Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast

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.

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!

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.

Should your firm move everything into the Intuit Accountant Suite yet?

Earmark Team · September 1, 2026 ·

An accountant was poking around in a new dashboard, or “playing with his data,” as Intuit’s Director of Product Management, Karla Uribe, put it, when something jumped out. A client’s cash on hand had dropped sharply. He wasn’t looking for it. But there it was, so he called the client to find out what was happening before the trend turned into a crisis.

That kind of catch used to take real work. You’d export data into a spreadsheet, import it into another app, or wait until month-end and hope you noticed. Now it can surface on its own.

On Episode 153 of The Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast, host Alicia Katz Pollock of Royalwise sat down with Karla to talk about the Intuit Accountant Suite (IAS). Alicia cheerfully called it “the official episode of The Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast.” The timing is perfect because Intuit is asking accountants to move their whole practice into one hub, and as Alicia noted, plenty of firms haven’t switched yet.

IAS offers a deal many firms haven’t weighed out yet. Bring your clients, teams, and data into one place, and you get bulk actions, guided month-end closes through Books Close, and firm-wide KPI dashboards in Client Insights. Karla makes the case for that move while staying honest about its limits. Your current tech stack isn’t going anywhere yet, and AI only earns its spot when it beats how you already work. Switching is just a toggle, not a migration, and it’s reversible until January. So the real questions are which pieces to test now, and how to make your feedback count while Intuit is still writing the roadmap.

Let’s walk through why consolidation is the foundation, where Books Close and Client Insights fit, what happens to the tools you already pay for, and how your feedback actually moves the product.

One place instead of scattered apps

Ask Karla what problem IAS solves, and she answers, “one centralized place where accountants can manage all aspects of their teams, their business and their clients.”

She sees two big wins there. The first is getting your data in one place, because that “unlocks other value.” The second is bulk actioning. You take the steps you repeat in every client file, then standardize and templatize them. You tell the system how you want the work done, then apply it across your whole portfolio.

It solves a familiar pain point for many accountants. As Alicia notes, most of us turned to outside tools to run the practice: “We’ve got the bookkeeping in one place, but all the management happens somewhere else.” It got worse when accountants spread clients across several QuickBooks Online Accountant accounts, sometimes for permissions, sometimes because performance suffered with too many clients. Karla says both problems are fixed now, and the whole portfolio can live in one IAS instance.

Making the move is simple. “It is really just a toggle,” Karla said. Your data transfers automatically. There’s no migration. The harder part is getting your firm trained on a new interface. That’s why Intuit built guides, videos, and how-tos around the switch.

Two optional steps are worth the effort. First, if you have multiple QBO realms, pick one as your master and use the Transfer Client experience in Settings to consolidate the rest. Second, a setup tool lets you organize teams and clients the way you actually work, by region or by service line. Consolidating may also lift your standing in the ProAdvisor Pro Partner tier program, which can change what you pay for the paid features. And if the timing isn’t right, QBOA sticks around through the end of the year, so you can switch back until January.

That’s the setup. The payoff shows up in what gets layered on top.

Consolidation unlocks Books Close and Client Insights

Books Close is a guided, AI-assisted module you add onto IAS. It’s priced per client and built to streamline month-end close across your whole client book. Karla was clear that working across the portfolio in bulk is “not something that you could do before within our Intuit platform.”

In practice, it handles transaction checks, anomaly review, and client collaboration when documents or context are missing, all in one place. Alicia made it concrete. If rules are auto-adding transactions from the bank feed, Books Close shows you exactly which ones were auto-added so you can verify them. Or set a threshold so any transaction over $2,500 gets flagged, in case it should be capitalized. It’s a checklist for the data checks you’d otherwise dig through files to run.

Karla also confirmed an agentic Books Close is coming that will automate routine steps. For now, you can see and control every step yourself.

Client Insights sits in the Accelerate tier, which will cost $149 a month for the whole firm but is free for now. It’s a dashboard you configure. You choose the clients and KPIs, and your ecosystem data comes along, including bill pay, payroll, tax, and ProConnect data. You don’t need spreadsheets or a third-party app.

What takes it beyond another dashboard is the insights find you. Anomalies, revenue and profit-margin swings, cash and balance sheet ratios, and bookkeeping health become the cash-on-hand story. One accountant told Intuit, “I wouldn’t have caught that if it wasn’t because you clearly signaled” the month-over-month change.

Alicia spun out the use case on the spot. Group clients by industry or region, build your own benchmarks, and spot the outliers. That client may be doing something special you can copy. Maybe they’re failing, and you just caught it early. It’s a path from compliance and data entry toward advisory work. Though as Alicia fairly noted, not every bookkeeper wants that path, and staying small is a fine choice.

Dashboard fatigue might be a concern now that dashboards show up all over QuickBooks. But Karla reminds listeners that they can control what surfaces. You can pin focused widgets to your home page, and more controls are coming. There’s also conversational Intuit Intelligence as an alternative. For example, you can ask Client Insights, “Give me a couple of clients I might need to focus on today.” That way, you don’t need to read everything through charts.

Where your existing tools stay, and what “co-building” really means

Alicia raised the obvious objection. Firms are already deep into Dext, Financial Cents, Karbon, Canopy, Asana, and even spreadsheets. So where does Books Close fit?

Karla didn’t oversell it. “We don’t expect everyone to drop everything and come to our product.” IAS may complement those tools. Over time, it may replace parts of them where “the data is native,” and the savings add up. She recommends accountants “just try it. There’s no cost to try it right now.” Make your own call. Longer term, Intuit wants to be an open, multi-platform system so portfolios with non-QuickBooks ledgers can live in one place. That’s the vision, but it’s not a feature you can use yet.

On AI, Alicia described the split she sees online. Some accountants say bring it on. Others ask why Intuit is stuffing AI everywhere when the bank feed still makes mistakes. Karla conceded the point. “AI for the sake of AI does not” make sense, she said, and the bar is “improving the way things are done, not doing it differently.” Her own test proved it. Alicia tried the new AI invoice creation and could have built the invoice faster by hand. If a feature doesn’t beat your current method, Karla said, you shouldn’t use it.

Meanwhile, feedback is “the most important of all of the data points” Intuit uses to prioritize. They collect roughly 10,000 data points a month through in-product forms, boards, end-of-experience surveys, and support tickets. The new Resolution Center is proof. Accountants asked to see their clients’ open support requests and their status, so Intuit built a consolidated, permission-controlled view. Alicia noted she has DIY clients who spend four hours on the phone with support when one click from her would have fixed it.

But Karla drew a line between co-building and bug-hunting. “We don’t ever intentionally put anything in the market that is not working, expecting you to find the errors.” Research and pilots happen before launch. But Intuit can’t learn which of ten possible improvements accountants care about most in a lab.

When Alicia brought up the forum frustration over bugs, slowdowns, and changes, Karla pointed to an internal priority she calls “nail the foundations.” She says it sits at the same level as new feature work, or higher. Every team carries a bucket of customer-reported problems. “We can’t just build new stuff. We have to get it right.” Alicia added her own request while she had the chance, requesting a public change log in the notifications bell, so accountants can scan every fix and release instead of getting surprised.

Your move while the roadmap is still open

IAS is a platform bet. Consolidation unlocks Books Close, Client Insights, and firm-wide templates. But the payoff depends on how carefully your firm tests it. What do you try now? Which features justify consolidating a realm? Where do your current tools still win? And how do you get your feedback into the process that decides what ships next?

This is bigger than a product switch. It’s a chance to move from compliance and data entry toward the advisory conversations you want to have on your own terms and your own timeline. And it’s a reminder that the roadmap is being written right now, while the headline features are still free.

Where to start:

Turn on Client Insights (Accelerate) while it’s free. It was Karla’s pick for the one feature every firm should try right away.
Test Books Close with one client. As Alicia urged, don’t write off an early version. Six months from now it may do exactly what you need.
Consolidate your realms. It unlocks features and may improve your Pro Partner tier benefits and pricing.
Keep your tech stack where it still wins. IAS may complement your tools long before it replaces any of them.
Flood that feedback. With 10,000 monthly data points shaping the backlog, yours genuinely counts.
Remember the escape hatch. Switching is a toggle, and it’s reversible until January.

To hear Karla’s own words on AI, reliability, and where the platform is headed, listen to the full conversation.

175 fixes and a fresh sales pitch: What to verify before you trust Intuit’s promises

Earmark Team · September 1, 2026 ·

Watch the recent In the Know! session, and you’ll see Intuit believes it’s turned over a new leaf. The company now wants to treat accountants as customers rather than as a sales channel. That’s a big claim. And as any good accountant knows, a claim is only as good as the evidence behind it.

In this “Now You Know” recap on The Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants Podcast, hosts Alicia Katz Pollock and Matthew “Spot” Fulton walk through that In the Know session. They cover QuickBooks performance fixes, updated Expert Services, and the features rolling out in Intuit Accountant Suite in August. They view every promise as a claim to verify, not a gift to accept. They welcome the fixes, but Intuit still hasn’t published the changelog that would prove the headline number. The new Expert Services guardrails leave open questions about Intuit’s human reviewers touching client files, and pricing barely came up at all.

175 improvements, but where’s the receipt?

Stacey Blanchard, Product Marketing Lead at Intuit, opened with a poll about speed. She asked how often listeners wished a page, workflow, or report would load faster. Only 11% said they never notice it. Thirty percent said rarely, 40% said at least once a week, and 20% said almost every single time they log into QBO.

Alicia offered a reality check. Before you blame QuickBooks, consider when’s the last time you actually unplugged your router for a minute. A clogged connection may be the real culprit. Matthew observed that pages often load, flash, and reload before they settle. So count “one, two, three Mississippi” before you click that gear icon.

Intuit claims they’ve made 175 “meaningful improvements.” The team framed it with the line, “building new things is only half the job—the other half is listening.”

Several of the fixes are genuinely useful. For example:

Duplicate-transaction warnings now appear before you post instead of after
Suggested bank-feed matches carry confidence icons—a green check when QuickBooks is sure, an orange alert when it’s guessing
Categorization is meant to learn from your own file first, reaching the broader database only when your file offers no pattern
Conflicting bank rules now get surfaced, so you can pick the right one and clean up duplicates
A cleaner dashboard with resizable, reorderable widgets, more than 100 keyboard shortcuts, over 50 report fixes so columns aren’t cut off and pages print as they appear, and extended sign-in timeouts

But Matthew notes, “I would love an actual list of those 175 meaningful improvements, please.” Alicia shared a simple fix: use that empty notification bell in the upper-right corner to post a running changelog. “I think that would go a long way towards consumer confidence.”

For now, she recommends restarting your router before you blame QBO. And if a tab looks timed out but another QBO tab is still active, just refresh. You’re still signed in. And keep asking Intuit for the changelog.

Accountant as customer, or accountant’s lane invaded?

The bigger story is what Intuit now says it believes about you.

Liron Zighelnic, Director of Product, AI-Powered Agents at Intuit, framed her team as “AI plus HI” (human intelligence). Her larger message is that accountants are “our customer, not a sales channel,” and the center of the client relationship.

The Expert Services changes carry weight. Intuit setup experts will coach new business owners for 90 days instead of 30. Intuit Intelligence builds a dynamic “setup hub” shaped around the client’s stated priorities, rather than a static checklist. And a step in the setup flow lets clients attach their accountant’s firm information directly.

Then come the guardrails. A new “Intuit Experts Services” toggle is off by default when an accountant user is attached. Self-serve clients who explore it get a pop-up encouraging them to talk to you first. If they turn it on, you’re notified. And firm-billed files stay off until you enable them.

But Matthew is skeptical. “I thought this is how it was supposed to be the entire time,” he said. And open questions remain. If a client starts their own file with the toggle on and attaches you later, does it flip off? Alicia’s believes it should, “because otherwise none of this has any meaning.”

The August bank-feed change is thornier still. AI takes the first categorization pass. High-confidence transactions post, uncertain ones get flagged to the owner, and a human Intuit expert reviews in the background. As Alicia said, “It means they’re going into our files unauthorized.” Is that a paid service, or free labor that trains the model? Matthew noted, “One thing that never came up during the entire presentation was anything to do with pricing.”

Before you trust any of it:

Confirm the default-off behavior in your own client files
Ask who pays for the human-review layer and whether it’s AI training or a billed service
Press for pricing before you lean on the setup hub

That same verify-before-you-adopt logic applies to what’s coming in Accountant Suite.

The August toolkit: tabs, a unified inbox, and portfolio insights

Adoption is climbing. Alicia noted a real shift since May. Attendees who answer, “Haven’t heard of it,” dropped into the single digits, and the majority are now using it.

Multi-client tabs

These are in Core (free) through August. Keep your Accountant Suite portal open, plus up to five client files in separate browser tabs. Click a transaction in Books Close and the client file opens alongside it. Matthew shared the perfect use case scenario: you’re mid-project when another client calls, so you pop their file open, answer, close it, and get back to work without opening an incognito window.

The unified inbox

This replaces the limited requests area. It gathers requests, receipts, messages, and reminders across every client into one place, reachable from a new inbox button in the upper-right corner. You can filter by client, send email or text reminders, and request information from QBO users, firm team members, or outside contacts who join through a free portal without a paid seat. Smart templates feed Intuit Intelligence, which in one demo caught a mismatch. The transaction was $58, and the uploaded receipt was $25. But Matthew pointed out this will need “tiered levels of control and accessibility, or visibility.”

Accelerate

The higher tier delivers cross-client portfolio insights. Ask Intuit Intelligence to identify which clients had a transaction-volume increase of more than 25% last quarter, and you have a pricing review, capacity plan, or advisory conversation without opening a single file. Version one is high-level KPIs only. There’s no transaction drilldown yet, although it suggests follow-up questions. Accelerate is free until January 2027. Books Close stays separate at $8 per client, with no firm start date for billing.

Start your testing with multi-client tabs, since they’re free and low-risk. Demand Intuit provides clear inbox permissions before inviting outside contacts, and use the free Accelerate window to judge real value before they announce pricing.

Do the homework (or take Intuit’s word for it)

Intuit is asking the profession to believe it has changed. The performance fixes, the “accountant as customer” framing, the new toggle, and the Accountant Suite rollout are all evidence, but evidence a good accountant tests before accepting.

Healthy skepticism is professional diligence. Verify the guardrails in your own client files. Ask the pricing and data-access questions. Hold Intuit to the transparency it hasn’t yet delivered. Do that work, and these tools can free up serious capacity and grow your advisory line. Skip it, and you’re just taking Intuit’s word for it.

So restart your router, then hit play. Listen to the full episode with Alicia and Matthew for every guardrail, open question, and August rollout detail. Then decide which changes actually earn a place in your workflow.