Intuit Inc. and Salesforce.com have formed a strategic alliance that will result in the creation of a new application merging customer relationship and financial management to allow QuickBooks customers to use cloud-based CRM to save time and close more deals.

The yet to be released application will provide information to those in sales and management to eliminate data entry in two different systems, showing aggregated customer information alongside the probability for deal closure. The application is expected to be available this summer, with pricing to be announced at launch time. Once available, it will be featured in the Intuit App Center.

In addition, as a part of the strategic alliance, Intuit will resell Salesforce CRM with QuickBooks integration, synchronizing customer data with QuickBooks and QuickBooks Online.

“This alliance will create offerings that allow small businesses to better manage their customers and deals,” said Dan Wernikoff, vice president and general manager of Intuit’s Financial Management Solutions division. “With thousands of small businesses using QuickBooks and Salesforce, this is a great way for two industry leaders to leverage the next era of cloud computing to help small businesses grow.”

This news is also seen as an advantage to midmarket accounting and financial management services provider FinancialForce.com, which is partly owned by Salesforce.com. FinancialForce president and chief executive Jeremy Roche said that his company does not compete directly with QuickBooks and, in fact many FinancialForce users are larger companies that upgrade to FinancialForce from QuickBooks.

“We think it’s great news for FinancialForce.com and the Force.com community,” said Roche. “It’s nice to see an industry player such as Intuit branching further into the cloud, and customers of all sizes now have market-leading cloud based financial and CRM apps to choose from. The demand for cloud accounting solutions is growing fast and reaching all corners of the market. QuickBooks provides an excellent entry-level accounting system for very small businesses, a market which FinancialForce.com doesn’t serve. We believe the Intuit and Salesforce.com partnership will bring more companies to the Force.com platform—creating prospects for FinancialForce.com as those customers grow.”