There’s a countdown clock ticking, and most accounting professionals haven’t looked up at it yet.
In Episode 149 of The Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast, host Alicia Katz Pollock and guest host Dan DeLong break down the June 17th ProAdvisor In the Know session hosted by Arti Patel Martinez. Two different accountants at Scaling New Heights told Alicia these recaps are their favorites. It’s like getting the CliffsNotes version plus expert commentary on what matters for your firm.
Highlights from the session included:
- The retirement of QuickBooks Online Accountant on December 31, 2026
- The reports engine you’ve used for a decade is being rebuilt from scratch
- The 30-year-old ProAdvisor program is transforming into something entirely new
This is no routine update. It’s a complete foundation replacement while we’re all still working in the building.
Before diving into the changes, Alicia announced that Intuit now sponsors The Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast. As she emphasized, she remains fiercely independent. Intuit won’t review her content. But after listening for two and a half years, Intuit considers her the “ProAdvisor whisperer,” translating between their intentions and what practitioners actually think.
Your Familiar Interface Goes Away in 18 Months
The first issue to clear up is that the ProAdvisor program isn’t disappearing. QuickBooks Online Accountant (that familiar black bar on the left side of your screen) is going away as of December 31, 2026.
Its replacement is Intuit Accountant Suite (IAS), which already has all the same tools. Plus, it matches what your clients see, and that’s where Intuit loads every new feature. You can switch right now through the gear icon. As Dan pointed out, don’t wait until the last day of the year and force yourself to learn under pressure. “Give yourself that runway so you and your team can get familiar with where everything moved.”
The pricing stays simple. IAS Core, where you switch between clients, is still free. IAS Accelerate, the $149 tier for teams, helps you manage staff and clients through dashboards. That pricing kicks in around July or August. Intuit developed seven ProAdvisor Academy courses to walk you through everything.
Modern Reports
Subhanan Sahoo, Intuit’s Senior Staff Product Manager, has worked extensively on reports. He opened with a revealing poll: only 18% use Modern Reports “almost always.” Another 38% switch between modern and classic depending on the task. A full 29% still use only the classic version, and 13% don’t even notice which version they’re using.
So why force the change? Classic Reports was built on what Subhanan called “monolithic” technology. One outage could break reports for every customer at once. After 10-plus years of data accumulation, performance started failing. Large transaction volumes would bog down or break completely. The static tables blocked any chance of dashboards, pivot tables, or custom formulas. Even small changes took months of engineering work to ship.
“If you’ve ever had to print out a general ledger for the entire year, you’ve seen the ‘load more… load more… can’t load more’ at the bottom,” Dan said, capturing the pain perfectly. That’s exactly what Modern Reports fixes. And the kicker is, QuickBooks Online never deletes old data. Alicia has clients with 25 years of transactions because they never condensed before migrating from desktop.
As of June 15th, all standard reports became modern-only. Between June 15th and August 15th, your saved custom reports will open in modern by default, but you can still switch back. After August 15th, everything goes modern-only with no rollback option.
Some Fixes You Might Have Missed
Alicia recommends that if you tested something months ago and decided it didn’t work, go back and check it again. “Things that didn’t work, they fix. But if you don’t actually go back and try it again, you never know that it’s actually working.”
The fixes already shipped are substantial:
- Choose whether the company name or the report name appears on top
- Toggle dashes on or off for blank cells
- New “Apply Changes” button to make multiple customizations without constant refreshing
- Add banded rows, grid lines and even column colors
- Auto-refresh when you edit a transaction from within a report
- Balance sheet discrepancies between modern and classic are fixed
- New collapse levels for subcategories
- Exports now include formulas, not static numbers
- Accountants can share custom reports within their firm only
- Right-click and control-click support added
- Transaction IDs are now available in the detailed reports
As Dan noted, he appreciates that Intuit makes these changes optional. “If you like the dashes, you can keep the dashes. They’re not just eliminating them because someone complained.”
Your feedback mechanism is quickbooks.canny.io. The developers actually respond, asking for company IDs, screenshots, and videos. You can upvote issues others have raised. It’s community-based, and it works.
Enterprise Suite Tackles the Complex Stuff
Likith Lanka presented complex consolidations, a topic so dense that both hosts said you need to watch the recording to fully grasp it. When asked about their most complex consolidation use cases, 48% handle simple one-level hierarchies, 15% work with multi-level hierarchies and consolidations, and 23% deal with eliminations.
Enterprise Suite now offers transactional eliminations and three consolidation methods, each with granular controls. You get options for intercompany journal entries, allocations, sales, and cross-company bill payments. Alicia highlighted one standout feature: a “smart complete” button that auto-fills all the due-to/due-from entries across companies based on your initial entry.
The Early Access program lets you beta-test features like manufacturing and assemblies, cross-company bill payments, and recurring intercompany transactions. This prompted Dan to wonder hopefully if QuickBooks Labs might make a comeback.
Alicia’s own experience validates the platform. “I just moved one of my clients onto Enterprise Suite, and they are so excited,” Alicia said. After nearly two years, IES has “come into its own” as a legitimate solution for growing, complex businesses.
The ProAdvisor Program Gets a 30-Year Overhaul
Jaclyn Anku, who leads the new Pro Partner Accountants program, didn’t mince words about why change is needed. ProAdvisors are overwhelmed by AI adoption, talent shortages, and the push toward advisory services. The 30-year-old partner program simply wasn’t built for today’s challenges.
The new program launches in 2027, but preparation starts now. It’s open to everyone from solo practitioners to top-100 firms. You keep your existing benefits, including 30% ProAdvisor preferred pricing on QuickBooks Workforce (the new name for payroll and time), Bill Pay, and the client discount for 12 months. You still get QBO Advanced with Bill Pay Elite, plus free payroll and time tracking through My Books.
What’s new addresses existing pain points. Customer support expands to Saturdays, with Sunday hours at higher tiers. More importantly, support staff will have actual accounting knowledge.
The revenue share math requires careful calculation. It stretches from one to three years, but scales from 10% to 25% based on your tier. Compare that to today’s flat 30% for one year. Both hosts emphasized it’s essential to do the math. Dan also warned about a hidden penalty. If clients don’t enter billing info within one day of assignment, they’re kicked out of revenue share, and you get nothing.
The big carrot is that when you reach the highest tier, IAS Accelerate is free. That’s $149 in monthly value.
Five Tiers and Your Path Forward
The tiers are straightforward:
- Member: Just sign up
- Partner: Pass one certification, have one client
- Preferred, Premier, Elite: Criteria coming fall 2026
New educational offerings include CAS (Client Advisory Services) training to turn data into recommendations and AI for Accountants courses co-written by Jan Haugo. A training manager lets you track your team’s certifications and assign courses.
Intuit’s also tackling the talent shortage with a five-year goal to upskill one million accounting students, connecting them to firms through mentorship programs. Alicia’s already received an invitation to mentor, a natural fit given her new bookkeeping incubator program with five interns.
The closing poll was sobering. Forty percent of attendees haven’t transitioned to IAS or gotten certified yet. As Alicia said, seeing that “only 60% have even touched IAS and certifications” was a wake-up call. “We still have work to do.”
Your Move-Now Action List
Intuit is rebuilding every system you touch daily, and deadlines are set. Here’s what to do:
- Switch to Intuit Accountant Suite today via the gear icon. Don’t learn under pressure on December 31st
- Test Modern Reports monthly and submit feedback at quickbooks.canny.io. Features get fixed constantly
- Check your certification status and consolidate multiple logins (now called “consoles,” not “realms”)
- Calculate the revenue share math before assuming three years at lower percentages beat one year at 30%
- Register Enterprise Suite clients by July 1st for the 30% revenue share
- Explore the free training in CAS and AI to build advisory skills
For the complete breakdown with all the details, poll results, and candid commentary from Alicia and Dan, listen to the full episode. These changes affect every accountant using QuickBooks, so don’t let the deadlines sneak up on you.
Alicia Katz Pollock’s Royalwise OWLS (On-Demand Web-based Learning Solutions) is the industry’s premier portal for top-notch QuickBooks Online training with CPE for accounting firms, bookkeepers, and small business owners. Visit Royalwise OWLS, where learning QBO is a HOOT!