file sometimes easier than trying to copy and re reinvent the wheel. But yeah.

Dan DeLong:

Yeah. Those, so those are the, that's all about the spend management. Yeah. We were gonna talk about today. Yeah. You wanna save that one for next time, Dan? Yeah. So join us next time. Yeah. For where we talk about the, spend management functions, we'll talk about the QuickBooks bill pay we'll talk about expense claims in advance because now you're paying$40 a month more for expense claims in advance. Sometimes

Lynda Artesani:

I really, feel sometimes too do I want all the eggs in one basket? Do I wanna use their bill importing system or do I wanna use Dex or Hubdoc that's specifically designed for those things? And I get more bells and whistles, and I'm not beholden. All software goes up. You have to pay your people, right? And you pay for innovation and you pay for new things. And sometimes you're paying because they're trying to get you outta the product. But, you, do, you have to pay people's salaries. Everybody gets a raise. So that's how I look at it. Maybe there's not a lot of innovation, or I look at advanced and I see that$40 increase price tag. And I think what did I, get outta that? And years ago there was always something new coming. But in software world, things cost a specific amount of money. And I look at software as such an important it's one of my biggest expenses when I'm paying for it and or my clients are paying for it. But the values there, you have to kind weigh. Doing things manual or switching to something to save in. Simple start, but doing workarounds to get around it. Is it worth all your time and effort than just paying what the difference is and then having the amazing software.'cause that's really where the world is going with technology. And I think sometimes people focus so much on the pennies and then not looking at big picture that they save money that way to be in a better product and, go with that. So yeah. But I think with the eggs in one basket

Dan DeLong:

yeah. I was ha I was having, a challenge at the I think into a connect with a limitation that the invoicing didn't solve in the new invoice experience, right? Inside of QuickBooks online. So I started looking at other applications that might. Solve the problem. And I was surprised at their pricing right here. This is a, an invoicing only application and they're basing their fees off of the volume, which it's up to them hard to figure their own pricing model.

Lynda Artesani:

Yeah.

Dan DeLong:

But, that would've added four times the cost of the of, QuickBooks. Yeah. Just for invoice. And, QuickBooks is the shallow end of the pool arguably for, a lot of these workflows, despite what their marketing might be saying about Intuit Enterprise Suite being the be all and end all of, all of these things. But, sometimes you need to go outside of the, QuickBooks ecosystem and their prices may double or triple what you're paying for QuickBooks just for that. Solution, whether it's inventory management, that isn't really handled all that fantastically in inside of QuickBooks Online, if you need more than what it's doing. That, so the cost for inventory management softwares, is is definitely eye-opening for those. But if they're getting the functionality that they need, it is, definitely worth it. So thinking of that in terms of, wow, this is$40 a month for advance times 12,$480 is, an additional increase. If they are using those advanced features, then it certainly is worth it over, the long run. Not that I'm justifying these pricing.

Lynda Artesani:

No, but you should evaluate. We do that as part of our scope with our clients. We evaluate how much,'cause some of the legal tech software is very pricey and we'll go through it. All right, you're using this and what is it doing for you? I'll ask the client, what is it doing for you? How does it help you? And then also I see you have 40 users you're paying for, and the client's typical answer is what? 40? No, 40 people aren't using it. And then we go to the list of so and so shouldn't be on it. And now we've saved the client money just by reducing the users.'cause a lot of them charge by users. So it's a way you can help your client, but you do wanna help analyze your, start with your own books, look at your own software and see what you're spending money on, and then start to do that for your clients. They won't be so happy with you. But you're right about QuickBooks seems it does seem like we get hit with the increases, but I think the value sometimes the value's there. In the fact that if you look at other alternates that are equivalent you're spending a lot more, if I want to go to Intact Sage intact, it's gonna cost my client a lot more, and then I don't have all the extra bells and whistles I can add to it. So it makes difference.

Dan DeLong:

Yeah. And then the other thing is the per user cost, because if you've got Yes. If you've got five users in, plus you know that, essentially is$20 per month per user which is, not so bad. But if you've got one user in Plus and you're only in there because you need class tracking. Yeah. That's, a little hard to justify, especially when it's now one user. But if you spread it, across all the, all of the people that are using it. Yeah. Advanced at 25 users, if you've got 25 users in your advanced, or a team of 10 or 15,$40 a month isn't not true.

Lynda Artesani:

Especially tailor it down too. That's what I love about it with advanced, I can really make, I make users for my clients sometimes, this person's this, and they don't need to be in this. I can really streamline it down. Just almost like enterprise, not quite. But I think too, when you're looking at payroll prices too, I always go back to a client and I'll say, look, if I were to do this manually, it would cost you five times that. So why would you want and have a higher, chance of errors than me? Having me do it personally, which we used to do a long time ago before the software. So now you've got the software and it is at an expense, but it's, of, there's a huge value there. And I think we got spoiled a little bit with the competition between all the different payroll companies and the pricing and now they're all starting to go up. So I think that if you're looking at payroll pricing, I still think it's a very good value for what you pay, even if you have to pay per employee.

Dan DeLong:

Look at the, there's a good exercise in making another spreadsheet. Yeah. And evaluating what it is that you're the software costs and going into a meeting with your client and saying, okay here's, what's happening. Here's the, here's what we're getting for it. Maybe it's time to downgrade, maybe it's time to upgrade. Yes. Or maybe it's time to do whatever. Yes. This, is another value added conversation that you can add with your, clients. And hopefully, that helps. so next time we'll be talking about spend management which. What if you, need more into those spend management platforms and we'll actually have our first app showdown between ramp or pay one, where we'll be talking about these spend management platforms what they do well with, good versus bad, or pros and cons. Yes. Pros and cons.

Lynda Artesani:

Not good versus easy. Yeah.

Dan DeLong:

Alright. So thank you Lynda for, joining us. You're welcome. Joining us today and it's fine being the sounding board of today. And appreciate all of you that joined us here today. Hopefully this doesn't sour your entire day with, all this great news. Yeah. And hopefully and the, the slides with the two slides that were actually pertinent for today does, have a link of the, to be able to submit a. Regarding the security, right? That would be a, specialized way to go and, put in your feedback about the security vulnerability so that the security folks get a, look at this feedback rather than just putting it inside of QBO, right? Yes. Because this is the larger issue with with security vulnerability more than just with QBO. So we appreciate you joining us here today, and we'll see you in a couple weeks on the QB Power Hour. And hope everybody has a great day and a great week ahead.

Lynda Artesani:

Hi everybody.