Intuit’s Annual Investors Report

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

Alicia Katz Pollock: In this episode of the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast, I've got Matthew Fulton with me, otherwise known as spot, and we are going to talk about the annual stockholders meeting from Intuit that just happened a few weeks ago, and we are want to kind of break it down for you and tell you what's happening in Intuit's world. This is part of our recurring segment called [00:00:30] Now You Know. How are you doing spot doing phenomenal.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : Alicia, thank you so much, and thanks for inviting me to be a part of this. So, you know, this is going to be an interesting episode. I've always been a firm believer that as an accounting, you know, person or online accounting community, you know, we're always talking about the different changes and the messaging we're hearing from Intuit, the Corporation. But I always like to kind of go in and listen to the shareholder meetings to make sure that the things we think we're hearing as accountants [00:01:00] are the same messages that are going to the shareholders. So we can, of course, best serve the rest of our friends out there. Of course. So this should be fun.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, that's really important because I know for me, I'm hands on QuickBooks all day, every day, like literally. And QuickBooks is still just one of the pillars of Intuit's bigger picture and where they're going. I mean, it started with it was the only thing that they did when Scott Cook invented it, but then it expanded out [00:01:30] into different software and MailChimp and Credit Karma and TurboTax, and now it's a lot of financial management for a lot of people. And into its intention with that has obviously shifted and grown. So it's really important for us to keep track of what they're thinking so that we can make sure that we're in alignment and know what to expect.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : Yeah, I think you really just basically nailed the underlying theme of the entire webinar itself. So kind of full disclosure what [00:02:00] I, you know, anytime since this is a publicly traded company, they actually post their live meeting as well as their presentation on their website every single time, their annual and their quarterly meetings. And we should start off real quickly, Alicia, to acknowledge Intuit's fiscal year, because it's a little bit different than everybody else's. Their fiscal year ends July 31st. So Q1 is the end of October 31st. Q2 is January 31st. So the fiscal year we're going to be talking about at this point will be as [00:02:30] of July 31st of last year. They will be coming up with their. I think it's later this month with a quarterly update. But just so people don't think since we're in February, we're talking January to December to to get things started.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, that's really interesting because it's not standard quarters by any stretch of the imagination. They're off one month cycle from everybody else.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : Quarters wasn't bad as workers comp companies, right. So but anyways, I digress. So okay.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Um, and before you, before you start. I also want to [00:03:00] let people know that we will have links to the recording of the shareholder meeting and the PDF in the show notes, so that you can leap directly to the real sources for what we are going to expound upon. All right. And with that, Matthew, let me hand you the floor. Take it away.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : I'm going to kind of go through some of this stuff. And, you know, for the listeners out there, I'll do my best not to get too nerdy into number, if you will, but I think you'll like this summarization of it all. Ultimately, [00:03:30] Intuit's strategy at listening to Suzanne, they basically said that Intuit made an early decision back in 2018 to focus on and invest in an AI driven, expert platform. Now, as a quick reminder, Suzanne actually became into its CEO in January of 2019. One of the key things he kept mentioning over and over during his presentation is how he feels that AI is the largest platform shift since electricity in the internet. And if you sit and pause [00:04:00] for a second, you think about it. He's not wrong. Right? Like, it's it's here to stay, folks. So if you're not really playing with it, you really should be. And to to illustrate it more within the company, they have started using AI across the entire company themselves. Matter of fact, it's increased their development velocity eight x, basically an eight x increase, which means they're getting stuff out there faster, quicker. It's about a 30% increase, is what they had said. And it's [00:04:30] also led to an 11% reduction in the number of contacts their direct contacts are having to deal with, since they've been using the AI powered digital experiences. So in other words, like their AI assist. So you can see these investments are starting to pay off because the goal hopefully is they can use human capital in different places. But it's starting to reduce some of that and people can do it themselves, find answers for themselves very quickly.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So it's not just that they're using AI on the customer experience [00:05:00] side, they're actually using AI internally to completely transform their operations and free up human capital. That's pretty cool.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : You nailed it. Exactly. Eat your own dog food. Kind of a concept, right? So if you say you're all AI in, you're going to be AI in.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Let me actually digress for a minute, because I'm actually the two things occurred to me when you mentioned that that they decided in 2018 to focus on AI. I thought that that was Sasson's [00:05:30] approach. I thought that that was his leadership that had decided that I didn't realize that that decision predated SaaStr.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : Well, keep in mind, Sasson had been with the company previously. He was a VP in the company earlier. So, you know, I'm not sure of exactly whose decision. I don't, you know, Intuit as a larger company. So I'm sure there's board and they all decided from based on what he said it was before he took over from Brad as the actual CEO. But it is a good point because we always I feel like in the [00:06:00] industry, we all try to give Brad all the credit of the lovey dovey and like everything's wonderful and all of this stuff. And then, Suzanne, a lot of people were like, this is so different. But if that was already the vision and we just didn't know it.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So he became the right person to step into that vision. So that's interesting. That actually kind of changes it in my head a little bit.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : It does.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So the other thing that you said is his quote about AI is the largest platform shift since electricity in the internet. That one actually is a kind of personal to me because [00:06:30] my childhood hero was Ben Franklin. Oh, really? I dressed up as him in fifth grade for Halloween, and I have since come to the conclusion that I actually honestly think electricity is probably the worst thing that ever happened to human beings, because it took us out of the natural environment and the natural order of things and made one species dominant over the planet. And so, you know. [00:07:00] I imagine what will the world be like if we didn't have electricity? We literally wouldn't have anything in our lives that we have right now. And I'm not so sure necessarily that that was a good invention. So that's something that I think about in my in my free time.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : I find it interesting. I mean, and then internet, if we were to touch base on that. Ironically, right now I'm watching a show person of interest. And if you haven't watched it in the past, which is about a ten plus year old show, it has to do with internet and [00:07:30] listening, everything else and the power of the internet. While I love it because we can do something like this, we can be in different places in the world and communicate collaborate. It definitely is also disconnected us. So let's hope that AI brings more positive than negative. And um, you know, we stay away from the Skynet version. So yes.

Alicia Katz Pollock: All right. So barring AI becoming self-aware, let's talk about how it's going to revolutionize Intuit.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : So Intuit's [00:08:00] basically they've made they basically have five big bets is what they say. Okay. Number one is to revolutionize speed, to benefit. Number two is connect people to experts. And I put an asterisk there. I'm going to kind of give you my take on these afterwards. Three is unlock smart money decisions for us. Be the center of small business growth. And then five is disrupt the mid-market. So listening to this whole conversation about it, [00:08:30] basically one of the things I noticed with, you know, the connects people to experts. This is an area where a lot of us accounting professionals kind of feel like what's going on here, because it used to be they were connecting to us accounting professionals. But now connect people to experts is a blend between their own service offering and external accounting professionals. And in their presentation at this big, huge pie graph. And now the accounting professionals is down with a little small chunk of it. But again, folks, I got to remind [00:09:00] everybody, publicly traded corporation, you know, they got to answer to their shareholders. So there this is what they're trying to do. This revolutionized speed to benefit everything they talked about. It's about the business owner. That's their end user that they're looking to to help out.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : So the new platforms these when they first started buying stuff like MailChimp, we were all kind of wondering like what's going on here? How are they going to use this? Now start thinking about the analytics. They have the MailChimp for the [00:09:30] marketing side of it. They put AI in with all of the accounting with Credit Karma. Their big vision for all of this is they can get somebody into the platform, somebody who's just starting their business, be able to see as they're growing, if they need to get money or funding to help, you know, pay payroll, do whatever else they can do that they can do sales from it. And then if they need help marketing their services, they can bring in MailChimp and start to create AI driven marketing campaigns that generate [00:10:00] sales, automatically create invoices, estimates, everything else. That's that big goal, the vision that they're trying to get to. So I think that could be huge and powerful. And as us as accountants, we absolutely still have a place in this world. I think it's more important that we're there to make sure to check it and help them evolve and better understand their numbers. What do you think?

Alicia Katz Pollock: It's been interesting for me, now that I've been doing this podcast for a year and a half, is we've addressed, you know, bits and pieces [00:10:30] of everything that you've talked about as they've come up or as we as they become top of mind. But now, a year and a half later, it's beginning to kind of gel in my head as this overarching strategy. It's beginning to make sense to me. Whereas in in the past there were some parts of what you just said that I love, like the MailChimp integration. And there's some parts that I have not been in love with, like the shifting strategy with the accountants and QuickBooks [00:11:00] Live, but the way that they're approaching it is beginning to make sense to me that if they can provide, like for instance, just with the QuickBooks Live piece of it, which is the connect people to experts, the fact that they've taken the approach that that we as bookkeepers can sign our clients up for the QuickBooks QuickBooks Live Expert Assist so that our clients have somebody that they can just pick up the phone and call and get a better answer than straightforward [00:11:30] support, where there's actually some bookkeeping expertise on the other end. And they don't have to answer the the low end questions, and we can build it into our pricing through the revenue share that that's useful. It really is. It's on the one hand, some people are going to see it as competition, but, you know, just because, you know. Well, put it this way, you know, there's no such thing as a stupid question, but it doesn't mean that you have to be the person to answer that question. And [00:12:00] that's where QuickBooks Live comes in.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : I love the way you said that. That is a phenomenal way to approach it. Um, because a stupid question is not stupid to everybody. That's maybe, you know, so it's really easy to forget what you had to learn. So, you know, another big part that I took away from this is talking about the overall Intuit ecosystem. And I think this is an area where a lot of the listeners are going to be really interested is. So let's talk about what are the numbers increases everything else. Uh, quite [00:12:30] a few years ago, Intuit stopped breaking out in their financials. What was what money and revenue was coming for QuickBooks online versus desktop enterprise. So we no longer get those specific details. But what we do know is QuickBooks Live has actually seen A3X increase in their total customers. And what we've also seen is A4X increase in their arpc, which is the average revenue per customer [00:13:00] for live customers versus the rest of the QuickBooks online base. It kind of makes sense because the way they're charging, instead of just a subscription now they're paying for service. Everything else. Turbotax live also 11% increase in customers, 17% increase in revenue. That's that was interesting to me. Quickbooks online 11% increase in US QuickBooks online customers.

Alicia Katz Pollock: That's huge.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : Yeah. That's the so [00:13:30] the total growth that they've been seeing is has been pretty nice year over year. I'll go through these other parts. And then I've got a little tidbit about like Suzanne Suzanne's um the way he's paid and how this kind of comes into play. But, um, QuickBooks Online Advanced 28% increase in the number of subscriptions. But one of the other things that they talked about is the stick, a bit like it's it's stickier. 84% of the people that are going to QuickBooks Online [00:14:00] Advanced are sticking with it, because we were always wondering, like, maybe they try this, they get the free trial and then they bounce down. It actually has gone up another 2% this year to get to that 84%, which is impressive.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Quickbooks Online Advanced has been something that I've definitely myself shifted my perspective on that when it when it first came out, I didn't see anything. That was kind of a game changer except for some very specific people. But now with the revenue recognition and the fixed asset manager and the cash flow reporting [00:14:30] and oh my God, I love the modern reports, customization engine and spreadsheet sync like I use these on a regular basis. And so the $225 price tag, I don't for some of my clients. Now that is absolutely worth it. And this, even especially for the people who are now coming in from QuickBooks desktop, because once they shifted the price on enterprise up, now a year of advance is less than a year of enterprise. [00:15:00]

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : Oh, wow. I didn't even realize that.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yes. And I think that's why the online stats here are doubled the the increase in all the rest of them. Because now all of a sudden QuickBooks Online Advanced looks cheap compared to desktop enterprise.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : So that's that brings us to an interesting thing. Of course, the new Intuit Enterprise Suite, the best they can give us at this time because it's brand new, is estimated Arpc. Again, average revenue per customer is about 20 K, which if I do the math [00:15:30] and I'm assuming that this is what it's supposed to be, that's about $1,600 per month. There's no stated number of exactly what it's going to cost, what the details are. At least we don't know those specifics yet. But that is, of course, supposed to invoke the ability to move people from enterprise up, giving you the multi-company intercompany exchange. There's a lot of other functionality. That's their next big bet.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, that math that you just did was literally the first time that I've even heard any kind of estimate for what it might cost a month, so that [00:16:00] we were able to work backwards from the average revenue per customer at 20 K and divide it by 12. That's now we have an average number.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : One of the other things I always like to do being, you know, Alicia, you know me well. I'm a workflow person. I like to deal with the API. So I always go into the into a developer area. And because I've been trying to figure out, okay, what's going to happen, is the API going to be the same the for enterprise versus the other stuff. So if you're a company out there and you've created an app for QuickBooks online, your [00:16:30] app will still work for Intuit Enterprise Suite. But in the near future, they're planning to release certain parts of the API only for Intuit Enterprise Suite. I'm Hoping I might finally get my custom fields I've been complaining about for all these years. Anybody who's listening to this and access to all aspects of that. So that's going to be a big bet towards that. So it's it's interesting to see the progression. Um, you know, do [00:17:00] I feel that it's the same QuickBooks online I started with back in 2014 or so? No. But there's a lot like there's a lot of increased benefits and functionality within the program which has grown it. And that's why the price grows too.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Mhm.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, absolutely.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : So other areas um, workforce solutions otherwise known as payroll 23% increase in online payroll [00:17:30] revenue. And I think I forgot to kind of mention some of the top ones. Did I mention like there's 87 million consumers that are actually using the Intuit platform. There's 10 million small and midsize mid-market businesses using it. 18 million total US workers paid annually through QuickBooks payroll. It's huge, right?

Alicia Katz Pollock: The payroll is one of those that I've been teaching classes on it. I have a three hour class [00:18:00] just on on Qbo payroll, and it's one of those where if you read about it in the socials, people are like, I would never let my clients use QuickBooks Online Payroll. But it has really, really, really changed. There's a lot of new features and streamlining, and the integrations with QuickBooks time and the integrations with projects, and I'm finding less and less issues that need to be resolved. Their support is better. Everything about it is better. So [00:18:30] if you haven't actually run put put QuickBooks Online Payroll through its paces recently, you might want to take a look. As a reminder, for all of the pro advisors here, you have a free QuickBooks Online Payroll in your ProAdvisor portal. And even if you don't run payroll, you are absolutely welcome to set up a fake employee and and see what it looks like and see how it operates, and run a fake payroll and just pay them by check and then delete it and, you know, see how [00:19:00] it actually works.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : No, Alicia, I know your your course goes through in much deeper detail and up to date for the payroll stuff on my YouTube channel. We can put a link in the the notes. I did a video just a short bit back, going through an entire setup from beginning to your first payroll. It's like a three hour video that goes through all the different pieces, looks at it from the employee, the workforce, everything else. So you can start to see some of that because I agree with you. My like my personal favorite trifecta is [00:19:30] QuickBooks Online Advanced really with QuickBooks time and QuickBooks Online Payroll. The three pieces together, the way that you can map out the different service offerings through QuickBooks time and get it pulled into payroll the way you want. It's just real powerful. It's really, really powerful.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. And we'll put links to both Matthew's and my payroll and time resources in the show notes for you. Yeah.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : Now so their money portfolio is another area that increased. So money portfolio means their payments. Okay. 20% [00:20:00] increase in total payment volume equaling about $124 billion. Billion dollars. That's huge. Right.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So reinterpreting that $124 billion of the US economy was processed through QuickBooks online using QuickBooks payments merchant services. Yeah.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : The way you just said that seems even crazier. Insane, right? That's how much um, actually, if you if you want [00:20:30] to go that way, some of the other by the dollar type things. $107 billion worth of consumer tax refunds per year is going through the Intuit platform. $2 trillion. 2 trillion plus invoices managed on the platform every year. And then this is the crazy one. Here's the Credit Karma piece coming back in. And you think about that huge overarching part of it, $10.4 trillion visibility into consumer debt so they can see the [00:21:00] whole picture.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Wait a minute, wait a minute. $2 trillion in invoicing went through QuickBooks this past year.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : Yes.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : Yeah. Straight from their presentation slides. That is what they shared with us.

Alicia Katz Pollock: That's enormous. That really means that QuickBooks is kind of the backbone of all small business. I mean, I love that they're. I still want competitors. I still [00:21:30] want there to be zero and FreshBooks. But that's like that basically means that all businesses are running through this platform And that is also making me think that you've got my head spinning right now. That also now makes sense to me why the business network is such a huge opportunity, which is I'm not going to digress and go into the business network. We are planning an episode on that in the future. But wow, that's a lot to wrap your head around.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : So keep in mind, at least by [00:22:00] the way, I'm reading this when they're saying 2 trillion plus invoices and it doesn't take away from it. That's the the that means they're taking the total value of all invoices in the platform itself. That is different than sending invoices out to be collected from. Because as we talked about before, out of the 2 trillion, what was it, 124 billion, um, payments went through.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So this is including those invoices that you created and deleted and the ones that never got paid and the ones [00:22:30] that you had to void out.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : Well, I'm hopefully not. I'd like to believe that the numbers that they're putting there. But keep in mind, just because. I mean, how many people are getting paid through Zelle or this or that, or here or there or Ford or these different programs, right. That, um, instead of it being paid through their merchant processing.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Oh, okay.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : That is still revenue. So the way I would perceive it if we're reading it right is that's revenues by businesses.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Mhm. Okay.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : So that's huge. [00:23:00]

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And then you also mentioned 10.4 trillion visibility into consumer debt which is through Credit Karma's integrations. And I'm kind of I'm wrapping my head around visibility into consumer debt. And you know we've we've talked about this in the podcast before and we're going to keep talking about it now. But one of the things that really is happening, because Intuit has gone cross-platform with the whole idea of helping people put [00:23:30] more money in their pockets, is they're leveraging what Credit Karma does with helping your credit score and teaching you how to manage your money and turning it into funding sources for activity inside QuickBooks.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : Yeah. So actually, one of the other key things that Suzanne was really trying to hammer home is one of Intuit's primary goals is they want to basically double. They want businesses on their platform to save twice as much as the average [00:24:00] of the nation. They want to double that amount. They want to see their businesses saving twice as much to help people. Planning better for the future is is one of their their goals for, you know, the five year tenure type thing.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : The visibility you know, Credit Karma obviously makes sense. Buying that, seeing the accessibility of the credit. Everything else. It's a little scary to me at times as well that they they can see all this data across all aspects. Um, but there is some value to have it that way. One [00:24:30] question that did come up. So at the end of the meeting, you have the ability that if you are an actual shareholder and you've been invited to it, you can submit questions ahead of time. And the one question that really stuck out was the first one is I liked mint. What happened to mint? Are you going to create a new mint? And Susan kind of did some word salad stuff around getting back to the point of saying, no, they're not so.

Alicia Katz Pollock: That's a.Shame. I actually really liked mint as well.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : I think a lot of people did. So I mean.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And for for those of you who [00:25:00] never used mint. Mint was a free website for personal finance that basically pulled in all of your bank feeds and just automatically categorized them so that you could do your own financial management pretty darn seamlessly. And it was free because they just ran tons of ads like, oh, you would be great for this credit card, and you can get this loan. And so that's how they financed the website. But as far as just managing your personal finances without doing a whole lot of work, it was it [00:25:30] was good.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : You know, the good old saying, right. If it's free, you are the product.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Exactly.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : So I mean, it's I think there have been a couple different purchases the company has made that are about data acquisition. One of the other things that they, they noted is within the way they're doing their financials. We're not going to go too deep into this, but they are continuously adjusting the way they're reporting their financials to shareholders that what's required or not based on GAAP and some of their prior acquisitions, if they have had losses [00:26:00] on certain things where they may have made something not very great anymore, and other ones where they're still like accruing the expense, they're not going to be reporting that the exact same way anymore.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So there's some places where, you know, if you go through all the details of what they shared, there were some places where the profit went down, but that's because they're reinvesting in other areas.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : Correct.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : Exactly. So it's you know, I recommend the nice thing is you can always go back and listen to this. Afterwards I jump in, [00:26:30] I you set it up, you click the link and I'm listening to it while I'm working, and I'm just getting some information because I find the best way that I can have some control over the future of, or at least contribute towards our industry, is by listening to these things. Intuit is a platform I've chosen to work within and continue to. I still look at the different options out there, but I don't see something equivalent still at this time. So I need to know what's their vision, where are they going, so I can try to make sure we're doing the best for our clients. [00:27:00] And then if there's areas where I'm maybe not so pleased with it. Finding positive ways to work with the company to try to help steer the rudder with my little paddle on the big old USS boat or whatever to, you know, at least make sure other people are heard.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, there were a couple stats that they used throughout the presentation that I think would really be really helpful for people to understand. We mentioned Arpc average revenue per customer, and a lot [00:27:30] of that is the fact that the the different modules, the different pillars are beginning to talk to each other. Like if you have a if QuickBooks Live suggests that they try MailChimp in order to communicate, then that's raising the average revenue per customer. But that's a good recommendation because the client might not have seen it otherwise.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : They're paying attention to the stickiness across the platforms, like you just said. So people that are [00:28:00] using there's been a 22% increase, I believe, between the people using MailChimp and QuickBooks online, both platforms together. There was I think it was A5X, if I remember correctly, the amount of people that are if they're using Credit Karma that are now getting their taxes done through TurboTax software, TurboTax live. So this is kind of what you're talking about is by starting to connect these different pieces, they're increasing that average revenue per customer, um, to to really boost up the [00:28:30] revenues for the business, of course.

Alicia Katz Pollock: No. And that's smart business. It's all about leveraging your resources whenever, whenever you're trying to grow your business, it's always looking at how you can, you know, if you already have a customer, your customer acquisition costs are way cheaper to upsell them to something else, another service, than it is to bring on a new customer. So all of this makes sense financially?

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : Yep.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : Yeah that kind of leads into one of the other things. If you go to the presentation, we won't dive into it too much. But like they talk about the total addressable market, [00:29:00] which for those listening.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : That's the idea of you're bringing something out there. And if you were to actually capture 100% of the market, what would be the total potential and what percentage of it do you have?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. The total addressable market, its abbreviation is Tam. When you see it in the in the presentation or hear about it, that one is particular with them for MailChimp, which doesn't have a huge adoption yet with it even within the QuickBooks ecosystem. And then also the [00:29:30] role of Intuit Enterprise Suite in the mid-market, that this is new turf for them that, you know, originally when they came out with QuickBooks Online Advanced, they called that their mid-market product. And then they very quickly realized that it's not really mid-market. It's still either top end of small business or low end of mid-market. And it didn't really address mid-market. But now that's where they're going. And they have very little revenue market not revenue [00:30:00] share. They have very little market share there because it's brand new turf. So you know that's that's where they want to send their attention.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : Yeah they they believe it's about a 5% from the large market opportunity. They've got about a 5% Tam at this time. Interesting. What can be done. So what do you think about all this.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, so what I think about it is that Intuit is really well positioned for continuing to be one of the largest financial [00:30:30] management corporations as well as tech companies out there like on par with right now, they're a step below Microsoft and Apple, but those are also hardware. This is all software, but they are like getting right up there.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : I would agree. And year after year, you know, one of the things I kind of teased about before there was some comments in the media about Suzanne Goodarzi CEO compensation, because this is one of the parts of the the [00:31:00] meeting real quickly. And I didn't realize this, that apparently within this normal realm, usually it's about a 15% salary and 85% stock option is how CEOs are paid. Well, Suzanne is actually kind of doubled down on skin in the game. His is about a 7% salary and 93% stock option. So when the stock is doing great, which it obviously has. He looks like he looks like [00:31:30] he's getting paid more and more than everybody else. But he he made that bet. He hedged the bet and believed into himself and his team that they were going to continue to do well and grow well. And so if the stock dropped, he wouldn't be making as much. But it's interesting to see that because I never realized that, that it's a decision you make. He's got skin in the game from that side for sure.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I actually find that reassuring because one of the things that I've, you know, economically that I don't believe in is one of the problems that we have in capitalism in general is that it used [00:32:00] to work when the owner in classic capitalism, the owner only made 35 times the lowest worker. And in today's world that's, you know, super low and super high and all the money that either should be in the worker's hands or should be going to development is going into the pockets of the CEOs. So the fact that Suzanne's compensation is not based on is smaller percentage of flat rate salary, and is [00:32:30] more based on his own performance in growing the company. I'm happy to have him have that money because it's helping the helping the company grow. So I appreciate that about Intuit is is that and hopefully that's the way the compensation is done for all of the VP's and the different departments. Because if that's true, then they're not getting paid based on our subscriptions.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : Yep. You know, I've always said this for some time as an accountant, we get these certain [00:33:00] points as we have different users, that you get all these points to get better support and so forth. And when you've got a bigger company, the points only go so far. I would love in the future if they transitioned that to do some kind of a stock option opportunity, even if it was a second tier type of stock. Imagine they did something like that and then they had these price increases. We could avoid all the complaining about the price increases because everybody will be like woohoo!

Alicia Katz Pollock: Hoo! What's not to like?

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : So, um, Susannah, if you want to talk about that more, [00:33:30] reach out.

Alicia Katz Pollock: That's definitely an interesting idea. But that does kind of come to the point where we say, okay, well, since all of our audience here are obviously all in on QuickBooks and care enough to come here to get their news and learn how to use the product best, let's all go buy stock. Let's together drive up the stock price and do better for ourselves based on the helping our clients succeed through what Intuit is putting into place. [00:34:00]

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : Love it.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : So well. I love it. Thank you for allowing me to cover this. Uh, this topic. I know it's, um, can be a bit nerdy for some, but I just, like I said before, I really believe it's important to understand, um, since it's a core, uh, foundation part of my business, to recognize what's going on with the company and to to advise my clients as well.

Alicia Katz Pollock: You don't have to worry about being nerdy around here. I mean, we're the official QuickBooks accountants podcast. It's kind of a given.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : Love it.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : So, [00:34:30] Alicia, you know, I know you've always got amazing courses and everything else going on all the time. What do you have up on the horizon for you?

Alicia Katz Pollock: I am currently in preparation for my Transaction Center class, which is formally been just the banking feeds, but now it really is the whole in all the tabs across the top when you go into the transaction center. So it's a three hour class where I completely go into everything about the bank feed itself, all [00:35:00] the settings, all the best practices, and then I go into receipts and reconciling and all the other features that are across the across the top. But this is one of those classes that I think everybody should take, because the hallmark of QuickBooks online is the banking feeds automation. And the truth is, is that either it's your best friend and will save hours of your time, or it is your worst nightmare and will cost you thousands of dollars and hours to clean up. [00:35:30] And my goal is to have everybody use it correctly and to know all the things that it can do to automate your workflows. And so this is a class that both bookkeepers can take and Proadvisors can take, but it's also a class that the business owners.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Can take as well. So you can send your business, your clients to this. So if you have clients who are mucking up the bank feeds and they have their hands in the books, this is a great way of freeing up your time because they will be using it properly. [00:36:00] So you can head over to learn.com and click on our calendar. The upcoming class is on March 4th, but all of my classes are also recorded, so if you can't make that particular date and time, sign up anyway because you will be have the recording and full access to the recording. It's also CPE three CPE for attending. All right. And spot. How about you?

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : You know, for me, coming up pretty quick, I'm. I'm [00:36:30] super happy to announce I've been joining our good friend Dan DeLong on the Power Hour every other Tuesday. And it's, you know, it's so fun to be a part of that. It's that's a big part of how I grew into this whole industry. I remember when I got started, I was sitting there working away and watching, you know, first it was Hector and Michelle and watching all this stuff and learning from it, and then it became Michelle and Dan. So I'm happy to be a part of that. So you can catch me there every other Tuesday with Dan. And then I've also got my Facebook [00:37:00] group, QB Community Live. It's a Facebook group kind of focused around accounting professionals, a great place that if you've got questions, challenges, you can reach out, ask questions there, and have other people to help answer questions for you instead of having to call some support line. So those are two big things I've got going all the time.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, thank you for all the resources that you provide to the community and places to ask questions and end learn. And you know, we all support each other and it really helps build a community. And that's one thing that's really special [00:37:30] about QuickBooks and Intuit and this ecosystem is that even though it's all financial stuff, we're really person centered, you know, people centered in a way that other industries and other software solutions really aren't. And that's why I love what I do.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : As you know, I always like to say together we all succeed.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : So.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: All right. Well, thank you for joining me today. And thank you for going through the Intuit annual stockholders meeting. And we will be.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : Back again [00:38:00] soon. Maybe the next one. We do a quarterly one. We can do an update as well as some of the other in the know topics.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : Looking forward to those.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I think we've got an in the know coming up in the next week or so, so we will see you in the next one.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton : See you in the next one.