While this may sound like a minor semantic adjustment, he said it changes everything. For many years, he said, accountants have primarily been seen as an important partner channel to reach new customers. Going forward, the accountants themselves are the customers. He said that when a business chooses an accountant, they want that accountant to be at the center of the relationship, and Intuit's role will be to help strengthen that relationship. This means a shift in focus toward helping accountants onboard new clients by ensuring they're set up to use all available services like payments, bill pay and workforce solutions, he said.
"We are here to be your partner, not compete with you," he said.
This means several things on a more practical level. For one, in acknowledgement that there has been friction between the company and accounting firms over QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping being seen as direct competition, Intuit will change how it markets bookkeeping and similar services. In short, it won't.
"We are stopping marketing any sort of bookkeeping or similar services to businesses that work with an accountant," said Ashley Still, general manager of the small business and mid-market group for Intuit. "This could be businesses that are client built or firm built. Doesn't matter. If a business works with an accountant, we will not market any bookkeeping or similar types of services to that business. Full stop."
She added that those businesses that do not yet have an accountant—pointing out that tens of thousands of such businesses join Intuit's platform every month—will still have access to Intuit experts who can help them with simple bookkeeping questions until they do. However, she noted that Intuit is also building a network with firms where it will actually be able to match businesses with accountants when they want one.
"We can actually match the tens of thousands of businesses that come to our platform every month that don't have an accountant with a firm who's going to be much better suited to provide those services on more of an ongoing basis, so I think we can reduce the immediate friction. We're really excited about co-building this future where we can actually help firms grow their businesses by matching them with new businesses," she said.
This will be contingent on the tier that someone has in the upcoming ProPartner Accountants program,
Jaclyn Anku, who leads the program, said the new tier system is designed to scale with firms as they grow with Intuit. Intuit ProPartner Accountants will offer a total of five tiers with escalating benefits, including the aforementioned client matching.
"At the heart of growth are people, clients who need your support to navigate their finances with confidence," she said. "We acquire thousands of new customers every week. Today, those customers find their way to an accountant on their own, or they don't. We're changing that. We will actively match customers to certified ProPartners based on your expertise and focus. You can grow your ideal firm, and businesses get access to accountants and advisors who can help guide their growth and success."
To reach partner status, she said, a firm will need at least one person who's certified and at least one client connected to Intuit Accountant Suite. From there, they can climb even higher through earning points. Firms can earn points through activities such as completing additional certifications, using more Intuit products across their firm and connecting more clients this fall.
"At the heart of growth are people, clients who need your support to navigate their finances with confidence," she said. "We acquire thousands of new customers every week. Today, those customers find their way to an accountant on their own, or they don't. We're changing that. We will actively match customers to certified ProPartners based on your expertise and focus, you can grow your ideal firm, and businesses get access to accountants and advisors who can help guide their growth and success."
The CEO said Intuit's new orientation can be seen in the major investment of time and money it made to roll out Intuit Accountant Suite
"We are all-in to invest in your growth," said Goodarzi. "Us, we invest billions of dollars every year in data, AI and the capabilities that power our platform. Very few have the wherewithal to invest at these levels. We have been putting that investment to work for you."
Changes and upgrades
Beyond these internal strategic changes, Intuit also discussed major upgrades, enhancements and new offerings, much of it based on direct user feedback and requests.
One is multi-tab browsing, which is now in limited beta. Users will be able to keep their client list open in one tab and their client books in another for "up to four clients at once," according to Carla Uribe, accountant product strategy leader at Intuit. If someone is also using Intuit Enterprise Suite, they will also be able to switch between different entities in a multi-entity client without losing their place.
Another is that the Resolution Center now shows both the user's firm and the client's support cases in one place so people can resolve issues without leaving the suite.
There is also going to be a unified collaboration system so that, whenever there is any information users directly need from a client like a transaction detail or a missing document, they can respond directly from a secure portal with all correspondence landing in the collaboration inbox. Intuit Intelligence will do the "chasing and validating" for the user.
Another change is cross-client insights, which provides a practice summary on a main landing page made up of relevant insights across the client portfolio in order to determine what needs attention when. This is also where users can monitor KPIs across any groups of clients they choose; those KPIs now also include Pro Connect tax data as well as some key payroll and bill pay data. The platform will alert the user on areas that require attention, for example, if a client's expenses have recently spiked. The data can be interrogated via a conversational chat experience so people can ask questions, compare ideas and explore "what-if" scenarios. The software will be able to not only directly compare profit margins, but also provide an analysis of key numbers, implications and impact.
There are also new customization options. Each firm, said Uribe, has a unique set of rules that guides its team's work, which is why Intuit has built firm templates with several customization vectors to start, which are meant to provide flexibility to tailor and streamline processes to the firm's actual work. Once a user selects a template to edit, the template builder assists with adapting the default for how their client's QuickBooks is set up based on industry.
"For construction, you can switch between or edit relevant chart of account templates, accounting policies and firm settings," said Uribe. "You can then publish to all your construction clients' QuickBooks accounts, and this is just the beginning. We will continue adding more customizations. For example, in the future, you'll be able to publish your own reports with your personalized KPIs and dashboards directly to your clients."
She also pointed to new automation options, such as with Books Close. Users can choose to turn on automation for specific clients and see which skills or recurring automations are scheduled to run for them. Once the skills run, actions will be automatically posted for review, such as confirming whether duplicates that were flagged. People can view and then approve them, or prompt the AI if they want to find out more or edit the action. People can use out-of-box skills such as fixed assets, depreciation and customer refunds or create brand new skills, change prompts and schedule them for clients.
Further over the horizon, Uribe said Intuit plans to launch an Agent Studio where people can create their own AI agents to deploy across clients. People will be able to select from previously built agents, such as a cash position monitor, or ones built specifically for a client, like a retainage agent for a civil infrastructure firm that tracks cash held back across dozens of contracts until each job is accepted.
Arundhati Singh, who leads product design and data science for small businesses and accountants, noted that through software optimization Intuit has improved homepage load times by 18%. The company has also improved bank feed accuracy for transaction categorization from 78% to nearly 88%, which he said was a real step change.
Bank feeds, he said, can also now be customized for which fields appear in which order so teams can work through transactions the way they want. They've also improved PayPal transaction matching so QuickBooks now recognizes when a bank deposit and a PayPal transaction are the same; the platform will handle the matching once the transaction is posted on PayPal, or vice versa. Intuit has also introduced accounting locking, which lets users block posting to accounts that should not be touched, so the chart of accounts stays intact without someone having to monitor it.
There are also now KPI scorecards and pre-built dashboards in both Essentials and Plus.
"Everything you heard came from you, your requests, your feedback, your sessions with our teams. Keep it coming. We're listening, and it's making a difference," he said.
Singh also discussed upcoming enhancements to core workflows, starting with onboarding. Intuit Intelligence will be able to tailor the setup to a client's business in coordination with an Intuit onboarding expert who is available to coach them through the setup, so by the time they land on the homepage, the pre-work will be done and they'll be able to see the tasks they want to get done first. Soon, he continued, businesses working with an accountant will be able to attach their accountant's information right in the setup flow as part of this intelligent onboarding.
QuickBooks will also personalize the chart of accounts based on industry for any business where the firm doesn't use its own custom template.
Intuit also plans to launch expert verified auto categorization to remove tedious manual work. AI will take the first pass at categorizing transactions based on the specific business and its configuration. This AI categorization is reviewed and verified in the background by an Intuit expert. High-confidence transactions are posted, and anything uncertain is flagged back to the business owner for review with a bookkeeping summary. Additionally, advanced customers will be able to access regular Intuit expert check-ins to help ensure books stay continuously clean and insight-ready.
Singh reiterated the point that, when a business chooses a specific accountant, they will remain at the center of the relationship, and Intuit will not go around it. The bookkeeping services are off by default if the business has an accountant already and Intuit will not market it to them if they do turn on the setting.
"We encourage them to discuss with you first before activating the service. If a self-built client still chooses to turn it on, we will notify you, and for firm-built clients, you have the ability to enable it. What I shared is just a start," he said, adding that Intuit later plans to introduce more controls at the firm service and client level, and enable full transparency into any work Intuit does on their behalf for their clients.
Singh also announced that the Intuit business credit card, which was previewed in February, is now live. There's no annual fee, 2% unlimited cash back, and 5% back on Intuit products and services. There's also a welcome bonus and multiple exclusive partner discounts. It is made to interact with QuickBooks. When a client opens the card, it automatically links to their QuickBooks Online account. Transactions sync directly to the bank feed, and attached receipts show up in line, with no need for separate credentials.
Clients will also be able to directly chat with Intuit Intelligence to better understand their business performance and get insight into trends based on their real-time data. There is no need for a report builder, nor for exports from the cash balance on their homepage. A client can click "view forecast" and then QuickBooks builds a projection based on their own ledger and benchmarks from similar businesses.
"From the forecast, the business can think through a scenario," said Singh. "What if I hire two sales reps in Q1? QuickBooks helps put structure to the answer and shows the potential impact on their projected net income and what it does to their baseline. We know business owners are turning to AI for answers, and we want Intuit's AI to be the one that you and your clients can trust."
