Alicia Katz Pollock

Intuit is going high and low—and accountants are in the middle

Earmark Team · October 26, 2026 ·

Intuit’s fiscal 2026 fourth quarter results include two numbers that tell an interesting story. Revenue rose 14% to about $4.4 billion, beating the company’s guidance of 10% to 12%. Yet the number of paying QuickBooks Online customers grew only about 3% globally, reaching 8.9 million. Meanwhile, average revenue per customer climbed 15%.

That difference explains Intuit’s next move: attract more businesses at the low end, keep expanding into the mid-market, and earn more when money moves through payments, payroll, and lending.

In Episode 161 of The Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast, Alicia Katz Pollock translates that investor story into a language accountants can understand. She explains why Intuit is moving downmarket and upmarket at the same time, and what firms should do before automation, new products, and advisory opportunities arrive at their doors.

Strong revenue can’t hide slower customer growth

The quarter itself was strong. Global Business Solutions, which includes QuickBooks, generated about $3.1 billion in revenue, up 15%. QuickBooks Online revenue reached about $2.28 billion, up 20%.

The concern is what comes next. Intuit expects total company growth of 9% to 10% in fiscal 2027 and Global Business Solutions growth of 13% to 14%. Management also lowered its three-year growth range for that segment from 15%–20% to 10%–15%.

This is a reset of expectations. U.S. QuickBooks Online customer growth was healthier at 6%, but global customer growth still trails revenue growth. Intuit is good at earning more from existing customers. Now it needs to bring more businesses into the ecosystem.

That need reshapes both ends of the QuickBooks product line.

Intuit is widening the front door

At the low end are QuickBooks Free and QuickBooks Lite. Intuit describes them as a wider front door for new and very small businesses. More than 20,000 customers already actively use QuickBooks Free or move into it from a paid product.

The business model is to bring in a business at little or no subscription cost, then earn revenue through payments, payroll, lending, upgrades, and other services. These products could help microbusinesses move away from spreadsheets, personal bank accounts, and payment apps.

But Alicia warns that simple and safe aren’t the same thing. Test these products with a sample company. Review the automated workflows, run reports, and make mistakes on purpose. Then decide which clients are a good fit.

This wider front door also creates a larger gap between entry-level tools and higher-priced plans. Accountants may have to explain why a client needs to upgrade, even when they didn’t choose the original subscription.

The mid-market offers a different kind of opportunity

While Intuit moves downmarket, it’s also pushing higher. Revenue from QuickBooks Online Advanced and Intuit Enterprise Suite grew 38% during the quarter. Full-year mid-market revenue rose 39%, and the number of mid-market customers increased 28%.

These customers bring more entities, employees, approvals, integrations, and reporting needs. They also adopt more services. Advanced customers have a payroll attachment rate 13 percentage points higher than core QBO customers and a payments attachment rate nine points higher.

Enterprise Suite passed a $145 million annualized revenue run rate, about four times the prior year. Its construction edition also shows early traction.

Most important for accounting firms, accountants influenced 25% of new Enterprise Suite contracts over the last year. That creates opportunity, but product knowledge alone isn’t enough. Firms need methods for discovery, scoping, conversion planning, access controls, integrations, documentation, and post-launch support.

The financial link between Intuit’s smallest and largest customers is clear when we follow the money.

Money movement supports both ends of the ladder

QuickBooks Money revenue grew 31% in fiscal 2026. QBO payment volume, including Bill Pay, grew 30% and passed $225 billion. Businesses also create more than $2.7 trillion in invoices through QuickBooks Online each year.

At the low end, Intuit can offer inexpensive software because it may earn money when a business gets paid. At the high end, more invoices, employees, bills, and entities create more service revenue.

For accountants, subscription price isn’t the only cost to consider. Transaction fees, payroll, lending, and related services also belong in the calculation. This strategy also explains why QuickBooks frequently advertises service upgrades inside the accounting workflow.

Automation creates time, not an advisory practice

Intuit says more than 150,000 accountants use Intuit Accountant Suite. Those users report increaing advisory work about 30% as routine tasks become automated. Intuit also says its AI experienceshelp customers get paid four days faster.

Those are useful outcomes, but automation only creates available time. It doesn’t decide how a firm uses it. To turn that time into advisory revenue, ask:

Do we have a defined advisory offer?
Can our team recognize decisions clients need to make?
Have we set boundaries around what’s included?
Can we turn a forecast into a useful conversation instead of a long report?

Software can flag a cash shortage. An accountant helps the owner decide whether to change payment terms, use a line of credit, postpone a hire, or raise prices. Helping someone make a better decision is advisory work.

Turn the strategy into action

Alicia recommends three practical moves:

Build a product-fit matrix. Compare transaction volume, inventory, entities, users, approvals, reporting, payroll, payments, and integrations across QuickBooks plans and non-QuickBooks options.
Define one repeatable advisory conversation. Start with cash flow, project profitability, or receivables, and connect the discussion to a decision.
Test the automation. Use a sample company to document what Intuit’s AI recommends, what data it uses, and where human review changes the answer.

Also keep watching desktop migrations and Mailchimp. Desktop still represents about a quarter of Global Business Solutions, while Mailchimp is now reported separately after roughly flat to slightly lower revenue.

Intuit’s quarter was strong, but its strategy is changing. For accounting professionals, that offers an opportunity. Match products to complexity, test automation before trusting it, and make human judgment stronger as the software gets smarter.

For Alicia’s complete analysis, listen to the full episode.

Is your answer about what QuickBooks can’t do already out of date?

Earmark Team · October 23, 2026 ·

A client asks whether QuickBooks can handle multiple units of measure, consolidated reporting, or AIA-style billing. We answer from memory, then discover the product changed. With Intuit releasing features this quickly, what was true six months ago may not be true today.

That’s the backdrop for Episode 160 of The Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast. Host Alicia Katz Pollock and guest Hector Garcia review Intuit Enterprise Suite (IES) developments through August 2026. They note that while IES expands what QuickBooks can handle, some features are moving into QuickBooks Online Advanced and Plus.

As Hector explains, “If I know how to use QuickBooks, I know how to use Intuit Enterprise Suite. I just have to learn the additional functions.”

IES extends the QuickBooks Online foundation

IES uses the familiar QuickBooks Online interface, API, app ecosystem, and Desktop migration process. It adds more fields and functions, but users don’t have to learn an entirely new accounting system. Intuit is also updating the underlying platform across QuickBooks Online, IES, and Intuit Accountant Suite, which Hector says should improve performance.

Intuit doesn’t publish pricing because it builds a custom package around each company’s needs. But Hector offered these estimates:

A single entity may cost about $750 to $800 per month
Three entities with payroll may average about $1,800 per month
Pricing can change based on users, entities, dimensions, payroll, and add-ons
IES includes five users, with the option to expand to up to 500. QuickBooks Online Advanced stops at 25.

Dimensions show the wider operating range. They work like multiple classes that you can name and use at either the transaction or line-item level. IES can support up to 20 dimensions. As of August 2026, you can apply dimensions to every transaction that normally supports classes, including timesheets and payroll.

Users can also build reports with one dimension on the rows and another on the columns. Balance sheets by dimension were in beta, while an AI backfill tool could suggest dimensions for older transactions based on patterns involving customers, vendors, and items. That historical backfill may make dimensions far more useful during implementation.

Multi-entity accounting creates a major advisory opportunity

IES connects related companies for consolidated reporting. Users can run consolidated profit and loss statements, balance sheets, sales reports, and roughly 20 other reports. They can also drill from a consolidated report into the original transaction in the underlying company file.

The system supports non-posting eliminations, which remove intercompany activity from consolidated statements without changing each entity’s books. Intuit added automatic eliminations in August for linked intercompany invoices and bills. An invoice created in one company can generate a related bill in another company and hold it for approval.

That automation depends on careful setup. Customers, items, and accounts must be mapped correctly between companies. Hector warned that this can take “hours and hours and hours,” but he also called it one of the biggest consulting opportunities in the Intuit ecosystem.

Companies can keep separate charts of accounts and map them to a standard reporting structure. Alternatively, they can adopt and lock a shared chart across all entities. Once that foundation is in place, IES can support much more specialized work.

Construction leads, with manufacturing and nonprofits following

Hector believes IES reaches, and in some areas exceeds, QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise’s construction capabilities. The expanding toolset includes:

Estimate-versus-actual and work-in-progress reporting
Percentage-of-completion revenue recognition
Revised contract values and separate positive or negative change orders
Project-specific user permissions
Target profit margins and project KPI dashboards
AI-assisted imports of project budgets from spreadsheets or PDFs
AIA-style billing based on an estimate and schedule of values

Manufacturing and inventory are next. Multiple units of measure is live in IES. So, for example, a yarn company could buy yarn by the case, track it by the roll, and sell it by the yard or inch. A few Advanced customers also had access, although Intuit hadn’t announced a broader release yet. Bills of material are in beta, while multi-location inventory, lot and serial tracking, and barcode scanning are under development.

Nonprofit tools may follow in 2027. Intuit is exploring grant management and restricted-asset tracking, although pricing will be an important concern for smaller organizations.

IES features are already moving downstream

Even if your clients never adopt IES, its development matters. Intuit has already moved several ideas into lower QuickBooks Online tiers, although availability may vary:

Cost groups organize products and services into reporting buckets such as labor, materials, and equipment
Project phases divide job costs into stages such as foundation, walls, and punch-out
Proposals turn estimates into polished documents with text, branding, and electronic acceptance
Calculated report fields add spreadsheet-style math inside QuickBooks reports
Sales order improvements connect one sales order to purchase orders from several vendors
Item receipts separate the date inventory arrives from the date the vendor bill posts

Item receipts require special care. Once enabled, the client must consistently follow the purchase order-to-item receipt-to-bill workflow. Skipping a step can leave a balance in the inventory clearing account.

That’s why Alicia recommends revisiting rejected features every three to six months. A workflow that failed last year, or even last quarter, may work differently now.

Build a habit of checking again

Smart accounting professionals will track IES releases to see what may reach QuickBooks Online next, reevaluate product limitations every three to six months, treat mapping, permissions, and workflow design as advisory services, and test optional workflows before introducing them to clients.

Listen to the full conversation between Alicia Katz Pollock and Hector Garcia in Episode 160 of The Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast.

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!

AI can fly your month-end close, but you still have to land it

Earmark Team · October 13, 2026 ·

It’s the third of the month. Bank statements have posted. Payroll exports and loan schedules are ready, and the close checklist is about to consume another week of staff time.

Now imagine Meridian already imported the activity, reconciled the balance sheet accounts, booked the accruals, and rolled forward the supporting schedules. Instead of doing the production work, you open a short review list.

That’s not hands-off bookkeeping. Someone still needs to investigate a few exceptions, like a payroll liability that never cleared, an unusually large vendor payment, or a prior-period problem a client introduced.

In Episode 159 of The Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast, host Alicia Katz Pollock talks to Jessica McKellar, Founder and CEO at Pilot, about Meridian, Pilot’s AI accounting platform for firms. Pilot began pursuing software-driven bookkeeping automation around 2016. It tested the technology through its own full-service accounting practice and refined it across more than 8,000 businesses and hundreds of thousands of month-end closes before publicly launching Meridian in June.

The experience taught them that the breakthrough isn’t just the AI; it’s the accounting structure underneath it.

The breakthrough took a decade, not one prompt

Jessica and her co-founder started Pilot “pre all the AI stuff” with the idea that they could substantially automate bookkeeping with software. If they could create a reliable autonomous month-end close, they could build other useful services on top of it.

The goal went beyond efficiency. “We want every small business owner in America to have access to high-quality finance and accounting support,” Jessica says. For many owners, that support was out of reach.

Pilot is a technology company offering full-service bookkeeping, tax, and CFO advisory services, and it became Meridian’s test lab, automating recurring work and directing complex accounting tasks.

That history means Pilot didn’t design Meridian around hypothetical workflows. Its team gained experience by serving real clients every day. As Alicia notes, that’s different from vendors that rush autonomous ledgers to market before testing them at scale.

Meridian is also modular, ledger-agnostic, and industry-agnostic. It can serve as a broad technology platform for a solo firm or provide production automation within a larger firm’s existing systems.

Accounting context provides the guardrails

That foundation leads to the key technical difference: Meridian isn’t a generic AI agent waiting for an accountant to explain accounting from scratch.

“You don’t have to input a bunch of accounting context into the system,” Jessica explains.

The platform has a built-in understanding of:

Supporting schedules and rollforwards
Balance sheet reconciliations across reporting periods
Vendor categorization histories
Firm-level and client-level preferences
Capitalization and materiality thresholds
Bad debt policies
Accounts that should clear on a regular cycle

Consider a bank reconciliation. Meridian can import activity, compare it with the expected closing balance, identify missing items, and reason through a remaining discrepancy. It can also recognize when the problem comes from a prior period and may require a conversation with the client.

New bookkeepers may reconcile bank and credit card accounts without realizing that payroll and sales tax liabilities also need attention. Alicia has found cleanup files carrying a $23 liability balance for five years because no one noticed it. But some errors are far more serious, like a broken revenue recognition schedule that overstates revenue for two years.

Jessica compares Pilot’s decade of development to building an “Iron Man suit for accountants.” During roughly the past 18 months, large language models became capable enough to operate inside that structure. The system can now do the work, check it, and show its work to the accountant responsible for the client.

An autonomous close still depends on good inputs

With those guardrails in place, the monthly workflow is much simpler.

First, the firm defines its standard checklist and policies. These may include capitalization thresholds, bad debt treatment, accrual methods, allocations, and QuickBooks class requirements. Firms can upload existing checklists or sample workpapers instead of rebuilding every step manually.

Next, Meridian needs complete source data. Firms can continue using QuickBooks Online bank feeds, connect through Plaid, or upload statements. Other inputs may include payroll exports, loan schedules, and point-of-sale data. Automation can’t finish a close when required information is missing.

Once you meet those dependencies, Meridian can run automatically or at the push of a button. It handles transaction imports, reconciliations, categorization, payroll allocations, accruals, revenue recognition, fixed assets, and schedule rollforwards.

The accountant then receives a review summary showing what Meridian did, what needs attention, which liabilities are open, and what questions may need to go to the client. The accountant can review that summary with the balance sheet, profit and loss statement, workpapers, and reporting package.

“All I have to do is a review,” Jessica says. That review still requires professional skepticism and responsibility. It’s not a rubber stamp.

Automation makes more client requests practical

Once routine production work shrinks, firms can reconsider projects that once required too many hours.

Through a chat interface, an accountant can ask Meridian to refine a chart of accounts, move vendors from operating expenses to cost of goods sold, restate historical SaaS revenue from contract PDFs, or apply QuickBooks classes to about 5,000 past transactions. The system also updates the related schedules, documentation, and supporting evidence.

These tasks were always possible, but they were often too expensive for the client or unprofitable for the firm. Automation changes that equation. “It lets you say yes to clients more,” Jessica says.

“The value is no longer data entry. The value is now opportunity,” Alicia says.

You still land the close

For QuickBooks professionals, the practical lessons are:

Build automation on documented policies and reliable source data
Use purpose-built accounting controls, not prompts alone
Keep human review as the final control point
Apply the time you recover to analysis, advice, and client requests

Autonomous accounting doesn’t remove the accountant, but it moves work away from mechanical production and toward review, judgment, and advisory services.

After all, the name is Pilot, not Autopilot. The system may fly the month-end close, but you still read the instruments, resolve the exceptions, and sign off.

Listen to the full episode to hear Jessica and Alicia explain the complete workflow on The Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast.

How to keep Intuit Experts from duplicating the work your firm already does

Earmark Team · September 15, 2026 ·

Alicia Katz Pollock wore her “Strange New Worlds” T-shirt from Scaling New Heights to record this episode of The Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast for a reason. QuickBooks Live is gone as a brand, and Intuit is restructuring how its employees help QuickBooks users.

As of July 29, 2026, Intuit Expert Services became a native feature within QuickBooks Online plans rather than a separate add-on. Dan DeLong of School of Bookkeeping and Matthew “Spot” Fulton of Parkway Business Solutions joined Alicia for this episode to examine the change.

Their central question is: Is this simply a new name, or is Intuit changing its role in clients’ books?

The new model focuses on businesses without accountants

QuickBooks Live offered assisted bookkeeping, cleanup, and full-service options. Intuit Experts has a narrower focus, covering onboarding new businesses, supporting AI-driven categorization, and reviewing books.

These services mainly target businesses without an accountant. Alicia estimated that about 70% of QuickBooks files have no accountant user attached. Accounting professionals may assume most businesses have bookkeeping support because that’s what we see in our own client lists. In reality, many owners sign up for QuickBooks and try to manage it on their own.

Intuit says its employed experts are QuickBooks-certified professionals with an average of 10 years of bookkeeping experience. Their work is meant to build a bridge to an accountant, not replace one. Beginning in January 2027, it expects the Intuit Pro Partner Accountants Program to match businesses with participating firms.

To understand where that bridge begins, however, we need to look at the services now included in QBO.

Three services move Intuit further into the books

Intuit introduced three ongoing Expert Services:

Books Check-In. An annual meeting with an Intuit bookkeeping expert to review the books, discuss AI-flagged issues, and help clean up the chart of accounts. It’s included with Essentials and Plus.
Smart Expert Categorization. AI-assisted transaction categorization with expert verification in the background. It’s included with Plus and is part of the Advanced service described below.
Expert Books Upkeep. Continuous automated bookkeeping with expert validation and posting, regular accuracy checks, and quarterly review meetings. It’s included with Advanced.

As Dan observed, this looks like two services plus a package that combines them. The exact scope is still unclear. Does expert verification mean reviewing the AI’s suggestions, managing the bank feed, or correcting mistakes? Matthew asked, “Who fixes their errors?”

Pricing raised another open question. Alicia believes these features may help explain recent subscription price increases, but that was her interpretation rather than a confirmed pricing explanation from Intuit. If a business doesn’t use the services, Matthew asked, can it pay less?

Those unknowns make Intuit’s new controls especially important.

The controls depend on attachment and billing

Intuit promises, “For every client connected to an accountant, these services are disabled by default.”

For attached clients, Intuit says it will suppress marketing for overlapping services. That includes in-product prompts, emails, banner and web ads, dashboard messages, tests, and outbound sales.

Who can enable the services depends on billing:

On client-billed accounts, the option is hidden in the Settings. Either the client or an attached accountant can enable them. Clients who turn it on see a message advising them to check with their accountant before proceeding.
On firm-billed accounts, only the billing accountant can enable the services. The client sees a locked setting and must contact the firm.

Alicia argued that a warning isn’t the same as approval. She asked Intuit to require both the client and accountant to approve activation. Until then, firms should verify the settings themselves.

One control covers all three services. If multiple accountants are connected, the billing relationship determines who controls the setting. Accountants also receive read-only access to the Expert Hub, where they can see service progress, scheduled calls, and summaries.

Intelligent Onboarding creates a separate overlap risk

Intelligent Onboarding is separate from the three ongoing services. Every brand new QuickBooks customer can access setup support from day one, even when Intuit doesn’t yet know whether the business has an accountant.

The program expands onboarding support from 30 to 90 days and may include several expert calls. Intuit Experts can also help configure QuickBooks Payments, Bill Pay, and Workforce.

That could save firms hours of basic setup. But CAS practices need to be proactive: t could also duplicate a service you already provide, create a chart of accounts that doesn’t match your approach, or connect a client to Intuit products before you discuss alternatives.

Intuit’s goal is to complete the “foundational work” before an accountant meets with the client. Alicia pushed back on part of that idea. Refining the chart of accounts is usually the firm’s job.

The practical response is to define onboarding in your engagement letter and kickoff meeting. Tell clients what you handle, what kinds of questions they can send throught Intuit, what services they should avoid activating, and when you will review any work completed by Intuit.

Your firm needs to defend its boundary

Intuit acknowledged that QuickBooks Live “created friction between Intuit and accounting firms.” The hosts are cautious because Intuit previously promised not to market QuickBooks Live to accountants’ clients, yet firms still encountered that marketing.

This version has stronger safeguards, but firms should test them rather than assume they work. Start with this checklist:

Confirm every client is attached through QBO Accountant or Intuit Accountant Suite
Identify client-billed and firm-billed subscriptions
Review the Expert Services control in each client file
Coordinate access when multiple accountants are attached
Decide whether each service supports or duplicates your engagement
Explain the new options to clients before they activate anything
Watch the Pro Partner Accountants Program as its January 2027 launch approaches

Automation may take over more categorization and routine review. That leaves firms to handle judgment, interpretation, and client conversations—work software can’t do on its own.

Listen to the full episode for Alicia, Dan, and Matthew’s full discussion of the controls, unanswered questions, and next steps for accounting firms.

Is the QuickBooks Online Price Increase Buying Your Clients Anything?

Earmark Team · September 14, 2026 ·

A QuickBooks Online user took to Reddit to complain that Intuit raised his price by 41% without giving him anything new.

Alicia Katz Pollock saw it differently. Standing in her bathroom, she dictated a multi-page response listing features that shipped during the past year. She calculated the user’s increase at under 22%. That was still a meaningful jump, but it wasn’t 41%, and it didn’t come with “nothing.”

In Episode 155 of The Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast, Alicia and Matthew “Spot” Fulton examine that gap between price and perceived value. Their larger point is that while we were rebuilding muscle memory around QuickBooks Online’s redesigned interface, Intuit was changing the product underneath it.

The price increase needs context

As of August 2026, monthly prices are now:

Simple Start: $38 (unchanged)
Essentials: $85
Plus: $140
Advanced: $340

The new prices took effect for new subscriptions on August 1. Existing subscriptions generally change with a later billing cycle, while recent subscribers receive six months of price protection. Alicia and Matthew also cautioned that exact features and timing can vary by plan and renewal date.

That explains the bill, but do the added tools create enough value for each client?

Improvements can save real time

Bank feeds offer one of the clearest examples. Alicia explained the new categorization system learns file by file. At first, results may disappoint because the system hasn’t seen enough transaction history yet to understand the business’s requirements. Once it recognizes recurring activity, accuracy improves.

Not every firm will benefit equally. If you enter every transaction before opening the feed and use it only for matching, smarter suggestions may not change your process much. Other firms may gain hours from improvements such as:

PayPal matching connects a deposit with the related PayPal sale
Bank-feed columns can be moved, resized, and saved
Locked parent accounts keep transactions in the correct subaccounts
Statement uploads recover missing transactions without a CSV file
Drag-and-drop receipt attachments on bank-feed lines

The wider interface is also more flexible. Users can customize dashboards, shortcuts, bookmarks, and search filters. Natural-language search can handle requests with several conditions instead of forcing you to build each filter manually.

Those changes may feel small one at a time. Together, they can remove repeated cleanup work.

New workflows solve familiar accounting problems

The strongest value case appears when QuickBooks replaces a workaround or outside app.

With document capture, you can upload bills and invoices and have QuickBooks extract details like the vendor, date, terms, bill number, category, description, and line information. Matthew said the tool has been 100% accurate so far for one construction client’s needs. He hasn’t tested product-and-service matching, and Alicia reported that she hadn’t gotten line items to map consistently, so there’s still room for improvement..

Customer deposits through Estimates now provide a true unearned-revenue workflow. A deposit can connect to an estimate or invoice and remain a liability until the business performs the work. That’s cleaner than recording a sales receipt and subtracting it later.

QuickBooks also added recurring invoice payments that customers authorize themselves. Your firm doesn’t have to collect their card or bank information. Automated reminders, payment notifications, and bulk edits to invoice terms can further reduce collections work.

Inventory is no longer limited to Plus. You can add it to Simple Start or Essentials for $40 per month. Moving-average costing may help Desktop users migrate, while item receipts add a step between purchase orders and bills. Alicia warned that this workflow is either-or. Once you enable item receipts, you can’t use bills for inventory.

Reporting and Bill Pay can change the plan calculation

Modern reports now support richer charts, reusable filters, formulas, and anomaly indicators on the profit and loss statement and balance sheet. KPI scorecards and prebuilt dashboards move from Advanced into Essentials and Plus. Conversational business intelligence can answer questions like, “What is my liquidity ratio?” However, the hosts noted limited access and usage, and they hadn’t yet seen how added charges might work in practice.

Bill Pay also changed substantially. ACH limits and the $0.50 ACH fee were removed. Premium costs $15 per month and adds bulk scheduling and 1099 features. Elite fell from $90 to $45 per month outside Advanced and adds approvals, payment releases, roles, and permissions. Elite is now included with Advanced as part of the price increase

For Matthew, that could let a client replace an outside bill-pay app. The client could pay less while keeping payments and matching in one system.

The Customer Hub CRM is an opportunity

The new Customer Hub has a variety of tools to manage your leads and sales pipelines, including integrations to gmail and Outlook, a system to gather reviews and feedback, scheduling & meeting tools, and the ability to sign contracts.

For companies that don’t have a pipeline system, these tools can increase appointments and cashflow. For companies with subscriptions to Docusign or PandaDocs, there’s cost savings right there.

Better automation requires better controls

Convenience also creates risk. Alicia heard reports of bad actors placing fake bills inside QuickBooks files and waiting for someone to pay them.

She recommends turning on bill approvals through Advanced or Bill Pay Elite, and having someone other than the bookkeeper approve payments. A bookkeeper may not recognize an unfamiliar vendor, but an owner is more likely to question a suspicious $90,000 bill.

Firms should also:

Require multifactor authentication or an authenticator app
Review roles and permissions instead of granting broad access
Check credit card receivables for recurring sales receipts that appeared to process but never charged

These guardrails turn automation into a controlled process rather than an open door.

Accountants must translate features into client value

The increase is substantial, and unused features don’t justify a higher price. Our job is to identify which tools a client can use, estimate the time or outside-app costs they may save, and confirm availability in the client’s exact plan.

We also need to keep watching. QuickBooks fixes can appear without a major announcement. Alicia recommended checking the QuickBooks Canny board for development boards and release notes. The new Resolution Center also shows support contacts and their outcomes, helping accountants review advice given to clients.

You don’t need to defend every increase, but honestly evaluate the value gained from:

Inventory the features available to each client
Test the tools that could improve their workflow
Add approvals and security controls before expanding automation
Explain what changed—and downgrade the plan if the value is not there

For the full feature-by-feature discussion, listen to the full episode.