Coming Soon to a QBO Near Your (with Kirsten Thulborn)

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

Alicia Katz Pollock: In this week's episode of the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast, I actually have an encore performance of last week, we had Kirsten Thorburn from Intuit. Come on, who is a group design manager or design leader, and we had such a good conversation about how Intuit approaches design and approaches development that I wanted [00:00:30] to actually have her come back. Like everything that we talked about was conceptual. I wanted to actually dive in on some of the new features that are rolling out to get her, her input on what's coming and why it's coming. So welcome back, Kirsten.

Kirsten Thulborn: Hi, Alicia. Thank you so much for having me back.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So in brief, in case some people did not hear last week's episode, can you introduce yourselves to the audience?

Kirsten Thulborn: Yeah, absolutely. Hi, my name is Kirsten Thulborn. I'm a group design manager [00:01:00] at Intuit, I work on QuickBooks product focused on accounting. Previously, Intuit Accounting Suites. I also work on sales tax and business tax.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And you know, you and I meet regularly to talk about what's coming because my challenge as a as a content producer or as an educator is that I'm putting out QuickBooks training materials on a regular basis, whether it's video courses or webinars or books. And for me, keeping up [00:01:30] with all the changes is like job security forever and ever. And so I've been talking to you and I have been in meetings so that I can kind of keep, keep my eye on the timing so that I'm not spinning my wheels, making, you know, pouring my heart into content that is instantly obsolete. And so I want to thank you, first of all, for that. So in the last time that you and I talked, you kind of gave me a list of like some really cool things that were coming out in the product [00:02:00] And so I wanted to give you the opportunity to share that with the listeners of the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast.

Kirsten Thulborn: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Alicia. So as I said, I lead the accounting team. And so a lot of what I'm going to talk about here with our cool new features are in the accounting app on the bank feeds and chart of accounts. I have a couple of things that I know accounting professionals are going to love because that's why we built them. So we [00:02:30] know that not many users click on the little gear icon on the bank feed table, but we've put a lot, a lot of little goodies in there. So something that launched recently is you can actually warn your clients, you can set it up. So QuickBooks will warn your clients if they try to post a transaction without a payee. So we've added payee warnings for those clients that maybe are a little bit too eager with clicking that post button and forget to add a vendor [00:03:00] to the transactions. So we're not blocking them. You can still get the job done, but maybe it's also just a little reminder for you. If you skip over something because you've been staring at the bank feeds for a long time. So super excited about that.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, I'm really excited about that. In fact, this is one of those features that when I'm setting up a client or working with a client for the first time, I actually go into the gear on the bank at. And again, it's not the gear at the top of the screen, it's the little tiny gear at the top of the grid. But I go through this and [00:03:30] I turn this on, and I turn on the ability to show the bank descriptions both in the interface and add them to the memo. Like to me, those are both mission critical. So I always like, um, like hitting those. So what are some of the other things that you've added that people might not know about?

Kirsten Thulborn: Yeah. So there's, there's one other little hidden feature that we just launched in that gear icon right above the bank feed table. And that is the ability for you to turn off the match categorized [00:04:00] toggle, so you'll know you've been looking at it for a while, and the new AI native bank feed that you have a toggle switch where a transaction either needs to be categorized or matched. And we know that our AI has gotten good enough right now that we're often getting the the match or category correct. We're able to find the match. So if or if you have a client or, um, a company that doesn't have a lot of matches because they're a very simple business, [00:04:30] you can now turn the match categorized toggle completely off in line. It's still available if you click to open the transaction and you need to make changes. But if that's not, if that's not what you want to see on your in-line transaction grid, you don't have to look at it anymore. You can turn it off.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I was really happy when I saw this that, you know, because that match categorize takes up pretty valuable real estate. And a lot of people think that clicking [00:05:00] the word match was doing the match. But what that does is opens up the match window. And like you, like you said, I have a a lot of clients who aren't doing their normal business workflows and then matching in the banking feed. I have a lot of micro businesses who they live in the banking feed, and they're doing all of their work in the banking feed, and the matches are already coming up, but this way they can just go in and start using it without having that toggle in the way. So I think that was a great idea [00:05:30] to pull it up, pull it out.

Kirsten Thulborn: Yeah, absolutely. I'm so happy, so happy to hear that. Um, but yeah, we know that these little things matter a lot. We, we like, we try to nail the details. All right. So what else? Um, so, uh, I mentioned this last week, but you do have the ability to drag and drop attachments directly onto a transaction in the bank feed. You don't have to click the plus button or open the transaction and click upload, [00:06:00] you can just drag a file straight from your desktop onto that transaction and it will attach. So saving you some clicks.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So that actually gives you three different ways of adding attachments.

Kirsten Thulborn: Yeah, absolutely. So you can drag and drop it. You can open the transaction and hit upload. Um, or you can click the plus button in the file column. But this also enables you now if you want to hide that attachment column, because you're not attaching, you're not adding [00:06:30] attachments to enough transactions, you can still drag and drop in there. And you don't have to have that column to be able to add an attachment inline.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Oh, saving even more real estate on the screen.

Kirsten Thulborn: Yeah. More real estate. Absolutely, absolutely. All right. So the next one that recently launched, I'm super excited about. Uh, we know that one of something that really gets in the way of getting the bookkeeping work done is when the bank feed gets disconnected. So, but what do you do if you're [00:07:00] the bookkeeper and you don't have access, you don't have the credentials to log into your client's bank accounts. So now when a bank gets disconnected, we show an error message that actually allows you to click to ask your client to reauthenticate, which I hope is super helpful. I'm super excited about this new feature.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I used that yesterday. So basically what comes up is you get this error message that says like error 185, please contact your client, [00:07:30] um, Blaine, to fix it or fix it now. And it gives you the link where for you to fix it or for them. And when you click on their name, it pops up a little, a little form where you can put in the subject line and it puts in default text, but of course you can change it. And then it emailed them and it sent them a message saying, hey. And he went ahead and clicked the shiny button and reconnected it. And I didn't have to like make phone calls and send texts and stop [00:08:00] working. It was great.

Kirsten Thulborn: That's amazing. That's so that's so thrilling for me to hear, Alicia, that it's already out in in your hands and it's working. Uh, coming soon. We are working on getting this functionality into Intuit Accountant Suite as well, so that you don't have to go into someone's client file, look at that banner, click the button. You can do it straight from accounting suite. So you never even have to log into that. You don't have to jump into that client's file. If you know it's disconnected and you're waiting for them to reconnect, saves you some [00:08:30] clicks.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Will that be in the core or the accelerate? Both.

Kirsten Thulborn: Core?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Both. Okay. So it'll be it'll be in the free version too.

Kirsten Thulborn: Yeah, absolutely. Bank connections is one of the most important things we need to make sure they stay connected so the work can get done. So absolutely it'll be available in core.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Oh, awesome. Good.

Kirsten Thulborn: Yeah. All right. On. So I have one more one more cool feature in the bank feed. So we call it our client collaboration tool. [00:09:00] You'll see in the bank feed, there's a column with a little chat bubble. And if you click, you can add a little message to your client. You can ask for a receipt, you can ask if it was a business expense, or maybe it was accidentally a personal expense. Um, you can ask for more context. And then if you click on the request button in the upper right hand side of the bank feed, it will show you a portal of all of the transaction questions you've asked. And your client sees the exact same portal. When you [00:09:30] send them a magic link, they don't have to log in. They'll go straight to the list of questions that need answers and they'll respond back to you. So we're constantly evolving this feature. We're also working on getting it into into an account and suites, but I just want to make sure everyone's aware of that to try and accelerate getting the context you need to get, get all of those big feed transactions posted.

Alicia Katz Pollock: One of the things that I like about that tool is that you can either. Leave it in [00:10:00] the banking feed as pending, or you can go ahead and add it to the books and put it in a suspense account, like ask my accountant or, and or, or Uncategorized expenses, and then be able to continue doing your reconciling work and still have a good list of what's incomplete. So it's a really cool workflow.

Kirsten Thulborn: Yeah. And that's what we heard from you guys that, you know, my hypothesis might have been originally that things transactions stay in the bank feed until [00:10:30] you have all the context. But that's not true. Sometimes it's, it's your to do list. Get it out of there. I looked at it. I'm done with it. Move on. So we want we knew we had to have the flexibility.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. I need to reconcile this. I can't kick the can down the road until they finally get around to answering. And so that allows us as bookkeepers to keep it, keep tabs on things that are still uncategorized, but still get on and be able to finish our clothes.

Kirsten Thulborn: Absolutely, absolutely. We never want to get in the way. Um, [00:11:00] so the next thing I want to talk about that recently launched is in the chart of accounts. I recently used it myself and I'm so excited. It's finally there. So you know that when you create a new chart of accounts account right now, you have to scroll all the way up to the top of the page, click the Add New Account button, and if you want to make it a child account, it's in that side menu that you can select this as a sub account. And you have to select the parent account. And that that requires you to kind of remember a lot of information about where you wanted [00:11:30] this child account to live. And then you click all these things and fill out these forms and maybe you've forgotten what you're doing. So now in every single account in the chart of accounts, if you click on the menu on the right hand side, the expanded menu of extra actions you can take, you've added. Yeah, we've added an add Subaccount feature, so you can add a child account to a parent account right in line.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So I'm like halfway down. Like I'm down in [00:12:00] the expenses under utilities and I want to add a list of utilities. I can do it right there from the utilities.

Kirsten Thulborn: Exactly. Yes.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Cool.

Kirsten Thulborn: Yes.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Is that out already or is that a coming soon?

Kirsten Thulborn: It's out. I used it in production recently. It's out. It's there. You can use.

Alicia Katz Pollock: It. I haven't noticed it. Yay! I will check that out as soon as we hang up the phone. Yeah.

Kirsten Thulborn: Yeah. So it's these little things. We're really trying to nail the details and add these. It just brings [00:12:30] me so much joy that you you're excited for these things because we work so hard to make sure we're actually solving things that will make your life easier.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, but I'm a geek, and I'm easily amused. Yeah. Yeah. But I do, I do honestly think this is this is one that a lot of people will really be jazzed about.

Kirsten Thulborn: Yeah, I hope so. I hope so. Uh, and then I have a couple of things that are coming soon that I'd love. I'd love to tell you about.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Oh, so like, so like this is like the people who are listening to this [00:13:00] are like getting the hot off the presses or the.

Kirsten Thulborn: Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Any okay. Yeah.

Kirsten Thulborn: It's only a matter of time before it goes out to the masses. These are the, the coming soon our latest and greatest. So we'll stick with the theme of chart of accounts for a moment here. So we're introducing the concept of account locking. And what does that mean. Um you will have control. You can set a chart of accounts. You can lock it so that your client cannot post to it [00:13:30] in the bank feed. So they can't make mistakes and post to something that's maybe they shouldn't be touching, uh, or something you prefer they don't use. So you'll have more control over what they can post to and what they can't.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay, I have questions. All right. So I mean, the immediate use case that comes into mind for me is, um, a parent account and child accounts. So we could lock the parent account so they can't put anything in the parent and they can only put something in the subaccounts.

Kirsten Thulborn: Yeah, absolutely. Yes, [00:14:00] exactly.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Does it make it so that we as accountant users can post to it, but the user can't?

Kirsten Thulborn: That's a great question. I, I'm not sure it's role based at this point. So that that is actually that's a, that's a good that's a very important thing that I need to bring back to the team and double check or I'm missing some information and maybe we've already figured this out, but absolutely, like we, we want to make sure that certain people have access [00:14:30] to everything, even when some people better not.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Right. Yeah. There's going to be some asset accounts, for example, that are things that I do behind the scenes, but I don't want my client putting anything in there.

Kirsten Thulborn: Yeah, absolutely.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So that would be cool to be able to restrict it.

Kirsten Thulborn: Yeah. And this is why it's coming soon. So we haven't launched it and prevented you from doing your job. But I'll follow up with the team. I'm sure they have a solution and they've already thought of this. My team is much smarter than I am. They know what's [00:15:00] up and they're like, Kirsten, I can't believe you went on there and said that. Of course we solved it, so. Oh well we'll see. Yeah, we'll make sure we nail it.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And that's why this is a Coming soon section.

Kirsten Thulborn: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Um, so that's all I have for chart of accounts. Let's go back to the bank feed. So um right now when you look at your bank feed, you know that we have these little star sparkle icons in your payee field as well as your category field. And what we've learned is that those are [00:15:30] largely being ignored. Um, either they don't look clickable or they're not providing value. And so they're not getting clicked on. Both of those things are valid. And so what we've learned is that the fact that AI has done something isn't really what's interesting or valuable on the bank feed. What users really need to see is, is this suggestion good or is there is there something I need to look into or double check before I move forward. And so what we're introducing [00:16:00] is some iconography that indicates if this is a very high confidence suggestion, because 100% of the time when something similar has come through, it's been categorized in this way with this payee. If we have some information about a transaction, but it's inconsistent, so it's not 100% similar, but we might have gotten it right. But you should double check. And then of course, when we have a suggestion based on the model and all of our QuickBooks [00:16:30] information in general, but we haven't seen that transaction come through your bank feed before, we might have some suggestions to help you out on vendors. Maybe it's a vendor you haven't seen, but we've seen it before. Um, so we're, we're going to introduce this kind of like kind of like a stoplight, red, yellow, green, go, go slow, stop and think to try and accelerate the pace at which you can digest the suggestions and decide whether to post or change something.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, I saw a demo of that at Intuit Connect, and [00:17:00] I thought that was a brilliant way because, you know, it's instantly understandable. And like you said, it's not just this little spark that now that like there's a piece of information on the screen that our brains have to process, our brains have to ignore. Because when we did look at the AI, it was like useful, like maybe occasionally, but not unfortunately, not as often as you had hoped it would be. So I think that I think moving in that direction to turn that into actionable [00:17:30] feedback, visual feedback is really a great idea.

Kirsten Thulborn: Yeah. So I'm super excited. I promise I asked the team every day, are we ready to launch? Are we ready to launch? Are we still on track? So coming soon and I'm the team. Will the team that's worked on this has really done some great work to get it where where it is, and I just cannot wait for it to launch.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So I don't get to ask when because you might not know either.

Kirsten Thulborn: So it can't be soon enough. My answer is it can't be soon enough, I. I literally discussed this yesterday with the [00:18:00] team. When is it launching? What's our date? So soon? Soon.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay.

Kirsten Thulborn: Yeah. And then, um, the last, the last thing I'll leave you with, um, there's, there's been a launch recently of the, uh, Intuit intelligence, which is the chat LLM experience within, uh, within QuickBooks, uh, the accounting team, we're working super hard to bring some pretty cool chat experiences to, uh, to that specifically [00:18:30] for accounting. So we're working on things like, how can you leverage that to do fixed assets, prepaid expenses, some things where you have to set up schedules. And it's, it's a lot of data entry can, can we leverage this new technology to give you a draft and you can edit it if you need to, but most of the work for that schedule is filled out already. So I'm super excited about that.

Alicia Katz Pollock: That would be cool because I would like to be able to take my $1,400 [00:19:00] Zoom thing and be able to say, you know, recognize this over the next year and have it just create journal entries for me. That would be awesome.

Kirsten Thulborn: Yeah. Yeah. That, that, that's what we're, we're working towards. So I'm, I'm super excited about that. We're working hard to try and figure out all the little ways we can use this new type of interface to accelerate the work, but with control. So of course, everything is you sign off on it. The human needs to be in the loop making the final decision, [00:19:30] but maybe we can do things a little quicker for you.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Is there any way that the listeners of this podcast can contact you to suggest, like, here's some of the things that I would like it to be able to just do. If I tell it to.

Kirsten Thulborn: I would, I would say the best way to reach me specifically with these ideas is you go into the bank transactions page and click on that feedback button. And you, you tell me what you're thinking right there, because that is the one that I am reading and paying the most attention to. [00:20:00] But yeah, put put any anywhere. If you're, if there's a feedback mechanism with an end to end intelligence, use that also because they're reading it, we're collating it, we're figuring out what the top needs are and, and we're solving them.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. I would love for the people of this, the people listening to our podcast to be able to go in and help craft the experience because that, that Intuit assist, um, little sparkle up in the upper right hand corner. That's where, where Kirsten's talking about. [00:20:30] And I've already started using it to ask questions of the data. And it's been really helpful from an advisory level without me having to go run five reports to go cobble the information together, but being able to take it to the next level where it's not just analyzing, it's actually being able to perform actions that's next level. And that would be amazing. And so, hey, everybody, all the listeners, let's actually help craft the experience. What do you want to be able to tell Intuit [00:21:00] Assist to be able to do in your books and head in and let them know.

Kirsten Thulborn: Yeah, we're listening. We're reading it and then we're, and then we're building it and we'll be launching it soon.

Alicia Katz Pollock: All right. Excellent. Well, Kirsten, thank you so much for coming back again and giving us a little bit of insider knowledge on some of the things that we can look forward to in the product. Um, and I have a question for you. If you could say [00:21:30] one thing to the pro advisors, what would it be?

Kirsten Thulborn: If I could say one thing to the pro advisors, I would say, we hear you and I hear you. The you were the reason that I'm so passionate about this and that I show up to work every day and ensure that my team of designers and everyone we work with to the left and to the right of us is focused on you and solving for you. So I just [00:22:00] I want ProAdvisor to know that we see them and to feel heard.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, that's really reassuring because that's the pillar that Intuit was built on. And as things evolve, you know, sometimes the ProAdvisor feel left behind. But, you know, knowing that the bottom line is that is the goal of making our lives, um, our lives work well and powering prosperity around the world.

Kirsten Thulborn: Exactly, exactly. Powering [00:22:30] prosperity for everyone around the world.

Alicia Katz Pollock: All right. Well, thank you again for returning. Uh, this is Alicia Pollock from realized.com.

Kirsten Thulborn: And this is Kirsten Thulborn from Intuit.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And we will see you in the next one.

Kirsten Thulborn: Next one.