Each year, when the ProAdvisor of the Year competition is over, and the winners have been announced, I am asked by countless numbers of people who didn’t make the Top 100, ‘how can I get to be in the Top 100?’ Apparently, they didn’t read the article I always write during the competition about the importance of each item within in the submissions we require as part of the process.
This year I thought I would reach out, at least a month away from the start of our process, to remind you of the importance of being ready to enter the competition. The reality is, this is the time of year to ‘get ready’ because of the abundance of training opportunities being offered over the next 6 weeks or so.
One of the single biggest factors in our competition scoring is ‘certification’ within the Intuit Ecosystem, and that means QuickBooks Desktop, QuickBooks Desktop-Advanced, QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Online-Advanced, QuickBooks Enterprise and QuickBooks Point-of-sale. It isn’t enough just to ‘be certified’ you need to be ‘current’ in ALL certifications.
While a person’s certification ‘history’ comes into play, and those people with a long history of having been certified tend to rank higher, the reality is that each year we have high ranking historical certification participants drop several points because they haven’t yet completed the most recent certifications at the time they submit their applications. So, I suggest that you use November and early December as your opportunity to take the courses and work your way through the current certifications, so you can ‘pass’ those exams and be certified when our application process begins.
Intuit is certainly helping you do this by offering ‘in-person’ courses to help you get ready to take the certifications for QuickBooks Online and QBO-Advanced at several major cities over the next 6 weeks. Here is the link to our article outlining the courses for November (Insightful Accountant will publish December’s courses in a couple of weeks).
In addition to these live events, Intuit is offering a QuickBooks Online Certification Exam Prep Training webinar on November 21, 2017 from 11am – 3pm Central Standard Time. You can register for the ‘webinar’ (registration link).
While none of these training events can insure that you will ‘pass the related exams’ and earn your certification, they will help you get ready to take the tests and give you the opportunity to earn continuing education/training credits.
And that brings us to the second topic: ‘training’ (including continuing-education and advanced certification credit), as it relates to the ProAdvisor of the Year and Top 100 ProAdvisor competition. Not only does our process value certification very highly, but we also value training related to your standing as a ProAdvisor. One of the things that puts the ‘Pro’ in ProAdvisor is staying current and keeping-up with what is going on in the industry (and Ecosystem). If you aren’t taking training courses each year, you can’t be doing that.
The Insightful Accountant Top 100 process doesn’t mandate a minimum number of hours, but we ‘reward’ each course in a variety of ways. All courses and conferences we define apply to the overall standing of an applicant, and specific courses also relate to the ‘areas of practice’ that are a key component of the categorical classification(s) with which each applicant is identified. For example, if you take more ‘QBO’ related courses then you not only earn ‘course points’ toward your overall score, but you earn more points toward the QuickBooks Online ‘categorical’ award than someone who only takes QuickBooks Desktop related courses.
One of the single biggest opportunities for earning training points between now and the start of Insightful Accountant’s 2018 ProAdvisor of the Year and Top 100 process, is QuickBooks Connect being held November 15-17. If I thought I was shy on training points last year, and I hadn’t really done anything up until now to earn training-related points, I would make my way to San Jose (QBC registration link) if I was trying to earn my way into the Top 100 for the very first time.
The third area I want to address is ‘knowing your numbers’. What I mean by this is knowing exactly what makes up your ‘personal’ ProAdvisor practice. You maybe part of a big accounting firm, or a member of a small bookkeeping practice. You may even have a solo practice, but regardless of where and how you work, our awards are ‘individual’ based, unlike Intuit’s Firm of the Future competition where the entire firm is being considered.
The Top 100 ProAdvisor and ProAdvisor of the Year awards recognize ‘the individual’ and that individual’s accomplishments. So, when we ask you about your clients, that is exactly what we mean, “your” clients. Do you know the exact number of clients for whom you ‘installed QuickBooks’ last year? How about the number of clients for whom you ‘reconciled their bank accounts’? What percentage of your clients are ‘in the construction business’, or ‘healthcare’?
Last year, nearly 20% of competition applicants either failed, or chose not, to answer critical questions of this nature. Remember these questions not only ‘generate points’ but also help to define each applicant’s categorization(s) within the competition. It makes me wonder if they simply ‘don’t have a clue’ as to what their numbers really are.
On the other hand, we clearly have people who try to answer these questions using ‘firm wide’ numbers. What would you think about the validity of an application where someone listed that they did 3,500 QuickBooks Desktop installations in a single year?
The last topic I want to mention is the 3rd-party Products section. We list 100’s of 3-party products that work with both QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online. This year we will be adding numerous new Apps that have come on board. I agree it is a time-consuming process to answer all the related-questions, but honestly, I don’t know of a better way to evaluate the extent to which you assist your clients with solutions above and beyond QuickBooks.
We reward you with points earned for each response, and the extent to which you are involved with each product is also rewarded. We value a ‘certification’ in a product higher than simply being a ‘referral partner.’ But a word of warning, don’t fudge…my staff routinely ‘spot checks’ credentials in this area and if we can’t verify your status, it’s “hasta la vista baby” with your application.
Each year, my team and I, spend 100’s of hours evaluating, checking and scoring the applications submitted. At the end of the process the point difference between spot 100 and spot 101 can be as small as 1/1000th of a point, and the same can be said for our ‘best in show’, the ProAdvisor of the Year.
Insightful Accountant will be announcing the start of our process in another few weeks. So now is the time to prepare yourself for this year’s competition.