Karla Uribe, Intuit’s Director of Product Management, IAS

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 edition of the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast. I'm Alicia Katz from Royal wives.com, and my special guest this week is Karla Uribe from Intuit. As far as the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast, I'm going to call this the official episode of the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast because we have Intuit in the house [00:00:30] and welcome, Karla. How are you doing?

Karla Uribe: I am so excited to be here. I am a big fan of your of your work, and I am thrilled to be a guest. So thank you for having me.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Oh, excellent. Excellent, excellent. Well, we have been doing a lot of content about Intuit Accounting Suite and all of the changes. And I made the switch over and I really, really like it. And, um, even, but even when I watch in the know, I've been seeing the stats that not everybody has adopted it yet. And [00:01:00] so I thought that bringing into it in to talk about their intentions behind it and kind of humanize the, the whole corporate entity piece of it would be really, really useful for our listeners. So I really appreciate you joining us.

Karla Uribe: Awesome.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So the first thing is, so Carly, you're the director of product management with a focus on IaaS. What does that mean?

Karla Uribe: Yeah. So in general, the product leaders, we are responsible for, um, making [00:01:30] sure that there is alignment on the product roadmap and the product vision. In my case, I am solely dedicated to accountant needs. So my world is all about understanding what accountants need want, where the industry is going, what would be the most helpful in making sure that our product is evolving with those needs, and always has the accountant as the center of the center of our universe, as I like to tell people. So my job is to think about [00:02:00] accountants all day and, and figure out what is the best way that we can help them succeed.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And what's your personal stake in the matter? Like, what are your own personal goals in that role?

Karla Uribe: Yeah, that's, that's an awesome question. As a product leader, you want to create products that people love. So my metric of success for the work that I do is am I helping to drive value for accountants? And do they love it? Because that is ultimately, you know, when [00:02:30] I'm an old lady telling my kids about it, I want to be telling them that I created something that that people loved using and that it saved them time or it saved them money. That's my ultimate, um, bar of, of ambition for my work.

Alicia Katz Pollock: That's awesome. That's a great legacy as well. Okay, so for our listeners who have not moved over to Intuit Accountants yet, what's the problem that Intuit is trying to solve? Like what's the vision that started the whole process? [00:03:00]

Karla Uribe: What we're trying to accomplish with the accounting suite is to have one centralized place where accountants can manage all aspects of their teams, of their business and their clients. So in terms of what opportunities or what problems we're solving, there's two big things. One is the consolidation of data in one place because the consolidation of data unlocks other value. Um, and then also the ability to do bulk actioning to be able to take steps that are repetitive [00:03:30] within each client file and standardize and templatize them and make them really easy for an accountant to say, here's how I want this done. Now do it across all of the things in our QuickBooks online accountant product. Um, the usage for that was primarily based just on having a directory of clients. And to us, it felt like there was an enormous opportunity to provide much more value in that consolidation of clients. And so the accounting suite is really, again, rooted on [00:04:00] one place where you can see all of your data and do a lot more work in the spirit of driving efficiencies, saving time, and of course, getting insights with the data that you have.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, I think that's a really valuable insight because most of us have had to turn to external tools in order to manage the practice. We've got the bookkeeping in one place, but all the management happens somewhere else. And so was it was user feedback that made you realize that these tools were missing in [00:04:30] QBO?

Karla Uribe: Absolutely. And another thing that really inspired the accounting suite is the realization that a lot of accountants have multiple different places, multiple different QBO accountants products where they're scattered their clients. And there was a variety of different reasons why people did that. It was because of permissions or because they had a lot of clients and they performance was not great. We fixed all that, and we've made it now really easy to actually be able to manage the entire portfolio within [00:05:00] one account and suite instance. And so again, being able to eliminate these little, uh, weird inefficiencies that were in our product to one place that has the ability to handle all of it is the best way to then unlock other things because of the data actually living in one place. So it was, um, very much rooted on how we're seeing accountants work and how many different apps they have, and they're scattered all over the place and they're not really getting the efficiencies of, of data being in one [00:05:30] place. That is really the heart of that of, of the accounting suite and what inspired us to create that.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. Excellent. That's admirable. So I recently watched the Intuit connect on. That's a series that Intuit has been doing that's kind of like Intuit connect conference, but in webinar format. So it's been a cool series. I'm glad that you guys started doing it. And in the most recent one, there was a section or a theme of your feedback in action. And so can you share a few examples where the feedback [00:06:00] from accountants directly changed the product roadmap, roadmap, or influenced a feature?

Karla Uribe: Yeah, absolutely. Um, the feedback is, is the most important of all of the data points that we use in order to prioritize something. I'll go, I'll go back to like what our role is to make sure that there is a backlog that is aligned with what accountants want. Some of it is research that we do. A lot of it is also competitive analysis and data and you know where the world is going. But [00:06:30] a lot of it has to do with what our accountants telling us. Are they telling us that there are problems in our product? Are they're telling us that they are, you know, using weird workarounds on things because they don't have the right, um, the right structures or the right support for the workflows that they're trying to, to work through. Um, so feedback is at the heart of, of all of the backlog work that we, that we prioritize. And again, it'll show up in improvements, it'll show up [00:07:00] in design, it'll show up in complete new feature sets that we hadn't prioritized. For example, just to give an example of a feedback driven roadmap item this year, we, uh, or this just last few weeks, we're announcing the brand new Resolution Center, which is the place where accountants are going to be able to see what open support tickets their clients have. And this is just the beginning. We're going to expand that to include a lot more information. But that came directly from accountants [00:07:30] saying, I really don't like that. I can't tell what my clients have submitted and what's open and where they are and the status of closing those. So that was taken directly from accountant feedback put into a backlog where various teams now have worked on improving the resolution Center so that it could be an accountant experience, not just an individual, one by one experience that consolidates all of the view of the tickets. So that is we do a lot of that.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Are you saying that I'm now going [00:08:00] to be able to have insight into the calls that my clients are putting in directly to support.

Karla Uribe: The support requests? So if your clients have submitted a support request for the accountants that are very actively managing their clients work, they want some visibility. And of course, all of this will be protected by permissions and, and no access to anything that you shouldn't see or don't want to see. Um, but it is important for some accountants to, to understand where their clients stand [00:08:30] with certain product issues or whatnot. And so that, that is something that was highly requested and we built it.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I love that idea because I have a lot of DIY clients and so many of the time that they'll report back to me, it's like, I just spent four hours on the phone with Intuit and I'm like, why didn't you just call me? I could have clicked the button. And so I welcome the idea to have that transparency and, and see that. So that's really cool. Um, where, what are the best ways of people putting in feedback? [00:09:00]

Karla Uribe: We have feedback forms, we have county boards, um, scattered through various parts of the product where folks can tell us what they like or don't like. There's also surveys at the end of each experience. There's often an opportunity to provide, uh, you know, would you recommend and here's why, yes or no. We read that we read all of the customer support tickets as well. So there's many different avenues by which people tell us what they, what they think or what they would like to see improvements on. And we read all of them.

Alicia Katz Pollock: That's [00:09:30] one of the themes in this, in this podcast that if I ever made t shirts for the podcast, the back would say, flood that feedback.

Karla Uribe: Yes, we get something around. I think the number is 10,000 data points a month. Uh, so we, we, we get a lot of feedback and we are definitely processing and doing our best to address the most important stuff, for sure.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. Excellent. Okay. So now let's talk about the the AI that's coming [00:10:00] into into QBO. It's been kind of fun for me to read the socials because there's a lot of people who are like, yes, bring the AI. And then there's a lot of people who are like, I didn't ask for this and I don't want this. And they're like, well, why are they putting all this AI in when my bank feed is still just making mistakes? What do you say to those accountants?

Karla Uribe: Yeah, I mean, I think that's a fair point. And in very rare cases, do people actually say, give me AI? Um, [00:10:30] that's that's not that's not the problem is lack of AI is not the problem. Right? The problem is I want to get my job done. I want this to work. I want to save time efficiency increase, etc.. Those are the actual problems that people want solved. The AI is the how, but the AI is offering brand new ways to solve these problems, which might not apply everywhere. We still have to fix the bank feeds. It's not that AI is going to be absolutely [00:11:00] everywhere immediately. Um, but there are lots of areas where in order to help with those problems, AI as the how makes a lot of sense, but AI for the sake of AI does not. And we are very mindful that it has to be accurate, that it has to be actually saving time and not costing more time and more money. And what we want is for people to engage with it in a way that makes sense, so that it learns and it starts to behave [00:11:30] even more effectively than, um, than the solutions from before. So we don't think about AI for the sake of AI. We think about AI as a how to solving problems that accountants have.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And one of the things that I noticed that just popped up this past week was the ability to use AI to create an invoice. And I was trying it out, but it was taking so long, I could have just made the invoice already. So I'm really confident, you know, conscious that the AI is still in its infancy and that, you [00:12:00] know, and this isn't just in QuickBooks, it's, you know, if you just go to ChatGPT, you put something in, you got to wait for it. And so it's, you know, I, everything that we're seeing with the AI is still really is in just version 1.0. And there's going to be a lot of development around it. So like, you know, for, for speaking to the audience here that, you know, if you try something out and it's got wait time, well, go open another tab and do something else while this thing is doing what it's doing. And then you're not losing productivity, you're gaining [00:12:30] productivity because you're doing two things at once.

Karla Uribe: Yeah, yeah. And our bar is definitely at improving the way things are done, not doing it differently. That that, that wouldn't be, that wouldn't be the right bar for a successful product launch to just say, oh, this is now done with AI, but it took the same amount of time and it cost you the same amount of effort. That wouldn't be what we would want when we do these experiences. They are looking for ways to be better than how you've done things in the past, and if they're not meeting that bar, then they shouldn't be used.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Nice. [00:13:00] Nice. Um, so one of the things with IAS is, like you said, you're solving the problem of, of bookkeepers and accountants and CAS teams having to cobble together a lot of different apps. And so a lot of firms are already heavily invested in double and financial sense and carbon and canopy and zenith and even other practice management or management tools like asana or even spreadsheets. What do you say to those firms [00:13:30] about where like books, clothes, for example, which we're going to talk about extensively, but like, where does books, books, clothes fit into their technology stack if they're already using those other tools?

Karla Uribe: Yeah. Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Is the goal to replace them, move people back into the product to solve a different piece of the workflow?

Karla Uribe: Yeah, that's that's, that's a great question. And for accountants that have, um, their, you know, have built very thoughtfully built their tech stacks, we don't, we don't expect everyone to drop everything and come to [00:14:00] our product. We, we believe that there are areas where, uh, we could add additional value by being the source of the data. And those will be complementary in some areas. In other areas over time, you might find that they provide enough value that it just makes sense to do it where, where the data is native. And so our goal isn't to say we're going to replace this or we're going to replace that. It really is looking into the future of where we see there being opportunities [00:14:30] to do more for accountants. And where we see those opportunities is streamlining efficiencies where the data lives. And so in the case of books, um, there has not been a place in within the Intuit platform where you can work across your client portfolio. And that makes a lot of sense for a place like Intuit Accountant Suite, because that is one of many jobs, as we call them, where we want to be able to say templatize and streamline from within where the work goes, do it there and do it in an efficient [00:15:00] way.

Karla Uribe: If it is not valuable enough to replace the tool that you already have for books, just try it. It is not. It is not something that we're we're saying drop everything now and and use it. But we do believe that we have more to offer because of where the data sits and because those efficiencies will drive other efficiencies. So if you are doing that work within the Intuit platform, that data lives within Intuit platform. Now you can do other things like engage with our conversational UI [00:15:30] and ask questions about those books, uh, numbers that you just closed. And so there is an unlock of of features and value that comes with having everything centralized in one place. But, but the best thing I can say on that right now is, is try it. There's no cost to try it right now. And so, uh, you know, be, make, make your own mind on whether or not we're providing enough value for, for replacing or complementing some of the tech stack that you already have.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. I mean, for me personally, [00:16:00] that's one of the things that I'm really conscious of is because I always try and be QuickBooks forward first and then use the tool, use third party tools when I need to. But I've been in double now for two years, and I see a lot of things in IAS that I want to adopt. But then it's like, okay, well, how do I make that change? Like, do I put a couple clients in it? Do. But then now I've got my data in two different places, or do I wait until QBO has been more fleshed out by people who are not using anything? [00:16:30] And so they're starting QBO because it's a, it's a best fit, right? They're part of it. And then later on, maybe I migrate over.

Karla Uribe: Yeah, that's exactly right. And not everybody is happy with their with their current solutions. And so, um, there's a lot of opportunity to find the right time to, to make that move. And while we are focused on, on the Intuit platform, uh, we have declared as our strategy that we want to be able to be a multi multi-platform, um, uh, open platform [00:17:00] as well. So we, we do plan on expanding beyond QuickBooks, beyond Intuit to be able to have all your clients in one place, because we recognize that that is going to be one of the biggest value drivers for this work is to be able to see all your clients, not just not just your QuickBooks clients.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Because I noticed Intuit connect on the word agnostic came up a couple times and it was never defined. So is that what you were talking about?

Karla Uribe: Yes, that's that's what we mean, we, we want to be able to, um, offer a lot of these [00:17:30] different capabilities to your whole client portfolio, not just the ones that are on QuickBooks. That is not something we can do yet, but that is ultimately the vision because we do recognize that, um, it is not going to be the case where accountants that do have multiple different ledgers and multiple different products where they want to split their clients. And so we do have the desire to, to be a platform that that works with everyone.

Alicia Katz Pollock: That's interesting. [00:18:00] So like being able to go multi ledger that if you are using desktop or Xero or double or digits or some of the other ones that are coming up.

Karla Uribe: Yeah. Again, it's not a, it's not, it's not in product yet. It is, it is, uh, the vision at this point, but, you know, to talk about some of the feedback that we get from accountants, some of the feedback has been, we're not going to do two different tools for different for different ledgers. And so how do we provide the value to keep the people where you need to keep them in and still be able to, to benefit [00:18:30] from that centralization?

Alicia Katz Pollock: That's really fascinating. I'll really look forward to seeing how that plays out. Yeah, that's something that I wouldn't expect from you. So I'm really happy to hear it.

Karla Uribe: We're listening, we're listening.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Um, so in the so let's talk about the experience of migrating from QBO, a QuickBooks online for accountants, which is what we've been using for 15 years over to Intuit Accountants suite. And I know a lot of people are curious about [00:19:00] what that's like. Um, I mean, I found it seamless. I just clicked the button and now my QBO A now looks like my client's files that I've been using for a year. So I thought that was, you know, I think it's pretty darn seamless. Um, is there anything else that you want to say to accountants that.

Karla Uribe: The transition from Qbo to IAS is very simple. It is really just a toggle that you say, I'm ready, [00:19:30] switch me over and all of your data will automatically be in accounting suite. There's no need to migrate any data. There's no need to do any additional work. Um, there's a couple of things that we hear from, from folks that are making that switch or are contemplating making that switch. One is moving over is simple. The part that I worry about is do I have the right tools to educate myself on how to use this new product and then train my employees or my team on how to use it? Um, that is why we have [00:20:00] created a lot of training materials, videos, how to's. There's a lot of guides to help with that transition. The transition itself is easy. It's more about getting the firm and the accountants ready to, to work under the new interface and under and with the new tools and everything that has changed. So that's, that's often the thing that we hear the most. Um, the other thing that we encourage accountants to do for those that have many different qbo accounts is if you [00:20:30] really want to take advantage of features such as client insights or books and. And you can really benefit from having clients in one place, you can consolidate your, your different shows into one.

Karla Uribe: So the way that you do that is you pick the one that's going to be your master. And in the settings, there is a transfer client experience that allows you to consolidate from different shows into one QBO. So those are the things [00:21:00] that require extra steps for accountants that really want to get organized. And we actually have also a really cool tool that allows you to set up the practice in the way that your teams are organized. So if I want to say, okay, here is my regions and I want to work by regions, or here's my my different services offered, and I want to split my teams and my clients by different services offered. We have a really cool tool that allows for that kind of setup. And ideally, people take advantage of that so that [00:21:30] it is reflective of how they work. And again, trying to unlock the most value. But all of that is optional. If all you're trying to do is move over to try it out and see what it is and how it works. That takes no time. Just say, yes, I want to do this. There is no cost to do that. Qbo will be around until the end of the year, so if it's not the right moment you want to switch back. You can still do that until January. Mhm.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I mean, I haven't found any reason why I would switch back because the experience was, you know, [00:22:00] it has all the same things that that QBO A had. And now the interface looks like everything else. And so I don't have my brain doesn't have to keep moving back and forth between two different interfaces. Um, and so it IAS is free. Everything that we had in the free program before, we still have now and the benefit of consolidating the realm. And you don't call them realms anymore. We've always called them realms. It's consoles now. No. Is that the.

Karla Uribe: Rooms? Its rooms? It's rooms. [00:22:30] I, I don't always know if to say realms, but yes, realms is the right thing. You have you have QBO realms and you want to consolidate into one account. Sweet realm. Um, ideally, in order to be able to set yourself, yourself up efficiently with your team and your clients.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Which is also going to help with your benefits in the new, in the new benefits tier. Yes, as well. So if you bring all your clients together in one place, then you get higher level.

Karla Uribe: That is exactly right. There are there [00:23:00] are many reasons, um, to consolidate and that is a big one. The ProAdvisor pro partner now program tiers will be very much benefited from from the consolidation. But, but also again, just the data, the data being in one place will really unlock another level of insights and features.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So we've started kind of alluding to some of the features. So let's kind of shift gears a little bit from concept and get into some detail. And we do have some [00:23:30] episodes historically about about IAS. Dan DeLong and I did a deep dive back in episode 130. Actually, it's been several months since then. Margie Reimers, Davis and I just did an episode about ProAdvisor versus pro partner in episode 150. So there's, um, in the time that we have, we're not going to be able to go into like all the features. So we have other episodes about that and we'll continue to have more, but let's call [00:24:00] out some of the highlights and some of the features and really explain to people what's new in IAS. So not just it's QBO A on steroids, but there's brand new stuff. So we've already said that, you know, the IAS itself, the platform is completely free. Now what we're doing is going into some of the new features which will be paid features, but they're not paid yet right like that. We have a while to try them out. Yes. That's right. Yeah. And [00:24:30] I'm going to throw in my own $0.02 here. This is totally my opinion, but I would like you guys to keep this stuff as free for a while so that people get the chance to see what it is. Because if you start putting a price tag on it before people have tried it, they're not going to try it. Yeah. So yeah, that's my that's right.

Karla Uribe: And that's, that's why we are heavily encouraging people to, to make that move now and to try these things now because they will be free for a little bit. And we want to make sure that that [00:25:00] there is opportunity to try them. So that's, that's exactly why this timeline works now for, for folks to make the move and try it out.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. All right. So let's start with books, clothes. And so in your words, what what is books clothes and what does books clothes do?

Karla Uribe: Yeah. So books clothes experience is brand new to the accountant suite. It is a guided AI assisted module that you add on to the accounting suite, and the intention of it [00:25:30] is to streamline a firm's month end close up among the entire client book. It is. It takes, you know, what is one of the most common jobs and puts it in in one place, one centralized place to be able to work across the portfolio. Um, and that is not something that, that you could do before within our Intuit platform, we have a way to review books and work on various different aspects of, of cleaning books within QuickBooks, but [00:26:00] not an experience where you can work across the portfolio in bulk. And so that is what the, what the new books close experience is, is bringing that as a, as a new way of working on books into the accounting suite.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Can you get kind of specific about it? Like what's the actual process?

Karla Uribe: Yeah. So the, the, the workflows, the steps for closing the books can now be done within the accounting suite. So, uh, transaction checks where you can catch and fix [00:26:30] anomalies or collaborate with clients that might be missing information, uh, documents, context, etc. all of that can now happen within the accounting suite. And there are cool features such as being able to fully customize certain transaction checks and templates, which is another topic we'll talk about in a bit as well. But being able to tell the system here is how I want to run these checks. [00:27:00] Here's how I want to do these steps. This is how my firm operates. Now. Run that across my portfolio for the process of closing the books. And so it is not that it is an unheard of process. As you said before, people have other tools where they do that, but it is new to the Intuit platform to be able to do this across the portfolio and within the accountant suite. And so that is the space in which we are also evolving and doing and using new technology to, to run through different aspects [00:27:30] of that close that are routine and transactional and can be done better with technology, can be done better with AI. And so eventually we'll also have a genetic books close which, which automatically takes care of, of some of those steps. But right now you can see all of those steps. You can control all of those steps. You can do whatever you need to do to, to make the books close process more efficient.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, just to give people kind of like a granular, um, idea of what this is like. Some of the things that Carl is talking about is [00:28:00] a checklist of transaction reviews. So for example, if you're set up with rules that are auto adding transactions from the banking feed, it actually shows you which transactions were auto added by the banking feed so that you can look at them and verify them and make sure that they're all right. Or you can set a threshold that if there's any transactions over $2,500, that you can review them to make sure that it's not something that should be capitalized. So it's a check listing system [00:28:30] for the books close. Of all the things that as an accurate accountant, you would go through and make sure that all the data is correct. And so it allows you to systematize your data checks and pay attention to, um, underlying detail that you would have to go manually dig into the file to find if you were to look for it yourself.

Karla Uribe: That's right.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Um, so you mentioned templates. Um, so one of the features that caught my attention is the ability that [00:29:00] you can build firm wide templates with, and then you can assign them that there's the, there's the, I don't have the terminology in front of me, but you have the person who's doing the work, the person who's reviewing the work and the person who's approving the work. Um, and so why is that kind of standardization such an important design goal. Yeah.

Karla Uribe: This is another one of those items that has come or capabilities that has come from customer feedback, from account feedback. And that is in order to [00:29:30] really drive efficiency in the firm, you have to be able to implement standards of how the firm likes to do certain things because it also quality control and team management, etc.. So we are launching for the first time, the first version of our of our template system, our playbook, which includes the ability to have certain company settings, chart of account configurations, policy configurations and and user access and custom [00:30:00] feeds. And so that's really the beginning of a journey where we are building control into the accounting suites so that accountants can say, this is how I want to work, this is how I want it to work. Now do this in my clients books. So a lot of these, a lot of these settings you can do within within QuickBooks as well. But if you did it that way, you'd be doing them one by one. And so again, one of the, one of the vision items for the accounting [00:30:30] suite is if you have a certain way of working, we should provide you the tools to tell us how you want to work. And it'll be in conversation as well. You'll get to the point where you'll be able to say, I want you to do this and that, and now do it across all my product based businesses, or do it across all my service based businesses and have, um, and have the accountants really be that control center for implementing things at scale to save you time right now.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And that's huge. And that's ambitious. And that really just kind of made real for me that this [00:31:00] is not a short term plan. Like this is going to take a couple years to develop it and really make it work. And so for, you know, I want to remind everybody that this is a journey and it's going to take time to make this big, hairy, audacious goal real. But the best thing that we can do is put it through its paces and make suggestions. Because, you know, if you're if you're you guys want that feedback to design it based on our needs. [00:31:30] And so I kind of recommend to people instead of waiting, like pick a client to play with the books, clothes and, and make it, you know, and make it your own. And I also want to remind people that that because things are changing so rapidly and this is under development, that if you try it now and it doesn't do what you want it to do now, don't just write it off and dismiss it because six months from now, it's going to do some [00:32:00] of the things that you need, or two years from now, it's going to be a whole different world. And so it really does take that, um, you know, you're using the word partnership. I'll use the word partner. It takes that partnership in order to get it where we want it to go. Yeah, although I can hear a couple people in the back of my head saying, yeah, but that's Intuit developing on our backs. I mean, so what? You know, what's Intuit's perspective on the fact that you're that yes, you want our feedback in order to [00:32:30] build it, but that takes our time to, to give that feedback and to put it through its paces and go, okay, it's not working. And then that's lost productivity.

Karla Uribe: Well, I mean, we don't, we don't ever, um, we don't ever intentionally put anything in the market that is not working, expecting you to find the errors or anything like that. But for something that is groundbreaking and doesn't exist in the market in this way, there's no templatized way to do work like this in the market right now across across the [00:33:00] QuickBooks platform. We do a lot of research leading up to launching a product feature. So we have had a lot of conversations, we have piloted things, we have tried things. Um, but at the end of the day, we do need to hear from accountants what they would consider to be the most valuable. So it is important that we take that step to put things in market and say, what more do you want to see? What more do you want this to do? It is horrible when something flat out doesn't work and you're catching it. That's we would never intentionally [00:33:30] do something like that. But but being able to influence the direction of where the product can go is an important moment in time, right? For, for the prioritization of all of this work, to be able to get that feedback and say, yes, there's ten different things we can be doing, but this one seems to be the one that people have the most energy on. Focus on that. Um, a lot of times you need to be in market to be able to get that kind of feedback.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Mm. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense because you have to, you can develop something in theory, but then you can wind up going down the [00:34:00] wrong path. And so it's kind of this catch 22 of we want something that works the way that we want it to, but then we have to have skin in the game as well.

Karla Uribe: Exactly, Exactly. That's why we say we want to co-build because it truly is. What we're trying to do is, is, is, um, build something that again, taking it back to the ultimate goal is to provide value. So we have to understand if something is providing value or there's a different way to provide more value. And we get that directly from, from our partnership.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. [00:34:30] All right. Let's shift gears a little bit and talk about the client insights. So this is another one of the features that's being built out. And client insights is part of the accelerate tier. Yes. And that's the that's the paid tier. So books close that we were just talking about is a per client fee that you can have one client on books, clothes, you can have all your clients on books closed and you pay per client and that's available to anybody. Then [00:35:00] accelerate is a right now priced at 100 or it will be 149. Well, you're saying that it will be $149 a month for the whole entire firm. Yes. And what is it that Client Insights brings?

Karla Uribe: Yeah. And I'll also just add the pricing will also be impacted by the ProAdvisor pro part sorry, pro partner tiered program. So if you are in the right partnership [00:35:30] tier, that price may change might might go down or it might be gone. So. So that is another reason why paying attention to that per partner program and what tier you're in and consolidating might actually be very beneficial also to how these cost structures play out when, when, when we start charging in the new year.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So the price might change according to the tier that you're in. Because I did hear a rumor that if you're in the top tiers, that accelerate would would be no cost.

Karla Uribe: Yeah. Yeah. And I don't, [00:36:00] um, I don't have the numbers that I can, that I can share in this conversation, but, but I will say is, is keep an eye out for those tears and how how that might be beneficial for for trying some of these products out that are paid tiers.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. Excellent. All right. Cool. So, um, client insights. Um, that's, so that's the one that allows accountants to look across all client files all at the same time at their whole portfolio. [00:36:30] That's right. And so what are the pain points that you're trying to solve with that? And what is it? What what will it do that just wasn't possible before.

Karla Uribe: Yeah. So this is, this is something that was completely not possible before. What, what you would be able to see in QBO A in the client list is a few data points across your client portfolio. But this one is really and was also very much born from, from accountants saying, I don't, I don't have unless I take all this data out, put it in a spreadsheet or import it into another third [00:37:00] party app. I don't have a way of seeing all of these important KPIs in one place and do analysis on them from within the platform. So the intention of the client inside's console or dashboard is that it provides a way for accountants to say, here's the clients I want to see, here's the KPIs that I want to see together, um, including ecosystem KPIs. So we've now added bill pay, payroll data, tax data. You can see a whole, a whole [00:37:30] dashboard, um, on tax data for accountants that use the, the pro connect product, all of that is now centralized. And you choose what you want to see in one place. And on top of that, you layer in the AI work skills that were, that were building, and you start to get opportunities to see what is drastically changing month over month. What are some anomalies that you might want to pay attention to? So the intention is not just, here's another dashboard with all of the data [00:38:00] is it is to provide a way to see those insights and have them proactively reach you so that you can take action and focus in areas where you might want to lean in with a client or really, you know, prepare for, for advising or consulting on, on finances or, or how the business is running. So it is, it is the first of its kind within our platform to be able to see the data you choose, [00:38:30] what you want to see, and also be leveraging the power of the AI that we've already put into various parts of our product from within one place.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. I just kind of had this imagining like as, as I'm listening to you, like I'm thinking like, well, what's the use case? And so earlier you said that you can group the clients by region or industry, and so you can make a dashboard of all of your manufacturing clients and keep an eye on their KPIs all at the same time, [00:39:00] which would allow you to see kind of what's happening in the whole industry all at once. And then if you've got one client that's higher or lower than industry, you know that they're either doing something different and special that's working. And you can find out what that is and apply it across your clients. Or maybe one of them's failing and you can catch it because they're statistically significantly off in their KPIs from their peers.

Karla Uribe: That's exactly right.

Alicia Katz Pollock: That's really fascinating. [00:39:30] The, the, the, the idea that you can kind of make these groups and see all of that at one point, it allows us now to kind of see, um, niche trends.

Karla Uribe: Mhm. Create your own benchmarks. Um, you know, set, set certain, um, ranges of data for within which you're going to action. Um, we are providing the tools to give you data that you can action because [00:40:00] at the end of the day, again, we still want the accountant to be at the center of those conversations. Mhm. And these are not tools that are available in the QuickBooks files for the clients. These are specifically for accountants.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. That's. Yeah. Now my, now my head's spinning with like all these different ways, ways of using it. And, you know, I think, you know, when they say the riches in the niches and, you know, one of the recommendations that Intuit has been making for a long time to grow your practice is to specialize in something [00:40:30] like whether it's an industry or a client size or something. But I can see that the client insights would be that much more valuable if there was commonalities or themes across your clients versus like, you take whoever comes, whoever shows up. I mean, any beginning bookkeeper is just going to take any client they can get. But as you develop your expertise, I can see how this would really deepen that level of expertise, because now it makes it that much easier to make recommendations or strategize with your clients.

Karla Uribe: Exactly, exactly. [00:41:00]

Alicia Katz Pollock: Now, one of the things that I've noticed is that there's now dashboards appearing everywhere across, across QBO every section, like there's a sales dashboard and there's a, you know, the homepage dashboard, and there's a vendor's dashboard and a dashboard. And so one of the things I've been wondering is like, well, what about dashboard fatigue that there's reports that we can be looking at? And I like the dashboards because they're turning them into visual charts, which is, which is cool. Um, how, [00:41:30] how did your team decide which insights deserve to be bubbled up to the top? And what can we do to keep from being overwhelmed? By now? We've got a huge amount of information available to us all at once.

Karla Uribe: Yeah. Well, for the for the client insights dashboard, you can choose what you want to see. So depending on what KPIs you choose to see with what clients, um, that'll change the data that is surfacing to you. But our [00:42:00] goal is not definitely not to bombard people with dashboards. It is more to create the platform tools so that you choose what you want to see. And so there will be a lot of flexibility and control over what's showing up. And again, the more you engage, the more we learn and the more we are able to provide extra layers of control so that you don't get bombarded. But the other thing I will say is the work that we're doing to centralize this data also benefits the conversational AI, the, [00:42:30] the Intuit intelligence. And so if a conversation is better than seeing a dashboard, that is going to be another way to engage with your data. At the end of the day, that's what we as the product team, the engineers, the designers, everybody. What we're trying to do is give you a way to do whatever you want with your data. So if you want to see a dashboard and we'll surface anomalies, and we'll surface the things that we think are important to you, you can do it that way. Or you can go into into intelligence [00:43:00] and say, give me a couple of clients that I might need to focus on today because they're having some issues with their data X, Y, z. So, so there are going to be different ways to interact with the data. There's also widgets, you know, at the front of, of the home page where if there is a specific data set that you want to see and you don't want to see everything else, you just want to see some payroll numbers, or you want to just see, um, books, books, numbers. You can just limit it to that data set. So our goal again, is control, not [00:43:30] necessarily being prescriptive about what you see all the time, but more giving you, giving you, giving accountants the ability to decide for yourself.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. And it almost seems like this is giving it an opportunity to kind of shift the industry, that there's individual bookkeepers that have been kind of the bread and butter, where it's all been compliance and data entry, and their jobs begin and end with reporting versus firms that are serving higher end clients [00:44:00] where they want the advisory and they want recommendations. And it seems that the client, the the client insights and accelerate give that ability to start elevating your own skills. And this may be, you know, for some of you bookkeepers out there, you may not want and need this, but it's also an opportunity that if you're hearing KPIs and you're not sure what KPI even stands for, which is key performance indicators, but you don't know what a liquidity ratio is. Now [00:44:30] you've got some choices, like, do you want to learn what these KPIs are and would that be beneficial to your clients? And would that be beneficial to you? And you know, for some people, the answer is no. And which is fine, you can still keep doing the work that you're doing. And if the answer is yes, it opens up a whole new world of opportunity for you with higher price tag on it as well and opportunity for growth. And so if you want to stay small, you can stay small and there's no need for it. And [00:45:00] if you want to grow or you're already in, or you're already a firm that has, you know, 20 cast staff, then it gives you that, that extra oomph to be able to do that analysis without having to go into every single file.

Karla Uribe: That's right.

Alicia Katz Pollock: That's right. Cool.

Karla Uribe: Very well said. Thank you.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Oh you're welcome. Um, can you share like a real life example where client insights helped an accountant discover [00:45:30] something that they might not have noticed until the month end or ever? Um, you know, like an example of when somebody went, oh, I saw that in the client dashboard and I was able to address it.

Karla Uribe: Yeah. Um, there was a call that we were on recently where an accountant that was playing with his data realized that there was a sharp decline of cash on hand and definitely noted, oh, I need to get back to that client because I want to understand why there was a sharp decline. [00:46:00] So the kinds just, just for the folks that that haven't heard much about this, we can do anomalies, we can identify changes in revenue, profit margins, etc.. What has gone up? What has gone down? Uh, we do a cash and balance sheet ratios, um, you know, bookkeeping, health, etc. and so there's a lot of different data points where we can signal that there is a drastic change. And, [00:46:30] and it's not only signaling, but you can also go deeper, open up the explanation and say, there seems to be a change in trend here in some of this data, like cash flow. Do you want to jump in and figure out how to help them or having a conversation with your client and ask if if they're okay, if there's something going on that that could warrant, um, some, you know, deeper relationship or again, trying to unlock opportunities for accountants. And so, um, again, this is just the beginning. And the more accountants get into the [00:47:00] space and use it and give us feedback on what they would like to see, we will continue to build it. Um, but right now, those kinds of drastic changes and patterns are the area that we're hearing count and say, oh, I wouldn't have caught that if it wasn't because you clearly signaled for me that this particular client had a drastic change month over month.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. That's really cool. All right. So let me, let me actually address the elephant in the room. And one of the things that I [00:47:30] see almost every day in the ProAdvisor community is that, um, you know, people love QuickBooks, but something, you know, changes or slows them down or something doesn't work. And there's a lot of frustration in the forums. Just honestly, when you, when you read social media, of course, the people who love it and are working or not in there. Like putting posting about all the great things they're doing that you only hear the complaints, but when you read those posts or you hear the feedback, um, what [00:48:00] is it that you want accountants to know? Like, you know, how does, how is Intuit balancing the push of innovation with that equally important work of making sure that the features are reliable problems are getting fixed quickly and that there's transparent communication when something is wrong? What, what, what does Intuit want us to know about that?

Karla Uribe: Absolutely. I think that's that's a great question because we talk so much about the new features that it [00:48:30] may sound like all we're doing is trying to build new features and we don't care about the work that's there. Um, and that's not the case. We actually have a strategic priority that we call nail the foundations. And that is just as important. And at an even higher altitude than new features is the work that we do to understand where our product is not meeting expectations or is causing problems or people are unhappy. And [00:49:00] so that whole category of strategic priority nail the foundations is every team that works in any corner of the Intuit platform has the bucket of work that is most important. Top, um, voice of customer coming through saying this is so it is, it is at the same altitude, if not higher than any of the new feature work we do is to make sure that we are constantly addressing the things that might be wrong with the product or [00:49:30] areas that we need to improve. It's very, very important for us.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I'm happy to hear that because I live in that realm. That's like, that's my daily bread and butter and you know, it's job security, but I don't want it to be. So I'm glad to hear I hadn't heard the phrase nail the foundations before.

Karla Uribe: I think it's a little bit of an internal name, but it just means we got to get it right. We can't just build new stuff. We got to get it right.

Alicia Katz Pollock: That's great. Okay, good. Um, what is the best way for the ProAdvisor community [00:50:00] to stay up to date on the changes and what's up and coming?

Karla Uribe: Yeah, that's that's a great question. Um, we highly encourage you to keep tracking our in the know webinars, the firm of the future blogs. We are doing a lot of work to make sure that we are communicating all of the stuff that we're working on, all of the features and the things that are coming and when. And those areas tend to be, uh, the best places to, to get, um, content. So again, visit form of the future, um, [00:50:30] attend or watch the recordings for the, in the know webinars, um, and, you know, sign up for our newsletters and keep track of you can keep track of what we're doing that way.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. I want to put a little bug in your ear. I have there's something that I want is that notifications bell that's up in the upper right hand corner. I want to change log. Every time you fix something, no matter how tiny it is, no matter how tiny, I would love to see it up in that change log so we can just go up there and see, oh, today they fixed these [00:51:00] five squash, these five bugs or today they released this new feature or they've put this one is in beta test. So it's showing up in some files and not others. But if we had a place where we could actually scan the development, it would help everybody because then we're not taken by surprise by the changes or two. Different people's files are different or anything. We can actually just go look and scan and know what's up and go, oh, that got fixed. Awesome. Let me get back to work.

Karla Uribe: Right? Yes. We always an opportunity for us to, to, um, do [00:51:30] more to communicate. I agree with that.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay.

Karla Uribe: All right.

Alicia Katz Pollock: All right. Um, so, you know, you see these features long before any of us, which feature or it could even be one that's coming out, it makes you think this is going to fundamentally change how accounting firms work?

Karla Uribe: Yeah, I that's that's I love that question. There's without question, a lot happening in the accounting industry with AI. And, you know, part of the reason we are focused [00:52:00] on giving accountants more data and more ability to lean in on, um, an advisory and on other work comes in parallel with a lot of accounting is being automated. And there is going to be ways in which all of those tasks that are automatable become that. And AI is a very powerful way in which the how on how some of this accounting work works [00:52:30] becomes more efficient and, and less tedious for accountants. And so, um, you know, the ideal world here is where we evolve to a place where accountants are that partnership to the small businesses and to the individuals, and they're helping them run their business, while at the same time taking full advantage of work that they can take on on their behalf so that they can focus on that relationship and that partnership and helping businesses thrive. So [00:53:00] for me, there is many things that I'm excited about. I'm excited about the evolution of accounting software to be in the new AI space with agents that can do a lot of the work, but I'm also excited to be providing accountants with tools so that they can become even more powerful source of, of consulting or advisory for, for the small businesses that really, really need that help.

Alicia Katz Pollock: If we invited you back two years from now, what would you hope that accountants would be saying about [00:53:30] into an accountants suite? Like what would success look like from your perspective?

Karla Uribe: Yeah, I would love for people to say, I don't even remember a world where I didn't have an accounting suite where I can do my best work in a clean way. It's all optimized efficiently. And, you know, I'm spending my time on the areas that I like to be spending my time on and not on the areas that just consume time for me. So that would be success for me is, is people love this product and they can't imagine a [00:54:00] world where they didn't use it as part of their, you know, core tech stack.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. Well, you'll be delighted to know that I barely even remember QBO A anymore. So the short term is working. All right, so let's kind of do a lightning round. Okay. So like quick answers, first thing that pops into your head. Um, what's one feature that every firm should turn on immediately?

Karla Uribe: I, every firm should try the client insights experience because it is, [00:54:30] I eventually it will be a paid feature, but right now it is not. You can try it for free and it won't be paid for a while. Um it is, it is going to unlock just as you were. You were kind of realizing as you were listening to me speak, like, oh, I can do this and this and that. I think it's going to unlock a lot of that for accountants to be able to see the data rather than just hearing about it, see it and think, oh, I can, I can do this and that. I'm excited to hear those stories about like, now I'm able to do this, that I wasn't before, that I hadn't even thought about [00:55:00] because I hadn't tried it. So I would say try, try looking at that data in client insights and see if it unlocks any, any new ideas for how you can work.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So basically turn on accelerate while it's free. Yes, exactly. Exactly. All right. Um, what's and not just in IAS, but like, what do you consider the most underrated feature in all of QuickBooks?

Karla Uribe: Oh my goodness. Um, I think I asked right now is the underrated product for me because [00:55:30] it's so new, accountants are still figuring it out, adopting it and trying things. So, um, yeah, I don't know that I have a feature that I would say this is the most underrated feature. I think that there's a lot of features that, that exist that people haven't discovered. So. So it is really for us a challenge of try try things. It's, you know, everybody does different kinds of accounting and some things might be better for something than, than for others. But I would say the accountant suite for me is the most underrated right now. People [00:56:00] need to get on it and try it.

Alicia Katz Pollock: For me, it's for me, it's the contract signing, the fact that you can send contract signing. I've been using that. All right. What was the most requested feature that surprised you where you're like, I didn't even think about that.

Karla Uribe: I wouldn't say it was surprised by this, but, um, I was surprised by how much positive energy. We just announced that very soon we're going to have the ability to open multiple client tabs, um, from one place, which is a technically a very difficult challenge. It sounds [00:56:30] easy just open, but it actually is a technically very difficult thing to accomplish. It took a while to get to that point, but we're now testing it and we're scaling it and making sure it's right. It was something that was heavily requested, and the amount of excitement is what has surprised me. Like people are very excited about that. And so those to me are, are part of nailing the foundations of like, these things sound simple, but they are an unlock to efficiency that I always get really excited when I see that much energy around.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. Um, all [00:57:00] right. Next question. What's the biggest myth that accountants have about Intuit?

Karla Uribe: I think the biggest myth is that we are not listening or not paying attention to accountants. And I think, you know, I've, I've tried to make that point today, but, um, we invest a lot of time and a lot of money in, in understanding accountants and partnering and, and knowing, uh, you know, what they want and, and hearing, hearing accountants. And so, [00:57:30] um, any notion that we don't care what accountants think is, is, is simply not true. We, we, we consider you extremely valuable and important to our business. And there are many, many, many product people walking around the Intuit offices all day thinking about how to make life better for accountants. And so that would be the one thing I would say take away is, is you matter a lot. And we are very serious about investing in that relationship.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I think that's [00:58:00] a great final statement for, for the whole episode. I love that, you know, and that's why I do these interviews. You know, I really want people to realize that everybody at Intuit is a real human being that shares the same goals as us. And then it's not just one giant billion dollar monolith that, you know, it's real people doing real work. Yeah. Thank you very much for coming on the show.

Karla Uribe: Thank you. This was so fun.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. We always end the podcast with a section called What's Going On in Your [00:58:30] World, which is generally an opportunity for the guest to talk about ways that the clients can engage with them. So what's going on in Kahlo's world or into its world?

Karla Uribe: I mentioned earlier, we are definitely trying to keep as connected as possible, um, through our form of the future and in the new webinars. And of course, we have our big event coming up in Las Vegas at the end of October, uh, which is Intuit Connect. And that is open to all accounting professionals. And, [00:59:00] um, we just love seeing everybody at that event and sharing what's coming and, and getting feedback and of course, having a lot of fun along the way. So those are the big ones that are coming for us.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And I've actually got some news Royal wise is going to be a sponsor this year. I'm going to have a booth in the exhibit hall.

Karla Uribe: Awesome.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Super excited about that.

Karla Uribe: Very cool. Alicia, why don't you tell us about what's going on in your world?

Alicia Katz Pollock: So I actually have a class about Intuit Accounting Suite coming [00:59:30] up, and it was supposed to be in August, but in in the. No. Yesterday you introduced some new things that are being released in August. So I actually decided to postpone the class until September because one of the new things is in inbox and I really, really want to include in a messaging inbox in my course. So my Intuit Accountants Week course has been postponed until September, but that one is coming. And then in the meantime, I [01:00:00] have my hands on training course, which is my college style class. It's a 12 week, 72 hour intensive where we build qbo files step by step and click by click, where I actually provide two different qbo shells and you create the create the content. And we actually just pushed it back two weeks. I've been telling you all for weeks that it was on. It's starting July 21st, but we're actually starting it now on August 5th instead because too many people were on vacation. So we wanted [01:00:30] to push it back a little bit. And we are making our initial presale price, the course price. So we're actually bringing the course price down. It was $2,500 and we're bringing it down to $2000 or $1999. And so if some of you have been thinking about taking the course but haven't signed up either because of the schedule or because of the price, we heard you and we addressed both of them. So head over, the link is in the show notes. [01:01:00] You can go to Royal wise.com, and there's a banner across the top for the hands on training. And so go ahead and sign up.

Karla Uribe: Awesome.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. All right. So Carla, we did it. Thank you so much for joining us. Uh, this is Alicia Pollock from Royal wise.com.

Karla Uribe: And this is Carla Uribe from Intuit.

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