Our mission is to help small businesses succeed; in fact, we know that when a small business works with an accounting professional, that business becomes more financially stable, creditworthy, and twice as likely to succeed.

Connecting these businesses, including your own accounting or bookkeeping firm, is part of the Intuit® ecosystem and was present throughout QuickBooks® Connect on Nov. 18, where the theme was “We go further together.”

To help grow your practice and serve as a true advisory partner to your clients, here are the highlights of the product innovations presented to attendees in QuickBooks® Online Accountant, QuickBooks Online, and more.

For more in-depth information, you can watch all the keynote and innovation presentations in the QuickBooks Connect on-demand content.

Month-end review

Month-end review in QuickBooks Online Accountant is the first end-to-end workflow built inside any accounting software, and is specifically built to help you clean up your clients’ books each month.

During Intuit’s beta test of 60 professionals, we looked at the accuracy of clients’ books for those who used this experience versus those who didn’t – and saw 5x fewer errors. Month-end review gives you a best-in-class workflow to get and keep your client’s books clean in a fraction of the time, and with higher accuracy.

Month-end review lays out a three-stage process starting with transaction review. We start with categorizing all transactions being brought into QuickBooks and accepting them into your clients’ books. Then, QuickBooks automatically surfaces issues to you: uncategorized transactions, transactions without payees, missing receipts, undeposited funds, unapplied payments, expenses that may be assets, and duplicate transactions. We also highlight anomalies in each step of the process, such as account balances that deviate from the six-month average and material accounts with balances that exceed 10 percent of net income.

Each row in this view is a deep link, so you can see exactly which entries make up each number, and can act on them as needed. You’ll be able to customize your month-end checklist by adding or removing actions you want to take or review each month, and easily track what you’re doing with built-in progress tracking. If you’re managing a team, you can keep an eye on how the whole team is doing right from your firm’s client list.

Soon, you’ll be able enhance your month-end review process with management reports and visualizations. With this feature, you can specify sets of reports – including custom reports – to generate regularly, add comments, and highlight open items that require your clients’ attention. You can also add striking, clear visualizations of business performance to help your client see what’s going on in their business, and add your comments to highlight what each graph is telling you.

Performance Center

You can now access the Performance Center (previously only available in QuickBooks Online Advanced) for all of  your clients’ books. Any QuickBooks Online Accountant user can access it to advise their clients, regardless of which version of QuickBooks Online they are subscribed to, as well as use it to assess the performance of your QuickBooks Online Accountant firm. Industry benchmarks will continue to bring a new degree of expert-level industry insights to your advisory services, enabling you to better identify areas for business improvement and set smarter goals for clients.

Performance Center calculates key ratios, provides metrics, and visualizes your clients’ financial performance automatically. You can also review client performance across 10 key metrics, then build a chart customized to your clients’ needs.

Statement Auto Import

With no additional work from you or your clients, you can now pull in bank statements from financial institutions right into reconciliation history. No more chasing your clients for their statements! No more starting work only to realize you don’t have everything you need to finish it!

Statement Auto Import supports more than 2,800 banks worldwide, including Bank of America, US Bank, TD Bank, Charles Schwab, Fifth Third, Regions, American Express, Discover, Bank of the West, and very soon, Wells Fargo. For banks not currently supported, you or your clients can upload and attach the statement to the specific account so they are available for you when it’s time to reconcile.

Custom Tags

With custom tags, now available for all new QuickBooks Online accounts, your clients can start tracking the most important information about their business.

Tags are customizable labels that let you track money however you want in order to gain deeper insights into a business. Clients can add tags to money in and money out transactions, such as invoices, expenses, and bills to understand where they make and spend money,.They can also create tags to track any part of their business, such as job types, ad campaigns, sales reps, or project managers.

Check out the video tutorial below or learn more here.

Automatic Sales Tax Center

The new Automatic Sales Tax Center calculates sales tax on invoices and receipts. When creating an invoice, QuickBooks automatically calculates the sales tax rate based on what you’re selling and where you’re selling it. And, when it’s time to pay sales tax, transactions are organized and easily reviewed.

We support all of the sales tax jurisdictions in the United States, and our team of sales tax experts reviews and updates rates monthly.

Amazon Business integration

We’ve integrated Amazon Business seamlessly into QuickBooks. It makes tracking and categorizing expenses easier than ever. All of the details of your Amazon Business purchase – item details, quantity, shipping costs, and sales tax – are automatically in QuickBooks.

Now you can easily categorize each individual item before adding them to your books. Then, each item is automatically pulled in, categorized, and reconciled in your bank transactions. This allows you to get every item in the right expense category, in the fastest way possible.

QuickBooks Online Advanced

QuickBooks Online Advanced was created for your complex and growing clients. Advanced provides the flexibility they need with more users and controls, deeper insights and stronger reporting tools, and more apps to run their whole business.

You can now enter, edit, and send multiple invoices, checks, expenses, or bills at once – and if you’re already working in Excel, you can easily cut/paste right into the QuickBooks transaction sheet. Batch invoicing alone reduces the time it takes to import and send invoices by 37 percent.

As teams expand, it can become harder to keep things on track for your business. Advanced empowers seamless collaboration in order to keep the business moving forward, faster. Task manager provides a single source of truth for who is working on what – and when the task will be completed. Managers can create tasks and assign them to a specific employee to say … “follow up with a customer” or “assign transactions for approval.”

Advanced helps you tailor your reports to the information that matters to your clients. Report builder allows you to filter, group, sort, and rearrange your data on any attribute so you get the insight you need to make the best decisions for your business.

Advanced also improves process and collaboration through customizable and automated workflows. Configure reminders, approvals, and more based on how your team works. For example, If you want CEO sign-off on any invoice more than $50,000, simply create a workflow to trigger the appropriate approvals.

Finally, Advanced has deep integrations and customizable workflows with key apps such as HubSpot, LeanLaw, Bill.com, and Salesforce, making QuickBooks the single source of truth for your clients.

More tools for you to succeed

QuickBooks has made many more additions to help you and your clients. Take a look at the following innovations.

QuickBooks Cash delivers solutions to meet your needs earlier in the journey of your business, at a time when access to money, tools to get paid easily, and cash flow management are your top priorities.

QuickBooks Commerce enhances Intuit’s strategy of expanding our capacity to be a central hub for your business. We now offer an open-platform commerce solution to help small businesses move to e-commerce or manage their existing omnichannel strategies. With QuickBooks Commerce, small businesses will be able to connect key tools and services, and see a holistic view of your business, making it easy to see which channels are most profitable.

QuickBooks Insurance is an easier way to find affordable coverage tailored to the unique needs of small businesses. Every year, one in three small businesses has an event that could have been covered by insurance. To help your clients get the protection they need, we’ve created QuickBooks Insurance that offers:

• Customized coverage designed for specific industries.
• Quick set up to make it easy to get insured online in as little as a few minutes; applicants can also talk to an insurance expert.
• The ability to conserve cash with policies designed specifically for small businesses, including some options with a monthly payment.

Click here to learn how to talk about business insurance with your clients.

To offer your clients a range of coverage options, QuickBooks has teamed with a handpicked list of insurance providers that focus on serving small businesses. Experienced agents take the time to learn about your clients’ needs and explain policy details, so that they can compare options and choose a plan with confidence. Getting started is also easy. Have your clients sign into their  QuickBooks account, or visit QuickBooks Insurance to request a quote.

QuickBooks Online Payroll offers newly improved payroll products that are built for the future – for your clients’ future. With automation you can control, including customizable automatic payroll and automatic taxes and forms, you are now empowered to support and advise clients like never before.

QuickBooks Online Payroll now provides business owners and accountants access to affordable Guideline 401(k) retirement plans, health benefits through Simply Insured, and workers’ compensation insurance through AP Intego. These powerfully and conveniently integrated products create a platform of success for you and your clients.

In addition, more tools are right around the corner, including:

• Employee self-setup. With a single checkbox, your clients can invite their employees to set up their own profile, including personal information and banking/direct deposit information.
• Payroll insights. View payroll processing dates and blockers, tax payments, and other important information to help stay compliant and resolve issues quickly.

The QuickBooks Online ecosystem never stops improving. Stay tuned to Firm of the Future for even more enhancements and innovations to grow and scale your practice.

Disclaimers: Additional terms, conditions and fees may apply with certain features and functionality. Eligibility criteria may apply. Product offers, features, functionality and subject to change without notice. Feature availability varies by product and platform.