Jaclyn Anku, ProAdvisor Training & Certification Leader: On today's episode of In the Know, we'll explore how to use the prep for realm consolidation feature in Intuit Accountant Suite.
Hey, ProAdvisors, it's Jaclyn, and you're watching In the Know, where you get access to exclusive demos of Intuit product enhancements by the leaders who built them.
Let's jump right in with Erin, who will show us how to use the prep for realm consolidation feature.
Erin, welcome!
Erin Hutton: Thanks, Jaclyn! Thanks for having me on In the Know. I really appreciate the time to talk about realm consolidation. This is really going to be just about preparing for your realm consolidation, and I want everyone to recognize not everyone needs to do this.
So I am Erin Hutton. I am with Professional Services here at Intuit, and I have worked very diligently to help the product team understand the needs of accounting firms when it comes to realm consolidation.
So let's just dive in.
So what is realm consolidation?
What we heard is how difficult it is for firms with multiple QuickBooks Online Accountant realms and/or Intuit Accountant Suite realms.
And what this really is doing, what realm consolidation really is doing, is bringing your clients into one QuickBooks Online Accountant or into one Intuit Accountant Suite.
And what does that do for you? Well, it makes your management of your clients and your team easier.
So what did we do? We talked with firms, we, I lived it as a firm, and what we built is inside Intuit Accountant Suite.
If you have not looked at Intuit Accountant Suite, you’ll want to take a look at that. You'll want to understand what that can do for your firm. But it's inside Intuit Accountant Suite. And it's, again, strictly for those that have multiple QuickBooks Online Accountant, or Intuit Accountant Suite realms. And a realm is an account.
So what is this really about today? It's really about the planning. It's not about the doing. I will talk about the doing, but it's really about the planning. And you can do this whenever you want.
My recommendation is to go ahead and switch into Intuit Accountant Suite, check it out, understand what it does, what it can do for you, what it can do for your firm, and what it could do for your team, hen go ahead and understand where your clients are today.
Now, this tool is currently only available in the United States. It is coming to other regions soon.
So what are we going to talk about? We're going to talk about pre-planning. So what is this pre-planning? Well, you need to understand, number one, do you have multiple realms? And so understand that, recognize who is the primary admin on those realms, and then kind of understand which realm is going to be best for your firm to become the main realm.
There are a few caveats which we have in the materials that are associated. You can find it online. For example, if you're using Intuit ProConnect Tax or Rev Share, you will want to read the materials first before deciding which realm will be your main realm.
You will also want to plan if your team needs training on Intuit Accountant Suite that can be available inside ProAdvisor, as well as there are other materials online to help you and your team understand what's coming with Intuit Accountant Suite.
So the next step is to actually create the project plan. So depending if you have just one extra realm, you might have 15 extra realms. It depends on the size of your firm and the structure of how you started your firm. So understand how big it is, understand the number of realms, understand who is the primary admin, and understand the timing. Obviously, maybe not the best time, if you're trying to push out tax returns to do this type of work. So I would hold off on that, but understand what your firm needs.
Now, here's a big deal: Depending on the number of realms that you have, invite the primary admin of each of your Source Realms to the Target Realm as a company admin, and that will make all of your steps easier in the future.
So next step is, if you have not opted in, you can always go to the gear icon, and there will be a banner down here for you to opt into Intuit Accountant Suite; you can see up here in the left hand corner. Or you can opt back out if you need to. And the tool that I'm talking about here is under Tools, literally, and it's transfer clients. And you can only see transfer clients if you are a company admin or a primary admin on that realm.
So the next step is to actually start the move. So log into your Target Realm, which we just looked at using the primary admin of the source that you're going to be moving those clients, and then confirm Billing is set up. That's a big deal. If Billing is not set up, it won't let you actually won't let you actually move them.
You want to recreate any custom roles that you had on that source firm, so that when your users transfer over, which is part of the new experience. When your users transfer over with that client, they will automatically be opted in with the same client level access, and that is a super big deal for anyone who's done this before. Historically, users did not transfer over. So this speeds things up dramatically.
And then go ahead and just follow the client transfer flow. It's a few steps. It has a lot of detail. It has links for help that you should take a look at. And it will get you through nicely, cleanly, and it will tell you the client, the clients that can't move, which you can then go back and clean up, which is our next step.
So you'll want to clean up those clients that weren't able to transfer, figure out the reason why. You want to inactivate and delete any users on your Source Realm that are no longer needed. You may have left some clients on there, so some users may be needed on that but that's up to you.
And then add any administrative users that didn't transfer. So I know when I was at the firm, we had somebody who wasn't on any clients. They just actually pulled the Billing. So you'll need to transfer or you'll need to recreate them on this new realm if they aren't already on there.
And so let me just give you a peek at what the first page of the flow looks like. It's transfer clients. And you can see we've upped the number of clients that can be moved in a single batch from 25 to 75 and it will walk you straight through. And there's detailed instructions on the first page. So please, click on that. Understand what you're doing, understand what it is doing, and you will have a great experience.
And that's just a little bit about how realm consolidation works.
Jaclyn Anku: Erin, that’s great! Thank you so much. And thank you for watching.
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