Reimagined QuickBooks Online Accountant Helps Accounting Professionals and Clients Succeed

Yesterday, in front of more than 1,000 accounting professionals at QuickBooks Connect 2014, Intuit Inc. (Nasdaq: INTU) unveiled the new QuickBooks Online Accountant, a global solution specially designed to save accountants time, grow their practice and transform how they communicate with and deliver value to their clients.

QuickBooks Online Accountant is Intuit’s most significant product offering ever to help accounting professionals and their clients succeed. Reinventing the way client information is managed and shared, QuickBooks Online Accountant helps accounting professionals collaborate with clients and gain insights like never before. More than 705,000 companies around the world subscribe to QuickBooks Online, and 115,000 accounting professionals currently use QuickBooks Online Accountant, making it the clear number-one cloud accounting solution for small businesses and accounting professionals.

“The biggest moment for accounting professionals in QuickBooks history has arrived,” said Jim McGinnis, vice president, Intuit Accountant and Advisor Group. “The reimagined QuickBooks Online Accountant is inspired by our accounting partners because they’ve told us it is all about their time. It's their time to move to the cloud and be recognized as trusted advisors and experts to their small business clients. We’re delighted to provide the solution that gives them valuable time back and bolsters their pride in confidently helping their clients succeed.”

Confidently Helping Clients Succeed

The new QuickBooks Online Accountant is designed to deliver on the Intuit QuickBooks vision to be the operating system behind small business success, while also helping accounting professionals save time and grow their practice. The new product’s core capabilities focus on three areas: seamlessly exposing tools and insights to accounting professionals, allowing them to seamlessly work with all their employees and clients, and transforming how they grow their practice.

Seamlessly Exposes Tools and Insights to Accounting Professionals

• New Customizable Dashboard: highlights what needs attention via alerts, to-dos and recent activities. It provides one-click access to clients’ books and payroll to help accounting professionals take immediate action.
• New Bookkeeping and Payroll Detail Tabs: allows accounting professionals to see at-a-glance reconciliation information, transactions requiring attention, due dates and tax filings.
• New Accountant Toolbox: enables easy access to accountant-only tools such as batch reconciliation, re-classify transactions and Books-to-Tax from within any client’s books. Also enables one-click access to any client from anywhere within QuickBooks Online Accountant.
• Enhanced Free QuickBooks Online Plus w/Payroll: Free subscription of QuickBooks Online Plus, included with QuickBooks Online Accountant, now includes Payroll to help accounting professionals manage firm’s books and pay employees.

Work Seamlessly With Employees and Clients

• New Client Document Center (scheduled availability early 2015): powered by Box, the hub allows users to request and receive documents from clients directly inside QuickBooks Online Accountant. After an initial one time setup and account linkage with a free 10GB Box account, users can view all requests and documents by client and easily keep track of what is received or outstanding.
• New Employee Access Controls: designates firm roles and permissions that define the level of access (full, custom or restricted) an employee can have to clients’ books.
• New Management Reports: enables creation of customizable, professional-looking and firm-branded management reports that can be easily saved and shared with clients.
• Enhanced Books-to-Tax: enables QuickBooks Online accounts to be easily mapped to tax accounts. Users can then make tax-only adjustments inside QuickBooks Online Accountant and seamlessly push the bookkeeping data to Intuit Tax Online to generate a tax return.

Transforms How Accounting Professionals Grow Their Practice

• New QuickBooks ProAdvisor Program Integrated into QuickBooks Online Accountant: allows QuickBooks ProAdvisors to access their membership details directly from within QuickBooks Online Accountant. ProAdvisors can track certifications, the number of clients they have, view available training materials and make changes to their Find-a-ProAdvisor listing.
• Enhanced Wholesale Pricing: exclusively for QuickBooks Online Accountant users, accounting professionals can now bundle payroll to their clients’ QuickBooks Online subscription. Through QuickBooks Online Accountant, accounting professionals can offer their clients a 50 percent off the life of their QuickBooks Online subscription (for a special limited time) and enjoy consolidated, monthly billing for all their wholesale pricing clients.

“This is what we’ve all been waiting for! I am really excited about the new QuickBooks Online Accountant,” said Michelle Long, founder of Long for Success, Inc. and internationally-renowned QuickBooks Online trainer. “The business insights it provides coupled with the firm management and time savings capabilities really pave the way for accounting professionals to transform the way they work so they can truly be trusted advisors to their clients.”

Time to Become an Expert

The new QuickBooks Online Accountant is a global solution that is scheduled to be available to new users starting in early December 2014, and will roll out to customers around the world throughout early 2015. Current QuickBooks Online Accountant customers will begin to have access to the new product over the next few months.

“We know from experience that accounting professionals want time to become familiar with new offerings before they are publicly available,” said McGinnis. “We listened and will offer a variety of ways to help accounting professionals become experts with the new offering including training sessions, videos, and weekly product webinars that highlight new features.”

QuickBooks Online Accountant is free for the first 180 days, starting from the date of enrollment. After the first 180 days, users automatically maintain free, full access to QuickBooks Online Accountant if they have an active ProAdvisor membership or at least one current QuickBooks Online client on their QuickBooks Online Accountant client list. For full offer details visit http://intuitaccountants.com/announcement.

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About Intuit Inc.

Intuit Inc. creates business and financial management solutions that simplify the business of life for small businesses, consumers and accounting professionals.

Its flagship products and services include QuickBooks®, Quicken® and TurboTax®, which make it easier to manage small businesses and payroll processing, personal finance, and tax preparation and filing. Mint.com provides a fresh, easy and intelligent way for people to manage their money, while Demandforce® offers marketing and communication tools for small businesses. ProSeries® and Lacerte® are Intuit's leading tax preparation offerings for professional accountants.

Founded in 1983, Intuit had revenue of $4.5 billion in its fiscal year 2014. The company has approximately 8,000 employees with major offices in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, India and other locations. More information can be found at www.intuit.com.