On April 24th, Intuit presented a QuickBooks Live Strategy Session (live webinar) hosted by Ted Callahan, Intuit's Accountant Partnership Director. The webinar featured presentations by Cassie Divine, SVP of Intuit's Small Business Segment Operations and Partner Ecosystem, and Itai Jeczmien, the VP of the QuickBooks Live operation.
From just a glance of the numerous 'chat' comments, I would say that a clear majority seemed very negative ranging from "Why are you doing this to us?", to "This will directly compete with our services."
I found myself wondering, why Intuit didn't think to offer this service as part of the ProAdvisor Discounted Services, an Add-on to existing client subscriptions. It seems that we could have a lot of time-consuming routine questions from our clients answered using this new functionality rather than having to pay our employees to provide the same answers.
Now you might think, "if Intuit's QuickBooks Live Expert Assist (QBLEA) answers questions for a QBO user without an Accountant or ProAdvisor then that user will never need us."
You might be right.
But what percentage of users (paying only $50/month) to get by with only QBLEA would hire you at more than $50/hour?
More than likely they are the kind of users who would call you when they see in your ProAdvisor profile that you give the first hour free (consultation) just to ask an hour of questions and tell you thanks... only to call another ProAdvisor giving away the next hour free.
I see QBLEA as kind of a 'hands-on' version of the QuickBooks Community forum, with thousands of users asking the same questions over and over and never taking the time to read the answers already posted.
More than 15 years ago I spent hundreds of hours answering questions in the QuickBooks forum and eventually got tired of responding to the "same old thing" day after day. It was far more rewarding answering questions for ProAdvisors (like many of you) in Joe Woodard's NAN Forum for the next three years.
Today, I don't want to waste my time answering questions about "What's the difference between an employee, a contractor, and a vendor?" Nor do I want to explain "Why a debit increases an asset, credits decrease assets, yet credits increase liabilities and debits decrease them." Professors spend a whole semester of Accounting 101 trying to teach that to college freshmen for $8501. I think it's great that Intuit's new QBLEA is going to waste its time trying to answer those kinds of questions, so I don't have to waste mine.
I just think the mistake Intuit made in this program was not offering it as a ProAdvisor Discounted 'add-on', letting you (as Accountants, Bookkeepers, and ProAdvisor) decide which of your own clients needed access to these 'answer bees' at only $50/month so that you and your staff could be producing more meaningful work for your clients at $100/$150/$200 per hour.
Heck, such a service might even make some 'intolerable' clients 'tolerable' with Intuit performing the burden of answering that "now what's the difference between a bill, an expense, and an invoice" question for the 1-millionth time.
But those QBO users who truly need help will soon learn that the new QBLEA service is limited to 'question answering' alone, no actual work, and that may very well turn into a referral through Find-A-ProAdvisor or even QBLEA itself.
Now Murph could be entirely wrong.
I once had a sign that said, "I thought I was wrong, but I was mistaken!"
So, this might just be the first time for such an oddity... and could become a "drink the 'cool aide'," tactic... but I really don't think so!
More likely this is just another 'fearful of the unknown' situation, on our part. And unfortunately, the strategy session didn't alay our fears, only heightened them for many.
When we were informed in a similar session a few years back, countless ProAdvisors thought QuickBooks Live would be their downfall. But Insightful Accountant's Top 100 ProAdvisor Award profile tells us that many of our 2024 applicants actually work for the QuickBooks Live service. The same is also true of Intuit's TurboTax Live service.
However, if you still feel like QuickBooks Live was your "first sip of the 'cool aide'," then post a comment below and we will share your story (so long as you keep the language 'civil').
Five years ago we were told that IBM's Watson was going to put accountants 'out to pasture', and that artificial intelligence could do the work better and faster.
What we've seen thus far is that AI is simply helping us do the work better and faster. Yet many of us adopted a billing model that moved from charging for time to do the work to billing for 'value-added services (including the work).' Resulting in less work and cost, but higher income.
On the other hand, if AI seems like "the latest 'cool aide' recipe" for your practice, then post a comment as well, because the rest of us need to know how 'harmful' it really is.
I just don't think we have anything to really fear from this new Intuit QBLEA offering... because as we stand strong together as an Accounting, Bookkeeping, and ProAdvisor community... "we have nothing to fear, but fear itself.2" (Murph)
Footnotes & Disclosures:
1 - based upon combined average tuition for Accounting 101 in colleges or trade schools over the past five years.
2 - Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Presidential Term Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933, as published in Samuel Rosenman, ed., The Public Papers of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Volume Two: The Year of Crisis, 1933 (New York: Random House, 1938).
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