Reflections on Intuit Connect 2024

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

Hector Garcia: Welcome to the unofficial QuickBooks accountants podcast. I am joined by my good friend Alicia Cat Pollock, the original, the one and only Qbo Rockstar CEO and founder of Royal White Solutions.

Alicia Katz Pollock: And I have the privilege of collaborating with Hector Garcia's CPA, the founder of Right Tool for QuickBooks. In this week's episode of the unofficial [00:00:30] QuickBooks accountants podcast. Hector and I are going to tell our stories of coming back from Intuit Connect. We were just in Las Vegas for this year's Intuit conference and I had a great time. So let's break it down and tell you what we did and what we thought and who we met and all of that. Hector, how are you doing?

Hector Garcia: I'm doing excellent, Alicia. Energized by Intuit. Connect. Also with a lot of thoughts in my mind about what is the future of our profession [00:01:00] and our relationship with Intuit, and also very excited about the new features that are coming down the pipeline, particularly for accountants, and also particularly excited about something that they mentioned on the stage many times, which is let's build it together, let's build it together. So maybe we can discuss what we think that means. And so our audience can also draw their own conclusions.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Absolutely. So when they opened [00:01:30] up the whole event, Ted Callahan was the first speaker. And one of the things that he said is that this is the first Intuit connect and that this is all of our first time. So what quick QuickBooks connect is the past, Intuit connect is the present and the future. And there was a whole lot of Hector, if I can use the word reframing of our concepts that we've been working on in our industry and kind of shedding them in a new light and looking [00:02:00] towards the future.

Hector Garcia: Maybe reframing, or maybe I think clean slate or fresh start might have been more of what they were going for. I mean, they have said before that the accounting partnership is important, but they never said, let's build it together. And I am going to grab every single positive potential positive outcome. Like Ed Clark said on the stage at reframe 2024. I am a possibility. So right now I'm putting my [00:02:30] possibility hat, and I am excited about the concept of let's building it together. Okay. They've always taken our feedback and they said our feedback was important. And they have accountant council and they have tax council and they have made it. They have created a feedback muscle for years. And many accountants feel hurt. Many accountants don't feel hurt, but announcing it in such a big venue with a new brand with a fresh start attitude. Let's build it together. It's something I'm very excited about.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, they used [00:03:00] the word together over and over again. They used the word partnership over and over again, and I saw a couple of things on the floor that we'll get to in a little bit. That actually made me go, oh, wait, maybe it's not just lip service. You know, we know that feedback has always been important. You know, going up to the gear and putting in feedback all the time about everything that you see is how the software gets built. I know that sometimes people haven't felt like their feedback has been heard, but into it really does use that [00:03:30] feedback in their design. Maybe not their direction, but in their in their design.

Hector Garcia: Okay, so let's talk about design versus direction. Sure. So Suzanne, the CEO of Intuit came on stage. Suzanne has not been at the last couple of QuickBooks connects. I don't remember I'm not keeping tabs, but I remember Brad Smith and Suzanne on stage, I believe 2019 ish, uh, making a big splash, you know, sort of a visual passing of the baton. You know, Brad, you know, moved [00:04:00] on to, I believe, to be the principal or whatever, the director of of a major college in West Virginia and took over as CEO. And it was a very beautiful sort of transfer of power type of stuff, very apt, very, very optimal to today's times because we're about to go into an election, right? Or depending on where this goes live, probably the election had already had happened. So anyway, um, so that was really great. But then there was a lot of absence of, of Suzanne. And there was more, more Alex. Chris on stage. Okay. Alex. Chris [00:04:30] was has been a major component of building and growing the Qbo ecosystem, but into a recently lost Alex Chris to PayPal. So obviously the they needed that leadership to kind of come back. And Suzanne came and he was on stage and obviously he had to say some other stuff scripted that had to be said. But also there was one particular piece that kind of stuck with most of us, which we were not expecting for it to happen, which he [00:05:00] sort of kind of apologized for a recent action that Intuit took and said that we took swift action and pulled it. Okay. Which is the TurboTax ad that said, fire your accountant.

Hector Garcia: We will beat their old price, which for tax preparing accounting professionals doesn't quite feel like partnership. And they heard a roar from from the industry and they said they pulled the ad. Not 100% sure what that means. Uh, and [00:05:30] a lot of folks were sort of rummaging saying, well, we don't know what that means. The damage is already done. So we're trying to understand exactly what that messaging meant. But there was an underpinning in that message, which I think was really the more important part, which is, hey, it doesn't matter what we do, you know, whether Intuit does something that it feels like it's hurting you or whether we apologize for it, whether we pull it or not. And this wasn't set for, you know, verbally, specifically, verbatim, but it was understood by some of us is that change is coming. Okay. I is coming [00:06:00] after our business, whatever that means. Um. External sources. External industries are coming after our business. And we need to all of us as leaders, whether it's you, a solopreneur, leading the leading your, your, your career, your business, or teams of small or large teams of accounting firms or the CEO of a large company, all of us need to be prepared for a major wave of change, and we need to adapt to the change. And we need to [00:06:30] act fast. And in the backdrop of of that into a leadership has been acting and reacting to that change. And it the change will come, reaction to that change will come. And we as a profession cannot depend on what they're doing or not doing to manage that change.

Hector Garcia: And I believe that that was it wasn't very it wasn't verbatim like that, but it was a very important piece of it. And I think that all of us should have heard that warning shot. And today is the day. Today is the [00:07:00] day you're listening to this right now. Today is the day that we start rebranding ourselves. We start rebranding ourselves as the most human of all professions we need. It needs to happen because the least human of all players in our in our, in our ecosystem such as software companies, automation, AI, all these things that are behind the scenes take over the work that we're used to. Um, it's going to take it's going to have front page, it's going to be a protagonist. And we need to bump our role [00:07:30] in, as advisors to our small business clients, as protagonists, as the most human of all professions. And that's how we are going to create contrast between the eyes of the world that are taking over and and keeping us relevant in the industry. So I appreciate that that message was between the lines, and I think a lot of accountants didn't quite read it that way. Maybe they focused too much on wait, did he apologize or didn't apologize? It's TurboTax ad still up. It's not up. So I believe a lot of people [00:08:00] got hung on that. And I think that other piece needs to be the part that we need to hear and act upon ASAP. Alicia, what are your thoughts on that?

Speaker4: Well, I.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Have a whole lot of them, and I'm thinking that I might actually want to do a future episode just breaking down his speech. But the quote, the two quotes that I highlighted were lean into the future. Don't fear it. The future always wins. And that electricity was not invented by the continuous improvement of the candle. And [00:08:30] you know, the if you think about where we are with our technology versus where we've been. So, for example, iPhones came out literally the same year as my kid. I got my iPhone and I got my kid And the life before smartphones was very different than it is now. And none of us, none of us, can even put down our freaking phones like they're in our hands all the time. And what would your life be like [00:09:00] if you couldn't instantly check the weather? Check your email, the things that we use our phones for. And that same kind of disruption is happening in the accounting industry right now with AI, with the changes in our staffing, with the accountant shortage. And so we're in a very uncomfortable time, but we have to go about what we've been doing as a profession differently. And Intuit [00:09:30] is on the vanguard of offering solutions. And, you know, I the people who are concerned about it are the people that this industry was built on, which is us, which is literally every person listening to this podcast. But our experiences over the past 30 years were the candle and now is coming electricity. And so the way we've been doing things is going to change. We [00:10:00] have to embrace it. Otherwise, you know, there isn't going to be any future for us now.

Hector Garcia: One really cool takeaway I took was at the very end of the speech with Suzanne was the question of some leadership advice. So regardless of what your what you think about the person or or or the leadership right into it, successful CEOs giving leadership advice is something that we all need to be listening to. And he gave three really important [00:10:30] pieces of advice. One, Alicia already mentioned the future always wins. Lean into the future, which has double messaging. One is shape the future and the other one is a lot of things are going to happen because they're going to happen and there's nothing you can do about it. So. So it's better to be nimble. Um. Uh, my friend Doug's leader says agility trumps ability, which basically means that our ability to shift and move around and adapt with the times is a lot more important than those [00:11:00] skills that were taken 20 years to learn debits and credits, QuickBooks, bank reconciliation, all that stuff. That's important. But just being agile is going to be very important. So that's a really important piece of advice.

Hector Garcia: The second one, he said, is cultivate a powerful mindset, okay. The powerful mindset is, is to really highly think of strategy like almost as if you have to build a strategic muscle. You have to make time in your schedule to think, okay, we are so [00:11:30] inundated with mundane work, mindless work that just keeps us busy. And there's so many folks that we talk over. We talked with interconnect and we asked them about implementing this. Implementing that. What did you learn last year? I asked a lot of people, especially the ones that came twice. I asked them people that said, yeah, this is my second year or third year. I've been coming every year. I asked them very specific things. What did you learn last year that you implemented? That's different now. And whenever people said nothing or they said, [00:12:00] well, I just didn't have time for it. So I think the challenge that we have is we don't have time to stop and think strategically because we didn't stop and think strategically about our business model that kept us bogged down.

Alicia Katz Pollock: One of the ways that he phrased it is that he said mindset shapes behaviors and behaviors shape outcomes.

Hector Garcia: Yeah, I mean, that's that's perfect. That was perfectly said. And the other one was treat every day like day one. [00:12:30] Treat every day like day one. And the hidden message here is, and Alicia and I spent a whole episode talking about exactly what to say and leading with curiosity. Essentially, essentially, that's what he's saying. He's saying walk in totally, 100% naive and curious about something. A lot of us come with these predetermined opinions about what things are and should be, because accounting is so much Sally like, same as last year. So we kind of come with the mentality that it should be about the [00:13:00] same with a slight change, sort of like us trying to innovate the whole industry by improving the candle type of thing. Um, so it's just lead all your thinking with curiosity, like almost always be a five year old with a clean slate. Ask why many times and try to see the information or the data that's not being presented right in front of you. You need to see everything that's around. So I actually think that if I were to grab these three pieces of advice that [00:13:30] Suzanne gave me, regardless of whether or not we think his apology was appropriate or not, that doesn't matter. I implement that in my entire trip to that conference. Is is worth it. So I want to make sure that people walk out thinking that there was some really powerful things being said in that opening speech.

Alicia Katz Pollock: In that speech, when he was talking about treating every day as day one, as the first day, one of the things he said was fall in love with the problems you're trying to solve, not the solution that you're creating. [00:14:00] In other words, don't get attached to your outcomes. It's all about the pain points. It's all about that, that future that you're that you're building. And I also kind of read that as, okay, so if he's saying fall in love with the problems you're trying to solve, not the solution you're creating, that translated in my brain, as, you know, fall in love with solving the problems for the accounting industry, not QuickBooks.

Hector Garcia: I sure [00:14:30] hope and I sure hope that actually becomes the operating Creating a mantra behind the innovation of of of of QuickBooks and the ecosystem in the future. And hopefully let's build it together means that I guess we could jump right into like the exciting new features. Alicia, what's the next on your list?

Alicia Katz Pollock: So one of the first things that they talked about, and I'm actually beta testing it now, is the new banking feed that they've been working on this for [00:15:00] a while. And you know, honestly, I did a beta test with them a year ago and I was like, um, no, you can't release this. And they took all of that feedback. And a year later, they're beta testing a new banking feed, which is cool because their goal is to save you clicks that instead of clicking on it and dropping it down and filling it in, it's now all on one line, and you can do all of the editing of the transaction for the data entry, right on the grid.

Hector Garcia: Yeah, I think even even beyond that, [00:15:30] a couple of the things that both the feedback that Alicia and I have been giving is that the drop down menus, the date pickers, the way the buttons behave, the add new button, the toggle buttons have been very inconsistent throughout the entire QuickBooks ecosystem, and specifically with bank feeds, which bank feeds has not been significantly improved in the past maybe four years or five years, which is pretty good because some of the videos [00:16:00] I created four years ago about how to use bank feeds are still relevant. A lot of the webinars that Alicia wrote, actual courses that she taught in person and via her her royal wife's portal are still relevant. Some of the books and and and and screenshots are still relevant. So in many ways, bank feeds was both the piece that QuickBooks has been ignoring and in other ways, the piece that us accountants hold as a holy [00:16:30] grail. Do not touch it, because it's the one thing that works and we know how it works. Okay, so it's like it's in this weird situation where they haven't added any improvements, and we're actually kind of glad that they haven't touched it because Intuit is very infamous for breaking something the minute they release it. Uh, my theory is because they don't have paid beta testers, and if they do, they get paid to say it's okay instead of get paid to break it.

Hector Garcia: Because I actually kept keep telling leadership, it's like, you gotta you gotta have beta testers that break it and you [00:17:00] pay them when they break it. Like, literally pay them for finding breaks instead of pay them to go through. Best case scenario, it works okay at thumbs up it. So this is one thing that I think Intuit should fundamentally change about beta testing. But like I guess that I digress big time. But the the point is that everyone here listening to this podcast is probably freaking out about them changing the holy grail of like qbo goodness, which is bank feeds and what we saw hopefully hope. Hopefully it doesn't get released broken. What we saw is [00:17:30] what I reluctantly thought as them screwing it up. And then when I actually saw a demo, I now think this is actually a really interesting, small but pretty big advancement into the process. And like Alicia said, streamline everything into a single line. Avoid clicks, avoid dropdowns, avoid double decision making. Give me everything. Like a spreadsheet. I'm an accountant, I think like a spreadsheet. Give it to me in one line. I think this is going to be a net win.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah, I've always joked [00:18:00] that banking feeds are either your best friend or your worst nightmare, and but the bank fees really are the hallmark of qbo. They're kind of the central driving engine behind it, and when you know how to use the banking feeds, they're like, ah, they're fantastic. But there were certain problems with like duplicated revenue or uncategorized assets, just a couple little things that were causing bad data. And I do think that the new format is going to address some of those pain points.

Hector Garcia: Okay. They did also talk about [00:18:30] they kind of did a summary of all the things that they have fixed in the past year, and it was a pretty long list. It was like sort of a rotating list on the screen. Um, going through them would be recapping the past year and a half of the podcast. So obviously not not not needed. Alicia, what else was on the list? That seemed like an exciting new thing.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay, so one of the things is that in the messaging when you're sending emails, there's a little I button where you can change the tone of your emails and you can make them friendly, or you can make them serious [00:19:00] where you can put in your default text, and then it will improve your messaging. And that one got a lot of applause. Another one is correcting your paychecks after payroll, that there's a new backdating feature up to 90 days. So if your payroll is still in your open tax period, you can actually correct your payroll checks. If it's in a closed period, you're still going to have to go back and submit a correction. But when I was in the pit, they actually [00:19:30] showed me that in payroll it under the resources button you can upload a tax notice and it will go through and actually I and change your settings for you as one of the things that's coming. So I thought that was pretty cool.

Hector Garcia: There was no specifics on this one in particular, but they were discussions I had with people on the floor. One is a new renowned energy to work on sales tax. They didn't show anything, but they said that step one was to revamp [00:20:00] the invoice, the new invoicing design and get everyone on board with like the new invoice design, which has been a very complicated struggle in the past, the past couple of years. I think there's a the adoption rate of the new invoice design is up over 95%. There isn't that many company files still left with the old classic view of the invoices. So now that they have a single sort of Platform from a UI standpoint for invoices. The next step is to now work with [00:20:30] the sales tax engine. So I'm excited that this will be the year where they let's call it fixed sales tax, although that's a very loaded term. Um, but that's I'm excited about that. I'm also excited on the particular AI part. Alicia. We kind of skipped through this, but since you mentioned the AI when they were talking about bank feeds, they talked about reducing the number of clicks and one of the major number of clicks that we do is we look at a transaction, we're not sure where it is. We open a new tab, we go to Google, we copy and paste [00:21:00] the vendor name in Google, and we try to decipher what that is. Okay. So what they've shown and I don't know if that's going to be live on the on the beta that's going to be released right about now. For some people, they've shown how you can ask Intuit assist, you can ask AI what is this? And it does a couple of things.

Hector Garcia: One, it uses the the AI large language model to kind of give you a summary of what the transaction could be. It also gives you a history of similar transactions that you've done in the past, to maybe provide some additional context [00:21:30] to try to figure out what account it could be. It suggests a specific account based on your chart of accounts, which I really wondering how that works, if it actually uses only the default chart of accounts with the default detail types to figure out what it is, or if it actually reads the custom name on the chart of accounts to try to triangulate the best option. As a nerd, I'm fascinated to figure out how that works. I wonder it also provides a potential link to the website of that vendor. So these are the three these. [00:22:00] This got tons of applaud. Tons of applaud. But I mean like roaring applaud. And then a few people came to me and said hey Hector doesn't right tool have that. So I'm going to say publicly right tools had that. Right tools had that for like over a year. So anyway into it you can always look for inspiration in, in, in our work I whatever whatever you can do to make our life easier, our profession easier. You're welcome to do so. Although it was inevitable, it wasn't like, you know, like I, you know, like I invented the wheel. Um, but yeah, that [00:22:30] got that. Got tons of applause.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I actually saw in the banking feeds today while I was playing with it, when it gave the suggested categorizations, it actually gave three different options. It could be dues and subscriptions. It could be a I can't remember exactly what they were, but it actually offered me a couple suggestions for me to go through. So I really.

Hector Garcia: Liked was that in your was that in your beta that they gave.

Alicia Katz Pollock: You a beta this morning.

Hector Garcia: Any other features that were announced.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So they he mentioned that Venmo [00:23:00] and PayPal by default are no longer going to uncategorized assets that it's now just going to um wait for you to translate it. Although I noticed in my beta today that it didn't do the PayPal integration like I used to, and I can't assign it to a product anymore.

Hector Garcia: So I think it was an aspirational announcement.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah. Okay. Aspirational announcement. There you go. They announced that you're going to batch be able to batch import your journal entries. And with using Csvs [00:23:30] up to a thousand at a time.

Hector Garcia: Actually that's already there. That's that's I think I think that was more of a, uh, we added this based on your feedback. Yeah. They did make a mistake. They did make a mistake, and I I'm sorry. The people on stage are not accountants. They don't know. They don't understand. There's a limit of a thousand lines. A thousand lines you can import with a CSV into, uh, into QuickBooks online. And if you know anything about journal entries again, sorry, guy on [00:24:00] stage that said this, that doesn't know anything about accounting. There's at least two lines on every journal entry. So the reality is there's a hypothetical limit of 500 journal entries, up to a thousand lines in the CSV file that you can import.

Alicia Katz Pollock: The next one is being able to bulk reclassify transactions Actions through the banking field, which is related to one of the changes that we've seen right now where you can assign Payees and change the categories. But I think with the new banking experience, it's going to be on steroids. Another [00:24:30] one was something that we've actually been talking about, the payroll cost allocation, that you can now split your payroll manually into different classes and different customers. And either your employees can do it in workforce when they're using QuickBooks time, or you can go in retroactively and do it either when you're approving time or even during your payroll run.

Hector Garcia: What I wish what I wish that Intuit had is if you were using a third party payroll like ADP, [00:25:00] Paychex, cost or whatever. I wish they had like a payroll like a paycheck worksheet where you could emulate that, um, without having to actually run payroll, because I don't know if you remember, in QuickBooks desktop had this thing called manual payroll that allowed you to create paychecks that use the entire job costing class allocation, but you didn't have to have a payroll service. I wonder if that's something that Intuit would ever give us, because that would be pretty cool. But for now, you have to actually run payroll to get all those features.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay. [00:25:30] Go ahead and Flood that feedback. Okay. Um, he mentioned being able to send I-9s through payroll. I wasn't clear, I can't remember if that was already available or not, but when.

Alicia Katz Pollock: You onboarded.

Hector Garcia: They just released it through the workforce app, where you add the employee and you can add them without ordering. You just basically say name and email, and then you allow the employee to literally onboard themselves, um, for payroll.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yep.

Alicia Katz Pollock: So they can give you your, their I-9 documentation, [00:26:00] um, proof of citizenship and all of that. Okay. Uh, another one was something that we all that has been out, but he wanted to make sure people knew that QuickBooks Online Advanced has revenue recognition and fixed asset accounting, which includes depreciation schedules, and he mentioned that they had two Accountant Delight jams over the year, and they made 106 improvements. That all came from customer feedback he mentioned. Now, Hector, [00:26:30] give me some context on this one. Multiple clients in multiple tabs.

Hector Garcia: Yes. So this is this is also an aspirational announcement, something they're working on. This is not working yet. But there's there's a fundamental change of security architecture that Intuit needs to go through to allow you to be logged in to multiple QuickBooks online accounts or QuickBooks online company files using the same instance of the browser. So traditionally, you would have to go and open [00:27:00] multiple Chrome profiles and open two different QuickBooks files into different Chrome profiles, or have two browsers, Safari and Chrome, or Firefox and Chrome. So you can run with two companies. Apparently they're working on whatever architectural security requirements would need to happen to be able to open two company files within the same browser, within the same profile. But I don't know. They didn't say when. They just said that this was like a big priority that we're working on. [00:27:30] If you're familiar with the desktop app for QuickBooks online that has already been released, probably for the past couple of months. So I'm assuming that they're learning they were using that as a sort of smaller testing ground. And whatever they're learning, you know, or whatever potential security issues it could have. And that's the reason why they've never allowed this in the past. I'm sure they're going to take those learnings and figure out how to do it. So when you're in your regular browser, you can you can have two company files in two different tabs. That's going to be awesome for people because especially [00:28:00] when it comes to reconciling intercompany transactions and that sort of thing, you need to have kind of the report on both sides to kind of know, okay, did I record this? Did I not record this? And that would probably be a quick transition into, um, into an enterprise solutions on the whole inner company thing, unless you have something else on the on the core QuickBooks products.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Uh, the rest of what I had was their reimagining of Qbo A, if you want to go into that.

Hector Garcia: Well, I don't know what that means.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Okay.

Hector Garcia: Now, [00:28:30] one thing I do, one thing I do think kind of what it means, based on the screenshot that we saw and there's no beta on this, is they kind of show your client list to to be like a dashboard, like an advisory dashboard. So you have all your clients with, let's say, the main piece of information you need to know from like a 50,000 foot level about where all your clients are, maybe the status of, you know, the last closing, uh, you know, what's going on with their profit margins or the revenue, [00:29:00] what's going on with their banking, just like in a really high level view for you to get an idea. So if you do have clients that should take priority over others, maybe by getting a snapshot of where every sort of client is at that moment in time. You can focus your attention on that. I think that's the only part that I kind of can construct from the screenshot and the statements. But there isn't enough meat there to to work on. Yeah.

Alicia Katz Pollock: In a future episode, I can actually break some of that down a little bit more detailed, but kind of in a nutshell, there's [00:29:30] going to be a dashboard where you can get a high level view of all of your client's KPIs and like tiny little charts for each client, all in one grid, and then also a month, a month close grid, kind of like you find in in Keeper and Zenit and some of the other, um, close apps. And so they are actually building that into Qbo. Um, but what I found interesting, the way that they positioned this during the speech is [00:30:00] that they're reimagining QuickBooks online for accountants. And he specifically said, this is an invitation. This isn't a launch announcement, but he wanted to us to feel part of the founding team, that we are the people that they are building this for, and they're considering us. They want us to be the beta testers on reimagining the platform so that it really is a one stop shop, and we don't have to, um, go out to third party apps, you [00:30:30] know? Sorry, I love keeper. I don't necessarily want to get rid of it, but it would be, you know, having those same tools there, seeing that these are necessary to do our work. And the books review is a first step but not sufficient.So.

Alicia Katz Pollock: I mean.As much as I love keeper and Senate and SaaStr and all this utilities per se that enhance us, I think into it, it's probably right by saying that they shouldn't exist and not nothing against them. [00:31:00] They shouldn't exist, or at least the lite version of that shouldn't exist. And there should be a free or included with your ProAdvisor account, or maybe charge a fee that allows people just getting started in this profession to have some sort of practice management, client management, close management tools so that they can not go insane in the first year of their business, and then maybe they'll still be a a position for keeper and taxonomy and all these companies for [00:31:30] like the real robust firms that have already been doing this for years and years and years. So I think I like I think I net like this and I don't think into it should, should overspend on trying to replace them, but I wanted them to fill the gap for the for the smaller practices.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Exactly like the way that there's there's already a work center that has project lists and task lists that if you're just getting started and you don't have the funds to go use one of the more robust platforms, you have the rudimentary tools to do it basically sufficiently. If you're [00:32:00] a solopreneur, it's already there. And so just kind of completing this segment, he showed some views where they are reimagining the entire Qbo platform, the whole actually the whole QuickBooks platform. App carousels, complete integration with MailChimp as a CRM, a business feed. I don't have in my notes what that actually meant, but really creating it as a complete, robust one stop platform for [00:32:30] your accounting technologies. And so, you know, they've got some big, lofty goals.

Hector Garcia: They do. Now, one thing that they announced, and the fact that this is now Intuit Connect and that QuickBooks connect, I thought MailChimp was going to be a bigger protagonist, honestly, and it didn't really play a big role. There's one mini exception that when they were talking about the new reimagined Qbo platform, they kind of showed a mock up of a carousel [00:33:00] where you see MailChimp QuickBooks payroll bill pay a set of modules, and it wasn't clear to me if this was going to be the Qbo platform or this was the new reimagined Intuit Enterprise Suite platform, but it looked a lot more like a suite of applications versus a single platform. And this is why I think they're they're now going back. And I'm not going to say killing the QuickBooks brand, but I'm saying I think they're going back and leaning harder [00:33:30] in the Intuit brand. You know, just like just like for a very long time, Gmail, just Gmail was a household name. Um, or Excel was a is a household name. So Google's calls a G suite or calls a Google workforce. So we're stepping away from the individual product name and focusing on the platform. Just like Microsoft stepping away from the Excel name and calling it the Microsoft, uh, office platform or office 360. So I think [00:34:00] they're taking a page from these companies that want to be more of a platform company versus a, um, an applications company. And I found that to be really, really interesting.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Yeah I think you're on to something there, because I noticed during all of the sessions about it, about Intuit Enterprise Suite, that they're they're relinquishing it as a suite of apps, like even things that we're used to, like QuickBooks payments and Bill pay, [00:34:30] like each of those little modules is really functionally a plugin when you look at it from the programmatic, programmatic level. And I think instead of us thinking about QuickBooks has all of these things that it's really like a piecemeal plugin that you're turning on and off. And I think they're kind of leaning into that in how they're presenting it to us now, which is why Intuit Enterprise is now a suite, even though really it's qbo with extra features. But they're kind of [00:35:00] changing that dynamic.

Hector Garcia: And I think the reason for that is because I think Intuit realized that although they are a software company, or at least, you know, it's supposed to be a software company, they're much more they're much more, in my opinion, they're a lot more of a marketing company. They're a software company. I think Intuit is a is a marketing company that happens to sell software as what they sell. And, and a strong marketing company leverages their brand, and their [00:35:30] brand is now being leveraged for multiple small business solutions, particularly banking, lending, CRM. So if they want to lend money to a big business, a big business goes to QuickBooks loans. And it doesn't. It just doesn't. It doesn't it doesn't register like if you're a mid-market business that wants to finance, I don't know, $5 million to start selling to Walmart QuickBooks loans doesn't quite resonate. You know, like it doesn't make sense because QuickBooks has done [00:36:00] an excellent job at positioning themselves as the champion of small business. But when you have really good positioning, you basically excluded the entire mid-market. And it seems to me that in whatever spreadsheet or financial projection somewhere that the Intuit C-suite sat on it, it spelled out that it's a fundamentally financial, financially savvy decision to get into the mid-market period.

Hector Garcia: And the [00:36:30] mid-market is going to be more more than just selling them software. I think they want to sell the entire suite of solutions, which the QuickBooks branding, QuickBooks payments, QuickBooks Billpay, QuickBooks lending, all the QuickBooks banking, none of that stuff is going to resonate with with the mid-market. That's why it's imperative that they switch to Intuit and going back to the, um, accounting platform. They showed a screenshot that didn't say QuickBooks accountant. It said Intuit [00:37:00] accountant. So, so so I think again we're speculating a lot. Read between the lines. But I'm not I'm not saying that the QuickBooks brand will be killed. I'm not saying that. But I'm also saying that maybe possibly it's going to intuit name is going to be the protagonist, and QuickBooks could be fading out. Just like QuickBooks desktop will stop being QuickBooks desktop because it just will stop existing, and it will just have QuickBooks enterprise and QuickBooks [00:37:30] being qbo. Basically the only thing associated with with the name QuickBooks. Yeah, I.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Mean, the whole company was built on QuickBooks as its starting point, but now I think QuickBooks is becoming the the GL component of their bigger financial package. Like this is the software that you use to do the bookkeeping piece of the rest of running your business with the marketing piece and the capital piece and all of that. And so I think we're just seeing the beginnings [00:38:00] of a new way of thinking about it. So this is kind of the first segment in a series about all the things that we found at Intuit Connect. So this is kind of a good treatment of the attitude behind it and breaking down Suzanne's speech and some of the innovations. And in future episodes, we're going to get down and dirty with some of the details about some new features that you can look forward to. So that being said, Hector, what's going on in your world?

Hector Garcia: Well, I've been reset. [00:38:30] Okay. We had reframed 2020 for a couple of weeks ago in Intuit. Connect happened all of the build up of all the pressure of things that I had to deliver to the outside world has happened. Halloween. I ate all the candy I had. I had to eat, I slept all this, all this sleep that I had to sleep. Now onto the work for the future. So for me, my attention is quite divided at the moment. You know, I have this podcast [00:39:00] I have right tool. I have reframe our conferences. So I'm going to try to focus as much as possible in what my newfound purpose and my newfound purpose, Alicia, which you heard at the conference a couple of weeks ago, is to help rebrand the profession to be to be sought after as the most creative, innovative and forward looking of all professions. And I believe that where I have my hands on now, right tool being, in my opinion, the most innovative thing that has come out of the [00:39:30] QuickBooks ecosystem in a very long time, trying to lead by example, they're building a an event, an annual event where people come in, their brain gets completely smashed in, and they have a new, renowned way of thinking. Alicia, I would love to know. You know, maybe you tell us what your biggest takeaway of reframe was, but this is my focus. We we changed the domain name to reframe 2025. Com. So if you want to know about reframe you've got to reframe 2025. Com. Alicia would love to know your take away. [00:40:00] And then tell us what you've been working on.

Alicia Katz Pollock: Sure I mean what you're doing with reframing the concept in the industry, I think is really mission critical right now. And I'm really glad that you've gone in that in that direction. You know, whether it's right tool with like, here's the different ways that we can leverage QuickBooks or reframe, which for me this year was how to reframe your Languaging and being. I've always been a big fan of the Four Agreements, and the first [00:40:30] one is be impeccable with your word. And the idea with that is that your words create energy in the world. If you use your words well, you create positive outcomes. And if you use your words badly, you create negative negative outcomes. And I really loved exactly what to say and end classes session on on questioning and curiosity. And I really do think that you are giving people an opportunity [00:41:00] to do that kind of personal growth that changes our effectiveness as accounting professionals. And I just it was fabulous, and I'm definitely looking forward to next year when you're going to be talking about pricing, which I have a feeling and I'm just making this up, but you're going to be changing how we think about our relationship to money in this, and that's going to be some of the outcome because a lot of people have like money phobias, right, or poverty consciousness. And I have a feeling [00:41:30] that there's going to be a lot of shift around that.

Hector Garcia: That is a good feeling. We actually we it started with called effective pricing because the word effective has a very important relation. I have a very important relationship with the word effective because of things I've learned from Ron Baker and that sort of thing. But my our advisors that attended the conference Chris Doerr, Phil Jones, Carolyn Edgar, everybody afterwards after listening to accountants speak. And there's no [00:42:00] doubt on anyone's mind that the people in that room want everything. They want to give everything their mind, their body, their soul to help their clients, but in many ways, to their detriment. And and the the fact that we do this and put our clients first, it's because we, we have a certain lack of confidence in ourselves and what we are worth and lack of confidence on how much we need to do things for [00:42:30] us, that we change the name from effective pricing to pricing with confidence. So what you're thinking, yes, we're going to talk about that relationship with money is very good, but we're going to piggyback on exactly what to say on the usage of words and the use of of a couple of, of of communications and conversations, especially conversations with yourself. And what we are going to work on is for you to have the confidence, the confidence to choose what your value is and stand your ground and [00:43:00] do not ever, ever, ever, ever let your clients lack of confidence in themselves bring your prices down.

Hector Garcia: So like, that's going to be the ethos of the conference that we're super excited. Carlos and I, we've been brainstorming for ten days. We walked out of reframe 2024 thinking there's no way we can do a better event ever. And in the last two days of brainstorming, we're like, oh, okay, 2024 will be a thing of the past. We're blowing our own minds every day with the ideas that we have about how to change your relationship with money. Keep the ethos of being impeccable [00:43:30] with your word. Going back to the Four Agreements, don't take it personal, and if you're confident, you will never take it personal. Okay, if you're confident, you will always be best correct. And then if you're confident, you will never make assumptions. So actually, it's funny you mentioned that. I think you and I have ever spoken about this, but that actually is my favorite book too. So we should probably do a whole episode on the four The Four Agreements of a QuickBooks accountant, because that could be pretty interesting too. But that being said, Alicia, what's going on in your world?

Alicia Katz Pollock: Well, this week I just started my [00:44:00] hands on training my heart course and the response has been I exceeded my enrollment goals. And at Intuit Connect, I got a whole bunch of new ideas for things that I can do. So for me, this was also kind of a reset that I had some plans for. I had plans for where Royal Lives is going in 2025, but now I've got like all new ideas. And so in 2025 I'm going to be working on Spanish language content, and I'm also going to [00:44:30] be taking this hands on training course, and I want to turn it into a train, the trainer course, so that accounting firms don't even have to come to me to get their training. They can get a royal certification on how to use my textbook, and then they can just go buy books and run the course whenever they want to. So that's kind of the brainstorm that I got completely excited about after Intuit Connect, and that was mostly out of feedback from things that people were saying to me.

Hector Garcia: That's amazing. So Intuit is changing their relationship with Intuit is and [00:45:00] accountants is transforming. Our podcast is extremely successful. I want to thank everybody that has been involved in in helping us produce it, listen to it, promote it. Alicia's training is evolving and transforming. I'm evolving and transforming. The next year is going to be a year of transformation for everybody around us and our industry, and we hope to continue to support you and get on board, on, on, on shaping the future to work for us and with us and through us. So with that being said, [00:45:30] thank you very much and we'll see you in the next one.

Alicia Katz Pollock: See you in the next one.