QB Power Hour Podcast

The State of QB Desktop: How Fourlane CX Can Stretch the Life of QB Desktop

• Dan DeLong

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Give it to me straight, Doc. Is QB desktop dead, dying, or in hospice? We will be joined by Marjorie Adams, a longtime supporter of the QB Desktop lineup has developed Fourlane CX, an online portal into the customer workflows of QB Desktop which will allow your desktop clients who are happy with QB desktop, but unhappy with the pricing increases, to make the most of their QB Desktop subscription while providing Online access to their sales team.

Replays and More resources on this webinar: https://www.qbpowerhour.com/25%20-%20the%20state%20of%20qb%20desktop

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/

00:00 Introduction and Housekeeping
00:51 Earning Continuing Professional Education Credit
01:56 Technical Difficulties and Casual Banter
03:13 Introduction to Today's Topic: State of QuickBooks Desktop
04:36 Guest Introduction: Marjorie Adams from Fourlane
06:59 Discussion on QuickBooks Desktop vs. QuickBooks Online
13:14 Intuit News and Updates
20:44 State of QuickBooks Desktop
31:48 Intuit Enterprise Suite
33:20 The Undervalued Market Spot
34:06 Intuit's Enterprise Suite and Naming Challenges
36:51 QuickBooks Desktop vs. Intuit Enterprise Suite
39:13 Transitioning to Cloud Solutions
40:18 Challenges and Solutions for Hosting QuickBooks
43:28 Custom Applications and Client Solutions
46:00 Introducing the Web-Based Product
47:53 Features and Benefits of the New Product
50:39 Cost Efficiency and Licensing
01:00:30 Final Thoughts and Future Discussions

Dan DeLong:

So welcome everybody to another QB Power Hour. Today we are actually gonna be talking about the state of desktop with Marjorie Adams from Fourlane. Talking about ways to extend the life of desktop, in, the QuickBooks EcoSys eco ecosystem. My name is Dan De Long, owner of Danwidth and School of Bookkeeping. I worked at Intuit for about 18 years doing the co-hosting here, also at Workshop Wednesdays at School of Bookkeeping. That's enough about me. Sharrin, who are you and how'd you get in

Sharrin Fuller:

here? Oh man, I'm tired. Dan is what I am. I, we did Women Who Count Conference and then I had a book launch gonna promote this book behind me. And then we did the Intuit Connect and then I was sick for a week and then hung over for a couple days'cause my Golden Knights gala and now sick again because of that. But not ready to get back to work. I normally take a vacation every year and I think I'm gonna start doing it. No, we all do, but I normally do it from like Thanksgiving to January 10th. I think I'm gonna start doing it November and December.'cause I think I'm honestly just done working for the year. All right. The rest of the stuff about me, you can read,

Dan DeLong:

And Marjorie. Bring yourself into into, the fold here. I don't have a slide for you. Yeah, no. Fine. I should have built one, but fine. Can you explain who you are?

Marjorie Adams:

Yeah. I, wanted to wait awkwardly behind the scenes.'cause you said it's supposed to be an awkward entrance, so there you go. And I'm here. There we go. Yeah. I'm Marjorie Adams. I'm the CEO of Fourlane. We started as a conversion company, so mostly desktop. I know that there's a lot of QBO lovers in the room here. And we still continue to focus on the enterprise space. Our sweet spot is customers between 5 million to a hundred million in revenue. And we just help them get set up appropriately for data, is what we've always focused on. Yep. Out here I did also go to QB Connect. I also had to take a break after coming back from that. That was a very intense couple of days. And, and then. I've got three kids in fall sports, so yay. That's my life.

Dan DeLong:

Yes. Now it is funny because when I worked at Intuit, one of my work wives was was sending me what worked in the QSP channel and was always sending me people to connect their ProAdvisor membership to make sure that they got, attributed properly and it was always somebody from Fourlane. Who is this Fourlane and why are they buying so many ProAdvisor memberships?

Marjorie Adams:

Yeah, we've got a lot of people, we've got a lot of people over here. All we, were, we started out remote, we didn't start remote'cause in Austin and then one of my first employees still employee, had twins and needed to move to Ohio. And so I was like I guess we're opening in Ohio'cause I couldn't let her go. So yeah, we've got a good group of people over here.

Dan DeLong:

Yeah. So you your reputation preceded you before I even met you, because I knew of all this, Fourlane, conglomerate. I guess

Marjorie Adams:

we tried to copy a TSheet spec then too, right? We'd had Fourlane Fridays and we would drop off all the food and t-shirts in the Tucson office and yeah, all that fun.

Dan DeLong:

Excellent. A little bit about the QB Power Hour. If you're just joining us for the first time, it's every other Tuesday at noon Eastern. We do have CPE credit available through eMAR earmark. If you didn't catch, the introduction from the AI Blake talking about that. And you can always go to qb power.com/resources for PDFs of the slides, past recordings, podcasts and, other resources as well. So today we're gonna talk about, a amongst the, discussion about, the, state of desktop are, Intuit news. We're gonna be talking briefly about the QBO payroll tax payments and filings that you cannot opt out after 1115, which is in four days. Happy Veterans Day for those that serve. By the way we appreciate all of your service. So we'll be talking about the state of desktop and, doing a lot of, speculation because Margie and I were talking yesterday as we were preparing, we're, just here reading the tea leaves and, and, trying to predict the future based on past actions. And so that's really what we have to go off of. None of us here on this panel has any insight or information or or details. And we would probably be strung up if we did, because you're not allowed to say those things because it's a publicly traded company anyway, but we'll talk about the state of desktop and Marjorie, we will, we'll be discussing a solution that four-Lane has developed called Four-Lane cx. And we'll, talk about some case studies. There. So let's launch our first poll question. Sharrin, if you have that available since I made you a co-host, can you launch that first poll,

Sharrin Fuller:

poll question? I do. I do. Yes, I am right now. Where are you in your QuickBook? Okay, there you go.

Dan DeLong:

There we go. The, QuickBooks Desktop Journey, right? I mean we, depending on how long you've been acquainted with, QuickBooks, your desktop journey probably, or your QuickBooks journey probably started with desktop before QBO even came around. But if you're relatively new to the QuickBooks space probably, you are available or I'm sorry, you're, you're in this space at this point of, do I move all my clients to QBO? Am I using both? Am I staying with desktop? Marjorie, you wanna talk about your desktop journey?

Marjorie Adams:

Oh, gosh. I, I would, so when, we first started, we did a lot around inventory, right? That's my sweet spot. I came from manufacturing in private industry and a lot of people don't like touching inventory. I learned over the, all these years. And so sales orders are a big part of things that we help customers navigate how to use in their sales workflow or project management workflow if they're using desktop. And, I've been told since 2012 that they would be in QBO and they are right in some right now it, sales orders are there without having to connect to Q eCommerce. But, it doesn't do the same thing, right? That's. Average costing of inventory. I've heard that's coming to QBO O2 and I will definitely be able to move a lot more clients when that happens. Build assemblies. I know I could do all the apps right. But we try not to, yeah. We try not to do an app for everything. So Yeah. We're still, and I think in desktop a lot.

Dan DeLong:

And I think that's the that's one of the key benefits of, QuickBooks Enterprise is that your payroll, your inventory management, a lot of those core functions are, in one place. And we're gonna talk a little bit about Intuit Enterprise Suite and how it's a little bit different, but that's the, what they're mirroring in, the online space is that the more that you are doing inside of your core system, the less friction that you have with, other things. But. To your point heavy in inventory, the marketing be damned, right? It's not a seamless, a journey from desktop to online. We both, we all got back from into a connect. And I always seem to have a client hijack my my Intuit Connect experience. And this year was no, no, no exception. Because we had migrated someone from, desktop and they found a deal breaker, right? And it was something as simple as the terms that are in QuickBooks desktop with the. The 2% 10 net terms doesn't exist in QuickBooks Online. And that was that was a deal breaker, so to say it's seamless. There's lots of seams and we, live in the seams Marjorie,

Marjorie Adams:

right? Yeah, that's what I mean. That's what we do, is we teach'em how to use the product that they purchase versus, versus, one of the things that we focus on a lot a lot of people do use QuickBooks in general as a checkbook, a glorified checkbook. And that's where we try to really push those boundaries and get them to use more because that makes them stickier, right? They stay longer if it's harder for them to leave. And we want people to be using as much of the product as possible. Yeah.

Dan DeLong:

Exactly. So let's get let's get the ball rolling here. All right. First we always lead off with Intuit in the news. And we could spend all day talking about what they talked about at the, Intuit Connect. You all right there, Sharrin?

Sharrin Fuller:

Yeah. Is this where I jump in or are we saving my comments for next for a different show? Stay tuned guys. Dan and I are gonna do a follow up of Intuit Connects. Yeah. And I've, we all know I've got opinions.

Dan DeLong:

Yeah. And, but, today we're just gonna limit that to the news because it's very timely about the QBO payroll tax filings and, and payments. So what's really, what's happening is, and I meant to put a link in here, but I'll, do that after on the, landing page there. But what's happening is all new QBO payroll subscribers after. November 15th of this year. So four days you can no longer opt out of automatic taxes and form filings, right? So this is when you're coming from from desktop where you do have the enhanced payroll where it's very u you're very used to being able to submit your tax payments and form filings manually. People appreciated being able to opt out of that and have that same experience in the QuickBooks online space. After November 15th, you're not gonna be able to opt out of that. Intuit is gonna be full service. With regarding to to doing that. I'm a little Why do you

Marjorie Adams:

think that is?

Dan DeLong:

Yeah, so my guess is they are one of the things that changed in the, past was, they impound the tax payments as soon as you run payroll now, and then they pay the tax payments on time, based off of your schedule. So with most other payroll services they tend to make some money on the on the float. So I think that is why, one, they don't want you to be late. And, they take the burden of that if they, are late. But in the time from impounding, the tax payments to, I'm jumping in here.

Sharrin Fuller:

I. We all know that, we all know about my unhealthy relationship with Intuit. But also as somebody who's, and raise your hand if this has been you guys. If somebody who's had a client who's oh, I've been running payroll all year for my clients on desktop or for my team. And then you go into your desktop and they're like, they've just hit the button. They haven't paid anything, they haven't processed anything. We actually ended up, one of our clients we had to turn in'cause he owed over$300,000 in payroll taxes'cause he was running it on desktop and it, I was like we need to pay this. And when we went to go file his w twos in his 10 99, he was pissed. He was pissed. Because he hasn't been paying taxes and he thought all of his employees were dumb enough. They wouldn't realize that. No big deal. Anyhow, so I'm wondering if payroll in a software shouldn't be for dummies anymore, right? Like it to me, if I have a software for payroll. I wanna ensure that you're using it completely, otherwise do it by hand If you're gonna cheat the government and your employees that I'm gonna back out now, but that's just my 2 cents.

Marjorie Adams:

I like that though because when I was in that private industry manufacturing firm, that was the most eventful day that we had. Was it? I believe it was the FBI who came to our, because a subscription, I won't say who Subscription failed to file our taxes and they came knocking on the door and I was like, oh my gosh. Like what? This is really big for a 13 employee company. Like, why are you all here? They

Sharrin Fuller:

took everything we had. Yeah, CPAs, they took everything from this. I'm talking everything. He owned his home, his businesses, they came in for everything. And then some, I can't tell you the amount of bankruptcy stuff we got, it was insane. So don't mess, the government doesn't like competition when it comes to cheating people outta their money. That's what I'm gonna say.

Marjorie Adams:

I do. I do telling Intuit too frequently because I talk to the developers a lot and I do tell'em, you guys have a responsibility to teach businesses how to be a business. Like they try to replace us, right? They try to replace consultants, and so if the software's good enough to try to replace consultants, you really have to show them how to be a legitimate business. So maybe it's a good thing in that way, but. I don't know. I don't do payroll. Payroll is not my thing.

Sharrin Fuller:

One of, one of the things that I actually, I'm not gonna turn my camera on'cause you guys all can just imagine my facial expressions. I actually think this is, was a really good move by Intuit. I know a lot of people are not happy about it, but again, I do agree. I think there's some level of responsibility from the software to make sure that you're using it. And I think Intuit has got to the point. And anyhow I think this was a good move by Intuit. I'm actually gonna give them four stars on this. So if anybody says I don't say anything Nice. I think this was a good move.

Dan DeLong:

That's right. We, it's, and it's recorded. So we can always, provide that as

Sharrin Fuller:

proof, Give that to Ted, let Ted know.

Dan DeLong:

Exactly. But yes when we talk about things that are, a compliance. Thing like sales tax. There's no benefit to a business owner for filing and remitting their, sales tax. There's really no benefit to a business owner to file and remit their payroll forms and their, tax payments. It's really just a service offering. Something that, accountants and bookkeepers could do, but also if it's got a time and a schedule in it it's, just a, double checking the machines as opposed to actually doing those acts. Is a better option, especially if there is, timeliness. And coming from the support realm, the, it was very common when people ha were left to their own devices to not really understand the lead time that needed to be taken. Into consideration when paying their, taxes through QuickBooks online. It's oh it's it's the end of the month. I'm ready to pay. Oh, it's late. Because it's actually gonna take some time for it to actually go. And there's a trying to explain that to folks, was a, was an uphill battle. If it, if they're gonna take take it over then, by all means it, certainly should be done on time.

Marjorie Adams:

Y we used to do, the only thing that I, we used to use enhanced payroll, even if they use an outside service, like a Paychex or an a DP to help with job costing. And so that takes away that ability maybe to, do that, right? You have to process. You can't do like fake payrolls and just to get the, output, right? So I guess it would take that away. You'd have to go back to desktop to do that,

Dan DeLong:

right? So

Marjorie Adams:

I don't Anything you can do anymore. You can't even, I don't even. I don't know. Yeah.

Dan DeLong:

Yeah. Alright let's, speaking of desktop, let's talk about the state of desktop. Yeah. It's now the 51st state of the United States QuickBooks Desktop. So let's talk about where we are when it comes to QuickBooks desktop Marjorie. We, look at the, way things that are, occurring and it, the chicken littles of the world's oh my gosh, it's going away. So talk about the, state of desktop as you see it as a, firm or, a company that is heavy in the desktop space.

Marjorie Adams:

I like to, so I know most people think I'm probably crazy for hanging in there in the desktop world as much as we do. We move people still daily off of QBO back to desktop'cause it's not the right product for them right now. We'll move them from desktop to QBO if it's the right product for them too. But, the things that you see every May we see QuickBooks, desktop discontinuation, and it's really just the sun setting. And then we'll see there's never gonna be a new release of QuickBooks, which is true. As of right now is true. But that's something that. I don't know if you guys as professionals have asked for, but I have asked Intuit for, years. Number one support call over all these years is installation and it's a pain to reinstall every year. So we said Stop doing that. Why do we have to do this? Just send, now you guys do periodic updates. Send the updates down and let us handle it that way. I don't think that the updates are being sent down appropriately, by the way.'cause somebody should have to approve, it before it comes in. Just send them down. So I'm all for not having to do fresh install. And to me that does not mean that the desktop product is going away. I do think that Intuit would love if they could replace it. I think that would be their most I think that they've told us since 2012 that this is gonna be a replacement. It's just not there yet. And they still have a million people using this product. I don't know. We did see in when point of sale discontinued. We did see just all of us got hit with a, what are you doing? This makes no sense. So it could come to that. What are you doing? This makes no sense. But that would be a lot of people, a million users to just say goodbye to, I don't know how many there were in point of sale when, they cut it.

Dan DeLong:

Yeah. And of course, point of sale had that we're gonna try a new option or an online option of point of sale with, Revel. With Revel,

Marjorie Adams:

oh gosh,

Dan DeLong:

sorry. If, sorry if that puts some P-P-T-S-D for you. But they tried an online point of sale product as a replacement didn't work. And then they came back and developed a few more versions of, point of sale as they were trying to figure out the best path forward. Yeah. With regards to that. But, and you brought up an interesting point yesterday, when it comes to the point. They stopped selling QuickBooks Enterprise, that's when we should start really paying attention.

Marjorie Adams:

Yeah. I don't think the, sales of it so there's a couple things that I gauge on. Number one is how much pressure as a var do I get from Intuit about selling the product? And for a short period of time, it was. They did not care whether I sold enterprise or not. In the most recent, before, one of my most favorite people who worked at Intuit exited, he even started coming to us saying, why are you not selling more enterprise? And so I've definitely heard that and our channels for the last couple of years. And then the second part is always whenever, because I try to stay engaged with the developers and what they're working on and the roadmap and if they go dark on me, I get a little nervous. But I was just on the phone with them last Thursday and, that always gives me hope, right? That they're, they are doing. But here's the thing, right? We were so used to for years QuickBooks being like, oh, here's a new feature. Here's a new feature, here's a new feature. What else could we want from it? That's the part too is it's like, what else can't now Some fixes. Yes. Yeah. But feature wise, I don't know what else we would want as a community. We just want them to like, there's little tweaks in here and there are some cool, what they're working on, and I've seen that it's, neat. There are some neat things coming that we have asked for a long time.

Dan DeLong:

So those those product updates are being pushed into the product automatically. So you, you end up having as long as your clients are on the latest 20, 24 version of of QuickBooks. Those product updates are downloaded and updated. Naturally. And then so you're, as long as you're on them the, latest release you have those features. And I think we have a couple things here that we wanna point out. And, that, as you had mentioned yesterday as long as they're continuing to develop these things, as little as they might be right, it, they're still getting attention. So

Marjorie Adams:

that's a good sign for us, for our customers because it would be, we although we, represent other products too, right? Acumatica and. We can work in NetSuite and things like that, but the clients just don't wanna go there. They're not ready for it, they're not sophisticated enough for that. And it would be a really hard thing for them. Or even if they go into some of the more sophisticated apps, it would be a hard thing for them to make that big of a change. So yeah, the fact that they're, and these are, some of these are very silly in me, like silly things. But again, the point is they are making changes. Changes are being rolled out, and that is based on history. A sign that this product is okay for right now.

Dan DeLong:

My opinion and yeah, and as long as these things are continuing to occur, then for the foreseeable future it, will maintain. So the, way that they and we mentioned if they're actively selling it even though we have the option to pay monthly enterprise in and of itself, and all QuickBooks desktop subscriptions are annual subscriptions. By Intuit's perspective, right? So if you purchase today, even if you're paying monthly, your contract so to speak, or your license is, good for a year, right? That's that's why I think your, your, point of like, when they stop selling it, that's when we really start to look on, the wall.'cause we're probably going to have a year from the time that they stopped selling it to some kind of announcement. Yeah. That, okay this is a this ship has sailed.

Marjorie Adams:

And they did stop selling pro and premier. But they're still pushing updates into those products. Yeah. Because it's subscription and like one of the ones that's coming out here in February, it's gonna be pushed pro premier too. So Yeah. Still there. Still trucking.

Dan DeLong:

Yeah. And as, as Steve is saying in the q and a, why did they get rid of Pro, pro Plus and Premier? That's, I, I think in, the grand scheme of things and, again, this is just speculation based off of what we've seen and heard is that, Intuit has probably made the claim that Pro is and, QuickBooks Online has basic feature parody, between plus and advanced depending on, your perspective, right? Obviously moving from desktop to online, you may have some workflow gaps that occur, but if you're just starting out and you're given the choice between QuickBooks Desktop Pro and QuickBooks Online Plus or advanced the they're going to essentially do the same things, right? The price. That's probably the, reason why they're no longer actively selling that subscription because given that choice of a new user, hey why not go with the, cloud computing.

Marjorie Adams:

I think one of the biggest downfalls around licensing on desktop, which obviously a lot of people have taken advantage of for years, is that if you buy a single desktop license, you can have as many company files as you want. And, Intuit has to figure out how to combat that. They've gotta figure out with how to police that effectively. Because that's not a thing in the modern SaaS world, right? You, pay for your instances, you pay for your entities, you, yeah. So they're trying to figure out how to bridge that gap a little bit, which is understandable.

Dan DeLong:

And there's you just can't do the AI things that they really want to do in the desktop product. So that's one of the big. Reasons. Sasan talked about, and maybe this is where Sharrin comes out of the woodwork and starts talking about, but when Sasan at the, conference is talking about you,

Sharrin Fuller:

you rang

Dan DeLong:

talking about intuit intelligence and ai, it really can't do those things in the desktop product.

Sharrin Fuller:

We all know I didn't go to his main stage, mainly because I think the closing party was that night and I was really afraid if I went to the main stage, I would heckle and boo. You get dragged out. He escorted out. And honestly, I only bought my ticket to go to the after party, I held back. You're all welcome actually I think people would've enjoyed it. I'd have sat in the front row thrown oranges. That's out of Monty Python. Him just kidding. I hope they're not watching this.

Dan DeLong:

I'm sure there's someone that's gonna tattle on you, but we went through, a

Sharrin Fuller:

bunch of stuff. I just sold my accounting firm. Whatcha you gonna do? Come at me.

Dan DeLong:

Exactly. So we did talk, or we we flashed by and you can download the slides to take a look at the things that they actually have done in, QuickBooks Desktop.

Marjorie Adams:

Yeah.

Dan DeLong:

But of course when this is now the nature of the beast where Intuit recycles terms that, that cause confusion because Intuit Enterprise Suite is not QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise. Talk a little bit about what you've seen in the Intuit enterprise side of things where you're. Where it actually is a good fit for, some folks.

Marjorie Adams:

And let's be very clear that this, was called QuickBooks Enterprise Suite. That was, what we used to call it also, right? Yeah. Which again the, new people who work in marketing at Intuit probably don't remember that 2009 days when we were selling the corrigo and other things with it too. But yeah. Intuit Enterprise Suite, this is gonna be, you guys are gonna start to hear that I was at Connect and talking with some of the management team there, and I would say Enterprise, and they would say Enterprise Desktop. Enterprise Desktop. Desktop Enterprise. They're trying to already make that our words, right? So that we're not confusing. We internally here we say IES, it is a very exciting time, right? I do think that. In the world of software, everyone is talking about mid-market, which is again, Fourlane's kind of, it's not true mid-market, let's be clear. It's companies who think that they're bigger businesses, they're not. The over 500 million, they're again, the five to a hundred million in revenue. This spot has been really under valued, and the marketplace is really talking about it. And that's not just here with Intuit, right? I've heard it from other softwares too. Lightspeed has this whole diversion. If you're over$5 million in revenue, you get special attention. And, so I'm excited to have it here. To me, when I first saw Intuit Enterprise Suite, I just saw Intuit's going after Intacct, and I was very excited about that. Because we do a lot of conversions out of Intacct for people who just, it's not the right fit for and this might be an option for them that feels closer to that product. And it gives us some of the things that we have been asking the dimensions. So you wanna talk about the, what do you think the, what do you think about the name, first of all? What, would be a better name?

Dan DeLong:

Oh, yeah, that, and that's the thing because they've, run out of advanced Can't say they've already got QuickBooks Online Advanced, so they can't say Intuit Advanced Suite. So it is a confusing thing when they use a term that's already in use by something else. Own in their own ecosystem too. So I, don't know what, it would've and, I, understand that, being on the other side of the Intuit badge, the, yearning to have Intuit's name associated with, all of its products. And, we're seeing that doubling down, that not only is it just Intuit TurboTax or Intuit QuickBooks or Intuit, MailChimp, now it's QuickBooks on the Intuit platform is now the is now the verbiage. So they're, wanting to make intuit be the, term or the word that is associated with the solution, whatever it happens to be. Gotta start with that Intuit.

Marjorie Adams:

I,

Dan DeLong:

and then whatever enterprise suite is after it.

Marjorie Adams:

Do you think that they're dropping?'cause the one thing we don't see here is QuickBooks and QuickBooks associated with small business. So dropping QuickBooks maybe helps.'cause there, as in, in our world we try to get customers to do case studies and things like that. And a lot of times customers don't wanna admit, like our, larger customers don't always wanna admit that they use QuickBooks because people see it as a small business software. And so maybe this is also their way of disassociating with. QuickBooks entirely.

Dan DeLong:

Yeah, that's an interesting point because when QuickBooks first came out they were under the foot of Quicken. The box would say from the makers of Quicken and the year that they removed that from, the box, from the shelf we were all in the, QuickBook space. Yay, we're no longer associated with the Quicken or the Quicken Books, or the Quicken

Marjorie Adams:

put it in

Dan DeLong:

the

Marjorie Adams:

Quicken.

Dan DeLong:

This could be another evolution in, in that just that verbiage and that, that vernacular, right? But the biggest thing about Intuit Enterprise Suite as opposed to QuickBooks Desktop is that it's it's still based off of the. Intuit QuickBooks in the Intuit platform, right? With QuickBooks online as its base for its general ledger, right? So the features and functionality and the core functionality that you have, even in Intuit Enterprise Suite, is gonna be based off of the, QuickBooks base, right? So even the the Intu or the QuickBooks Online Advanced is the highest you can go as far as that is concerned. And then you get those additional functions of the. The dimensions and the contracting contractor reports and, things like that you, get Intuit Enterprise Suite, but it's still based off of QuickBooks Online, right? So as far as their core functionality, so you know, those folks that you have in QuickBooks Desktop that are heavily in inventory based they are going to have a tough time,

Marjorie Adams:

right?

Dan DeLong:

They're moving into, an enterprise suite, even though there's a little menu that says just move, move to, to, into an enterprise suite inside. And that's why we want to reemphasize that not all enterprises are the same. Just because it has the word enterprise in it does not mean it's exactly the same, or the fact that it says plus in your subscription inside of QuickBooks Online does not mean that QuickBooks Online plus, or desktop, sorry desktop Plus over to. QuickBooks Online, plus you just, those are not the same.

Marjorie Adams:

I, didn't put that one together.'cause I don't do as much in the, QuickBooks online levels have changed so much. We don't pri deal with all the different levels very much. And yeah, I didn't realize that they had two pluses. That's hilarious. Oh my goodness.

Dan DeLong:

Yeah. Originally it was all things that started with the word P or the letter P, like pro premier plus pro advisor.

Marjorie Adams:

We need to send them a fifth source now,

Dan DeLong:

Move to advanced and now enterprise is just getting mixed in there. So we're asking the second polling question, how are you approaching that, the move to the cloud, are you moving to QuickBooks online? Are you utilizing it with A VPN or remote di desktop through a lot of, there's a lot of acronyms in there on your, poll question answers there, Marjorie. But if you're using a virtual private network or remote data, desktop to where you can access, your, QuickBooks desktop or maybe you're adding cloud hosting or maybe Q Box, as the, case may be there's another ways to to manage that or maybe it's not your thing.

Intro:

Yeah.

Dan DeLong:

So are you find, are you finding Marjorie that, I guess we're gonna, we're gonna move into your, solution. That's, how you're doing that?

Marjorie Adams:

Yeah. Some of, and that's

Dan DeLong:

what, go ahead.

Marjorie Adams:

No, I was just gonna say, I think that I still feel, I feel Okay. A couple years ago, everybody was very excited about hosting, and then there was a little. Going on with some of the hosting partners that are connected into it this year. A little bit of drama happened there. And then, I have seen IT services, IT companies get better about providing hosting, whereas before they might not have been the best. So there's more competition with hosting providers I feel like. Although not all of them get in a hundred percent. And then of course you have to, not all of them have actual 24 7 coverage. Which the, hosting partners will have too. But I feel like I hear more self-hosted now than I have in years past. And I. And, some of, sometimes I, I haven't heard this in a long time, but I did on a call the other day, I heard them say, I just don't trust the cloud. And I was like, oh, wow. Do you have a phone? I don't know.

Sharrin Fuller:

A whole other webinar. Yeah. Like I can understand us being upset with Intuit and QuickBooks and Accountants. I jumped right in here. I'm sorry. I say this all the time, but accountants don't like change. When we start our practices, we start our way. We learn, we set, we dig our heels in deep and we stay that course. And we'll do other things if it helps us stay that course. But we don't like change. And to me, there are a lot of people that have had their practices for a long time and are probably getting ready to exit their practices. And they don't wanna learn a whole other software, a whole other system. They're just gonna dig their heels in until they retire out. And I think there's nothing wrong with that. And, but I honestly think that's what QuickBooks is also doing right now. They're allowing. Those people to retire out of their firms with their desktop. But I think in the next few years, everything's gonna be online. We will be at the the internet the robot overlords are going to own us. And that's something I feel like we don't have control over unless we wanna move to the backwoods and not get Amazon delivered. And that's just not where I wanna be.

Marjorie Adams:

That's a great transition to what we solved for our clients that are still wanting to stay in desktop.

Dan DeLong:

Perfect. And I love this story, Marjorie, because it is, it speaks to how you as a, company have created your own solution to the problems that you, foresee the, friction of moving people off of of, a foundational system, into the cloud because there are so many. Minute nuances that they're gonna have to relearn all of these things. They're gonna have to it's quite an undertaking, especially for a large company to move things over into the cloud. This, this, is genius. Sorry. Just,

Marjorie Adams:

okay. Yay. Sold. No, I'm just kidding. No really what, this came from is our company, because we've always treated QuickBooks. As an ERP product, we've always tried to elevate it to be equal to NetSuite or to Intact or to Acumatica. And we've tried to make people feel comfortable that they can stay and hang out in this space and not have to because we do we, help people all day long. NetSuite's my most favorite. They're like, Hey, my NetSuite renewal's up on Thursday. Can you help me get out of it? And it's always people who come from QuickBooks, they've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and realize that they don't actually need to be there. There is no magic button when you go into a different product. It doesn't magically do all the things you need it to do. You still have to customize it and build it. But they just wanted to not have to watch the little spinning button when they're opening their QuickBooks every single morning. And so we we also have built custom applications for years on top of QuickBooks, which the. The premise of this, like the basis of this product was around the custom applications that we've built for clients. So yeah, so that's what we did is we said, Hey, clients want speed. They want accessibility. They don't want something that looks and feels different than QuickBooks. They don't want a massive, they just want what QuickBooks does in an accessible place. And, so that's what we did with this product. We have people who use QuickBooks Desktop still. And with this, because it's this product, our product sits on top of QuickBooks Desktop and I can flip over. Do you want me to flip over to my show?

Dan DeLong:

Yeah, let's go ahead and just show it because we, chatted so much about up until this point. We wanna make sure you give you enough time to

Marjorie Adams:

Oh,

Dan DeLong:

take a look at it. And so I'm gonna stop sharing if you wanna, or did you want me to go into another another slide?

Marjorie Adams:

No, I can, you got, can you see my screen now?

Dan DeLong:

Yep.

Marjorie Adams:

Okay, cool. Yeah. Yeah. So, that's just what we did. And, the, purpose for me today is just to let people know that there are options out there. That's what, I really wanna get across, is that there are options out there. I know that everyone is being told that desktop is going away as we are trying to show today. I don't think yet that it is, and this is a bridge for people who, think that they have to go to NetSuite and they maybe don't. That's really just to have the accessibility and to not have to deal with the speed or those kinds of issues. So I. This is our product, right? It's web-based products. You log in, you have your own little URL when they log into their software, it looks, feels like QuickBooks. I come into my customer center, right? And I've got drag and drop just like we're used to seeing. So looks and feels very similar. I can add a new customer, a new job and it's a seamless sync into the QuickBooks. So it's a ten second sync down into the QuickBooks database and a couple minutes sync up into the, CX database. If we make any changes there. What, we've used it for, our clients is two things. One is a point of entry, right? So they're in the field, they're. Again, not wanting to have to log into the VPN and log into QuickBooks. I was on a call the other day trying to just get QuickBooks to open on my local computer and it was driving me up the wall and it's just something like a quick point of entry as well as I can open up a sales order. Even if it was created in the QuickBooks desktop product open up a sales order printed out of here. Like it's a very similar look and feel. There's a couple things that you can do on top of it that you can't do in QuickBooks Desktop. A couple things like, one is that we have an archive function. So our enterprise clients, if they're true QuickBooks Enterprise clients, their file size is probably pretty large. So we have a way in here where you can go in and we call it archive. You can get rid of your estimates as an example. So the estimates will remain in CX in the cloud experience product, but they'll be removed from the QuickBooks desktop database. Because after the estimates are closed, you don't need them, right? So some of the old ones are old sales orders. So you still have access to them. You can still see them here, but then they remove them from that desktop database so that database shrinks and it will hopefully move faster. Some of the other things that our clients like about it is just that it, again, speed wise if you've done any kinda lot numbers with QuickBooks Desktop, that can be very overwhelming, right? Because it says your lot number is being used by someone else. You can't do anything right now, or even when you see somebody else is editing this transaction, you can't do anything right now. All of that gets removed. And so clients, it's not usually the accounting team who complains the most, right? It's like the sales team and the warehouse people who like complain the most about QuickBooks Desktop or in our, the loudest a lot of times. And accounting just wants to stay in their QuickBooks file. That's what we're trying to allow to have happen. So you don't, and sales

Dan DeLong:

people are the ones that leave QuickBooks Open when they go home, Right.

Marjorie Adams:

Yes, a hundred percent, yes.

Dan DeLong:

So when you're trying to switch to single user mode or change a preference or resort your lists like you would in the accounting space, then now you're trying to hunt who left their computer running inside of quick, inside of QuickBooks, right? This takes those people those those offenders of Yeah. Of the of, the multi-user access outta the equation because. They can stay in it all day. And it's not gonna cause a, an issue with a single user mode.

Marjorie Adams:

Yep. They, yes, exactly. They, so the way that we with our customers, we tell them to split is we'll say the core accounting users, people doing ba bas, payroll doing, changing up company preferences or merging customers together, whatever it is, they can, you can do some of that stuff in here still, but they mostly the, accounting people feel most comfortable being inside QuickBooks. And then let the rest of the people who would maybe be in an app or a connected system, let them sit there, and do. Sales order lookup, estimate lookup, related transactions. So if we have any kind of purchase type of transactions related, you could see that stuff in here. Attachments all that stuff. Yeah. Anybody who's not core accounting, we try to move out here. And that also helps with keeping the, licensing and the cost of licensing can get quite expensive, especially when you add in hosting or the cost of it to VPN in. And so it helps kind of balance that a little bit too, because I know that some of the, a lot of QuickBooks users are trained right, to focus on price heavily instead of just value. Yeah.

Dan DeLong:

Couple questions that popped into the q and a and, in the chat that I wanna throw at you.

Marjorie Adams:

Sure.

Dan DeLong:

It, because I think the main thing is that people are trying to now grasp what, is this a separate thing or is it sit on top? Basically this is a division of duties between. QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise and the sales team for lack of a better word. But is there anything that you can't do that has to be done in, QuickBooks Desktop with regards to the sales process or the sales workflows that you built out?

Marjorie Adams:

Yeah, I, should say this we learn every day pretty much people QuickBooks is something that people have figured out how to use. So if they have some custom workflows that they have built in, what did we see the other day? Somebody had, I wanna say it was hacks. Types, right? Like taxable. They had 75 tax types. I just couldn't understand why. But they use it for some reason, even though you can't even report on it anyway. And so we had to, pivot and make some changes for this customer to be helped.'cause that is the thing is we are a custom application shop, right? So if there's customization that is needed, we can do that. We have built for clients things on top of this platform with manufacturing build outs and work order management and all these different things that, that they can use this tool to flow. Even their own homegrown systems use this tool to flow data through into QuickBooks. But yeah, so the things that we currently don't touch bank reconciliations. We don't do bank feeds, obviously that's something that is, not even managed by QuickBooks, and payroll. Those are the biggest ones. We do have build assemblies. We do have barcode scanning. We lot serial number tracking multi-site. But there are, yeah, there are, it's not an exact replica of QuickBooks. The idea is not to make it exact. The idea is to give you access to your data in a way that looks and feels familiar. So not every single workflow.

Sharrin Fuller:

So smart. I am jumping in here'cause I've just been looking at this. I'm like, this is a great UI because it's doing what you need it to do. But it's very familiar, which again, as accountants, I don't care. You can all fight me. We don't like change. So like whenever QuickBooks change is one thing, we all freak out. Where'd you put it? Anyhow, good job on this. This is, great. I've been silently watching.

Marjorie Adams:

Yeah, same purchasing, right? Creating purchase orders. It's the same thing. So we do have people who just come in and put their purchase orders in here because they've got people all over the country, who need to be able to enter purchase orders, and they don't wanna have to make them log into QuickBooks to do that. So yeah, receiving items. Yeah, all that stuff.

Dan DeLong:

Awesome. So is there

Marjorie Adams:

oh I should say one other that if it's not available in the API of QuickBooks, obviously there's not much we can do there. So certain things like price rules, we have price levels. Price rules are not available through the API and QuickBooks, so there's nothing we can do about that. But other things like attachments, you can't send attachments down into QuickBooks. That's not part of the API either in desktop, but what we can send down is a link to the attachment in the CX product. And when you have an attachment in QuickBooks desktop, it's just a link anyway, right? So it's just a link to a different place. So yeah, I mean there's little, bits and pieces, but we are limited to whatever the API allows us to do.

Dan DeLong:

Yeah. And I think James was asking about can you do barcode scanning and and those types of things that inventory management. Yeah. Functions that are in the advanced inventory of platinum, it would, be, a, a Soar, it'd be disappointing, I guess if you had all of these things cool in a, thing and then, oh, you gotta do that part of this sales process over, in, over in QuickBooks. But your, main goal is to lift those that day-to-day out of QuickBooks desktop. Yeah. And as long as you can, as long as the, there is a pathway to get it into, the QuickBooks database you'll, be glad to do that. And that keeps, the sale. It's like the Mc DLT I'm dating myself. It keeps the hot side hot and the cold side cold.

Marjorie Adams:

Yeah. It, just helps for accountants. We, that is one of the biggest complaints that we hear. I have to go and simply use the mode and I have to get all these people out and it's right. You hear that or I hear the crashing or I hear the black screens that are black and white. Black and white, and I like, people get afraid when stuff like that happens and they start to not trust their data and that's when they start looking at things like NetSuite. And so we're trying to give an alternative and say, Hey, here's a safe place. You can enter the data, you can see the data. It's significantly faster. And you don't have to log into the QuickBooks database. So it will speed up too if you don't have. 5, 10, 15 people in that database. So it's just a solution. We're trying to help. What I tell Intuit, right? A lot of people when I, started presenting this product said isn't Intuit gonna get upset at you about this? And I said, no, because I'm trying to keep their customers here until Intuit Enterprise Suite is ready until I'm trying to keep them here and not have them go spend$250,000 to try out NetSuite and figure out that it's not magical.

Dan DeLong:

But one part of that strategy is as Intuit is increasing the leverage that they and the uncomfortableness of staying in QuickBooks Desktop, they are using pricing as part of that leverage. And this allows you to short lengthen the life lifespan of, QuickBooks Desktop by. Making your QuickBooks licenses leaner. Correct. And then adding this as an expansion. So let me go ahead and reshare my screen because we wanna talk a little,'cause of course that's gonna be the question for accountants. Oh did I share the right thing? I did. Okay. With three, three monitors. It's hard to remember which one. I

Sharrin Fuller:

see a spreadsheet, Dan, and being a spreadsheet lover, you got my attention.

Marjorie Adams:

That's my, I love building models and my, price model, my spreadsheets too. They try to get me out

Sharrin Fuller:

of it and I'm like, I'm sure it's amazing, but I love my spreadsheet.

Marjorie Adams:

Yeah.

Dan DeLong:

Am I on the right slide?

Marjorie Adams:

Yeah. Yeah. Basically we, have a little calculator tool that we show our clients and you get to choose, what are you in now? You're a Gold 10 user. You shift some of the users over to for lax, which obviously there's a cost to that product as well, but it's lower than the cost of the host hosting licensing. We do support contracts with our clients and then they so, clients can see that there's a cost differential, whether it's good or bad. I always like to tell clients even if I am. Charging. And even if it ends up being that switching to CX is$10,000 a year, the energy savings of not having to have the people, let's be real. Salespeople are tend to be a little bit different. They'll get way super frustrated and they'll just start to write it down on a piece of paper and then stuff is lost and you know

Dan DeLong:

exactly

Marjorie Adams:

that. We just need it to be easy for them to function. And then that way accounting.'cause that's who's been pressuring, right? Sales has been pressuring accounting to move out of QuickBooks. That's who we hear the most. And so we're trying to help them have a way to, and it's just because of speed, that's usually what it is. It's just slow,

Dan DeLong:

yeah, because they, this is busy work for, the sales agents, to, enter that in appropriately. And by them doing their job properly. The accounting and the finance team is actually much happier because the, it's

Marjorie Adams:

money,

Dan DeLong:

the bookkeeping is being happen is, happening because of them doing their job.

Marjorie Adams:

Yeah. Yes. And TA being able to attach pictures of things and Yeah. All that stuff. I feel like it in the field, it just feels like it's a lot easier. So

Dan DeLong:

yeah. So ultimately they can they can reduce their, software license of QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise by and adding this on everybody's happier because sales team is happier. They can do their job they can, be in a, web-based, do they do you have a mobile application or, tablet or is it more just the best used on a laptop or, something like that?

Marjorie Adams:

Yeah. So it, resizes down to mobile screen is pretty hard. But it will resize, it's just the like, any other, you don't have to have a mobile. So the blazer that's built in, you don't have to have a mobile application. It resizes based on the screen that it's in similar to an Acumatica or same thing. Of course going down to a cell phone's harder, but I, iPad or whatever we have that, people using that all the time. It's just a little, a tiny bit bigger.

Dan DeLong:

And while we're wrapping up here with, our conversation, I did launch the last poll was this useful? And if you wanna hear or wanna learn more about the four-lane CX product you can answer that. If you're watching on the live stream just go ahead and answer those in the comments. Any, anything else you want to add here? I know we, we walked a, little bit over here then

Marjorie Adams:

the slides that you've

Dan DeLong:

prepared. I,

Marjorie Adams:

it's great. I just like people to know that there's options, right? That's just, and that there are people out here who, you're not alone if you still are a desktop supporter. That's it. Exactly. You're not alone out there.

Dan DeLong:

There. Oh, geez. I wanted to go all the way. No, I Where Oh. Oh. Apparently I didn't put the last poll quit. There it is. No.

Marjorie Adams:

Yeah. You did that one in there.

Dan DeLong:

Yeah. There I did. Okay. That's the, Dan, what

Marjorie Adams:

is happening? What is happening?

Dan DeLong:

I don't know. It's, one of those days I, drove through here. Here's what happened. I went from Michigan to Florida.

Sharrin Fuller:

What happened was,

Dan DeLong:

and one day we, Which was Saturday. We drove from eastern to central and the time changed at the same time. So I don't know what time it's, we were like,

Sharrin Fuller:

oh

Marjorie Adams:

man,

Dan DeLong:

even though we only moved the clock back once, we had to move

Sharrin Fuller:

it

Dan DeLong:

two hours back,

Sharrin Fuller:

it's

Dan DeLong:

10:00

Sharrin Fuller:

AM in Vegas. And I feel like that's the only thing that matters in life because I'm American and self-centered.

Dan DeLong:

Good for you Sharrin. Alright Marjorie, we appreciate you joining us today. It is very lively discussion. Thanks again Sharrin for your, insights and hop out my valuable

Sharrin Fuller:

info.

Dan DeLong:

Next next week or next time on the QB Power Hour is the week before Thanksgiving. So we thought we would share some love with Intuit and talk about the things that we are thankful for with, with QuickBooks, in the past, year.

Sharrin Fuller:

This, episode will be 10 and a half minutes, and that includes intros and outros. I'm just kidding. I'm going to, I can I come up with the small list too? Can I give you a list? Won't it be fun to see? I've got a, like we said, unhealthy relationship. You still like something, so

Dan DeLong:

Exactly. We're, you they, do something to keep you around.

Sharrin Fuller:

My, my platform's free as an accountant, so I really, I shouldn't have even said that aloud. I'm gonna, it's immediately I'm gonna log in. They're like, you owe us three years.

Dan DeLong:

All right. Marjorie any closing

Marjorie Adams:

thoughts? You

Dan DeLong:

on your side?

Marjorie Adams:

No, I was just saying, yeah I, had a great time and, fascinating. I wanna hear more, can we do a whole episode on Sasan I episode?

Sharrin Fuller:

Yes. Oh, I'll talk to my lawyer. Let me talk to my lawyer and find out how we can, without getting sued in any way. I'm really good at that.

Marjorie Adams:

The direction, yeah, the direction. But no, I had a great time. The

Sharrin Fuller:

opinions of this podcast are the, those of the individuals. Yeah. Don't need a

Dan DeLong:

disclaimer for sure.

Marjorie Adams:

No,

Sharrin Fuller:

I put that in my book on chapter seven, just saying

Marjorie Adams:

thank you.

Dan DeLong:

Thanks again for, joining us, and all of those those of you who do serve or have served as veterans, we appreciate your service and thank you. We'll, see you next time on the QB Power Hour.