What's New in QuickBooks: November In the Know Recap

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Alicia Katz Pollock: Hey, everybody, it's Alicia from com. And in this week's episode of the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast, I'm going to go over the In the know from November 20th. So this is our now you know in the know is Intuit's monthly webinar on the third Thursday of every month where they talk about all the new innovations coming out in the software. [00:00:30] So today we're going to talk about what's coming through Intuit's lens using Intuit's words. Jacqueline opened up the event with ProAdvisor Community News. The first one is that Intuit Enterprise Suite has a new course, which launched in November. It's a one hour course. It is going to have a certification which is not ready yet, so you can start taking the course now and then take the exam later on. The Intuit Enterprise Suite course talks [00:01:00] about what Ise Eyes is who it's for and how it helps firms streamline their workflows. Leverage AI powered tools and deliver greater client value. Along with exploring the interface, they'll talk about the onboarding process as well. She announced that some new AI agents have been released. The Intuit new agents are the payroll agent, the sales tax agent, and there's been improvements to some of the existing agents as well. She also mentioned [00:01:30] that there have been some new and improved AI powered bank feed innovations. She wasn't real specific about what the changes are, but I do know that they're listening to our feedback and working to make the bank feed as fast as possible and as streamlined as possible.

Alicia Katz Pollock: They're also continuing to hone in the navigation. They're working on the left menus to make them more efficient and implementing different ways of making the whole experience faster. [00:02:00] So when they first released it a couple months ago. It was really dog slow, and I'm not really experiencing those slowdowns that I'm finding anymore, so that's good. A couple new terminology updates. What was called dashboard has been renamed as home, and the Myapps button has been renamed to all apps. She also mentioned that Insightful Accountant nominations and applications are now open for the 2026 top ProAdvisor Awards. There are several of them now. There's [00:02:30] the top 100 US ProAdvisor the top 25 up and coming Pro Advisors, the top 50 international ProAdvisor, and the top 25 tax advisors. So head over to Insightful Accountant to nominate somebody or nominate yourself. You can't win if you don't nominate. Then she starts the sections with the product innovation starting with Intuit Accountant Suite. And the guest was Karla Uribe, who's the director of product management in San Diego. [00:03:00] And the mission that they, um, that she wanted to enforce. So Intuit's accountant focus is to be the number one trusted partner, delivering a platform of AI powered products and services that drives accounting firm growth and pushes the industry forward. And they are delivering on their mission by directly solving firm problems beyond bookkeeping, streamlining our firm complexities and costs across disconnected data and apps, and deepening [00:03:30] their partnerships.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So I think they're hearing us that the ProAdvisor have been a little, um, a little underwhelmed. So continuing with the Intuit's words, they say that they're partnering, partnering with us to navigate an evolving industry. And so they talk about some of the things happening in the industry workforce decline, bottleneck and growth. There's been a 17% decline over the last two years in accountants leaving their jobs, which is [00:04:00] good news. And accounting firms are consolidating and these consolidations are edging out the competition. So Intuit realizes that their software does need to scale and offer some increased efficiencies to firm levels. They noticed that there's a disconnected tech stack that firms use an average of eight different apps to manage their operations. So they want and they want QuickBooks to be a centralized hub with connected tools that aggregate [00:04:30] the workflows, data, and operations all into one place. She also mentions that we are struggling to keep pace with rapidly evolving technology that 70% of firms don't currently have policies guiding the use of gen AI in their practices, which is a higher percentage than any other profession surveyed. So they want us to be able to embrace AI with seamless automations to modernize and grow our advisory services. So that is all of the rationale to introducing [00:05:00] the Intuit Accountant suite. And so we've talked about the accounting suite.

Alicia Katz Pollock: We're going to continue talking about it. Dan and I have a future episode talking about all of the detailed innovations that they are going to be rolling out. Um, and so, uh, as we have been talking about Intuit Accounting suite is the new Qbo. So it's a new platform to match the one that's being rolled out for users, and it has [00:05:30] a lot of new innovations for us. The basic functionality, the core functionality is still free and still exactly the same. And then the accelerate version has new paid tools that, if you don't already have a solution in place for those issues and problems that it solves, then it's a good option for you. They go into details about how to move. Move to Intuit Accountant Suite that if you are the primary admin, you will see a notification [00:06:00] on the main screen to opt in from Qbo to Intuit Accountant suite IAS and then once you have made that switch, then you now have some new tools that if you have multiple domains, meaning different qbo platforms, and you want to consolidate your clients into one, you now have the ability to do that. You will be able to organize your firm by creating a creating sub organizations. So it could be by [00:06:30] office or location. It could be by team function. But you're going to be able to assign your team members and your clients to these sub organizations and then filter your lists by those groupings.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Some of the questions that were asked were really interesting. So these are questions that different attendees asked Carla, like, how did all this come about. And she said that at connect 2024, they recruited a bunch of ProAdvisor and showed them prototypes of IAS and then gathered their feedback, [00:07:00] and that helped them know which of the new features to prioritize. When we have feedback, we want to give them about the new experience. There's going to be a candy board where you're going to be able to submit your feedback directly to developers. If you aren't a member of that, there's going to be feedback links everywhere and do put in your feedback. There are a lot of questions about the pricing that when accelerate is released and they start charging us in 2027, but we don't know what the fees are. Accelerate, [00:07:30] which has all of the client portal management, is going to have a fee. The books close is going to have a fee per client. So the number of clients you have using it will dictate your fees. The next part of the In the Know was about the ProAdvisor program evolution. So it's evolving from a traditional training where it's one person training about the QuickBooks platform. They're evolving it beyond just QuickBooks training to more robust training [00:08:00] on the holistic skill set that we need for advisory and proactive problem solving, including critical thinking.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And the goal is to transform it from a culture of training. Compliance with once a year certification to a firm wide training system where you can assign trainings and celebrate everybody's accomplishments as they take the courses and pass the certification tests. And so that transforms the training experience from compliance, where certifications were seen as a box to be checked off to [00:08:30] a firm wide training strategy where your professional development is a creates a culture of continuous learning. They're also providing a number of new resources where if your firm was creating its own marketing and sales and onboarding materials, you can now have a one stop shop for pro advisors to access curated marketing and sales collateral so that you don't have to recreate the wheel. So a lot of this is already available [00:09:00] right now inside the hub. Kevin Tran. The staff product manager for the Learning technology team came on and let us know that the training manager is already partially available, but there's more to come, and it's going to turn into a whole portal for your entire entire firm. There's a new CAS foundations pathway with a new badge and that is already available. And the sales and marketing materials that I mentioned are already available inside the resources hub [00:09:30] in the new Intuit Accountant suite, there's going to be a ProAdvisor widget that's going to show you the percentage of your team's certification and what level ProAdvisor they are.

Alicia Katz Pollock: You're going to be able to see each team member's certification, what they've completed, and what's in progress. This part's not live in the product yet. That's to come. Eventually, you're going to be able to manage the training, and you're going to be able to keep track of each individual team member's progress and where they are on their recertifications. You'll [00:10:00] be able to see their transcripts and their profile views down to the line level detail of each section of the certification training. You'll also be able to assign the trainings with due dates, including past due alerts and reminders, and you'll be able to assign the training to individuals or the entire firm. That's not available yet, but that will be coming. There is a CAS learning pathway. So as we are moving from bookkeeping compliance into client advisory [00:10:30] services, and the bookkeeping industry is evolving from bookkeeping to CAS, the CAS learning pathway includes the existing bookkeeping certification. But there's new classes for AI in accounting, communicating to build trust, analyzing and interpreting financial reports in the ProAdvisor Resource Hub. Some of the new things that are available is information about Intuit Enterprise Suite, new marketing materials for QuickBooks payroll, QuickBooks time and contractor payments, [00:11:00] information and handouts about desktop to online migration, and also about QuickBooks money, which is the Billpay and payments integrations. They also announced that there's new ProAdvisor certification badges. They have now been colorized and they're I think they're pretty snazzy.

Alicia Katz Pollock: These are have already gone live. And so if you log into your ProAdvisor portal, you have new badges. There's there's a badge for the Intuit Bookkeeping training, the QuickBooks level one certification, [00:11:30] level two certification and payroll certification. So be sure to download those and and update your website and your email signatures. On December 11th. There's a joint presentation with QuickBooks and Housecall Pro. So if you have clients who are in field services, then you can bridge the gap between your job site operations and your bookkeeping so you can learn more about Housecall Pro. They also mentioned on the books, which is the podcast with Jessica McCracken and Ted [00:12:00] Callahan, and some of the new upcoming episodes are about policy and law change reviews and a year end celebration. One of the recent episodes featured the work of Professor David Waite at Utah Valley University, who, with Brittany Brown and Dan Luthy, have created a transformational cast training at the Utah Valley University. And so there's an episode about that that I think was just spectacular. But go check out their podcast. [00:12:30] They also gave us a resource called A Books Closed Playbook, which is a detailed instruction list about Intuit Accountant Suite, including the books, clothes and onboarding clients, and pretty much everything that you want to know about it. And so it was shared as a Google doc, and I will have the link for that in the show notes.

Alicia Katz Pollock: It's definitely, definitely, definitely worth checking out. I also will have the slide deck for in the know as well. I definitely recommend heading over to the firm of the Future Comm and signing up [00:13:00] for the In the Know series. It's one of my favorite places to get information about what's happening in the software, but if you can't make it, we will always have our recaps. And to close us off in the what's going on in your world? I'm about to have my last week of classes for 2025, and I'm doing two classes next week. On Monday, December 14th is my Running Reports for growth class, where I teach how to use the modern report tools. And then on Tuesday is my advanced [00:13:30] reporting class. And this is actually a brand new take on a class that I haven't taught for a couple of years, where I'm going to go into all of the advanced reporting tools, including spreadsheets, sync, and how to craft a report that has fields from all different kinds of tables. And, uh, so we'll take a look at advanced reporting tools. Both of those are being sponsored by fanatical and in the Advanced Reports class. We're actually going to have a demo of their Flash Reports tool as well. So [00:14:00] that wraps up the now, you know, for the In the Know recap. And I will see you in the next one.