Intuitive Accountant strives to provide you, our QuickBooks Specialist, Accountant and Business Consultant readers with information about opportunities to serve your clients, build your practice, and bolster your compensation through this series we call ‘Advisor Alliance’. The focus of this series will be product developers and vendors who offer some form of alliance, partnership, or referral program that might be of interest to you and your practice.
There is almost always a need to search out an ‘inventory’ solution for QuickBooks users who simply need more than Pro, Premier, Enterprise or even Enterprise with Advanced Inventory can offer. One very popular solution is ACCTivate! We aren’t going to cover the specifics of the inventory features of ACCTivate! in this article, we have done that previously in other Intuitive Accountant features; however, we are going to discuss some of the benefits of forming an ‘advisor alliance’ with ACCTivate if you are a ProAdvisor, consultant or accountant who finds themselves recommending inventory alternatives.
ACCTivate! calls their version of ‘advisor alliance’ their “Consulting Partner Program”. This program is more than a simple referral network; it is a ‘true partnership’ in between the Client, the consulting advisor, and ACCTivate! in which all benefit from the relationship. While ACCTivate! benefits by acquiring new ACCTivate! clients, our partners benefit by adding ACCTivate! clients to their consulting practice. The Clients benefit because they need the expanded capabilities that a 3rd-party integrated inventory solution can provide to QuickBooks users, and that solution is best accompanied by services designed around utilizing ACCTivate! to its’ full extent.
ACCTivate!’s Consultant Partner Program is designed to provide on-going participation in the proposal, acquisition, installation and continuing implantation of the software. If the consultant learns the ACCTivate! software well and participates in the selling and implementation process they can provide local expertise and significantly improve the probability of a sale as well as satisfaction of the Client. ACCTivate! offers training and certification (via on-line resources) to help consultants understand the ACCTivate! program. The process is a mix of videos plus a certification exam that does not have to be completed in one session.
ACCTivate! strives to build the relationship with their partners. Partners typically have a great working relationship with ACCTivate! employees, including the support department which works hand-in-hand with partners to make sure their Clients have a great experience. ACCTivate! relies on their partner network across the country to do the hands on implementation and ongoing work that Clients require, because ACCTivate! doesn’t send employees to do implementations. In order to insure this process works smoothly every time, ACCTivate! s provides dedicated support personnel for their partners so that they are able to get assistance when they need it.
With this kind of training, certification and dedicated assistance and technical support you might expect there to be some ‘fee’ associated with this advisor alliance, but there isn’t. Joining the ACCTivate! Consultant Partner Program is free, but it does require a commitment of time to get trained and certified. On the other hand, there is of course a financial incentive involved in an advisor’s participation within the program. Partners receive a percentage on all sales referred to ACCTivate! , and if the Consultant actually participates in the installation, they can earn an additional percentage of the value of the sale.
So if you are looking for an inventory solution for your QuickBooks clients, and also seeking an ‘alliance’ that promote a “win-win-win” for all parties involved: partners, software supplier and most importantly, the Client, then the ACCTivate! Consulting Partner Program maybe just what you are looking for. For more information, or to sign-up, see their website.