The Intuit Community is a forum of information and the source of many knowledge-based features on everything QuickBooks (Desktop and Online). The community, which has been around for a long, long time, features contributions from many ProAdvisors. In fact, a few contributors have posted in excess of 100,000 responses.
Not too many years ago, Intuit phased in a new face to the Intuit Community, known as QuickBooks Learn & Support. This site features four major branches of inquiry:
- QuickBooks Online
- QuickBooks Desktop
- QuickBooks Accountant
- QuickBooks Self-Employed (added within the last year or so)
Within each of the major branches, a series of browse topics are available. For example, the QBO branch features:
- Getting Started
- Bank and Bank feeds
- Account maintenance
- Reports and accounting
- Income and expenses
- Payments
- Employees and payroll taxes
- Inventory and projects
- Apps
In addition, the site features an "Ask a question" search box, which attempts to link your inquiry with either existing similar inquiries or knowledge-based articles related to your topic.
The site also features access to other Intuit product information resources, including:
The above link to Payroll will take you to yet another main page (for Payroll), where you can select the specific payroll product, including:
- QuickBooks Online Payroll Enhanced
- QuickBooks Online Payroll Full Service
- QuickBooks Desktop Payroll (Basic, Standard & Enhanced)
- QuickBooks Desktop Payroll Assisted
- Intuit Online Payroll
- Intuit Full Service Payroll
Part of the problem in using this Community Learn & Support website has been that you had to wade through a multitude of forum postings that didn't seem to apply to your inquiry or, if they did apply, they were very old. And, if they were current, they hadn't reflected recent updates regarding changes associated with product release updates, critical fixes or support investigations.
Another common problem was the failure of the Community to "maintain current links." Many articles contained web links to other resources and published information, but when you clicked on those links, the web page was no longer active. You would get an "oops" message saying, "The site (information) can't be found."
Attempts to search for the un-linked article left many users dissatisfied over their inability to find the information they really needed.
Hopefully, these problems are about to come to an end.
Intuit has just announced it will be making major changes to improve the site and provide improvements like adding timely information, search capabilities, filtering and more intuitive community experiences – all of which will make things easier to connect to the information you need.
The transition to the new and improved Intuit Community will take place in phases. The first, which will go live July 10, is being called a "discussion space." This will afford small businesses and leading contributors (many times referred to as "All Stars") an opportunity to more closely share information.
During the new "phase-in," the current Q&A functionality will continue to be operational. Intuit Community team members will reach out to some All Star Contributors as well as frequent users to garner their input on the changes as they're being made.
One can only hope that the revisions restore the forum to a truly valuable and timely resource for everything within the QuickBooks ecosystem.
ProAdvisors and users of QuickBooks products need a reliable resource center that can keep them up to date with information about product details and trending issues related to the software.