Now You Know: In the Know July 2026 Recap

Attention: This is a machine-generated transcript. As such, there may be spelling, grammar, and accuracy errors throughout. Thank you for your understanding!

Alicia Katz Pollock: Hey everybody, welcome to this week's episode of the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast. I'm your host, Alicia Katz, and I've got with me, Mr. Matthew Fulton, otherwise known as spot from Parkway Business Solutions. How are you doing, Matt?

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Doing wonderful. Alicia and yourself.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I'm doing really good. Just got back from being at Oregon Country Fair, where I'm on the tent tags [00:00:30] camping crew. And so it's a kind of a working vacation where I passed out tent tags and sighted campers for seven days and then got to go play in the woods in an arts and music festival for three nights.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Did you find any new QuickBooks users for the future?

Alicia Katz Pollock: I actually found out that the booth registration is using QuickBooks, and now I maybe I want to switch crews and go help them with their QuickBooks instead.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: There you go. See? Always. There's always a chance to talk about the things you're passionate [00:01:00] about.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. And that also gave me the opportunity to tax deduct my miles going down there because, hey, I actually had a meeting with somebody. All right. So today our topic is the recap of in the know, which was on July 16th, 2026. So we call this now, you know, and, you know, I was always wondering if people, if, whether this segment was redundant because a lot of people were already going to [00:01:30] in the know. But when I was at scaling new heights, I, you know, asked several people and they actually said that this is one of their favorite segments of the podcast because they don't have to go watch the in the know. They can get it all in a nutshell with our commentary and they actually kind of like that. So thank you for doing these episodes with me.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: You know, I always love it. I appreciate the opportunity to keep myself informed, but then to be able to discuss it with you and give our our $0.02.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. All right. So between us, we got [00:02:00] $0.04. So let's go ahead and and give it. All right. So um, in the know was um on July 16th and it was hosted by Artie Patel Martinez, who's the principal program manager of ProAdvisor training out of San Diego. And on the agenda was community news product innovations with new embedded services inside QuickBooks, the latest improvements to Core and Accelerate and some more upcoming feature [00:02:30] releases in Intuit Accountant Suite. And then they ended with what's around the corner. So let's go ahead and break through all of that. I am actually going to share my screen so that those of you who are watching on YouTube have some visuals and aren't just staring at spot and I.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: And if you're watching here on YouTube, be sure to leave a comment down below. Let us know what you think of the show, any questions that you may have as well.

Alicia Katz Pollock: All right. So we are [00:03:00] going to start with community news. Uh, that one is already gone by. Um, if you are listening to this early in the morning, there's a webinar today about Bill, um, and how it works with QuickBooks. And so in the show notes, there is a link to the slide deck. And in the slide deck are all of the links and QR codes so that you can actually go register for all of these things. And so you to, to get [00:03:30] the links to what you're seeing on screen, you can go to qbo.org and then click on today's episode, and then it will have the link to the downloads. And then the download handout has the links for the registrations. All right. So if you are considering using Bill there's a webinar on Thursday the 23rd for it. Then they are having a webinar series of five of five episode series, but unfortunately started [00:04:00] a couple days ago. The first one was onboarding like a pro. And these are all about Intuit Accounting Suite, but the next one is how to use accelerate. Then there's one about the new Pro Partner program. On August 27th, there's new features, and on September 15th they're doing a fireside chat with different accountants on partner council. So definitely go check out that accounting practice series. And in the slide deck, there's a QR code that you can use to register. [00:04:30]

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: I do think that series is definitely gonna be worth it. It's something the information is going to be inside of. It would be worth listening to, uh, especially the fireside chat with the partner council. Uh, I think that would be very interesting to hear their perspectives.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Everybody that I hear coming back from partner council has been really, really positive about the the changes in innovations that QuickBooks is making. And if they're happy, then I'm happy because I know that a lot of people get on to partner council with the goal of being able [00:05:00] to give Intuit their $0.02 and, you know, have a positive impact on things that they don't think are right about the software and the fact that they all came out this year. Just glowing, I think really says something. Yeah. Okay. Then an announcement about Intuit Connected is October 26th to 28th in Las Vegas. It will continue to be at the Aria. The price is $1,395 per pass. But if you have more than two people, then the price drops $200 [00:05:30] per person and there's a QR code on our screen or in the slide deck, or you can just go to Intuit connect.com. All right, now let's go into the product innovation. So the first section was called you asked. We listened QuickBooks product improvements. So the first thing that they started with was things that they've changed and have. And they want to let you know that they are listening. So the person [00:06:00] who presented was Stacy Blanchard, who's in product marketing out of New York City. And she started with a, a poll about speed. And the poll was, how often have you been working in your client's books and wished that the home page, a specific workflow or a report would load faster? And the four options were never. I've never noticed this or experienced it as a pain point, which was 11%. [00:06:30] Yeah, you laugh, you deserve laugh. Uh, 30% said rarely. I expect I experienced this every once in a while, but not consistently. 40% said often I experienced this frustration at least once a week and 19, 20 or 20% said always. I experienced this almost every single time I log into QBO now I fall into one of the. The seldom. But I have a T one line in my office and [00:07:00] so I think this. The answer to this is probably directly related to your internet connection speed.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: You know, the challenge I've had is it seems like they're consistently. They're trying to load a page and provide it to you. And then they actually stop and reload it and give it to you again. So for example, you'll have your buttons at the top if you go right in and you're trying to get to that gear icon at the top, you better count 1 or 2, three Mississippi before you know it's moved exactly where it's going to go before you try to actually hit it or do anything. Um, [00:07:30] there's just a lot of pages where it'll, it'll pop up, start to show you stuff and then you'll see it flash again and it's finally fully loaded.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Oh, interesting. I don't know that I've ever noticed that myself.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Could be my spectrum internet.

Alicia Katz Pollock: It could be, uh. Hey, word to the wise out there, everybody. When's the last time you restarted your router? When's the last time you actually unplugged it for a minute and then plugged it back in again? If you haven't restarted your router anytime recently, the your problems that you're [00:08:00] experiencing with QuickBooks may very well just be the fact that your system's clogged. So everybody, when you're done listening to this, go ahead and do that today. And, you know, let us know.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: When you're done listening.

Alicia Katz Pollock: After you're done listening, go ahead and tell us in the, in the comments whether that helped for you. Okay, so the next thing that Stacey talked about was the small meaningful improvements. And so the, the quote unquote, what we heard was that they've been introducing [00:08:30] a lot of AI, like new AI powered capabilities, payments AI into an intelligence. But the they emphasize here building new things is only half the job. The other half is listening. And so over the past several months, they realized that there were things that we were doing which were not working as well as we wanted them to, like the bank feed matches and the reconciling. So they took our feedback and started [00:09:00] focusing on the things that we were complaining about most. And they made 175. Quote unquote meaningful improvements to make sure that the performance was reliable and that the data was accurate. And so they focused on the bank categorization and matching, uh, streamlining the reports and faster workflows. Although, you know, I don't, I never know what faster workflows actually means.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Yeah. So the language is confusing, right? Because we have workflows as a feature within QuickBooks. [00:09:30] I think they just mean like the ability to go through different stuff within the program itself. I would like to pose a question to anybody in Intuit who's listening here. I would love an actual list of those 175 meaningful improvements, please. Me too. I tried to ask it while during the webinar, but there were glitches to where the question wouldn't populate through. I'd actually like to see it instead of you just telling me 175. I'd like to know what you guys have worked on, please.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I want them to use the notifications [00:10:00] bell in the upper right hand corner. That has nothing happening in it, and I want them to every time they quash a bug or fix something or improve something, I want them to put a changelog in there so that we can see literally what they're doing on a daily basis. And I think that would go a long way towards consumer confidence and bookkeeping confidence.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Well, especially when we then jump into the idea of like price changes, but that's a topic for a different show.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Mhm. Yep. And we will have an upcoming one [00:10:30] about about that. All right. So the next thing that she went into is some of the changes that were made in the bank transaction matching that. If there was a warning that if a transaction is a duplicate and now that duplicate warning is going to appear before you post a transaction instead of afterwards. And when you look in the new banking feed, there's now icons. There's a [00:11:00] green check sign and a orange alert. So it tells you what the confidence is in the in the suggestions that it's making. It's it's telling you, yes, I'm pretty darn sure this is what it is. Or no, I'm wildly guessing. And then that way you have a visual clue as well.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: They also talked about how the categorizations, you know, it's basically supposed to start learning from you. Um, this was an area where again, I wanted a little bit [00:11:30] more information about it. Is it truly learning just from that company file or is this still an amalgamation of all the different QuickBooks company files, which, you know, if there's still bad data elsewhere, it could still be conflicting or causing challenges. Theoretically, it's just from your categorization stuff, right?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, from what I gather, it starts with your information. And if you have data for it to work off of, that's what that's what it works off of. But if there's [00:12:00] nothing in your file that triggers any matching at all, then it, I believe it looks out to the larger database of what other people.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: That makes good sense. Okay.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Then another one of the small changes is that if you categorize one transaction, then all the other ones that are similar to it are supposed to update to match what you just did so that you can do them in bulk. And I was finding that that was kind of hit or miss. And she specifically [00:12:30] said that the suggestions are now refreshing faster. So when you categorize one similar transaction. The rest of them should update. I still, I don't know, like, you know, the when I find myself categorizing one transaction and then refreshing my screen and then the rest of them go, but it sounds like they're working on it. So it's immediate the way it used to be.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Well, I will give him credit, as we've talked about kind of in the past, that the bank banking area, the ability to accept transactions and continue to work is definitely faster. So I have faith that this will [00:13:00] definitely continue to improve.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I do too. Yeah. Um, the, you know, that was one of the changes we talked about in an earlier episode where it used to pause and wait for QuickBooks to handle the transaction that you just did before continuing. And now you make the edit and the update happens in the background so you can keep working. And so they changed that a few months ago. Okay. Something else they did is they're working with duplicate and conflicting rules so that if you have two rules that apply to [00:13:30] a transaction, it will actually Surface that and say, hey, which rule do you want to use? And that gives you an opportunity to make sure your rules are in the right order and that they're all accurate and that you don't have duplicate rules?

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: That's a smart add on.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, I think that's really cool. And that's brand new. That's never been there before. So happy to see that one. Okay, the next one here's, here's the one about the workflows, uh, faster load times across the home page and [00:14:00] core workflows. The dashboard is now cleaner and more customizable, allowing you to resize and reorder your widgets to fit your personal workflow.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Alicia, have you done much reorganization of the widgets?

Alicia Katz Pollock: You know, I actually was in a session yesterday with a client and that's what we did is we went into her dashboard and her menus and her shortcuts and her bookmarks, and we completely tricked out her entire QuickBooks experience for her particular workflows. And [00:14:30] I was pretty impressed at how much we could actually do.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Now I, as the accountant, are we able to go in and set this up for what the client can see to help them?

Alicia Katz Pollock: You know, I am not 100% clear, but it seems to me that we had to do it in their file.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: In their file.

Alicia Katz Pollock: The view, the view is um, is per user set up by that user. And right now there's not an ability to set up a user interface and push it out, which [00:15:00] would be a great feature in accelerate. Um, I would love to see something like that out there, but the amount of customizability, there's so much of it that I actually think I want to add a course on it, you know, like how to, how to trick out your, your, your own QBO. But it does mean for those of you who work between multiple files, every file is going to be a little bit different.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Yeah. Okay, so that makes sense. What you're saying with the, you know, uh, accelerate or the ability for [00:15:30] Intuit Accountant suite is what I should be saying. Um, maybe having that ability in the future would be a great suggestion. So not to confuse people with what's available yet.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Right? Yes. Thank you for that clarity. Okay. Um, they, as a reminder, they have updated the keyboard shortcuts so that now there's over 100 different keyboard shortcuts and you can get into that list the same way you go into the company ID by going Ctrl.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Alt question mark.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yep. That's the one.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: What's the Mac though?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Control option? Question [00:16:00] mark. So when you do control alt or control option and then hit the question mark, which is really just the slash, not the question mark, that pops up your company ID and the full list of keyboard shortcuts so that you don't have to reach for your trackpad or your mouse anymore. Okay. In the reports, it says labels spell out every figure. I don't know what that means. Columns show all your data, which means your widths should now not be [00:16:30] truncated and pages print exactly as they appear. So that's really super important. So they made over 50 different improvements to the reports.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: It's interesting this another great opportunity for those, um, you know, watching on YouTube. I would love to hear your feedback if you've noticed certain aspects of these changes. If there's something you specifically like about it, please let us know.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yes, definitely. And in the comments, wherever you are, wherever you are [00:17:00] watching this, uh, the last thing that they mentioned is that there's fewer sign ins and interruptions. They are in the process of rolling out changes that will keep you signed in securely so that you're not having to reverify every time you step away. Personally, I always go to the settings and then down to advance and the very, very, very, very last option on the whole entire settings is to change it from 1 hour to 3 hours, which I do in every single file. And then I also want to remind [00:17:30] you that if you have multiple tabs open and you ignore a tab for over an hour or three hours, and it looks like it's timed out, but you're working in another tab, you are not really timed out. Just refresh that tab and it will wake right back up again. You do not need to sign in because you're already in.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Now that option for the extending the time is now hidden inside of another option box. So you're going to see in the advanced at the very bottom there. It's still listed there, but you got to click a pencil to get to that one to [00:18:00] then click to it where before it was listed all by itself previously. So just a little extra nuance there.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay, cool. Thank you for that. Heads up. All right. Then the next section of in the know was intelligent Services and Accountant Configurability. And the speaker was Lauren Zelnick, who is the director of project management and her team. I found this interesting. The team is AI plus h I so their AI team is not just AI [00:18:30] into it, is taking it seriously that the human still has a role here. So Intuit is calling the AI team AI plus high human intelligence. So I was very happy to see that title. Okay, so Lauren's polling question was, how involved is your firm in setting up new QuickBooks clients? And option one was we handle the entire setup for them. We guide clients while they set up clients, set up their own, we review or clean up after [00:19:00] or number four, it varies from client to client and the.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Yeah. Alicia on this one. Unfortunately, I didn't see the exact totals at the end, but I do remember that the it varies from client to client was the ultimate, um, top choice for everybody.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Exactly. Yeah. It was. And this really depends on how, you know, a lot of the time your clients come to you and they're already using QBO, while other times you're actually getting them started. So I think the, [00:19:30] the two most popular was, like you said, it varies from client to client followed by we handled the entire setup for them.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yep. Okay. So in her section of the, the, what you've told us was you need a partner you can count on. And the slide says tech automate my routine tasks to improve my profitability growth, help me grow my top line by reaching new clients and scaling advisory and people [00:20:00] up level firms skills with training and certifications in the era of AI. And she went on to talk about, you know, what you were referring back to a few minutes ago, Matthew, is that accountants are our customer, not a sales channel. They're shifting their perspective that they saw bookkeepers as the people who would bring them new clients, and now they're realizing that we are actually the customer. Once they realize that most of us are [00:20:30] have been aggravated for the last year. They realized that they can't just assume that we're going to bring them new clients, and the clients will be happy that we matter. So.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Uh, this is an area where, uh, my cynical side, unfortunately is, is, uh, in front. It's, it's very challenging. I'm, I'm stumbling with my words here because I want to try to say it as politely as possible, but I'm so concerned on, you know, fool me once, shame on me, [00:21:00] fool me twice, or I guess it's vice versa, right? The idea that this is something new, this is their new approach. I thought this is how it was supposed to be the entire time. So are they actually acknowledging here that they stepped away from it completely for a while. It just I'm a little concerned on some of the stuff that they're, they're, um, proud to be introducing at this time.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Right. I mean, they, you're absolutely right that they did [00:21:30] say in, uh, you know, when, when they released Intuit experts originally, they were like, yeah, anybody who's attached to an accountant user isn't going to see any announcements for them. But that did not prove to be true. And they said the same thing again. But this time there's actually a little bit of extra detail. So okay, let's so let's dig in some of the, the, the, the new things that they, that they said here, this, this time. So they said [00:22:00] that we are the center of the relationship, that if a business has an accountant user, um, associated with it, they're working to strengthen the relationship and not work around it and that they're trying to build in one platform that's unified where we and the clients are working together. And that's what Intuit Accountant Suite is with all the new features that you're going to that we've talked about on the show, we're actually going to have Carla Uribe from Intuit on [00:22:30] next week. And so we're going to have a big conversation about that one. And then she gave some details about the new role for Intuit experts.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: So the idea of Intuit experts, they're expanding on what features or functions that are going to be offered. Is that correct way to say it?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, it sounds like they're going to repurpose the Intuit experts for onboarding [00:23:00] and setting up new customers, which was part of that, that $50 service, if they were not attached to an accountant, but it sounds like instead of bookkeeping or maybe in addition to bookkeeping, they're trying to use the Intuit experts to do this onboarding for you.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: So now not I'm not trying to confuse topics on it, but the old Intuit experts were was that $50 a month was a we'll jump on a video call [00:23:30] or a meeting with you, but we won't ever touch your books. Now, this is a different service offering. There's kind of a couple different parts of it where they will be touching and doing your books. Is that that's a main difference, right?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yes. But before everybody starts panicking, there's guardrails on it. So let's talk about what it is and then we'll talk about what it's not. Because if you just listen to your statement, then it would be cause for alarm. And I don't think there's as much alarm [00:24:00] there. So, um, basically they're also changing the, the onboarding process as well. So basically when somebody starts up a new QBO file. Intuit set up experts actually coached the business owners through all of the all of the steps for 90 days, not just 30 days, but 90 days during the setup process. They're also changing how the setup works. And so the clients [00:24:30] will share their business name. And then what are their top priorities. And then Intuit Intelligence is actually going to change the setup process and tailor it according to their needs so that there's less manual entry. And so instead of a static checklist, it's going to have a dynamic setup hub. And it'll focus on the important tasks relevant for that particular client's business and goals. And then there's going to be a step where if the if the client is [00:25:00] setting it up themselves with Intuit experts help, there's going to be a step where they attach your firm's information right in the setup flow.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So Intuit is actually going to help them get their accountants set up in the in the file. Now, along those lines, the experts are there's a new setting in the settings in the accounting section called Intuit Experts Services. And it's [00:25:30] a toggle where you can turn it on and off. So for everything that we've just been saying about Intuit, trying to steal our clients, um, it's, there's now an option to turn on or off the ability for the Intuit experts alerts in the software. So they're going to be off by default if there's an accountant user attached. So if there's no accountant user, the options are going to show up. And if there is an accountant user, it's going [00:26:00] to turn them off. So they will never market to your clients. If a client does explore it, They're going to put up a pop up that encourages them to talk to you first. If you have a self set up client and they turn it on, then you will get a notification that they're signing up. And if you are firm billed and you're creating their file, it will be off until you enable it.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: So to kind of [00:26:30] recap what you were saying there, there's always this very strong distinction of who's paying for the subscription is always kind of a big part of it. So if the accounting firm is doing like the wholesale billing and they're actually paying for it, not just trying to pass a discount, they're paying for it, then it will not be turned on and they cannot turn it on. Only you as the accountant, would be able to turn it on. Yes. If you it's a preexisting client, they're paying for it. [00:27:00] And but it's still attached to an accountant by default. It will not be turned on. However, if they go into settings and they see this new setting, they can activate it at that point if they wanted to and you would be notified that they've done so.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Exactly.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: If no account is attached to it or connected, it will be turned turned on automatically. Um, and they can subscribe to it, do what they wish to, they can be marketed about [00:27:30] it, all that stuff. That summarizes it.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well said, well said. The question that I have is if they start up their own file and they're not attached to an accountant and it's on and then they and then they attach you, does it turn off?

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: I would expect no, because if you know preexisting, if it's already on. Um, now my, my question becomes if it's automatically on when you're setting it up, if there's additional charge for [00:28:00] this stuff, right, then They have to. There's there's other questions of do they go to turn it off? What's the charge? Is it automatically part of services? Is it an add on price? You know, those type of things?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So we still have some questions. Um, but I would for any of the developers out there listening, I would make sure that at the point that they attach an accountant that it flips off because otherwise none of this is meaning has [00:28:30] any meaning.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: More importantly, developers, if you're newer there and you didn't exist through the first round of a lot of this stuff to experience the oops, we accidentally left something turned on. Um, please talk to your counterparts about how we can avoid that happening around to.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yes, thank you for that. Okay. Uh, the other thing that they mentioned is that the bank feeds is also going to have an expert role as well that launching in [00:29:00] August in QBO plus and advanced in the banking feeds. That AI is going to take the first pass at categorizing tailored to each business and its configuration. So I think essentially what's already happening and they're going to have an agent or not an agent, an expert in the back actually reviewing and verifying.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: This means a human being.

Alicia Katz Pollock: A human being is going to be reviewing the categorizations [00:29:30] in the background.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: So look, I can see this as a good and a bad thing. So this is that area where still everybody don't go freaking out on stuff, right? This is a monotonous part of the job at times. However, it's I also believe this is kind of what helps keep us in touch with what the business is doing is understanding some of the categorization and things that are happening. So it could help you offload work, and you could really focus on the advisory, which is what they're really talking about with this and why it's such a [00:30:00] huge benefit. Um, but it is another area that they're stepping into the accountant's lane, I feel.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So let me read the I have I have two separate thoughts about that. Let me read the rest of what this is going to be doing. Um, it does say that high confidence transactions will post anything uncertain is flagged to the business owner. Uh, a bookkeeping summary shows owners what's handled and what needs their input. And if you're in QBO advanced, you get a regular Intuit [00:30:30] expert check in to keep the books continuously clean. So I have two thoughts here. So the first one is, is this a paid part of the paid service where they're just reviewing in the background? Or is this the humans adding to it, trying to improve the AI by scanning our transactions and looking for things that are posting incorrectly so that they can fix and improve the AI.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Your questions are great because one [00:31:00] thing about all of these features and functions that never came up during the entire presentation was anything to do with pricing on it. Mhm. Um, so I honestly do not know. Is it is this just a play to have more data for AI training or are is there charges for this? Because again, if you have to turn something on, um, it's kind of like the AI functionality that if you want to use more tokens, you pay extra per month for [00:31:30] that. I have a feeling there's going to be a charge or a cost to it, but we don't know what it is or what's involved.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Right. So is this part of the Intuit Experts package, which, you know, has been $50 a month? But the way they're making this read is that this is now part of the of Qbo plus an advanced. And I think it's just them. Double checking their their accuracy so that we don't [00:32:00] have to. So that they can improve it. You know, I've got serious, serious questions about this particular slide.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: I mean, if they're doing a lot of extra free work for us, I'd be like, hey, that's great.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. But it also means they're going into our files. Unauthorized.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: A good point.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So this, this slide is definitely got me like spinning. I really, really, really want some want some clarity on that one. So I'm going to go ahead and make some notes on that one and see what I can do to [00:32:30] get back to you on that. All right. Shifting gears, Intuit Accountant Suite. And Haley Garcia is a product manager to from the small business group. And she's returning. She's been on the on the show before. And the next poll was, have you tried Intuit accountant Suite? And this was the same poll that they ran in May. And the four options are. Haven't heard of it, haven't tried it, trying it currently or tried it and went [00:33:00] back to using QBO A and I didn't get my my screenshot of the final results, but I did significantly notice a big shift since May that back in May. 57% hadn't tried it yet and 25% were trying it currently, and 13% hadn't heard of it this time. Hadn't heard of it was in the single digits. Um, haven't tried it yet. Was about half and the majority were trying it currently. So [00:33:30] over the last two months there was significant adoption.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: They forgot an important option on here, which is I'm currently using it. So for myself I am, I'm actively using it.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Trying it currently.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Uh, but I'm not like, I don't consider it trying it. I'm actually using it. To me, there's a, there's a difference, right?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Right. Well, that's like Yoda do or do not. There is no try.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Yeah. Good point. Yeah. So I don't know. When I read it, I'm like, what do you mean trying it? Is it going away [00:34:00] is what makes me like uh, yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So better, better word for number three would be using it currently. Yes, yes. Okay. Semantic differences right there.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Which I like it by the way. But anyways.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, I do too. Okay, so, uh, some of the new features that are coming out and this is in core, this is in the free version, so no extra charge. Uh, they are making it so that you can have multiple tabs. So you can have your I s portal [00:34:30] open in one tab. And then like, let's say you're using books, clothes and you need to research, you click on a transaction in the books close, it will open up the client file in a new tab in the same browser. So you can have your eyes open. You can have your client open. And in fact, you can have up to five clients open simultaneously in your browser.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: There are a couple clients that would be really great to have. That's [00:35:00] nice to have that ability. You know what I really like? This is when I'm in the middle of a project with a client, and then some other client calls me real quick for an answer on something and I'm like, oh, and I have to like close out of everything else or go to an incognito window. That's where this would be nice that I could actually just pop it up real quick, get an answer, be done with it, close it back down. That would be awesome.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Mhm. And this will dovetail really, really nicely with both the books clothes and with accelerate. Accelerate is the new dashboard that allows you to work across to [00:35:30] see across clients all at the same time. So if you have, you know, their bank feed is disconnected, you can go in and go fix them all at the same time. So it's, you know, there's a, there's a lot to love about that. And so this is coming in August. The other thing that is coming in August is an inbox, which I am. Yeah, I'm.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: This is cool.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I'm super excited about it. Do you want to take the lead on this one?

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Uh, well, I just [00:36:00] so they've got a new inbox feature, basically that what it's supposed to be able to do is you're able to pull in all of your different information and the inbox will give the accounting professionals, basically, it's a centralized location for all of their communications across the clients, across their firm. And then you can assign certain questions to, uh, for particular clients, to certain employees. Probably not using my best words here, but hopefully you're getting the gist of it. Um, the example [00:36:30] they kind of gave was a best Buy, uh, transaction that if, you know, I'm imagining you've got all these different emails coming from all these different clients with different receipts, everything else. And now you need to know which client is supposed to go to into the right set of books, this inbox can kind of capture it and you can do more communications all within one area. Have record of it all. It makes sense to have this whole portal aspect of it in one area. And then the key part, [00:37:00] which maybe if you want to dive in a little deeper, it's this idea that the portal in the future is coming along as well, that even if the, the communication stuff happens, where if, as they called it, if the person has a seat in QuickBooks, right? So if maybe in a company, there's only maybe only the owner has access to the company file, but they also have another person in the company that should be answering questions. They don't necessarily have to have a seat. They can end up creating their [00:37:30] own free account to have access through a portal to be able to interact and answer questions. Also, what did I miss on that?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Um, let me, um, say some of the same things in another way and add a couple more things in. So when you're in the bank feed right now, you already have the ability to make requests. And so you can ask for more information or for a receipt. What's new is they've made it easier to select one of the users to ask the question, and it could be one of your team members or one of the [00:38:00] users on the file. But you can also add a contact if you have a client or an employee who is not doesn't have a QBO seat, you can send them an invite and it creates them a portal. They'll have to create a login for it, but they they don't have to use QuickBooks. So the way that you're already used to asking for more information or asking for a receipt, they're just making it that much easier. And then they're also adding a number of smart templates, like other questions to ask, but they didn't show us [00:38:30] what they are. Yeah. But once you use those, that is actually going to feed information to the Intuit Intelligence engine, which we'll be able to use those receipts and use that information in in queries as before.

Alicia Katz Pollock: You can leave it in the um, leave it in the banking feed for later or you can post it and those questions will still be there. Now what's new and cool is that there's a new button going to be up in the upper right [00:39:00] hand corner. That's an inbox button. So it's, you know, like where the tasks are or the integrations or the bell or the settings gear. There's going to be a new one up there called inbox. And in that inbox, you can see a list of all of the questions that have been put out there. So instead of having the requests area, which is where they started, they're improving that process. There's not going to be a requests area. There's going to be a unified inbox. And when you go into your inbox, you're going to see all the [00:39:30] questions across all of your clients in one place, but you can filter them to just see the questions for one client. And it's not just transaction specific. You can also send messages, um, to the contacts and you can send it by email or text. If you have questions out there and they haven't been getting back to them, you can send notifications and reminders. Um, and.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Can we set up the reminder? So [00:40:00] if hey, clients, if you haven't gotten me stuff for three months and you know the tax deadline is coming up, you're getting notified at 6 a.m. in the morning now probably legally can't do that part, but that'd be great. Everyone at 6 a.m. till you finish your task.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And every 15 minutes.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Yeah, exactly. You're going to get me those documents.

Alicia Katz Pollock: All right. Um, one thing that was really cool is she showed an example of Intuit intelligence, um, at, at work that if let's say you ask them to upload the receipt, but the dollar amount is different and they [00:40:30] upload the wrong receipt, it actually pops up and says, hey, that the transactions for $58. The receipt you just gave me was for $25. I don't think this is the right receipt, which is cool.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Yeah, the fact that it could actually try to catch that. So we're not having to do the back and forth now. That's that's pretty nifty.

Alicia Katz Pollock: It is. It really is. Um, in this inbox, clients can also message anybody inside your firm. And [00:41:00] so it's going to evolve into a communications portal.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Okay. Yeah. There's going to be questions. I'm sure they're already thinking of this, but there's going to have to be tiered levels of control and accessibility or visibility, I should say, uh, on information also.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So great suggestion. Yeah. So I'm really excited about this feature. You know, again, it's going to take some refinement at first. It's just going to be like one giant inbox. But eventually we'll I'm sure it will [00:41:30] become a communication center. Yep. Yep. All right, shifting gears, the next section was hosted by Caitlin Wolczynski, who is the principal product manager of the accounting team out of Mountain View. Her poll question was what size is your firm? And a 56% were small, with 1 to 4 employees, 18% were medium with 5 to 19 employees, 12% were large, with 20 to [00:42:00] 99 employees and 12.5% were mega with over 100 employees.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Wow.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: And that's only people that attended, of course. Right. But that's still interesting perspective.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, I, I, we've always known that the lifeblood was the small bookkeepers. And I think this is actually, I would have been curious to see this poll a couple years ago.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Me too.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Because I think the, the Mega is gaining traction large in Mega. [00:42:30] So she came on to talk about Aya's Accelerate. So accelerate is the paid version or the higher tier version. Although I have heard rumors that if you have enough points in the pro partner program that you are, um, that Aya's might be reduced price or free for you. So we don't have any pricing on that, but I think it's a confirmed rumor.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: I think that's a cool idea, I respect that.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Oh, I do to.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Kind of make me feel [00:43:00] like I'm finally getting something for my points.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, exactly. All right. So what they talked about was cross client and portfolio level insights that compare financial data across your entire client portfolio. So you can actually use Intuit Intelligence and ask sophisticated questions across all your clients and get immediate real time insights without extensive research and effort. So you can select one client and ask questions about that client [00:43:30] from your eyes without going into their file. And you can also ask questions across all of your clients. Like you can say like of all my clients in the manufacturing industry, tell me this about them. One of the examples that they gave was identify which of my clients had an increase in transaction volume, more than 25% last quarter compared to the previous period.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: So I, you know, I, I can see [00:44:00] where this starts to become a great value for the firm owners, managers, you know, as you're, you're looking at your client list, maybe your pricing, if you have to do price increases, you're, you're looking at all that information, being able to evaluate growth in comparison to others within the same industry could be very helpful from that side. Would you agree?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, I absolutely would agree that it's all new opportunities. It's new ways of thinking. It's new information. You know, like if you're [00:44:30] in the example I just gave. You know, if you're taking a look at your pricing and you're trying to see if you're priced by time and volume, you know, there's no time clocks in here yet. Yeah. But if your client's transaction volume has increased significantly, then your pricing should increase as well. And so without you having to go in and research all of your clients individually, you can just go ask it.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Yeah. And of course, you know, the upsell opportunities, they've already kind of focused [00:45:00] on some of that, but this becomes a lot more apparent using these capabilities.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Mhm. And in version one, it's really high level KPIs. You can't drill down to the transaction level yet, but that's, you know, over time, we'll we'll get to that point. And one thing that's neat is that after an answer, additional prompts will come up to rise. More information about about the answer or where to look next. So we'll make suggestions of other things [00:45:30] you might want to consider and then do that. Additional analysis.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Very interesting.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Now they did also note that accelerate is um they've pushed the price out. So there's um it's going to be free all the way until January 2027. So. Oh wow. Yeah. So I mean, I think it was originally supposed to be um, July charging already.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Yeah. It should have already started basically.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Um, but they realized that, well, if people [00:46:00] aren't using it, they're not going to pay for it to discover the what it does. So they're, I'm really, really glad that they've listened to me. They listened to my feedback and pushed out the pushed out the pricing until next year, which I think makes sense given that they're changing the pro partner program. So it all makes sense to roll it out next year instead.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Now I always the books, the book Close. That's part of accelerate, right?

Alicia Katz Pollock: No, it's.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: No, that's a [00:46:30] separate one. Mhm. Okay.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yep. So the book's close is per client that you use it on.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: That's right.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. So and right now the pricing is still free because again they're still building it and we haven't tried it yet. But right now the stated pricing is $8 per client. But I don't know when they're going to start and hopefully not until January either, because we need to build it first before they can charge it. Okay. And then what's [00:47:00] around the next section or the last section was what's around the corner. They wanted to remind you that there they Intuit has its own podcast called on the books and upcoming episodes include the 2026 Accountant Technology Survey report, which is always really interesting to hear year over year. Um, they're going to be talking. There's some episodes live from the Better Together tour. They just did one with Brittany Brown recently and some Q and A's with Intuit leaders, and I [00:47:30] always like hearing what the leaders are up to and you know who's actually building it. What are the people behind the scenes? And then they also shared some resources in the session. I have links to the resources inside the show notes. So you can go into the show notes and open them up. One is a toolkit, one is a what to do. What are they? Um. One is a document about making the transition [00:48:00] from QBO to IAS. One is an onboarding document all about Intuit accountant suite and then a checklist for switching. If you are consolidating your your channels and realms all into one, there's some, uh, specific instructions for that.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: Now, Alicia. I know you've always got some stuff coming up. Uh, what's next on your schedule?

Alicia Katz Pollock: So in the what's happening in [00:48:30] my world, um, I have I actually was planning to do my Intuit Accountant suite course in a couple of weeks, but with the new things that they've added, in particular the inbox and these, the things that we talked about today that are rolling out in August, I'm like, hmm, I think I should wait and teach the class in September instead. So I'm pushing out my IAS class, the link to the class. You can register now, but we're going to be holding it in September instead of August. [00:49:00] And so for those of you who already signed up, we'll send you a notice with the new date just to let you know that you're going to be able to show up later on. And then in the meantime, my hands on training class, um, we got a lot of feedback from people. Two kinds of feedback. One is the economy is terrible and even though the price is perfectly reasonable, it's too much more than I can afford. So we're actually going back. We had rolled out, um, staggered pricing, and the course was $2,000 back in April [00:49:30] and May and then 2250 in June and then 2500 in July. And we're just like, yeah, you know, let's just go back. So we're reducing the price back down to the original $2,000. So if price was a was a barrier to taking my hands on training class, you can now get it for essentially 20% off. Um, and we also push the date out instead of starting it in July. We are starting it in August instead. So it's going to [00:50:00] go from the first week in August until the third week of October. So all based on customer feedback, all the barriers to entry. And I'm super excited about that course because I give you two empty QBO shells and you build company files from scratch, one one guided step by step and then one, you prove to me that you can actually do it, and the whole thing ends in a Royal Wise certification as well. And you get a little Golden Alley for for completing the course.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: I've always said that I wanted to build a course [00:50:30] out that does exactly that, where you're truly giving people the core of it, providing information, building it up together so they can see step by step that there's a right answer or wrong answer in a sense, on when you're done with it. So that's a very, very powerful and valuable way to learn QuickBooks.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. As far as I know, I'm the only person who teaches a course specifically like this because the barrier is the is being able to provide the shells and.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: To create it and do all that stuff. Yeah, it's a lot of work. So congrats. [00:51:00]

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well thank you. Thank you very much. All right. So Matthew, thank you for joining me. And we will see you.

Matthew "Spot" Fulton: In the next one.