What's Behind Qvinci V2?

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So why does a highly successful product like Qvinci, which I myself once described as "having hit a home run out of the ball park...", when it comes to insightful reporting and financial analysis, decide to redesign themselves? And not just in terms of a refreshed look, but a newly engineered interface that gives users the look and feel of Microsoft Excel even though it is pure Qvinci. Can you answer me that?

This past August 15th, Qvinci released their 'V2' (version 2) product which provides users with this new Excel-like interface packed full of features and capabilities. I wrote a short article about the debut of V2 based upon some preliminary information and a briefing I was given a few days before the Qvinci team started offering webinars on the new release. But I also found myself asking questions about "why would they make such a drastic change in a reporting tool that 'was like nothing you had ever seen before' (to use my own words when describing enhancements they had made in version 1 over the last couple of years)?"

A short time later I contacted Brad Adams, the CEO of Qvinci and requested a phone-conference with he and Charles Nagel, Qvinci's Founder and CIO, so we could discuss the 'rationale' for the big changes behind Version 2. I also wanted to dive deeper into what makes the new interface 'so Excel' when it didn't appear to actually be 'Excel'. Of course I wasn't really certain that either Brad or Charles would 'share too much' because you know major corporations do like to 'keep their corporate and trade secrets' but I thought I might be able to coax a few tidbits out of them.

In reality I was overwhelmed by the extent to which Charles and Brad not only welcomed my inquiries but responded to my inquisition. This feature is a summary of some of the information they provided along with my own commentary regarding the product as it was presented alongside our discussions.

Question: Was their a 'primary' motivator behind making the monumental changes in Qvinci going from V1 to V2?

Answer(s):

  • Becoming a “transformative advisor” or a “firm of the future” is not a slogan, it’s achievable.
  • Qvinci is really 'the tool' which enables accountants to become that “transformative advisor”, or a firm to be that “firm of the future”, or “tomorrow’s accountant today,” by giving accountant and business consultants a truly customizable platform to create their own specific reports, BI, KPIs, and reporting packages that are tailored for and easily understood by their clients. 
  • Accountants have struggled to achieve the objective of transforming their client relationships from that of “compliance” to “consultancy”.  Providing actionable business intelligence is probably THE MOST transformative opportunity for accountants to employ, if they are to become a catalyst for improving their clients’ businesses.  When an accountant can show a client “what to do” that is easily understood, implemented and tracked -- that in and of itself is transformative. 
  • Accountants who adopt “the right” technology to help transform their practice and their client’s businesses will be successful and scalable in the future…and the future is NOW. We believe that Qvinci is that 'right technology.'

Discussion & Commentary:

With V2, accountants can scale growth and profits through technology automation and standardization, while providing value added services to their clients by:

  • Utilizing business intelligence tools like KPIs, bench-marking, trend analysis, forecasting, etc. that clients desire, and can easily understand and implement;
  • Adopting standards that facilitate supporting more customers in less time;
  • Learning fixed/value-based billing concepts and how to use them effectively and efficiently.
  • Making your time-based billing more profitable through workflow efficiencies; and
  • Adopting “the right” technology to automate and standardize processes that will improve internal efficiencies, further reducing non-billable time, while better serving more clients without adding headcount.

Question: What other 'industry changes' do you see impacting not only accounting as a whole, but how Qvinci, and more specifically 'V2' will better respond to those changes?

Answer(s):

  • Traditional accounting functions are becoming a commodity and less profitable.  As machine learning and AI automate traditional accounting functions, the value of those services will continually be diminished.  There is no dispute of this trend.  Qvinci has been continuously ahead of the curve since its inception.  The more we talk to accountants, the more we understand the need to help accountants move from commodity provider to trusted advisor.  V2 is the tool to help accomplish this objective.
  • Attracting high value advisory services is the goal of all accountants.  The “holy grail” of advisory services revolves around collaborating with clients on improving their business, using actionable financial and operational data to facilitate business intelligence-based decisions. 
  • The first step is to provide insights all clients can understand…business intelligence that incorporate predictive analytics (green/red arrows; charts /graphs) that motivates clients to want to engage in high-margin advisory engagements.  A close second involves reducing or eliminating the redundant and time-consuming (and generally non-billable) tasks surrounding the management of accounting files by using technological efficiencies, automation and standardization. 
  • Qvinci is the industry standard for solving these paradigms.  With V2, the accountant’s world just became even simpler.

Discussion & Commentary:

V2  facilitates an accountant’s ability to customize, style, package and publish sophisticated and virtually unlimited reports, business intelligence, KPIs and (including integrated charts and graphs) – blending data from multiple financial types (P&L, Balance Sheet, etc.) and other data sources (Excel®) in one customizable templated reporting package all in near real-time. 

Because the BI, KPIs, reports, charts and graphs auto-hydrate, auto-update, auto-blend, auto-style and auto-package virtually instantaneously without requiring the need to export the QuickBooks data to Excel for manual styling, customizing and packaging the month-end Excel® spreadsheet chaos ends with Qvinci V2! Indeed, the accountant's world became much simpler.

Question: What did the market tell you about your product, or your competitor's products, that entered into your decision to make the monumental product changes between the V1 and V2 versions?

Answer(s):

  • Users expect true customization of BI, KPIs and reporting. Everyone (in the market) claimed they were customizable, but they were not!  Some had limited options, but none today, other than Qvinci had true customization.  Qvinci’s V2 is a truly customizable solution from top to bottom, with over 70 reports and BI tools, plus 7 complete reporting packages to jump-start the experience.
  • Users want an easy-to-use Excel-like Report Editor.  Users know (and love) Excel, they like software that either emulates or uses Excel for reporting. The new Excel-like Qvinci Report Editor helps users of the product to be more efficient and effective because most accountants today have a basic understanding of Excel -- many have advanced training in Excel.  V2’s user interface is very familiar to any Excel user and thus, very easy to onboard, implement and navigate from the start.

Discussion & Commentary:

Qvinci quickly came to the conclusion that creating a report editor that mimiced Excel would empower the widest audience so they purposely designed their new V2 report editor to mirror Excel. Today's Qvinci lives by the motto “if you can envision it in Excel, you can build it in Qvinci.”

V2 adds the most powerful functions, like those found in Excel, to Qvinci’s authoring solution. For instance, users have the ability to transpose dynamically synced data in an auto-hydrating report exchanging rows and columns on-the-fly. Conditional formatting of results is now possible similar to how someone would accomplish the task in Excel.

In fact, once reports are built in Qvinci V2 they are templated in your library to be used across an unlimited number of clients, franchises or business units. They can even be copied and pasted into Excel spreadsheets with all the cell’s formulas transferring, or the reverse applies. Users can copy an Excel spreadsheet into the Qvinci V2 Report Editor and all of those cell formulas will transfer from Microsoft Excel. This evens holds true for spreadsheet Tabs when multiple tabs exit inside a single worksheet. The data is truly interchangeable. 

In Conclusion

In my earlier V2 article I mentioned the fact that even though the 'front side' of Qvinci V2 changed to the Excel like interface the backside remains 'pure Qvinci'. That is definitely true and Charles Nagel confirmed for me that Qvinci's patented technology to automate the collection, consolidation and standardization of financial and non-financial data from a plurality of files in near real-time remains just as strong in V2 as it was in V1.  V2, like the predecessor version, remains the state-of-the-art data collection and consolidation tool for multiple QuickBooks accounting files, including the mapping of a disparate chart of accounts to a standard chart of accounts, regardless of file, type, or location.

Charles also shared with me the fact that Qvinci is working toward 'transactional level' reporting which is beyond the scope of any analytical reporting tool on the market. What I can say to that is, 'Wow'!

When I look at the many articles I have written about Qvinci I have used a lot of baseball terms to describe my pleasure with their products, things like 'hit a home run' or 'hit another one out of the ballpark'.  I also recall a baseball-themed movie with the promo, "If you build it, they will come..." , well I find myself believing "If Qvinci builds it...we will want it" that is why you should make absolutely certain to stop by the Qvinci booth at QuickBooks Connect to experience V2 for yourself. If you aren't attending QuickBooks Connect then you might want to watch this Qvinci V2 video-demo for more details.