Intuit announced a bevy of new and upcoming features and enhancements to its suite of products during its most recent user conference in Las Vegas, most of which center around AI and automation.
Many of these enhancements are made specifically with accountants in mind. With regards to QuickBooks Online Accountant, the company’s vision is to provide a personalized space for accounting firms with accountant-specific workflows and robust client management capabilities that span multiple clients. This hub may include a client console that provides access to client data to improve decision-making and speed-to-action to better serve clients; advanced role-based access controls and permissions; and a dashboard and file review experience that automatically surfaces anomalies across all clients and tracks and enables closing books at scale.
Accounting firms will also now be able to subscribe their clients to QuickBooks Live offerings through QuickBooks Online Accountant, freeing up time for accountants by connecting businesses to QuickBooks Online-certified experts to educate them on how to set up and manage their business within the platform as well as answer questions on specialized topics such as business tax and payroll tax compliance. Each time a client wraps up a call with a QuickBooks Live expert, the accountant has access to a call summary, providing transparency on topics discussed.
Accountants will also be able to use QuickBooks Live Expert Full-Service Bookkeeping, which offers them the ability to outsource ongoing bookkeeping work to a dedicated bookkeeper, who works directly with the client to perform monthly tasks. A dedicated bookkeeper will get to know the business, bring past books up to date, and manage the monthly bookkeeping, complementing a firm’s client engagements beyond scope or if they are tax-only. QuickBooks will also provide access to a QuickBooks-certified bookkeeper to bring a business’s books up-to-date within 30 days, going back to their most recent tax filing.
Beyond new capacities for QuickBooks Online Accountant, QuickBooks itself now includes AI-enabled transaction categorization and matching within QuickBooks Online; Intuit Assist, the generative AI assistance in QuickBooks, will soon have the ability to auto-generate invoices, estimates, bills, and expenses, and auto-draft invoice reminders that help get small businesses paid on time.
Meanwhile, within QuickBooks Online Payroll, the software can now calculate and withdraw payroll tax liabilities as they increase, such as at the time of a payroll run, and pay agencies when taxes are due; the software will inform businesses which taxes are being filed and paid automatically and which need to be handled manually. The product also now supports the ability to schedule compensation changes in advance and set up employees with multiple different pay types (i.e. salary and hourly). A new History tab also allows employers to easily view historical employee information, including position and compensation data. Users can also make bulk changes to multiple employees at once, saving significant time and clicks, especially for larger customers. Payroll professionals, meanwhile, can now access paycheck corrections, which allows them to fix errors even after payroll has been processed and the quarter is closed. Additionally, a new HR Manager role has been introduced, assigning a user access to all QuickBooks Payroll, QuickBooks Time, and HR functionality without access to the company’s finances in QuickBooks Online.
Also, select QuickBooks customers will soon be able to unlock referrals, reviews, testimonials, and customer growth recommendations with QuickBooks Customer Hub, powered by Mailchimp in the Customers Tab within QuickBooks Online.
Intuit also brought up its Enterprise Suite for businesses (see previous story), plus its reimagined Pro Advisor Academy (see previous story).
“Intuit and our accounting partners have a shared goal of helping businesses grow,” said Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi. “Together, we serve the financial needs of millions of shared customers, and by harnessing the power of AI, we’re delivering a connected platform for accountants and their clients that save them time, drive more informed business decisions with predictive analytics and insights, and help them thrive as they expand.”