New Year, New Innovations!

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

Alicia Katz Pollock: Welcome everyone, to this week's episode of the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast. I am kind of excited because guess what? It's 2026 New Year Fresh start. Uh, so I'm Alicia Pollock from Royal Comm, and I've got with me Dan DeLong of School of Bookkeeping comm and the QB Power Hour. And what's your, um, [00:00:30] your Facebook group called.

Dan DeLong: Uh, the QB Power Users Group.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And so we are, uh, this week's episode is actually perfect for a January 1st episode. And so new year, new innovations. This is that episode I've been kind of threatening now for six weeks, about all of the notes that I took when I was at Intuit Connect and down in the Innovation Circle and talking to all the [00:01:00] developers about all the new features that they are rolling out and developing. We've talked about we've touched on a couple of these over the last couple of weeks, and now what Dan and I are actually doing is poring through all of my notes, which is how many pages of notes do I have here? 27 pages of notes. And we are in. Yeah, exactly. We're interpreting my fast typed scrawl because I literally dictated as they were talking. So everything that [00:01:30] we're telling you was translated from my ear to the page. Some of it is complete gibberish. And we're trying to figure out what I actually meant. And some of it is actually pretty cool and worth talking about. So we are going to start off with one of my very favorite topics and what I consider the hallmark of QuickBooks online, and that is the bank feed. Or in the new speak, this is the Accounting agents.

Dan DeLong: Right? [00:02:00]

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So let's talk about the accounting agents. This conversation was with Kirsten Thulborn and Jason Worth, who are two of the developers that I really enjoy working with. So are you ready, then?

Dan DeLong: All right, let's dig in. All right.

Alicia Katz Pollock: All right. So, uh. All right, so the first thing is that those sparkles that are on every single line indicating the AI in the banking feed don't give us much information. And they're kind of just visual clutter. So they are replacing [00:02:30] them. They are going to be icons. And so if the AI has high confidence based on the history, and it's pretty darn sure it knows what's going on, it's going to have a green check mark on it. If there's not enough information available like the vendors not on the list, it's going to have a blue eye circle. You know, those little information circles. And if it has no history and it's just guessing it's going to put up a red exclamation point. So [00:03:00] we're going to know with the confidence level of the suggestions.

Dan DeLong: Yeah, I like I like this I think this is really, uh, a good, good usage because I think initially, you know, that sparkle, um, was supposed to be an indicator of a, of a suggestion. Right? And I think by and large, uh, those suggestions because as you mentioned, you know, in the past, you know, with the AI, um, and the accounting agency, the accounting agent [00:03:30] being in its infancy, uh, some of the suggestions were not accurate. Right. So, so I think some people are kind of desensitized to oh, okay. Is a is AI actually doing anything here? You know, I'm going to have to check it anyway. This gives some further context to what that suggestion might actually be. Um, and kind of going back to what, what it used to be where it would say rule and then you know, and have an indication [00:04:00] with it or highlighted in green from the from the legacy bank feed. So having some color coding uh, context I think is a is a great, great beginning to allowing people to, to work with the accounting agent.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. And having that level of confidence gives us the confidence to know whether the AI can be trusted, that if the AI is telling us, it's not sure that goes a long way.

Dan DeLong: Right?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. [00:04:30] All right. Now, this isn't going to be released right away. And the reason why they are not releasing it immediately is because they're still not happy with the speed of the banking feed, that because there's a lot of drop downs and a lot of draws and a lot of information being processed, it's a little slower than they would like it to. So one thing that they have done is they've made it so that the page is now loading all the data and information first and then the visuals, like the sparkles and the icons and the graphics are coming in second. [00:05:00] That way it doesn't hold us up while it's while it's loading the page.

Dan DeLong: Yeah. The, um, I think that's a great way to approach it. Um, I think in, in, in the grand scheme of things in, in, I don't think it's just QuickBooks, but I've, I've noticed it in QuickBooks when things come in phases like that of of how they are loading. Uh, you see something on the screen, you go to click it and then the screen jumps and then you actually clicked [00:05:30] on something else. Hopefully that is not, um, what is going to occur, um, with, with this, uh, phased approach that they're taking with the, with the loading screen.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, that did happen to me once too. Fortunately, it hasn't been a regular occurrence, though. Yeah. Okay. Um, then the next thing that they're going to do is if you have a disconnected bank account, you're going to be able to send a request to your your business [00:06:00] owner to update their bank information themselves. And what it's going to do is send an email from inside QBO using your attached email account. And so the message is going to come from you with your email address, but it is going to be on Intuit letterhead in their formatted style. But what's nice is that they're not going to require QBO login. You're going to be able to just go send them a message, they can put in the bank information and you're back in business.

Dan DeLong: Yeah, that's a that's a huge win. I think [00:06:30] if you can do something, especially if it's like mobile friendly and they can get an alert, uh, do it on their phone, you know, type of thing, you know, especially if they're out and about, you can meet them where they're at and then, oh, crap, I got to log in to QBO to reconnect my bank feed. I'll never get to it. And lo and behold, you're sitting there waiting.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And waiting, and can't get the workdone.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. All right. The next thing we've touched on this, I actually talked [00:07:00] about it a little bit in last week's look what I found episode is about the client requests. Those are those little speech bubbles where if you don't know how to categorize something, you can actually ask. And what they are rolling out right now is the ability to assign who the request goes to. And right now you can set it up. And I think they do need a login at the moment if you want multiple people, if it's just one person, you can send it out and they don't need a login. But the [00:07:30] setting that we talked about last week said that if you want multiple people, you have to have logins. And I think right now they just haven't worked out any other way to specify the who on it. Um, so they'll they're they're working on it. That's going to be kind of a work in progress step by step by step.

Dan DeLong: Um, did they mention anything about, uh, being able to address these things without, um, like being able to respond to the requests without, uh, without logging into [00:08:00] into QuickBooks to do it. Or is it, um, also requiring them to sign in?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, the the original premise is that we could ask and they wouldn't have to log in and it would just send them a request and they can fill it out and it will populate it for you. And I think that's still true. I think the nut that they're trying to crack is if you're trying to pick who to send it to, like if the charge is on an employee's credit card, you want to send it to that employee. And does that employee have a login or not? So right [00:08:30] now we have more questions than answers. Um, so as it starts rolling out, we will actually give you real information instead of our, um, you know, gibberish chicken scratch on a on from.

Dan DeLong: Well, you are also you mentioning this as client requests. So I when I, when I read this off of your notes, I was thinking of client requests from work, you know, from the, the the the the QBO perspective. And there you can, uh, mention certain people. Uh, but [00:09:00] but I think it's that's your team.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah.

Dan DeLong: Necessarily. Uh, the client.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Right.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah.

Dan DeLong: That's they can do that for the team in QBO. They should be able to, you know, leverage the same type of function in inside of Qbo.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. No, the dream would be that if we have a charge from an employee that we don't know, it's for that we can ask the employee and not the business owner. So that's the that's the dream.

Dan DeLong: Got it.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Um, one thing that they are also working [00:09:30] on is that these client requests won't just send you the information. Eventually, uh, the they'll have a dropdown and the business owner can or the person answering the request can actually pick from the dropdowns for the payee and the class and the account, and then eventually it will even populate it for you. And then I think all you have to do is approve, or maybe it'll just be done. Um, so they are trying to streamline that as much as possible. But again, it's going to [00:10:00] take several phases for that rollout to.

Dan DeLong: Yeah, yeah. This is always the, uh, the dream state of like not even going into your QuickBooks, just, you know, doing things in reality. And then that comes back to QuickBooks, uh, in, in the grand scheme of things.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: All right. Then the next thing that they mentioned is that they now have an agreement with Mastercard. And I did see a button for this in one of the files at the very, very top. So it's currently being rolled out. But what it does is [00:10:30] if you have a transaction on your Mastercard, it's going to send you a text message with a reminder for you to take a picture of the receipt, and then it will attach the receipt to the transaction. That's really cool. So that way, you know, if you're chasing receipts from your employees. If they get a text as soon as they run the charge, they can right? Then answer the text with the image and it will it will populate the attachment.

Dan DeLong: Yeah. That's, um, that's something I really liked about, uh, file, [00:11:00] uh, the, the expense management software where once you had your cards connected, anybody uses that card, it sends them a text, and then, hey, it looks like you used your card. Would you like to attach a picture of his feet? Because everybody knows how to use their phone to take a picture of a receipt and send it via text. I mean, how many low quality pictures of your dessert have you taken and posted on Facebook? Right. And we've all done that right. So [00:11:30] this overcomes the barrier of using an app to collect those receipts. And, uh, for employees who, you know, may or may not be, you know, technically challenged, um, this is a great thing because it sends them the text reminder. They take a picture, they reply to the text, and then they're done right, like they don't have to log again. They don't have to log into a software. It's like, oh no, I forgot my password. Right. So it's all of those things, [00:12:00] you know, I would love this not just to be a Mastercard thing, but you got to start somewhere.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Right?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So if we want it to be visa, uh, we, we have to pressure into it and into it has to pressure visa. But, you know, at least they're starting with, with Mastercard, the big affinity program.

Dan DeLong: Yeah. I mean file started with visa, Mastercard and American Express was on the back burner. Right. So same thing.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. Gotta start somewhere.

Dan DeLong: Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: All right. So [00:12:30] those are great innovations to the banking feed. I will get to continue to be a bank feeds geek. And we'll let you know as these things continue rolling out. The next booth that I stopped at was for protests and I talked to drew. Amen. And so now there's a couple different tax softwares from Intuit. There's Pro Series, Pro Connect tax and Assert. I'm pretty sure we're talking about Pro Pro Connect tax here. Um, [00:13:00] now I have to preface all of this with I don't do taxes. I don't use the tools inside QBO Dan, do you.

Dan DeLong: Know I do not either. But, um, you know, I used I used to support the program, but I didn't do the pro I didn't do the, the actual return.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. So that means basically I'm just going to read off of my notes. And those of you who do tax will be like, oh wow, that's really cool. And the rest of us will be like, la la la la la. Okay, so here we go. Uh, [00:13:30] so Intuit Accountant Suite is soon going to have increased integration with Pro Connect tax. You're going to be able to upload documents. You're going to be able to do your prep and then pass everything off to your tax preparer. It will collect e-file authorizations. You'll be able to group your lists by client type. And then they're also adding an Intuit tax advisor, which will actually read your 1040 and then come up with tax saving strategies. The [00:14:00] new client insights will are due to arrive in January in time for tax season, but the rest of the innovations they're going to wait until after tax season. So you'll see them starting to roll out in June 2026.

Dan DeLong: Now the Intuit tax advisor Alicia, did they talk about that being a like an AI thing or an actual human?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Um that's a good question. I don't remember, I'm assuming that it's going to be an AI solution.

Dan DeLong: Yeah. [00:14:30] And if you've ever used, um, if you've ever used Tax Pro or Pro connect tax, uh, which used to be Intuit tax online with your QBO. Um, I, I thought that was a really slick feature. The books to tax being able to create the return. Uh, from from that from right from there. I don't know if the Pro series and the cert are going to be part of, uh, you know, part of this integration that they're looking for. Um, [00:15:00] but Le cert, I'm sorry. Uh, Pro Connect tax is based off of the, the cert tax engine. So if you are using CERT, you might as well use Pro connect tax. Right. Because it's just the online product of CERT.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. Good. Thank you for that. All right. Now let's turn our attention to payroll. I spent a lot of time talking to Tiffany Dolan about the features that are being rolled out in payroll. [00:15:30] Now, this a lot of this is aspirational. We're looking at spring 2026. It's not coming yet. But there's some cool things happening. Uh, so in the look what I found, I mentioned that I'd seen the first signs of the new payroll agent and the SMS interactions with it. And these are really geared for clients who struggle with collecting hours from employees. So if you're chasing timesheets, this might be a little bit more comfortable and familiar [00:16:00] for your employees. So field services and construction, um, basically it it handles a lot of the payroll prep. And so you can figure it by first giving it permission. And then then the payroll agent will contact your employees and ask for their permission to do payroll through text. So they have to approve it.

Dan DeLong: Everybody has to opt in in order to even start this process.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Exactly. So it's totally, totally opt [00:16:30] in. You don't have to use it. But if it's convenient for you, then awesome. And you'll be able to tell it which information you want your employees to be able to submit, and it'll basically allow them to send in their timesheets through texts where they say Monday, eight hours, Tuesday six hours, Wednesday eight hours like that. And then if you have, did you have something to add?

Dan DeLong: No. I think that's again, going back to what we were talking about with the, um, you know, [00:17:00] employee barrier of, with the with the technology. Again, texting is something that employees are familiar with. So it's very conversational. It's very, you know, doing it the way that you would if, if, if the person was texting, hey, what are your hours. Uh, and then you're just replying back to that text. So, um, getting, you know, the, the hurdle of operational software is, is being [00:17:30] removed by this, which is, I think in theory, it's a great thing. And what things that it can actually do is pretty cool. The truth is, you know, the the, the when the rubber hits the road, we'll see. You know how it actually works.

Dan DeLong: But we'll see.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And this is absolutely in its infancy. And so I think they're releasing it for very specific use cases first before getting it's not ready for complicated payroll at all.

Dan DeLong: Yeah. Like the the demonstration that they showed and you know, as [00:18:00] they talked about on the main stage, it was really cool. And you'll get to that. You know, that kind of context of of what what that conversation looks like.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: All right. So basically once it has that information, it will draft payroll for you. It will alert you to variations. And this is also in text for you. So it's doing this all over text messages. And then when you're ready you can improve it improve payroll right from the text messages without even logging in. Um, so a lot of [00:18:30] this starts in the business. Feed that little feed icon in your left hand rail. And, um, you can still do all your payroll through workforce, but this is just another option and it's going to have some natural smartness in it. Like if the employee submits ten hours, it's going to break it into eight hours of regular time and two hours of overtime. It will include the tasks if you want it to. If a day is skipped, it will ask, or if the information isn't clear, it will follow up. And if you are [00:19:00] set up for employee reimbursements, then you'll be able to actually have have the employees send in their receipts and do expense management right through this as well.

Dan DeLong: Yeah. This is I mean, this is the really cool part because then you're, you know, the employees is just they're just replying to the text and, um, it's catching the anomalies like, hey, it looks like you missed a day or, um, I'd be I'd be curious, you know, with typos, you know, and those types of things, how [00:19:30] smart it is at at figuring things out. But, you know, the again, the theory is or the concept is is phenomenal because it's just a conversation as a text. It's now a machine just doing the texting for both on both sides, you know, the payroll preparer and the people that need to enter their their time in.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I would imagine though that this is going to take increased surveillance from the payroll manager, though, because that basically means employees [00:20:00] can text in whatever they want.

Dan DeLong: Exactly.

Dan DeLong: Yeah.

Dan DeLong: So an approval or approval before, um, before it actually goes into really payroll? Yeah. I don't want to turn on auto payroll and just be like, oh, they just mentioned, how can you work 25 hours in a day.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Right.

Alicia Katz Pollock: No. Hopefully there's some guardrails around that. But, you know, this is one of those things that if you're going to complain, you don't complain to Intuit. You put better your own due diligence processes in place in your in your policies and procedures. [00:20:30]

Dan DeLong: Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. So, um, all of this is coming slowly. Leaf. Um, like I said, they just turned it on. But spring 2026 is where it's going to start rolling. Okay, now another thing that they are doing is they are enhancing the document management section and employee onboarding tools. And they bought a company called Goco. Um, I'm not sure how long ago that they acquired the company, but they're building all of those [00:21:00] abilities into Qbo payroll. So if you didn't already know, there has already been a document section for about a year where you can store any documents about that employee, their job descriptions, their contracts, their I-9 forms, um, w W-4 forms, whatever forms you're collecting, you have been able to store them with that employee record. Um, what they are now doing is they're building in [00:21:30] some additional tools. So there's going to be the ability that you can send them an offer, an offer letter, and it'll actually do e-signatures right through it. You'll be able to send them a copy of the employee handbook and gather their signature that they've read it. They'll be able to upload their driver's license. They will even be able to enroll in benefits. So right now, the benefits are, you know, the only thing they have connected is all state for health insurance. [00:22:00] But what they're planning to do is eventually is you can upload your health insurance plans, and the employee will be able to pick their own and self on board.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So that's.

Dan DeLong: Really cool. Um, you know, being able to, you know, open it up, just not to the preferred, you know, connection, but also, you know, because they, they can't be obtuse to the fact that, you know, not everybody wants to switch their healthcare provider [00:22:30] just because it has an integration. I am curious though, if you don't use Allstate, for example, and you add in your own, um, is it going to be able to allow you to pay those premiums and those types of things directly within the payroll system? But, you know, that's that's a future?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, I'm kind of imagining that really. It's just them being able to pick their tier. You know, if I'm offering bronze, silver and gold, they're just telling me I [00:23:00] want the silver. I don't think it's actually going to do any of the onboarding where you're with your insurance company.

Dan DeLong: And we're we're operating operating under the assumption that this is probably going to show up in the elite payroll service first. Uh, as far as the different levels of core, premium and elite of the offerings or, you know, and then it may trickle down into to the other versions as well. But, you know, this is all spring spring surprise.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So it'll remain to be seen which version [00:23:30] it all gets built into. Other things that you'll be able to do is, for example, have some onboarding lists, like your list of equipment. When you hire a new employee, you need to create their tech accounts. You need to requisition a laptop. You need to prepare a workstation. You need to send a welcome video. So there's going to be some sort of onboarding checklist involved in this as well. There's going to be some new improvements to the manager, approvals that managers [00:24:00] are going to be able to log in and perform actions for their team and still not be able to see the whole payroll, including approving time off requests and being able to look at at at PTO balances. So basically, there's going to be this new level of manager that can see certain people but not others.

Dan DeLong: Yeah, I think that's, you know, as, as they continue to grow and add services, uh, the view permit the permissions and security of, you know, the all [00:24:30] or nothing is is where, you know, improvements are are needed. You know, like they don't need to see this part of payroll.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Sure, it'd be handy if they could do this.

Dan DeLong: Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yep. Okay. And something else that was really interesting is that there's going to be some performance management tools as well, like tools for performance reviews. And right now I'm just reading off of the list. I don't remember what she actually told me, but self-assessments manager reviews, peer [00:25:00] reviews and the ability to upload documents. So I don't know if we're talking checklists. I don't know if we're talking about built in tools. So we'll find out. And then there'll also be a team documents section. So all of your your firm level not firm level, your company level documents like, you know, all of the agreements, the forms, the handbooks, the ability to gather signatures. So there will be a document library for your HR as well. And I'm super [00:25:30] excited about the ability to add documents and gather signatures. And I actually saw something related to that in the customer hub that you can send contracts. So this is unrelated to payroll, completely unrelated to payroll. But I did see signs of the e-signature tools in the customer hub that you can design a contract in QuickBooks and send it to the client through the customer hub and gather their signatures. So I saw that in testing.

Dan DeLong: Yeah, [00:26:00] that's a that'll be a good win across the board of being able to, you know, remove signing things from the the the picture.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Now, uh, Andy I want to go talk about the, the new tax impounding, which is not part of what we, what I saw in the innovations lounge. But do you have anything else to say about their innovations before I kind of branch off on a [00:26:30] soapbox.

Dan DeLong: No, I think, um, you know, this is all remains to be seen how this actually plays out. Um, but these are these are good, all good things, um, and improvements and probably necessary, um, you know, necessary functions and features that, uh, that people have been asking for. So it's good to see them making progress for this.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. All right. So I want to take a minute just because it's payroll related and it's top of mind. And I'm [00:27:00] seeing a lot getting a lot of questions about it is they made the change in November that they're auto filing the taxes for you. And they've been impounding taxes so that when you run payroll, they take the whole tax burden and, uh, and then pay them on your behalf. So you're paying the taxes at the time of the payroll run, and they're paying your taxes, whether it's payroll by payroll or monthly or quarterly or annually. They're holding the money, but [00:27:30] they changed the chart of accounts. And I hear a lot of people are like, oh my God, this is all wrong, and let me go move it all around where it should be. No no no no no no no. Stop it.

Dan DeLong: No touch.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Don't touch it. Don't touch it. Don't wreck it. You're making the mistake. So here's how it works. And I actually think it's kind of genius. So what they're doing is they're taking your tax impoundment and they're creating a new account, a new current asset account, because it's your money called tax [00:28:00] clearing holding account or I'm not looking at it. So it's close to that. But look for a tax holding clearing tax clearing holding account as another current asset. So every time they impound that's where it's going. So it's saying here's your money that we have. Then every time they pay the liabilities they're going to make an automatic journal entry from the tax holding clearing account down to the state tax or the federal tax, or. 941 tax your state tax, whatever [00:28:30] local tax, whatever the tax is that they're paying, they will pay it down for you. They will make the journal entries at the time of payment. That way you always know how much is left in the impound. How much is current on the liability. Now, this is new enough that I haven't actually really seen it in action. I've just seen a couple entries here and there, but you should be able to still continue to reconcile your payroll liabilities like I have been suggesting to [00:29:00] you for two years, where you check off all of the the payments from the paychecks and you pay and you check off the payment and it all should equal zero. So I encourage you to all do this so that we can make sure that this is really working as designed. But this is how it's designed. And it's a good design because you want to still see, you know, you've got taxes at different cadences, and it makes a lot of sense for them to tell you what they've heard, what they've impounded, [00:29:30] and when they've made the payments.

Dan DeLong: Yeah, I mean, it's very similar to the whole idea of the sales tax liabilities. Uh, the way that QuickBooks online manages the the liability for the sales tax by tax agency, um, you know, if you've ever tried to manipulate those accounts, uh, QuickBooks says no, don't touch that, because that's what it's doing. So keep that in mind. You know, as you're, as you're looking at these, um, this new account and going, well, [00:30:00] this is not account I want to make. Um, or if you've used desktop and you've, you've seen that direct deposit liabilities account when you have, you know, that's just the way that QuickBooks is going to manage this whole process is by doing it through an extra account or, um, a special account. I'm using air quotes there.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Right.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Um, and the, uh, the reason why they're doing this. I actually spoke to Tiffany at length about this. [00:30:30] Um, and again, Tiffany is the PM in charge of payroll, and the if the tax is already impounded, it made sense for them to auto submit it. And what they discovered is that they saw that the amount of penalties that people were paying was much, much higher for people who were doing manual tax payments than it was for people who were on auto pay. And, you know, a lot of times some companies don't want to do auto pay because they're worried about [00:31:00] cash flow. But if your cash flow is so tight that you don't have payroll, you've got some bigger problems, right?

Dan DeLong: And those are liabilities. Not not not revenue. Right. So, uh, you shouldn't be spending them anyway.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Right?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yes. Um, and so because Intuit realized that that people were, you know, paying extra money for not having filed on time. And the people who are on auto pay were not having nearly as [00:31:30] much trouble. They're like, you know, we're just going to kind of make it for everybody. And, you know, if you're the kind of person who just you refuse to have Intuit pay it on your behalf, don't use QuickBooks payroll. But for most business owners, not having to think about it is a benefit.

Dan DeLong: Yeah. I mean, it's protecting the business from themselves, you know, just like, um, you know, sales tax, right? You know, people paying, people spending the sales tax or misappropriating and [00:32:00] putting it as an expense and, you know, not realizing the the true accounting behind it. Uh, so those those things, um, you know, there's no value to a business to, uh, to pay their taxes or to pay their liabilities or their tax payments. And so if, if something can do it automatically And I've, uh, I've had conversations when people would call in and say, you know, I'm trying to pay my tax. It's it's the day before, uh, I can't [00:32:30] it's saying it's late, but in reality, I'm looking at the calendar. Uh, it's not late. Well, there is a funding, um, delay. Right. Like, there's a lead time that you have to do these things, and people didn't realize that. So, you know, this is, again, protecting people from those nasty, um, tax notices that come in while you were late or you didn't pay it right or you didn't pay it on time. Um, you know, and Intuit is taking care of of that for them. [00:33:00] Um, yes. It's a convenience or an inconvenience, depending on how you're looking at it. But, um, again, you know, it beats the alternative of getting those, those tax notices and having to pay penalties and interest and those types of things. So.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And I want to remind everybody that if you have QuickBooks Online Elite, if there are any tax penalties because they make a mistake, they'll pay those penalties for you. And if you have [00:33:30] premium or elite, if you have to do any payroll corrections, they'll file amendments for you. So there are some some good reasons to go up from core so that you have those levels of protection. The next station that I went to, I spoke to Nenad Maranta about the business intelligence, and they really touted the business intelligence a couple times from main stage as well. So this is definitely huge in the direction that [00:34:00] Intuit's going. Now some there's little little signs of this already. But most of this is future. So and we don't have a timeline. He refused to tell me a timeline. So we're talking 2026, 27, maybe 28.

Dan DeLong: But as we were talking, uh, kind of reading through these notes, um, the, um, I went over to this guy as well and, um, you know, he was I was concerned about, like, how can you tell, [00:34:30] you know, how can you tell which agent you're talking to? And he's like, actually, some of these agents are going to be going away in in terms of, uh, or in service to this business, intelligent or intuitive intelligence, where you will see, um, you know, this, ask anything, you know, type of situation. And, um, when you look at it inside of QuickBooks, you will be like, wait a minute, this looks like ChatGPT. And, [00:35:00] uh, lo and behold, you know, Intuit just announced a big investment in ChatGPT and that that is, uh, what we're speculating here, that this is what's happening with, uh, with that announcement and how it's going to show up inside of your QuickBooks is that there's some connection to ChatGPT. Inside of QuickBooks directly.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And so we can have a whole other conversation [00:35:30] about security and accuracy and all of that. But let's put that aside right now and let's just talk about Intuit specific aspirations with this.

Dan DeLong: Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. So they are it's a way of advising your clients by bringing in information from several different sources. And it's they're calling it Intuit Intelligence. We saw that from Mainstage. We saw it plastered in a couple places at connect. And so what's going to start with a box like an Ask [00:36:00] Anything box that's going to be in the top center of the dashboard. And you can ask it about your revenue and your profitability. It'll include graphs. So as an example you can say where can I look to improve my margins. And in their example it answered that the cost of goods is on an upward trend and its higher than industry average. And then it analyzed the vendor concentration and the timelines. And so it kind of looked at the spending cadence and who [00:36:30] you were spending your money with and how much you were spending. And it actually came back with some recommendations. One of the use cases that they mentioned, and I think they're really proud of having made this one work, because I actually heard it three different times from three different people in three different places. So they have one complicated use case under under their belts, and that was that they had the ability to upload a spreadsheet of vendor rates for your different products, and then it will compare the [00:37:00] prices and it will choose the best vendor for you. So that's one of the experiments that they succeeded with.

Dan DeLong: Yeah.

Dan DeLong: So they'll always be saying but but the vendor thing.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Exactly. For that it.

Dan DeLong: It Worked for that.

Alicia Katz Pollock: But you know signs and signs of things to come. So it'll be neat to see that. And I've actually been pretty impressed with the insights that I've already seen when I look at the AI, um, articulations, when it looks at the reports, I've been I've been pretty happy with what it's found.

Dan DeLong: Yeah, [00:37:30] I think I think in general. Right. This whole idea of, uh, ask your QuickBooks anything is, uh, you know, for a from a business owner's perspective or maybe, maybe even from an accountant. I don't know what to ask. Like, you know, like, I don't know what to ask, and you're asking me to ask you anything. And, um, in general, whenever I have to talk to a machine, I freeze up because I'm. I'm thinking that I need to articulate my words in such a, such a way that [00:38:00] it will understand. And so I, I, I'm not sure how quickly the people will adopt it, but the fact that it is looking and feeling like ChatGPT. And if you are Familiar at all with using ChatGPT. I think that part will will be easier to adopt than if Intuit, you know, created something branded like that that even did the same thing.

Alicia Katz Pollock: All right. The next thing that we talked about was analytics, [00:38:30] some new dashboards with KPIs. So there's going to be KPIs scorecards. There's even going to be a KPI library where you can create your own dashboard and pick and choose which KPIs are pertinent to that client specifically for that client. Um, we've already seen the signs of a CRM pipeline, but it's even going to integrate with Monday.com, HubSpot, and Salesforce so that it can look for your qualifications and your leads and your deal win rate and have, um, customer, [00:39:00] um, statistics in there as well, which is, I think, pretty darn cool.

Dan DeLong: Salesforce seems like a big, uh, ask, right? Because, I mean, that's a pretty that's a that's a huge enterprise level thing. Do you think do you have a lot of clients using, you know, CRMs like that? Um.

Alicia Katz Pollock: No.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Not many. Um, which is one of the reasons I'm glad that they're building in the customer hub into QBO and that some people are going to have their first CRM so that they can experience how helpful [00:39:30] it is, and then either continue using it or grow in into something.

Dan DeLong: Into something else.

Dan DeLong: That's good.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, exactly.

Alicia Katz Pollock: All right. And then the last thing is that they are totally renovating the management reports. They're starting the release right now, but they're going to be fixing it incrementally. And so a whole new interface, you're going to have drafts of management reports. You're going to be able to publish the management reports. You're going to be able to pull in all of the KPIs from the KPI dashboards. [00:40:00] You'll be able to edit the charts. You'll be able to, um, pick the the chart type and the date range. And do you want banded rows and do you want grid lines, and you're even going to be able to add calculated fields with formulas inside the management reports.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Um, and then the text box will have smart chips to pull in current content. A smart chip is basically a tag saying, you know, go get me the net revenue, go get me the company [00:40:30] name, and you'll be able to make reports that pull in the data.

Dan DeLong: So that looks like it would be really, really cool and useful for those that you know, that that create those management reports. Um, you know, short of hey, we prepared. We prepared your financial summary for last month. And here's all of Intuit's types of things this can be, you know, taking that to the next level.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And I'm going to put management reports on my list for the future that as soon as those [00:41:00] start rolling out, we'll dedicate a whole episode right to them. Okay. So Dan and I only made it through page 15 of my 27 pages, and that was including skipping a bunch of pages about Intuit Accounting suite because we already recorded that episode. So this is just part one in a series of all of Intuit's innovations, but we'll start our January with that. Um, and yeah. Okay. So so far, so good. Um, Dan, what's going [00:41:30] on in your world?

Dan DeLong: Um, yeah, I'm I'm enjoying going to, you know, going to enjoy the holidays with my with my core nuclear family. So unfortunately, it's in some place cold. So, uh, we are we're going to be doing that, um, and, uh, you know, that's that's what we're that's what we're looking forward to, or at least, uh, this, um, work wise, um, you know, like you, we are beginning to be looking at the 1099 with, uh, with the [00:42:00] power hour on, uh, on the same day that you are. So we'll, we'll be having we'll be having conflicting. So someone will get 1099 information for either from you or me. So.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, so that leads me into my what's going on in my world, which is my 1099 class on January 6th. And so I do a deep, deep dive with the demo. I may even run somebody 1099 if I [00:42:30] can find somebody to give me permission for that. Um, and, uh, I've been teaching this class every year and I've seen the evolution of the tool, and actually the developers have brought me in last year to help dial it in because I go so deep with it.

Dan DeLong: So our topic is going to be is QuickBooks enough? And so I'll be glad enough to send them your way so that they can really get an understanding of yes, it is enough for some for a lot of purposes, right?

Alicia Katz Pollock: For the right people [00:43:00] it is enough. Not for everybody. It's not for everybody, but it is for some. And then the following week I'm doing my tax, my my year end cleanup for tax time class, which is one of my favorite classes to teach. I'm expanding it from 2 to 3 hours this year, and it's how I look at my clients books and all the due diligence I do to make sure the data is bomb proof before passing it on to the accountant. So it's the I would call it a ten step process, but it's really about 15. [00:43:30] And all the places I go and all the reports that I run and how to clean up the mistakes that you find there. So the link is in the show notes. And so please do join me for year end cleanup for tax time.

Dan DeLong: Sounds great.

Alicia Katz Pollock: All right well thank you for joining me Dan welcome to 2026. And onward and upward.

Dan DeLong: Exactly.

Alicia Katz Pollock: All right. Thank you everybody. And we will see you.

Alicia Katz Pollock: In the next one

Dan DeLong: See you in the next one.