QuickBooks Online Updates November 2024

There may be errors in spelling, grammar, and accuracy in this machine-generated transcript.

Hector Garcia: Welcome to the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast. I am joined by my good friend Alicia Cat Pollock, the original, the one and only Qbo Rockstar CEO and founder of Royal White Solutions.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And I have the privilege of collaborating with Hector Garcia, CPA, the founder of Right Tool for QuickBooks.

Hector Garcia: In this episode of the unofficial QuickBooks [00:00:30] accountants podcast, we're going to be talking about the firm of the future article with the November 2024 QuickBooks online new feature updates. Hey Alicia, how are you?

Alicia Katz Pollock: I am great, I'm really looking forward to this because it's these monthly articles with all of what's new that always get my juices flowing.

Hector Garcia: This month is particularly fun because it shows a lot of things that I don't see on any of my on my clients QuickBooks files. And this has always been sort of a thing where [00:01:00] they release it. They say it's a new feature, and for the most part you start seeing it maybe on the newest accounts and not the oldest accounts, and you kind of have to wait until they, they, they update those old accounts. But in this particular case, a lot of the things here I can't find in my own files, and we'll find out if Alicia has seen some of them and talk through them. So we'll go step by step and cover each one of these. Now, the one thing that they mentioned at the very beginning is that November [00:01:30] 10th is International Accountants Day. So I'd like to say for the folks that went through November 10th, not knowing it was Accountants Day and it was your day, happy day.

Alicia Katz Pollock: To celebrate belatedly. Exactly. Yeah. Now, it's actually kind of interesting in this article because usually they're very specific. Like this has already been released. This is rolling out in November. This is what's coming in December. But this time there's none of that timing language. And so I went hunting for [00:02:00] these features and I didn't find a lot of them. So I'm super curious to know why they weren't as specific as they usually are. Like, we are beginning this rollout now.

Hector Garcia: Well, you know, it's consistent with Intuit Connect, right? Because in the in the Intuit Connect main stage, they showed a bunch of things and most of it was very aspirational. It's coming. We're building it. But they weren't very specific in terms of timelines. And I found that when Intuit did give timelines in the past and [00:02:30] maybe had a challenge meeting them, they got a much bigger blowback. So I don't know if maybe they're thinking that when folks read this, everybody reads between the lines that this is all aspirational or coming. But I agree with Alicia, as a as a power user myself, it drives me crazy to get excited about something that's not there. Um, so I want to know when these things are coming out so into it. Listen, if you're going to tell me November whatever, this article [00:03:00] came out and says new features, tell me if it's new features we're working on. Put it in one section and new features are out. Put in another section, and new features are being staggered in the next 2 or 3 months. Because what I get excited about is to go and look at it, and then I have to decide, should I make a video about this? Should I include this on my next webinar? And then I have to plan? If in my next webinar, I'm going to include the screenshot that they're putting in there, or am I going to do a live demo for [00:03:30] it? And as a trainer, I also want to know that I have a client next Wednesday or whatever. Is this feature something I should be excited to tell the client about? Because our clients are not going to be excited about something that's coming. Right.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, keep in mind that the way that Intuit rolls out, which is actually I have no trouble with, is that they do it server by server and piece by piece to make sure that it's functioning as designed. And so the rollout, one group of people make sure everything's cool, [00:04:00] roll out another group of people, continue to gather feedback, improve it, roll out another one, and eventually it becomes what they call GA or generally available. I don't think GA actually stands for generally available, but that's when it's fully rolled out. In other words, I think most of the things that we're telling you about you might already have in your file, but I don't matter of time.

Hector Garcia: The first thing in the article that we see is alluding to the new and improved [00:04:30] ProAdvisor Academy, and what's interesting is the word ProAdvisor Academy has never been used together. It was always like the ProAdvisor program or Intuit Academy. I think now they're just calling it ProAdvisor Academy, which also which is great, by the way, I love the word Academy. It's actually a word that I like a lot, and Alicia is an educator too. I'm pretty sure she likes that a lot too, but hinted on the main stage of interconnect and the whole ethos that we want to help the accounting profession, that we're [00:05:00] going to grow together. Et cetera. Et cetera. With this rebranding, it comes a new sentiment that is not just about QuickBooks. It's going to be about things to get started in your bookkeeping accounting career, or, if you're already experienced, to elevate that expertise, grow your firm. And this has all been inspired by feedback accountants. We are, uh, education fiends. We we want to be educated. We want to be learning. And it's all about [00:05:30] what they're calling building crucial skills and career expanding education. And I think it might be just worth it, Alicia, to do an entirely separate episode, to break that down step by step. But I'm excited about that nonetheless.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, I've actually just published two different articles about it, one in Insightful Accountant, where I actually go into the detail about it, and another one on firm of the future. That's just kind of an overall summary. This is what Jacqueline Anku has brought to the table since she joined and took over from [00:06:00] Johanna Wie. So she's standing on the shoulders of that, and I think there's absolutely enough here. So probably our next episode we will go into the detail about it. The thing that really inspires their renovation of it is it is one of the requirements for becoming a QuickBooks Live employee. And so the things that are in here are kind of founded by what they want to make sure that their own employees know, and they're rolling it out to all of us as well. [00:06:30]

Hector Garcia: Yeah, I'll take a quick pause, and I'm going to go into a conspiracy theory rabbit hole for about one minute and then quickly get out of it. Okay, so because it's been my theory that Intuit's ultimate goal is to kind of sort of Uber ize the profession in such a way that because they have millions and millions of customers using QuickBooks, and their brand attracts brand new businesses to get QuickBooks that they are the ones that [00:07:00] are going to direct the small business owner to an accounting professional, and for them to maintain the quality and the symbiosis between what QuickBooks can do, what the AI can do, and what the human can do. What Intuit ultimately wants is to have the world's database of every ProAdvisor accountant certified bookkeeper in their at their disposal so they can quickly deploy a talented expert. You know, combined with Qbo combined with [00:07:30] AI. And of course, that talented expert will make money in the platform, as I mentioned, but it all be controlled by Intuit. Again, they hate when I say the word Uber ice. But yeah, how is that even different than than Uber? So of course, this Intuit bookkeeping certification that I created like five years ago, I think I remember beta testing it during the pandemic, It's now going to be front and center, because they're going to want to create a minimum standard of bookkeeping education for everyone that works with with [00:08:00] QuickBooks, whether they're an Intuit employee or a sort of contractor in this system. So I love the fact I mean, it's very smart of them to, to, to make this public because essentially, and I don't want to say this word, but you get you essentially indoctrinate all brand new accountants into their ecosystem of minimal educational guidelines. So I'm going to get myself out of that, uh, out of that rabbit hole now. All right.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So because we're going to do a whole separate episode, I don't want to go into this at length, but [00:08:30] I do want to say that adding in the bookkeeping certification here, I'm beyond thrilled about because people learn how to use QuickBooks, especially since we have a lot of nonstandard education bookkeepers coming in who this is their second career or their side hustle, and they think that bookkeeping is putting transactions in buckets and they don't. They don't know anything at all about debits and credits, and they don't know anything at all about the accounting life cycle and all the things you have to do for your clients. I am delighted that there is [00:09:00] a training program in here for what does it mean to use bookkeeping? Aside from what does it mean to use QuickBooks?

Hector Garcia: Yeah, and they advertised a virtual conference to get people into the Qbo certification system on December 10th and 12th. We'll add links to that in the show notes. I assume that as part of the CERT prep, uh, virtual conference, they'll also kind of announce all the different ways that, you know, young professionals and people getting into the QuickBooks bookkeeping world can interact with ProAdvisor Academy [00:09:30] and go further from there.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Great.

Hector Garcia: All right. So the next one is and I love this, and I love when I say love, I might possibly a little bit be sarcastic. Free up your firm with QuickBooks Live expert assistant and call summaries. Now QuickBooks Live the full service bookkeeping that has existed probably from 2018. It's one thing QuickBooks Live expert assisted. Of course they [00:10:00] have to give us so many, so many words. It's a different thing. So and this is a really important distinction to make. So if a small business owner doesn't want to hire a local accountant or a bookkeeping and accounting firm, they can add on QuickBooks Live, I believe it's like 500 bucks a month or more and you have a bookkeeping service, quote unquote, attached to your software that Intuit runs and controls. They started they released maybe like two years ago or one year ago, this QuickBooks Live expert assistant, [00:10:30] which is $50 a month. And I don't know if that number has changed. Alicia, do you know if that number has changed or. I think it's still 50, so $50 a month. And the main difference is that QuickBooks Live the full service, they have access to your books. Quickbooks Live expert assisted does not have access to your books.

Hector Garcia: That's a fundamental difference in in services. And in order for you to trigger QuickBooks Live assisted, you have to click a bunch of buttons or make a phone call [00:11:00] and connect with the person. And the person is walking you through the process. They're doing training, they're doing consulting, they're doing support, whatever you want to call it. I assume that none of these people have the average experience that a field ProAdvisor has. So maybe you can call it consulting or maybe not. But essentially they're aiding the client through the process of whatever issue they're trying to do. They're trying to maybe create a credit memo to attach a write off an invoice, whatever. [00:11:30] They walk you through it. So what Intuit is doing is saying, hey, leverage us, leverage us in your practice. You pay us the 50 bucks? I don't even know. I'm not sure if there's a ProAdvisor discount. You pay the 50 bucks, and then when your clients have a QuickBooks. Question of the nature and scope of what QuickBooks Live expresses and does. Delegate that to us so you can concentrate on the higher value stuff.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Right now this this service just came out this past May, and there was kind of a big brouhaha. And I brought [00:12:00] Ted Callahan on to QB talks. And so those videos are actually still available on YouTube where we we talked about this because the first initial reaction to expert assisted was, oh my God, you're taking our jobs. But really what it came down to after really discussing it with several different people is it's kind of just like a paid low end support line where you're getting better advice than you are just by calling support. And it's specifically, how do I [00:12:30] do this? How do I do this? And at first, people's reaction was, well, you're competing with me. But the truth is, well, yeah, maybe in a way. I mean, yes, I teach how to do reconciliations, But is that how you want to spend your time? Is that the best use of your time as a bookkeeper to teach the same answer the same questions over and over again across all your clients? So Intuit is now building it into the the revenue share, where [00:13:00] you can sign up your clients as a value added service. You will be able to either pay for it yourself and build it in, or have the client pay for it directly. And this is where the new announcement comes in. And I had talked about this in the previous episode where I broke down Suzanne's, uh, um, keynote.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And what they are doing is they're giving you visibility into that relationship [00:13:30] with expert assist that when you go into your Qbo A and you pull up that client in your dashboard, there's a new tab that when your client is attached to this service, there's a new tab that says call with experts, and it gives you a list of all of the all of the or which user called from the company, because you actually might have more than one calling which expert [00:14:00] they actually got assisted. So you can see who they talked to, the date and the time of the call, and a view summary that shows you what the a general, what the topic was, what the expert showed them, how to do, what the resolution was, and also potential next steps as well. And then this way you it's not just a black hole of well I know that they have this service. I have no idea what's going on. You [00:14:30] can actually see how they're using the service. If they're using the service, what they're using it for and what was discussed. That way you can give it your seal of approval or if maybe the advice wasn't right for this particular client. For some reason, you actually have something to go on, and I believe that it's in their roadmap that you can actually respond in there as well and put in your own $0.02 to the conversation.

Hector Garcia: That's that's incredible. Who would have thought that the secret of [00:15:00] making the service valuable wasn't to add more features, was just to make it transparent. And at the end of the day, that's kind of what accountants want. They don't want to be out of the loop. At the same time, they don't want to be deeply in the loop. Like, I probably don't want to get a text message and an email every time the client calls to ask a question about a credit memo. Um, so what they probably need to also build into this is preferences. Like, okay, so for this client I want to notice notifications for this client. I don't want notifications for this client I want this type of [00:15:30] notice. So if they're like for example if they help people. Uh unclose. The books, let's say that I want to be notified, right. So like, say it would be interesting if I could go into that level of detail where I could choose what type of notifications, what level of things like if they reconcile a bank. Okay, I probably want to know about that, but if they want to know how to categorize a meals and entertainment expense from this month, maybe I don't want to know about that.

Hector Garcia: So I think it's going to be interesting to kind of see how how that [00:16:00] starts, um, working. But I, I do like the fact that that's what they're doing is they're going to show me the call summary, they're going to show me what's going on. I love that. And that's that's the first step towards collaboration. Right. So like with QuickBooks Live and TurboTax live and all this stuff we're into, it is is proposing is competing with us. But if we accept the fact that they're an option and we're an option [00:16:30] and there's a possibility that we can work together, and then they respect our relationship and we respect their relationship and we get full transparency, what's going on? I think that's going to be best because even though they may get a really awesome person helping them, they're going to get a different one the next day. They're going to get a different one the next day. That's just how it's going to work. And it's going to take many, many years for for customers to feel they can build a relationship with a company when every every person is different, [00:17:00] right. So but it's easier to build a relationship with with us.

Alicia Katz Pollock: You just said something that's really interesting to me is we're also going to be able to see who's giving good advice and who is not giving good advice. So there's going to be a lot of motivation on Intuit's part to make sure that their employees, their staff are really well trained. And if they're not, we're going to be able to say, oh, Jenny, that person over there didn't give actually said something inaccurate. And hopefully that means that they can get some better training. [00:17:30] But we also might be throwing somebody under the bus. So hopefully they are taking into consideration what is an appropriate and ethical way of handling those kinds of issues.

Hector Garcia: All right. So the next thing that we see here in the article is talking about modern view reports. So this is the type of reports that accounting pros kind of hated at the beginning. And now it's kind of growing into most people. And I think in there will be situations where both Alicia and I will go, I think I'd prefer the new modern [00:18:00] view over the old view for situation A, B or C, and I think, I think the reasons to go to modern view are actually higher than the reasons to stay in the classic view. I still have some reservations on that and we can go down the rabbit hole. Alicia, if you have particular questions about why, I think the classic view has still a place in my heart, but particularly in this article, what they mentioned was that December 2020, for most of Qbo standard reports will be available [00:18:30] in modern view. Now, it doesn't say that we're going to kill the ability to go back to classic view. It says you can still choose whether you want to go to classic or modern, but, um, it seems that the reports are going to get updates and modernization only on the modern reports, and then they're not really going to be investing anymore in the classic reports.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Right? So they talk about critical security updates, but they don't talk about any more functionality. Now we just did definitely [00:19:00] no rabbit holes on this one because we actually just did a complete episode about modern reports just a week or two ago. So definitely go listen to that. Both Hector and I really appreciate the power of modern reports. And yeah, they got off to a rocky start. They were not rolled off, rolled out successfully, but they've really come a long way. And there are times where if now a report is only available in classic mode, I've actually been hamstrung because I can't go run the complicated filters [00:19:30] and groupings that I like to do when I'm doing analysis. I'm all for this. I do really like that. They're going to allow you to switch back and forth between classic view, because for a while they were like, if you go to modern reports, you're not going to be able to roll back. And I think they realized that for some people, that's just not the right approach. And I think if you start in modern and then you have a reason to go back to classic, great. But if it shows up in modern, don't panic. Just look around [00:20:00] and get used to you. Get used to it. It looks different, but it's got so many more features that it's it's a benefit for sure.

Hector Garcia: Yeah, I would, I would say and and I will take the risk if somebody were to, if I were to say, I'll be the voice of the profession here and tell into it how we feel about this. The reason why we want to go to Classic View is not because we're lazy, and we don't want to learn a new view. It's because some filters or some fields just haven't made [00:20:30] it over to the modern view. So it's not necessarily that we're just being resistant to change. I think most accounting pros, once they learn how to use the modern view. And, you know, I taught people how to do that. Intuit connect Alicia has multiple courses on that. We had that podcast episode. I think once you learn how to use it, you realize that functionally you're not you're not missing much. It's just that for some reports, for some reason, some fields are not available and they haven't they haven't made it to they haven't made it yet to the modern reports. [00:21:00] And I don't have a particular example, but I, I know that was the reason why most people were resistant to us changing. Okay.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, since they specifically say that modern reports will receive functionality updates, there's a feedback link right on the top right of every single modern report where you can go in and say, well, hey, I'm running this report. It doesn't have this thing that I want to do. And then I know that they're committed to really making it useful for all people. I do want to throw [00:21:30] in here that I am teaching a bio advanced class on November 26th, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. And I'm going to be going into the modern reports and specifically what's different in advanced versus the regular modern reports. And so if anybody wants a live demo of that, head over to learn.com and sign up for Qbo advanced coming up in November.

Hector Garcia: Yeah and like Alicia said, it's QuickBooks Online Advanced and [00:22:00] Intuit Enterprise Suite. Both of those are going to have advanced reporting modules. And these advanced reporting modules were built on the modern report platform. So they're going to be adding so much investment into the modern report platform because of these higher priced SKUs like Qbo advanced and into Enterprise Suite. Therefore, it just makes no sense to continue to support or add more stuff to the standard classic reports.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And, you know, that's a really good point that you make right there that if you're [00:22:30] looking for like, well, what's the distinction between plus and advance? And what's the distinction between advanced and Intuit Enterprise? A lot of it really comes down to the reporting and your ability to manipulate your data and get insights on your data through, whether it's crafting your reports or doing pivot tables or being able to create dashboards. That's every time you go up in one of the versions or one of the what they call the SKUs, then you get just that much more power without having to turn to a third party app. [00:23:00]

Hector Garcia: Now, this one is very dear to your heart, Alicia, and I'll let you run with it, which is make unused pay items inactive in Qbo payroll. And we had a long conversation about this last month that didn't make it to the podcast. I think now it's time to have that conversation.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So let me tell you a little story. I in in September and October, I did probably the most complicated cleanup job I have ever done. It was one [00:23:30] of those where you look at it, you assess it, you bid on it, and then it's three times worse once you get in. And one of the problems that we had is that when she was using Qbo payroll, one, there were things that were old that aren't relevant anymore. For instance, she had employees who had child care garnishments, but the employee wasn't with the company anymore. They'd been terminated, but we couldn't remove the garnishments from the pay types or [00:24:00] from the chart of accounts. And so, because Qbo makes a separate garnishment liability account for every employee and every garnishment, she literally had six different garnishment accounts on her balance sheet that we could not inactivate. She also had some employees reimburse her, like somebody had broken one of their iPads out in the field. And so they were they were Deducting a monthly payments [00:24:30] out of his wages until he paid for the iPad. Now that iPad is long paid for, but the pay type still exists in Qbo and it still exists as a liability on the balance sheet.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And so I called them up. I think it was September or October and I was raising high. Holy hell. Because, you know, you can't just have these live on in the reports permanently. And I was incredibly frustrated. And so when I saw this announcement [00:25:00] two days ago, I'm just I'm giddy. I am so excited to call her up and schedule another appointment because this is out of scope. And so it's not part of the cleanup. This is something new that I can go back to her, but we can go spend an hour taking all of these payment types off of the employees and then inactivating them. And then once they're inactivating them, taking them off of the balance sheet. So that was it was so bad with this one client that I was like, [00:25:30] you guys, I can't recommend Qbo payroll if this is how it operates. I can't in good faith recommend it because these are things that shouldn't live on forever. And so I don't know if they were already working on it and my timing was good, or if they actually heard me and said, oh wait, we never thought of that and went ahead and fixed it.

Hector Garcia: Yeah.That's awesome. Thank you, Alicia, for going up to going going out to get us those things. Because sometimes [00:26:00] it's those little, little things, the little, the little things that really make make a difference. And traditionally, with Qbo, the biggest frustration that has come from the traditional desktop users is that deleting things and inactivating things has always been weird. Like, I think weird is the right word to use because it's been just inconsistent. Like for example, there are screens in QuickBooks where you call something delete or sorry, you call it inactivate, but then it shows up as deleted or you call it deleted. It shows up as [00:26:30] inactivate. And the word deleted. Inactivate actually means two different things. And in reality, in qbo nothing has ever deleted. It's always inactivated. So that's always been an issue that people have had is like, can I delete it? Can I delete it? And why are these weird things showing? And I'm going to tell you something. As a founder of an app company called Right Tool and getting feedback from people, nothing delights accountants more than deleting crap from.

Hector Garcia: The accounting system.

Hector Garcia: It's just incredible. So [00:27:00] like Intuit needs to listen to us every time we say, I need to be able to delete this. Don't don't take it as a lightly. Like it's really important to us to to remove the things from the screen that are not pertinent to us, period.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Let me throw in a little educational moment there what the distinction is between the two. Delete means get rid of something completely. Inactivate means hide it Up temporarily. Anything that's on a list can only be inactivated once it's [00:27:30] been added to a list. It's permanent, but once you either inactivate or quote unquote delete it, it's still available through a check mark where you can show your inactive things. When Hector says you can't delete anything, the one thing that you can delete are transactions. And once you delete an actual transaction, it is gone. You can void it, which is kind of like inactivating it. But that's the distinction. Delete means a transaction that goes away. Inactivate means a list item [00:28:00] that is hidden. The unfortunate crossover is that when you inactivate a list item, it shows up in your old reports as parentheses deleted instead of parentheses inactivated. And if they would just make that one little semantic change that would solve the entire confusion.

Hector Garcia: Well, transactions can be deleted, But.

Hector Garcia: They go-ish. Right. Because they still show up in the audit trail.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Right. Which is great. [00:28:30]

Hector Garcia: Yeah, which is great. No, of course, of course. And one wish list item that I've had forever. And people have had it forever. And people tell us to the right tool. Can you make this happen? Is could we go into the audit trail, pull a transaction has been deleted and and.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Delete it

Hector Garcia: Undelete it, bring it back from the dead. That would be incredible.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, that's a that's a shout out to rewind, which is a third party backup app. And that is what rewind does. So if you have rewind going and you do delete that infinite journal entry that you didn't mean to delete, you can actually rewind [00:29:00] it and bring it back again. But I think that would be so easy just to put right back into the audit trail to undelete something.

Hector Garcia: But but giving giving credit to what Alicia is talking about that deletes that rewind, creates a new transaction with the same attributes. It doesn't technically bring the transaction back from the dead. It's a new transaction number and everything. It could it could contain the same document number, like the same check number or whatever, but it's still a new a new transaction. So that would be cool if Intuit were to kind of I know this is actually a completely [00:29:30] different topic that shouldn't even be discussed here, but.

Alicia Katz Pollock: That's programing info right there.

Hector Garcia: Yeah, exactly.

Hector Garcia: That's, that's that's why you come here. You come here for the extra color commentary. All right. The next item in in the firm of the future article was E-signatures in Qbo payroll elite. So elite only e-signatures. And it's not specific to something. It just kind of says, hey, if you're the payroll admin, you can upload a document [00:30:00] and request a signature and a date and a name. And why would that be useful? Well, maybe you have an employment contract. Maybe you have an agreement where you're paying the employees education. But but the exchanges that they have to stay on for two years. And if they don't stay for two years, they have to pay you back a period amount over two. I remember that specifically from my banking days. Or maybe you have an employee loan and you want to have. So it's actually I love this. I just have an internal document. And this is what Intuit wants to call their payroll stuff. Uh, [00:30:30] what do they call it? Uh, workforce management or workforce solutions, like they're trying to the, uh, or human capital or they just have different fancy names to get away from payroll, because payroll is a very narrow function, but it's the biggest function within the world of HR. And I think what Intuit is trying to do is they're trying to position themselves as a, as a full business suite. So they don't do payroll, they do workforce management, they do human capital management. And part [00:31:00] of human capital management, especially in the mid-market world, is to manage your communications between you and your employee.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, I'm really happy to see how they have been building out the whole HR center. And when you go up to the premium version, you get some features. When you go up to elite, you get a whole a whole air center out of it. And in the employees center, they recently added the ability that you can upload documents, and then your employees [00:31:30] can see them either using the workforce app on their phone. Although I noticed that this article says using workforce on the web and it gives a web address. So it may be that the app on your phone acts differently for workforce than the website, and I haven't tested that out to find out. But just in the last year, they've added the ability that you can upload all of your different employment contracts and all your backup information and all your onboarding [00:32:00] documents. So that's been available for a few months. And what this one is saying is that you're going to be able to add fields to the document and get e-signatures from the employees. And I tried it out, and I didn't see the ability. I was able to upload the document, but I didn't see any ability to make it interactive and gather a signature. It says it's available now, but I don't see it now. It might be because I'm using Qbo, A [00:32:30] and sometimes features inside Qbo for accountants don't behave the same way as it does on the client side, so that might be the limitation to it. I'm not sure. I'm sure. Curious, because it would be so nice to be able to gather signatures this way.

Hector Garcia: Right? Right.

Hector Garcia: Especially when they can do it with a phone app as well. Like, not just not just a web based app.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah,

Alicia Katz Pollock: Just to say that [00:33:00] this would replace your need for DocuSign or for Pandadoc or any of the other signature apps you're using.

Hector Garcia: Right?

Hector Garcia: For for the employee portion of it.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Mhm.

Hector Garcia: So the last item here was QuickBooks helps you comply with boy reporting. So boy is it stands for Beneficial ownership information, which is one of the gems that came out of the Corporate Transparency Act, which now forces small businesses to have owners that own 25% [00:33:30] or more go into a website in the US Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Division, same place where individuals report bank accounts that they have overseas and then they create they create this little form with this weird interface where they put the name of the company, the Ein, the address, and who the owners are and what percentages they have. Now, I don't understand why the US government doesn't have this information already. Like isn't it on like the K one of the tax [00:34:00] return or whatever. So it's just more redundant bureaucratic work. I get it that what they're trying to figure out is make sure that there isn't companies, you know, washing money or laundering money or doing illicit stuff or whatever, but I'm not sure really. I don't want to get into the politics of it, but I don't even know why this thing exists.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, if a.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Client's not paying their taxes and, you know, we all have clients who are 3 or 4 years back, then this kind of fills in that gap. But I agree with you. Like if we're [00:34:30] registering a company, shouldn't that just be part of registering the company?

Hector Garcia: Yeah.

Hector Garcia: The problem is because we have a federation, you know, we have a federation of states. Um, there isn't a national, there's technically not a national registry of companies. And the IRS kind of becomes that. But then the IRS is only for fiscal matters and the information is very delicate information. So I assume that because if any government entity wants to request information from the IRS, [00:35:00] it's it's a whole mission. They say, you know what? We're going to create an entire different department where we start collecting this information separately. That's how efficient our government is. Um, so yeah, so that's kind of part of the challenge of, of, of kind of like all the companies that registered in the state level. And not all those databases are public, and those databases sometimes don't require you to put who the owner is. You know, like in, I think in Delaware and in Nevada, like there's multiple companies where you actually don't even have to put this total secrecy over who who the owner is. So with the boy, [00:35:30] you have to put the correct information. But at least if somebody hasn't been paying taxes for three years, they're going to they're going to go to boy and report themselves in there. I think they won't do that either. It just gives the government more ability to assess more fees and more, more fear. And honestly, this is just welfare for accountants because most small businesses go to accountants and say, can you help me with this? But what I find interesting is that boy has now become a subindustry. Now you see companies like Legalzoom [00:36:00] offering boy services as an add on to the corporate, um, incorporation fees. You see companies like tax 1099 offering boy services. I think even Avalara offers buy service. All these different companies are now offering buy services. I get a bunch of spam emails and letters from people saying, hey, you have to do this or you're going to get a $10,000 fine or whatever. So the entire ecosystem around helping somebody fill out a form online has has been created.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And it's it's [00:36:30] ridiculous because the form is really super easy. All you're doing is just taking your incorporation document and typing in the name and the address and the Social security number of each of the partners with their personal, with their percentage of ownership. And that's literally all it is. And so you don't have to pay anybody to do this. There's it's zero complicated. And the fact that there is this whole subindustry is ridiculous. You literally just go to [00:37:00] the website, you put in your company's name, ein and, and business address, and you put in the personal information for each of the partners. That's it. That's all there is. So don't be scared of it. Just go do it.

Hector Garcia: You know what I think?

Hector Garcia: I think that because of QuickBooks Live, all these companies have been, like, kind of bothering their QuickBooks Live bookkeeper with this thing. And they've been capturing that. Let's say 20% of small businesses are asking us about this thing. Therefore we should create a service [00:37:30] around it. And they didn't. They don't specify whether or not there'll be a charge for that.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: They did. They do. So let's actually head back to the article. So I think Intuit is trying to help everybody defray this mystery because you do have to do it by January 1st of 2025. If you were formed before 2024, if you started your business in 2024, you actually are supposed to have already filed it [00:38:00] within 90 days. And then moving forward starting January 1st, 2025, you have to file within 30 days of forming your business. So mostly we're really just talking about the people who have had businesses for years and just get meeting this deadline. Qbo does say for a small fee, where's the line for a one time fee? Your clients can follow a smooth, step by step experience to upload support documents and complete their form, which [00:38:30] basically means upload your articles of incorporation and then go step by step to copy the information out of it. Maybe they're using AI to harvest the form and just have it auto fill and then verify. That's what I would like to see out of this tool.

Hector Garcia: You're right. It says for a one time fee. I missed that somehow. Come on into it. Come on. Really? You're going to charge for this, especially when you already have the information. I mean, this could be a huge value [00:39:00] driver for your customers. I mean, again, I'm fine. I'm fine with it.

Alicia Katz Pollock: This is a feature where they don't have the information because there's nothing in Qbo that tracks your percentage of ownerships.

Hector Garcia: That's true. But we do know we have the company name. We have the address. We have. We have most of the stuff. Now, I think the other side of the coin here is our small business clients that use QuickBooks only and not the TurboTax. Are they going to want to disclose that information to [00:39:30] Intuit? Right. Because what's the other side of the coin here is and I'm going to go back into another rabbit hole, which is, you know, Intuit is very much becoming a data mining company, right? You know, the purchase of, of of Credit Karma was very much a data play. Like, they didn't buy any technology per se. There was no technology. What technology did they buy? A matchmaking between small businesses and banks. That's not that's not there's nothing to buy there. There's no $7 billion worth of technology there. Right. So. [00:40:00] So Credit Karma was a data play. They bought data. So I wonder if the ultimate goal here is to collect that data to like is the ownership. I just don't know what get into it. Do for this. Like what? What can they do by knowing the ownership of the companies?

Hector Garcia: Well, I mean.

Alicia Katz Pollock: It's all just more research and benchmarks. I mean, it's all publicly available information. That's not.

Hector Garcia: The ownership, not the ownership.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Percentage of ownership, something that's on public record or.

Hector Garcia: No, not not in. [00:40:30]

Hector Garcia: So in Florida, for example. And this could be another rabbit hole, a conversation that we can have. But in Florida you you have to list who the officers are. But the officers don't necessarily doesn't don't have to be owners. So there's actually you could put director A, B and C, but it doesn't say who the owner is. So it's not public information.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And that's the whole purpose of the boy because that's what's publicly available. And that's not what is accessible even to the federal government. And so I think that's why they've started [00:41:00] this whole project.

Hector Garcia: Yeah. So the only place the government has ownership information in theory is on the tax returns because the k-1s for pass through entities like LLC partnerships or S Corp's, they have to you have to say what the percentage is for corporations. Interestingly enough, you only disclose owners that own 50% or more. So there's a lot of companies that have a whole bunch of owners that own less than [00:41:30] 50%, and that information is not public either. I wonder if if and I'll ask you, Alicia, do you want this information to be public, or do you want this information to be private, or should the government have this information?

Alicia Katz Pollock: I am not sure. I have not actually formulated an opinion. I mean, in for my particular company, we're 5149 so that we can be a female owned business. I don't [00:42:00] mind people knowing that, but I.

Hector Garcia: I think it's a good question.It's a good question.

Alicia Katz Pollock: It's a really good question. I don't actually I'd have to really think about whether that is something that would bother me to have that publicly available or not. I would love to hear people's comments. If you go over to a earmarked community, we have a forum for the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast, and I would love to hear what people have to say about that. So [00:42:30] if you go, if you head over to Earmarked Community and head over to our board, we'll have a post about this episode and please let me know.

Hector Garcia: And the reason why I kind of asked it is because I would say 20 years ago in the micro, I wouldn't mind it, but in today's age on the macro and knowing how quickly I can crunch data, I wonder, you know, once the US government knows what companies are owned by who, you know, whether I can crunch data [00:43:00] sort of across companies to get a general idea, you know, in terms of location or race, I don't know. I'm not sure if the race is being collected here. The census is a different thing, that there's actually a corporate a business census from the US Bureau of Economics, which also presents a new thing, that or not a new thing, but that's existed for a while. But that's another thing that small business accountants get a lot is, you know, a, a a customer gets a letter saying, hey, you have to fill out the census. And then they send it to us thinking that [00:43:30] like, that's an accountant thing. And then like we're like, no, they're asking questions that I don't know anything about. You need to answer those questions. So it's just adding it's literally just adding more work to all of us. And it's becoming more and more annoying to be an accountant.

Hector Garcia: Because we have to manage all these things, and we have to know about these things, and people are going to ask us, well, but, you know, my cousin owns 27% of it, and he's not American and he lives here, but he owns it indirectly through a company in Guyana and this and that. Do I do they need to report and [00:44:00] it's like, ah, that's making my head hurt. You know, I hate the fact that I just have to think about these things. You know, life was very easy where all I had to think about is, is it a debit? Is it a credit? Is it a expense? Is it an income? Whatever. It's just like like this profession is getting increasingly more complicated and the government is not helping. I don't I don't think they're helping in this case.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I'll go along with that one for sure.

Hector Garcia: All right.

Hector Garcia: Well that's it. That's the end of the November 2020 for fear of the future article updates for [00:44:30] QuickBooks online. With that being said, Alicia, anything else going on in your world?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Oh yeah. I had mentioned a few minutes ago that I am doing a class on November 26th. Let me just double check that date real quick. Yeah, November 26th. That's my Qbo advanced class, which is a class that just features the just goes over the features in Qbo advanced. And when I taught it two years ago, most recently, it was only an hour long and now it's a three hour class. And [00:45:00] so I'm going to be going in and doing demos of spreadsheet sync and revenue recognition and the custom form builder, and actually doing hands on demonstrations of what all the features are, not just giving you a list of them. So I'm like putting that together though, has become a bear. I mean, it's I'm enjoying going down into all the rabbit holes of what Qbo advanced has and finding all the little features. So head over to learn.com and sign up for that class. And [00:45:30] Hector, what's going on in your world?

Hector Garcia: Yeah.So, um, my education events brand reframe is now doing multiple things. So we had an event in in October and it was great, immensely successful. We have 150 deposits for next year. If by the time we announce the location and date for the venue, um, we don't have any cancellations, the conference is technically sold out. But of course, you know, once, you know, once [00:46:00] we release the dates and then people realize that that date doesn't work for them or whatever. We'll have some cancellations. We'll have other tickets open up. So that's going to be most likely November of 2025. There's an amazing property we're negotiating with and we think it's going to go through. We're very excited about now, from now until then. There are other ways to interact with the Reframe brand. So we're going to do a couple of things. One is we took the book that we released on the conference called Exactly What to Say. And Alicia and I had a whole [00:46:30] episode where we talked about this. This is before Alicia even knew there was an accountant edition of exactly what to Say. We've actually recorded a virtual course, so Carlos and I went page by page and did a role play on every single magic word. It's about six hours worth of videos that we cut and organized on each magic word. That's ready, that's ready, that's already ready, that's available, and that's for sale. Uh, on top of that, we also wrote an implementation [00:47:00] guide. The implementation guide is like a 36 manual to the book. So we actually wrote a manual.

Hector Garcia: To the book.

Hector Garcia: And what that manual really is, is the the work we spent to rewrite the book for the accounting profession for a whole year. It was a big document that Carlos and I kept going back and adding and brainstorming and using ChatGPT to say, is this written correctly? And then I added some of my own war stories from when I did this in my firm and all that stuff, and we basically took that document and made [00:47:30] it into a step by step manual on how to implement exactly what to say. We also are including in the kit the, the, um, the role playing cards. So you can practice on your own or with your team. And those are being shipped today, the day that we're recording this episode, which is November 15th. So people that purchased that are going to get a copy of the book, the implementation card and the role play cards. So the implementation guide and the role play cards are very excited about that.

Hector Garcia: So people can get all that, plus [00:48:00] the virtual course. Plus Phil Jones, the author of the books, his keynote at reframe, that's published in the in the portal. Uh, plus, we're doing a US tour of exactly what to say to certify accountants in the process. So we're starting with Miami in our neck of the woods, December 5th and sixth. There's a certification program, so if you want to come down here, spend two days with Carlos and get indoctrinated into exactly what to say so you can indoctrinate your clients into paying you more fees [00:48:30] or paying you what you're worth, and and making sure that we save the profession from all this craziness. We're strongly recommend that people get really, really intimate with exactly what to say. And we'll close it to January and February. We'll start announcing where else in the United States will be physically going to, and helping accountants get certified with exactly what to say. So you can buy the book, the implementation guide, and the role play cards. You can buy the virtual course or you can get, um, certified. [00:49:00] And that's all going to be available in reframe 2025. Com reframe 20 2025. Dot com is a website that allows you to get into any of these programs, and also put a deposit for next year's conference, which has an entirely different theme. The theme is pricing with confidence. It started with effective pricing because the word effective means a lot to me.

Hector Garcia: But then at the end, my advisors, uh, the keynote speakers and attendees told me, you know what? That name is kind of blah. Effective pricing. Really, Hector? Three days worth of effective [00:49:30] pricing. You know, you should you should call it something else. And I'm like, well, what else should I call it about? And there and we were brainstorming about, well, what was a common theme in reframe 2024. And the common theme is most of us are very confident in our numbers and our ability, uh, but when it comes to talking about how much we're worth, we're not so confident about that. So we changed it to pricing with confidence. And we're going to spend three days exploring three major topics. One [00:50:00] is how much you're worth. Like what is your self worth? Right. So we want to want to build that confidence on that to what kind of value you create for your customers. And once you know your self-worth and the value you create, then you have the confidence to give the price of the services and not have to discount, not have to lower that. So you ask me what's going on in my world? A lot is going on in my world, and so it's going to be a mixture between promoting exactly what to say and promoting pricing with confidence [00:50:30] in November of 2025. So reframe 2025. Com if you want to be part of that.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. What I really appreciate about what you're doing is it's not just about our client relationships and our staff relationships. It's also about our internal dialog as well. And really becoming self-actualized yourself, which does nothing but enhance your relationships and enhance your business and enhance your client interactions in the services that you provide. So it's really a total package, [00:51:00] and everybody really should go take advantage of these new materials that Hector is putting out there because it's spectacular. It really just changes your whole the way you appear in the world.

Hector Garcia: Yeah. Thank you so much. That means a lot. I'll end it with this is as a parent, um, I often think about what's what's my what's my role as a parent. Like, am I supposed to educate? Am I supposed to instill discipline? Am I supposed to give them freedom to make mistakes and and figure [00:51:30] life out on their own? Am I supposed to, you know, set, set rules. You know, as a parent, I always think, uh, you know, from a philosophical standpoint what my role is. And at the end of the day, after many discussions with my teenage kids, which are the hardest ones to talk to, is sometimes the more I say, the more deep in trouble. I get.

Hector Garcia: So sometimes it's just about listening and saying, you're right, you're right, or I get it. Or that sounds painful. That sounds difficult. But [00:52:00] at the end of the day, the most important tool I can give my children is self-confidence. Because, like, I could teach them a gazillion things, but usually your confidence is built in those early formative years. And then once you turn 18, 20 and you go out in the world, and if you are, if you don't have that self-confidence built in, life becomes increasingly more difficult. And I find it a pattern that accounting professionals are very self-confident about their abilities, [00:52:30] but they don't know how to show that. So they show up every single time with low confidence, which is the reason why we always get low balled, because we say, I think maybe, possibly. And that comes that has to do with education. It has to do with CYA. You know, we have to be careful with not to say this and not to say that or not, we have to disclose this so that our entire profession is built about dancing around the answer instead of giving straight answers. And that comes out as very [00:53:00] low confidence. And I think that's driving the entire value of our profession down. And and that realization made me realize that, you know, this is going to be one of my life missions is just helping every single person around me raise their confidence level. And that will unlock a whole new thing.

Hector Garcia: So that's it.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I'm now like thinking about all these other things, about how our culture promotes low self-esteem instead of confidence. And so the more content like this that you're creating that we can have [00:53:30] out there, the better.

Hector Garcia: Awesome. Well thank you Alicia. Thank you everybody. We love our listeners. We love this podcast. We love QuickBooks, and we love keeping you informed. We'll see you in the next one.

Alicia Katz Pollock: See you in the next one.