There’s no doubt that the power of QuickBooks® and more than 500 available apps has changed the way you and your clients work.

What if connecting and integrating apps were made even easier? With the release of the new QBO Apps tab, you can now add apps for your clients through QuickBooks Online Accountant (QBOA). The goal? To help simplify everyday tasks, streamline data entry and expand the capabilities of QuickBooks.

This new integration has the community of expert accountants, bookkeepers and QuickBooks ProAdvisors® buzzing.

“Historically, I’ve used the Intuit® App Center to search for an app that will fill the need a client might have, and that won’t change because it’s just a personal preference in how I search,” said ProAdvisor Stacy Kildal, owner of Kildal Services. “What will change is the way I manage these apps. In the past, we had to have the clients sign up and then add my firm as a user. With the new QBOA Apps tab, it’s MUCH easier for us to add apps to a client’s QuickBooks Online (QBO) account, view the connected apps and launch.”

With this new QBO Apps tab feature, you’ll enjoy a few big benefits, including the ability to do the following:

• Get more done. Digitize the AP/AR process with Bill.com, sync receipt data in a snap with Receipt Bank, manage expense reporting with Expensify and more.
• Set up in a snap. Access new or existing apps from the new Apps tab. Setting up an app is simple, whether it’s for your firm or directly within your clients’ books.
• Stay in control. When you add apps on behalf of your clients, you’ll be able to ensure the collected data is organized and in the correct place within QuickBooks, right from the start. When you add apps on behalf of your firm, you’ll be able to customize settings and optimize performance to ensure you’re getting the most out of each app.
• Fix less and grow more. By connecting clients to data collection and processing apps, you will eliminate time spent fixing data, which frees up time to take on more clients.

The impact of the QBO and apps integration is undeniable, but it affects everyone and every practice differently. For Christy Bertani of Christy Bertani Bookkeeping, it literally changed everything.

“For my practice, apps have solved so many pain points, allowing us to serve our customers like never before and deliver outstanding service,” she said. “Apps have not only taken away the manual tracking of hours on spreadsheets and double entry, but also eliminated printing checks, envelopes and mailing, while providing increased visibility in tracking a payment. When it comes to 1099s, apps eliminated mailing these, too, as well as increased the ease of lost document retrieval.”

As far as specific apps go, Christy loves Unify integrating Shopify with QuickBooks.

“Shopify’s link in QBO is very limited, because it does not really handle inventory well – really, only from a sales perspective,” she said. “With Unify, you can track inventory in QBO, keep Shopify up to date and move sales information from Shopify to QBO in a meaningful manner. Another example of a great timesaving app is Zenefits Payroll, which tracks withholding status, health benefits and retirement benefits, eliminating the burden of updating employee records. This can really simplify payroll for the busy client – and the busy ProAdvisor – because it integrates with QBO."

Stacy has also seen apps play a major role in addressing some obstacles.

“Doing conversions and setups, and getting historical/non-bank feed related transactions such as invoices and vendor bills entered, has been a major pain point,” she said. “Transaction Pro Importer is the best solution to solve that. Another one that I can see us using will be ChronoBooks; right now, it offers backup, restore and copy. The developer has some great upgrades coming up that will assist us in our special projects, including comparing historical data, getting alerts for changes to closed periods and copies of transactions pushed to Dropbox.”

With the QBO Apps tab, these experts and others have already noticed a big difference. For Stacy, it’s a huge timesaver because she can view QBOA in one screen without having to open each account.

Christy says the Apps tab connects apps to her clients’ data without asking for their login. She also clearly knows that the app is connecting to the appropriate client or to her firm, something she says used to be a big nuisance in the old days. In fact, she’s already used the Apps tab with a client and said it worked seamlessly.

Whatever apps you choose for your practice and your clients, the QBOA Apps tab feature will power up your practice and help convert data fixing time into meaningful advising time. Intuit is excited to see the impact it will make for your firms and clients.

Editor’s note: Learn more about how to access and manage the Apps tab in this Intuit Community article.