Accounting Technology

June 2025 QuickBooks Updates: Inventory, Square Integration, and What’s Coming

Earmark Team · August 6, 2025 ·

Picture this: You’re an accounting professional starting your Tuesday morning routine, coffee in hand, ready to tackle your client’s monthly reconciliation. But when you log into QuickBooks Online, something’s different. The familiar black navigation bar that’s guided your workflows for years has vanished, replaced by sleek gray buttons and flyout menus. Your muscle memory falters for a moment as you hover over unfamiliar icons, wondering if this change will derail your carefully orchestrated productivity schedule.

This scenario is the reality facing thousands of accounting professionals as QuickBooks Online undergoes its most significant transformation in years. In this episode of The Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast, host Alicia Katz Pollock and guest host Matthew “Spot” Fulton from Parkway Business Solutions broke down the latest “Now You Know” updates, revealing what’s new and why these changes matter for the future of accounting technology.

The Big News: Inventory Module Goes Standalone

The most significant announcement buried deep in a Firm of the Future article is a complete restructuring of how QuickBooks Online offers inventory features. After years of forcing users into QuickBooks Plus for inventory capabilities, Intuit is finally separating the inventory module into a standalone $40-per-month add-on.

“Until now, if you wanted inventory, you would subscribe to Plus,” Katz Pollock explains. “But they had users who were using Simple Start or Essentials, where they have their inventory in other places. They don’t need everything in Plus, but they do need QuickBooks inventory.”

This change eliminates a long-standing barrier for businesses running Simple Start ($30/month) or Essentials ($65/month) who needed inventory capabilities but couldn’t justify the cost of jumping to Plus. Instead of making that expensive leap, they can add inventory functionality for $40 monthly.

The thinking behind this move connects to QuickBooks’ broader Commerce Center strategy. “They’re doing this because of the commerce tools they’re building out,” Katz Pollock notes. “They have the Commerce Center, which is designed to be a one-stop shop, your single point of truth for integrations with shopping carts like Shopify, or your own website, or eBay or Etsy.”

But there’s a catch. Intuit is also wrapping the shipping label feature into the inventory module, sunsetting it as a standalone option. This means if you currently use shipping labels without inventory, you’ll need to either upgrade to Plus or add the inventory module to maintain that functionality.

The shipping integration actually works quite well, according to Katz Pollock’s testing. “The shipping module adds tracking right inside the invoice,” she explains. “You have those fields for the shipping address and then the tracking number. This auto-populates the tracking for you.”

Square Connector Gets a Major Upgrade

While inventory restructuring grabbed headlines, the Square connector improvements might have a more immediate impact on many practices. The previous “Connect to Square” integration had limitations that frustrated accountants and clients.

“The transactions were slow to appear. There was not a lot of transaction detail. The matching was limited,” Katz Pollock summarizes. “The way Square manages its holds and its adjustments, kind of like PayPal, it can be really confusing.”

The new Square connector addresses these pain points systematically:

Faster transaction processing. Sales now appear within hours instead of days, dramatically improving cash flow visibility.
Better transaction detail. You can now see net amounts, fees, tips, and taxes all broken out separately within each payout batch.
Improved matching. The system better recognizes and matches transactions, reducing manual reconciliation work.
Sales tax integration. Perhaps most importantly, the connector now imports and tracks sales tax automatically.

However, the new system imports individual transactions rather than daily batch summaries, which could create challenges for high-volume businesses. Katz Pollock shared concerns about a cornfield maze client who processes hundreds of daily transactions. “This integration right now looks like it’s individual sales. So that would import all hundreds of them every day, which is not going to be ideal for us.”

Intuit acknowledges this limitation, with batch summary imports planned for “version two” of the connector. The new system supports classes and locations, works with all QuickBooks Online versions, and remains free to use.

Interface Revolution: The New Dashboard Arrives

The most visible change coming to QuickBooks Online is the complete interface redesign, and it’s closer than you might think. The new dashboard represents QuickBooks’ most significant user experience transformation in years, but it’s designed to minimize disruption to existing workflows.

“Intuit has done a really good job of not making something so drastically different that we have to start over again,” Katz Pollock observes from her beta testing experience. “All of the windows, all of the transaction screens they’ve already been updating over the last two years. And so once you go into a transaction, there’s literally nothing different.”

The visual transformation is dramatic. The familiar black navigation bar disappears, replaced by a two-level system with light gray buttons and flyout menus. But beneath this aesthetic change, all core functionality remains intact.

Fulton, also beta-testing the interface, emphasizes this continuity: “Nothing’s actually changing behind it. You have pretty little icons on the far left instead of just words. And then those pretty little icons fly out to more menus, and then guess what? It’s exactly the same when you’re in that.”

QuickBooks carefully orchestrated the rollout timeline:

July 1st: Manual opt-in becomes available (with opt-out option)
August 1-30: Automatic enrollment begins (opt-out still available)
September: Mandatory transition (no opt-out option)
September 22nd: Final cutover date

This phased approach gives users multiple opportunities to adapt while providing safety nets for those who need more time. The timing also ensures completion before the next QuickBooks Connect conference, where QuickBooks will likely showcase new features built for the updated interface.

Key improvements in the new interface include:

Enhanced bookmarks. Favorite reports and frequently used screens are now accessible at the main level, eliminating menu navigation for common tasks.
Customizable dashboard. Users can hide or rearrange dashboard components to match their workflow preferences.
Intuitive navigation. The “silo buttons” (accounting, expenses, sales, customers, payroll) are actually easier to understand than the previous system.
Hover menus. Flyout menus respond to cursor hover, eliminating unnecessary clicks.

Supporting the Transition: Training and Resources

Recognizing that interface changes require comprehensive support, training providers are mobilizing resources to help professionals maintain productivity during the transition.

Royalwise is undertaking a massive curriculum overhaul. “Everything I have has to be rerecorded,” Katz Pollock explains, referring to her library of over 50 QuickBooks classes. “So, you’ve got me here for the next 15 years.”

Starting in September, Royalwise will re-teach its entire curriculum in the new interface through bi-weekly sessions. Silver and Gold members get automatic enrollment at no additional cost—a commitment that demonstrates the scale of change management required.

The training approach extends beyond just explaining new buttons and menus. They’re developing a new book series specifically for the new interface, with comprehensive volumes and specialized guides for daily workflows, inventory, project management, and payroll. A practice set with real business scenarios will help users gain hands-on experience. Preorder your copy at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FDX859WD

Fulton’s ongoing QB Power Hour sessions with Dan DeLong provide another support pillar. These live streams every other Tuesday (9 AM Pacific, 12 PM Eastern) offer continuing education that adapts to current challenges and allows real-time interaction with experts.

What’s Coming Next: AI Agents and Beyond

July’s “In the Know” session will focus heavily on AI agents—automated assistants designed to handle routine tasks like sending invoices, tracking payments, reconciling books, and managing customer leads.

Intuit is developing four types of AI agents:

Accounting agents to handle routine bookkeeping tasks
Payments agents to manage payment processing and tracking
Customer agents to oversee customer relationship management
Finance agents to provide financial analysis and insights

These agents will integrate with the new dashboard and existing workflows, representing the next phase of QuickBooks’ evolution toward more automated, intelligent accounting processes.

Other developments on the horizon include expanded CRM tools, deeper MailChimp integration, and enhanced mineral HR features for payroll Premium and Elite users. The Mineral HR platform, available since 2019, includes law alert libraries, wage calculators, employee handbook builders, and safety training courses—resources many users don’t realize they already have access to.

The Path Forward

QuickBooks understands the critical balance between innovation and disruption in professional environments. The modular approach to inventory, careful interface preservation, and comprehensive training support show enterprise software evolution can enhance rather than disrupt existing workflows.

For accounting professionals, this blueprint suggests future changes will follow similar patterns: gradual, well-supported, and designed to amplify rather than replace professional expertise. The phased rollout timelines, preserved functionality, and extensive educational resources show a commitment to maintaining productivity during technological transformation.

As these changes roll out over the coming months, they’ll provide valuable insights into how the accounting profession adapts to technological evolution. The strategies demonstrated here offer a roadmap for future innovations that prioritize professional continuity alongside technological advancement.

Ready to dive deeper into these game-changing updates? Listen to the complete episode of The Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast where Alicia Katz Pollock and Matthew “Spot” Fulton provide their full analysis of these developments and discuss how these changes will affect your practice and your clients’ businesses.

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!

Avalara Tax Research: The Answer to Your Clients’ Toughest Sales Tax Questions

Earmark Team · July 30, 2025 ·

“Is this service taxable?” It’s a seemingly simple client question that can send accountants down a rabbit hole of research, often leading to uncertain Google searches and hours navigating complex state websites.

“Google’s great for some things, but when it comes to figuring out the taxability of products, it is lacking,” explains Blake Oliver in a recent Earmark Expo webinar. “As anyone who has worked with sales tax questions knows, the answers are different by state and by local jurisdiction. It’s a giant mess.”

Sales tax isn’t something most CPAs learn in school, making these questions particularly challenging. Many accountants refer clients to specialists when they can’t find reliable answers quickly enough.

In the webinar, Luke Marlatt from Avalara demonstrated how their Tax Research tool helps accountants tackle these challenges confidently. Let’s explore what makes this solution work and how it could benefit your practice.

How Avalara Gathers and Organizes Tax Information

Behind Avalara’s platform is an impressive research operation that transforms chaotic multi-jurisdictional tax laws into accessible, actionable information.

“We employ a gigantic team of researchers who spend all day, every day going to find information,” Marlatt explains. “We’re scrubbing over 27,000 web pages every single day. That’s not just some poor intern in the basement clicking on web pages; they have web crawlers and all this kind of cool technology.”

What sets Avalara apart is what happens after data collection. Real human experts verify every piece of information, translate complex tax code into plain language, and track changes down to case law and local regulations.

The team’s commitment goes beyond passive monitoring. When necessary, they actively chase down information through direct outreach to tax authorities. Marlatt shared how one colleague spent 2.5 hours on the phone with tax authorities in Jackson, Wyoming, to confirm a customer’s tax rate question.

This thorough approach has earned such credibility that Colorado, Missouri, and the Alaska Municipal League actually use Avalara’s data to power their own public-facing websites.

Key Features That Make Research Easier

The webinar demonstration highlighted several standout features designed to make sales tax research more efficient and user-friendly:

Simplified Nexus Determination

Rather than forcing users to interpret complex legal language, Avalara converts nexus requirements into straightforward yes/no questions.

“Instead of reading through the law trying to figure out what they mean—which in Washington, you’d have to read through five totally different parts of the revenue code—we just turn them into yes/no questions,” Marlatt explains.

This makes it easy to interview clients who might not understand tax terminology but can answer simple questions about their business activities.

Multi-State Comparison

With a single click of the “compare” button, users can apply a tax question across all states simultaneously, eliminating the need to research each jurisdiction individually.

“You hit the compare button and literally have your answer in every single state in the country,” Marlatt demonstrates. “Then you can hit this export button to dump it into Excel and start a workbook for a Nexus study.”

Customizable Tax Matrices

The Tax Matrix feature allows you to create customized, multi-state, multi-product matrices showing tax liability across different jurisdictions. You can save these matrices in the system and they’ll update automatically whenever relevant tax laws change.

“If you provide a tax matrix to your client, they’re going to want it updated. And traditionally that’s a difficult thing,” Marlatt explains. With Avalara, “The only thing you need to do is log in and hit the export button. And you’ve now got an updated tax matrix for your client.”

This creates an opportunity for subscription-based services, as Leary pointed out during the webinar: “And you build a quarterly tax research update into your fees.”

Precise Rate Lookups

The platform includes rooftop-level tax rate lookups, allowing users to find exact rates for specific addresses. The system shows the breakdown of rates by jurisdiction, essential for places like California where returns require this detail.

An interactive map displays the exact boundaries of taxing jurisdictions, making it easier to visualize where different rates apply.

Change Tracking and Updates

Users can toggle on a “highlight changes” feature that visually marks modified content with color indicators. This helps accountants quickly identify what’s changed since their last review.

The customizable email update system notifies you about tax changes daily, weekly, or monthly, filtered by content areas and specific states. These updates provide both an overview and detailed information about specific changes.

Marlatt shared how this helps catch significant changes: “The state of Kentucky defines SaaS as a service—they changed their law at the beginning of 2023. Because of that service law change, SaaS is now taxable in Kentucky as well.”

Expert Research Assistance

When questions arise that users can’t resolve through self-service research, the “Contact a Tax Expert” function connects them with Avalara’s team of expert researchers (mostly attorneys).

“Ninety four percent of the time, we beat our 24-hour mark and 71% of the time we actually beat the hour mark,” Marlatt notes regarding their response times. Last year, the team answered approximately 8,900 questions.

Avalara Tax Research also saves previous Q&A exchanges in a searchable repository, allowing users to benefit from questions other customers have asked.

Accessible for Firms of All Sizes

While these capabilities might seem designed for large firms, Avalara Tax Research serves accounting practices of all sizes.

“We have all the big four and most of the really big firms across the country using our tax research. We have mom and pop shops,” explains Marlatt. “Most of the demos I do are for single person operations with two or three people in a firm.”

For firms concerned about audit protection, Avalara offers an audit information guarantee. While they don’t provide direct tax advice or audit defense (leaving that advisory role to accounting partners), they stand behind their information’s accuracy.

“We will back up our information under audit directly with that auditor,” Marlatt explains. “We will go and defend that information with the auditor. We say, ‘Here’s all our research. Here’s how we got from A to B.'”

The platform also includes training resources to help firms maximize their return on investment. “There’s a team of trainers that make sure you get the most out of this tool,” Marlatt notes.

Adding a Valuable Service to Your Practice

Avalara Tax Research helps transform a persistent challenge into a strategic advantage. By providing authoritative answers to sales tax questions, firms can build service offerings around tax compliance while delivering more value to clients.

When clients receive clear, authoritative answers instead of tentative responses or referrals to specialists, it strengthens their trust in your firm. When you can proactively alert them to regulatory changes before they become compliance issues, you position yourself as a true advisor.

For practitioners who want to see these capabilities in action, watch the on-demand webinar. Tax complexity continues to increase, and having reliable resources to navigate this landscape is essential for serving clients effectively.

When Two Accounting Apps Listen to Their Customers (And Actually Do Something About It)

Earmark Team · July 22, 2025 ·

Picture this: It’s 2021 at ‘Appy Camp, and Ben Stein from Keeper is standing at a bar, drink ticket in hand, ready to exchange it for a well-deserved cocktail after a long day of conference sessions. But when Alicia Katz Pollock rushes past—bass guitar case slung over her shoulder, racing to join the evening’s music circle around the fire—and tosses him her drink ticket with a hurried “Can you get me my drink?”, Ben doesn’t hesitate. He heads to the bar, discovers they’re not accepting drink tickets, and simply buys her a drink anyway.

That spirit of going above and beyond would prove fitting. Three years later, Ben’s company, Keeper, just launched an integration with Anchor that’s making accounting professionals everywhere take notice. When Katz Pollock brought together Stein and Tal Ben Bassat from Anchor for a special episode of The Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast, the conversation revealed how real software partnerships actually happen.

The story isn’t about corporate strategy meetings or market research. It’s about two companies that actually listened when their customers said, “We want these apps to work together.” And then they did something most software companies don’t: they made it happen…

…like chocolate and peanut butter…better together!

When Customers Become Your Product Team

Here’s what most software companies get wrong: they build features based on internal roadmaps instead of user requests. But when Stein’s team at Keeper and Ben Bassat’s team at Anchor started getting the same message from customers, both companies did something simple. They listened.

“Really, the idea came from our mutual customers,” Ben explains. “This is something that our customers asked for and Anchor’s customers asked for. We have a lot of overlapping customers and we want to keep them happy.”

Ben Bassat’s approach at Anchor takes this customer focus even further. “Everything we do on Anchor comes from our clients. Every feature, every development we have,” he says. “Our product team spends full days speaking to customers about what they need.”

The proof came after they launched. Stein admits it “caught my team off guard” with the response. “We go live with the integration, and all of a sudden, our support team was just inundated with dozens of tickets from Anchor customers and Keeper customers that were super excited about getting this up and running.”

This customer-driven approach creates a simple but powerful advantage: when your users tell you exactly what they need to work more efficiently, you don’t have to guess what to build next.

How the Integration Actually Works

For those not familiar with these tools, here’s what they do.

Anchor handles contracting and billing. Accountants can create proposals with multiple pricing tiers, get electronic signatures, and automatically invoice clients monthly. The invoices sync to QuickBooks Online. Keeper manages your bookkeeping workflows and checklists. It integrates with QBO so you can review transactions, ask client questions, and track your monthly procedures without jumping between systems.

Now here’s where the integration gets useful. When a client receives a proposal in Anchor, they can choose from different service packages and even agree to automatic annual price increases. Once they sign and connect payment information, the integration takes over automatically.

Based on your Anchor settings, the system auto-configures a client in Keeper, applying templates, creating tasks, and setting properties—all without manual work. “Once the client signs the agreement, Anchor will take the upfront payments. So you’re already clear on that. And then your team gets a notification and they start to work on Keeper immediately,” Ben Bassat explains.

This eliminates what Ben Bassat calls the traditional approach: “someone in your back office who starts organizing the onboarding process.” No more Excel spreadsheets tracking tasks. No more manual emails. No more wondering where each client stands in the pipeline.

Future updates will include amendment management. When you add services in Anchor, it will automatically trigger new workflows in Keeper. The integration keeps evolving based on what users really need.

Why Specialized Tools Beat All-in-One Platforms

Both companies made a conscious choice to focus on what they do best rather than trying to build everything. “No one can do everything perfectly. It’s not possible,” Ben Bassat explains.

His philosophy is clear: master your core function, then integrate with others who’ve mastered theirs. “Our approach on Anchor is not to give people a half-baked CRM experience or half-baked project management or practice management experience because it will not be as good. Keeper spent years developing their product.”

Stein agrees, recognizing that building billing software is “enormously complex.” Meanwhile, Keeper has spent years perfecting practice management and client communications that are “so deeply coupled to each other” that splitting them across multiple systems would create problems.

As Katz Pollock puts it, QuickBooks Online is like “a multifunction printer where it can print and it can copy and it can fax, but it doesn’t do any of them really, really well.” That’s why we have an entire ecosystem of specialized apps that excel at their one thing, and then connect to create something more powerful than any single platform.

Building the Integration Right

This wasn’t just two companies slapping together a quick connection. It was Keeper’s first major integration, and both teams approached it with their full attention.

“It surprised me how involved it was,” Stein reflects. “Anchor sort of took the whole process very seriously.” Keeper had to modify their API and release new endpoints specifically to support what Anchor needed.

Ben Bassat’s team matched that commitment. “Our approach is to deliver the best we can.” The development included extensive customer research, with Anchor’s product team speaking directly to Keeper users to understand their expectations.

The mutual respect between companies is evident in how they talk about each other. Stein praises Anchor’s authentic customer approach, while Ben Bassat marvels at Keeper’s user loyalty: “Clients are in love with the company, with the product. It’s something you don’t see a lot.”

When both companies share the same standards for quality, the collaboration works better.

The Bigger Picture

The Keeper-Anchor integration is a model for how accounting technology should evolve. When specialized companies listen to their customers and collaborate instead of competing, they create something more powerful than bloated platforms trying to do everything poorly.

The overwhelming user response—support teams flooded with excited customers wanting immediate access—shows that accountants recognize good tools that work together seamlessly. You don’t need another platform that does everything adequately. You need best-in-class solutions that communicate perfectly.

As these founders envision a future with universal bank APIs and seamless connectivity between all accounting apps, they’re describing an ecosystem where your software works as hard as you do. Where signing a proposal automatically sets up workflows, amendments in one system update tasks in another, and tools anticipate needs instead of creating more work.

When software companies prioritize partnership over competition and specialization over generalization, everyone wins. Your clients get better service. Your team gets better tools. And you get back to what you do best: serving clients instead of wrestling with software.

Want to hear the full conversation? Listen to this episode to discover how customer feedback drove this integration, what’s coming next, and why the future of accounting technology is specialized, connected, and customer-driven.

QuickBooks Updates: Tap to Pay, Third-Party Integrations, and Training Opportunities for Accounting Pros

Earmark Team · April 23, 2025 ·

In the latest episode of The Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast, hosts Alicia Katz Pollock and Matthew “Spot” Fulton break down the most important QuickBooks announcements from Intuit’s March “In the Know” webinar.

Here’s what’s new, from streamlined payment processing to expanded integrations and professional development opportunities.

Upcoming Training Opportunities for ProAdvisors

Here are several important training opportunities that ProAdvisors should mark on their calendars:

Level Two Certification Virtual Conference (March 25-27) – This training offers 9.5 CPE credits and prepares you for the advanced certification that many firms now require. Alicia emphasized, “Level one is like what buttons do you push… Level two is really leveraging the resources, some of the more advanced features, being able to think creatively about how to use the features to solve problems.”

MailChimp Training – Two new trainings are available in the ProAdvisor certification portal: “Getting Started with MailChimp” and a “MailChimp Product Guide” for client conversations. These trainings help ProAdvisors understand how MailChimp (now owned by Intuit) can be used for targeted client communications.

Recertification Window (April 28 – June 30) – The hosts emphasized the importance of recertifying early. “If you certify much earlier, your chances are probably better than later to get that prize,” mentioned Matthew, referring to the weekly $250 gift card drawings for those who pass the test. Remember that ProAdvisor certification tests are open-book!

Construction Industry Training (May 8) – For those interested in the construction niche, Intuit is offering specialized training covering “the modern construction landscape, mapping the construction workflow, connecting field and office, and key technology solutions.”

Tap to Pay on iPhone Eliminates Hardware Requirements

One of the most exciting announcements is the new Tap to Pay feature for iPhone, available in both the QuickBooks Mobile and Go Payment apps. This eliminates the need for the $50-100 Bluetooth card readers that many users didn’t even know existed.

“This is huge,” Alicia explained. “Now all you have to do is pull up the GoPayment, pull up the sale, and all the person has to do is either tap their phone to your iPhone or tap their credit card to your iPhone, and it automatically pays.”

The financial benefits extend beyond hardware savings. Transactions processed through Tap to Pay cost just 2.5% compared to 3.4% for manually keyed entries. ProAdvisors can secure even lower rates for their clients through preferred pricing.

However, both hosts emphasized that the real value isn’t in the processing rates but in the automated reconciliation. “If your focus is on the rates versus the efficiency, then you’re actually paying attention to the wrong thing,” Alicia noted. “QuickBooks Payments has huge ROI because when you run the payment through it, it recognizes it, it pays the invoice, it puts it in undeposited funds, it batches the payments and it matches to your bank feed.”

This feature is currently available in the US, with Canada expected to follow later.

Third-Party Payment Integrations Expand

QuickBooks Payments is significantly expanding its third-party integrations, allowing more applications to use it as a payment processor. The growing list includes PandaDoc, ChargeOver, Notify, ServiceM8, Buildertrend, Lightspeed, Salesforce, BigCommerce, and many others.

“Basically, what happens is you go into the settings on these apps for the payment processor, and it’s going to now give you a choice,” Alicia explained. “So instead of just going to Stripe, you will now actually have choices… and QuickBooks will be on the list.”

A major advantage for bookkeepers is how QuickBooks Payments handles processing fees. Unlike other processors that deduct fees from each transaction, QuickBooks extracts fees as separate transactions. “When you see the money in the bank, you’re seeing the full payment on your invoices and they’re all batched at their totals, which makes it much easier for you to batch and reconcile,” Alicia noted.

Intuit is also exploring options to allow merchants to pass processing fees to customers—a feature many professionals have requested.

ProConnect Tax Planning Tools Enhanced

For accounting professionals who handle taxes, ProConnect Tax now offers enhanced integration with QuickBooks. The system allows you to toggle different tax strategies on and off to see how they affect clients’ estimated taxes and tax projections.

“They’re trying to create an environment where it’s more intertwined and you can start to be planning for quarterly estimate payments, better projections, that type of stuff,” Matthew explained.

Users can create multiple “what if” accounts to compare different tax scenarios, view federal and state tax implications, and even print estimated tax payment vouchers. The integration also incorporates Intuit Assist’s AI-powered insights to identify opportunities you might otherwise miss.

QuickBooks Live Expert Service Evolving

QuickBooks Live, Intuit’s $50 support service that allows clients to get simple questions answered, is being refined based on customer feedback. Initially seen as potential competition, many ProAdvisors now view it as a valuable addition to their service offerings.

“I actually now see it as a huge value-added service,” Alicia shared. “I have some of my high maintenance clients calling into it instead [of me].”

The service has important limitations that protect the ProAdvisor relationship: “They’re only answering the question that’s asked. They can’t contribute more information… they can only answer what has been requested of them.”

Intuit is now testing enhancements, including priority queue access and weekend support hours, which could prove valuable during crunch times.

Making the Most of These Updates in Your Practice

These March updates reflect Intuit’s commitment to creating tools that help accounting professionals deliver more value with less effort. For those looking to leverage these innovations effectively:

Focus on efficiency over processing rates when evaluating payment solutions
Consider introducing clients to QuickBooks Live for basic support questions
Pursue Level Two certification to enhance your problem-solving capabilities
Explore specialized training in high-demand niches like construction
Complete recertification early to maximize learning and incentive opportunities

The real value accounting professionals provide goes far beyond basic bookkeeping. These QuickBooks enhancements free up time to focus on the advisory work that truly transforms client businesses.

For more detailed insights on these updates and implementation strategies for your practice, listen to the full episode of The Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast.

How to Use AI to Analyze Data and Draft Financial Reports in Minutes

Blake Oliver · April 10, 2025 ·

Imagine being able to turn 4 hours of tedious financial analysis into just a few short minutes, all while uncovering valuable insights you never knew were possible. For those in accounting and finance who often find themselves overwhelmed by spreadsheets and manual reports, this isn’t just a pipe dream—it’s becoming a reality today.

On a recent episode of my Earmark Podcast, I had a great conversation with Nicolas Boucher, who focuses on how artificial intelligence can be used in accounting and finance. We discussed how AI is no longer just a topic of theories and ideas; instead, it’s becoming a valuable tool that is changing the way people in finance do their jobs every day.

The Growing Adoption of AI in Accounting

The accounting field is undergoing a big change with the use of AI. Nicolas notes that in the past, only about 20% of accountants used this technology, but now that number has grown to around 50%. This increasing adoption indicates that more accountants are starting to embrace AI in their work.

“Every three to six months there is a new phase of adoption,” Nicolas explained to me. “Two years ago, almost nobody was using it… then six months after, you had 20-30% of people starting to use it for emails, but then the technologists started using it for financial analysis.”

This adoption happens in waves, with each new phase bringing more sophisticated applications. While early adopters began with simple tasks like drafting emails, many are now creating custom AI agents and analyzing complex financial data.

Practical Examples of AI in Financial Analysis

Cohort Analysis for SaaS Businesses

Nicolas demonstrated how a SaaS business cohort analysis—typically used to track customer retention rates over time—can be transformed from a 3-4 hour task into a minutes-long process.

By uploading a simple dataset with dates, customer IDs, products, and invoice amounts to ChatGPT with a brief prompt to “do a cohort analysis visually,” he produced a sophisticated heatmap visualization showing retention rates across different customer cohorts.

“If you never did it [manually], you will probably need one day because you will have so much trial and error,” Nicolas noted, highlighting the dramatic time savings.

Salary Distribution Analysis Using Box Plots

Perhaps even more valuable than time savings is AI’s ability to suggest visualization techniques that many finance professionals may never have considered. Nicolas shared a powerful example of ChatGPT suggesting using box plots for salary distribution analysis—a visualization method he hadn’t applied despite 15 years in finance.

“The first time I saw the output of the analysis of salaries… I was like, wow. This is actually the best way to show a distribution of salary. After 15 years of finance, I never used that,” Nicolas recalled.

The box plot clearly displayed salary ranges across departments, showing minimum, maximum, and outlier values in a way that averages alone could never reveal. This discovery was so impactful that Nicolas thought, “This is going to change all our lives.”

Automated Financial Reporting

Nicolas also demonstrated a tool called Concourse.io that connects directly with QuickBooks Online and NetSuite to automatically generate comprehensive financial reports.

The tool automatically generates a complete report with executive summaries, revenue analysis, cost analysis, and customizable sections—all with both narrative commentary and visualizations.

Overcoming Implementation Challenges

While AI’s potential for finance is clear, many accounting professionals have hesitated to adopt these tools due to four key concerns:

Data confidentiality: Uploading sensitive financial information to third-party AI platforms
Auditability: Verifying AI calculations and tracing how results were generated
Processing limitations: Most AI tools cannot handle large financial datasets
Scalability: The inefficiency of repeatedly prompting AI for the same analysis

Solutions for Data Security and Auditability

Nicolas demonstrated an ingenious workaround that addresses these concerns. After using ChatGPT to generate a visualization, he asks it to provide the underlying Python code that created the chart. He then copies this code to Google Colab, a free browser-based tool from Google that allows users to run Python code.

“Now it solves the confidentiality of data because you are not in ChatGPT, you are inside your Google environment,” Nicolas explained. “And for auditability, here I can see the source… It’s not random. It’s not like a black box. You can see all of it.”

For professionals who aren’t comfortable with code, Nicolas showed how to implement AI-suggested techniques directly in Excel. For example, after discovering box plots, he asked ChatGPT to provide step-by-step instructions for creating these visualizations in Excel using the “Box and Whiskers” chart option.

Ensuring Proper Data Protection

When selecting AI tools, Nicolas emphasized the importance of proper data security:

“Make sure your team is using it without fear of data security. These tools use the best standards in terms of data security. If you sign a contract with them, you can read the data security protocol and make sure you opt out for data training, which is normally standard.”

For those using ChatGPT, he recommends the Teams account, which has data protection built in, rather than the Pro account, which requires explicit opt-out of data training.

The Evolving Role of Finance Professionals

As artificial intelligence changes how we handle financial analysis, the work of finance professionals is also changing. Instead of taking away jobs, these new tools help professionals focus on more important tasks that add greater value.

“Instead of spending a week with five people building a report, it’s just going to be 30 minutes of work. Then you can reinvest that time analyzing which vendors are good or bad, and working with procurement to make some savings,” Nicolas explained.

This shift addresses a long-standing aspiration in finance. “We talk a lot about business partnering and adding value. But when people are behind their Excel files, they cannot do a lot of this,” Nicolas pointed out. AI tools free finance professionals from the technical burden of report creation, allowing them to focus on strategic interpretation.

The evolution comes at an opportune time for the profession, which faces staffing challenges. “You have less people coming into accounting jobs. You have many people retiring. The turnover is really high,” Nicolas noted.

Organizations that adopt AI tools not only improve efficiency but also enhance their appeal to potential employees by offering more meaningful work.

Getting Started with AI in Finance

When selecting AI tools, Nicolas advised focusing on integration with existing systems:

“If you are already embedded in Microsoft—you use Outlook, SharePoint, Power BI, Azure—it makes sense to go with Copilot,” he explained. Similarly, organizations using Google’s ecosystem should consider Gemini. For smaller organizations without specific ecosystem requirements, ChatGPT provides a flexible solution.

For those looking to develop AI skills, Nicolas recommends following experts on platforms like LinkedIn and YouTube. “It’s crazy to see how much people can learn and implement in just two hours of training,” he says.

He also created a community called the AI Finance Club, where finance professionals can stay current on AI developments. “Every week we provide the most important content in the form of guides, masterclasses, or video courses where experts teach the best ways to use AI for finance.”

From Spreadsheet Specialists to Strategic Advisors

This isn’t just about getting new tools; it’s about a complete shift in how financial experts provide value to their companies.

These technologies are not just about saving time; they actually improve the quality of analysis while keeping data safe and accurate. Incorporating AI doesn’t mean losing control or risking the quality of data.

The professionals who will do well in this new environment won’t necessarily be the ones who are great at coding or become technology experts. Instead, success will come to those who know how to use these tools wisely—making good decisions while letting AI take care of routine tasks in financial analysis.

This change opens up a real opportunity to fulfill the promise of being strategic partners in business, a goal finance professionals have talked about for years. When they are free from making basic reports, finance experts can focus on analyzing insights and providing the valuable guidance that truly drives business success.

Did you find this article helpful? Listen to my full conversation with Nicolas Boucher on the Earmark Podcast for more practical examples and step-by-step guidance on using AI for financial analysis. Plus, you can earn free CPE for listening to the episode or watching the video with the Earmark app.