Some applicants maybe surprised later this year when the results of the 2025 US ProAdvisor Awards are announced. The reason is two-fold:
Blending Multiple Applications
The intent of our 'Save & Continue' (later) feature for the ProAdvisor Award applications is to prevent the need for applicants to complete more than one application in a single year; however, we found out "the hard way" in the 2024 awards' year that applicants easily loose the email they receive with the link to return. We also see that 'despite the number of warnings' we provide, applicants still either close without using the 'Save & Continue' feature, or they 'Complete' their application in error. In addition, we've also found out that if our 'survey source' changes one programming detail in the survey tool, that it can sometimes result in applicants loosing information, especially if they went backwards at any point to change information after initially saving; however, to date, we've never completely 'lost' an application as a result of such changes.
All of these commonly result in applicants completing multiple applications, many with partial information that may be similar or dramatically different.
In order to deal with this for 2025 we created a mechanism to 'blend' two (or more) submitted applications from the same applicant. Once the final application download hits our Excel program, each applicant becomes a worksheet that lists every application for that applicant and each question submitted and that's when the magic begins to happen. Each question from every application you submitted is used to populate a scoring form so the only questions not included are those you never answered on any of the applications submitted. Further, the score for each question is populated at the highest score reported in any application you submitted.
This blending approach* is designed to maximize your scoring, without duplicating points per question, and hopefully makes up for failures with the application 'survey tool' that result in needing to submit multiple applications.
Past Year Supplementation
Similar to the way we 'blend' multiple applications from the same year for each individual submitting them, we have another routine that now performs essentially the same operation using your final 2024 application scoring to supplement your 2025 application scoring. But we don't do this automatically, it requires an appropriate response by the applicant to a couple of key questions in the 2025 application.
We've told you for the last couple of years that we are working on an application process that can be streamlined by allowing applicants to only 'supplement' their application history. We want to allow you to use past application information for the current year when it hasn't changed. You will see this maximized next year in the 2026 US ProAdvisor Awards, and hopefully the same will hold true for our International ProAdvisor Award applicants by 2027 (we are still experimenting with which approach 'detail' (fixed entry) or 'summary' (free-form entry) works best for our International applicants).
If US applicants told us in this year's application that they had submitted a 2024 application, that was the 'first qualifier' to use past year data; however, applicants also had to elect to use 2024 data and were specifically asked if they wished to complete all areas of the application form or use the prior year's data. If they chose to use the prior year's data, even if they completed new data in 2025, the 2024 data was available to supplement 2025 scoring whenever a question was unanswered or not-scored in their 2025 results. Each question in the 2025 application scoring was mapped in Excel to the corresponding 2024 question scoring. The score for each question was populated at the higher score reported for either 2025 or 2024 based on the applications you submitted*.
Of course, there are exceptions to this... the minimum qualifications of both 'active practice' and 'certification', but once an applicant cleared that hurdle, the majority of the application scoring could be supplemented from their prior year's data. Other questions, that are date/year driven, are reduced by the same year-by-year scoring value when plugged into the 2025 application results*.
Conclusion
We believe that both of these processes benefit individuals who may have had issues 'returning' to their application at any point in the process after providing the 'bare minimums'. We also believe that the results of this year's outcomes will give us valuable feedback as to how we can make the application process much simpler, shorter and less time consuming by allowing you to select areas where you simply complete what's new, and the rest is scored based on your history. For example, if you told us this year that you had been a ProAdvisor for five (5) years, and you upload a current ProAdvisor certificate in your 2026 application, we automatically score you for six (6) years as a ProAdvisor and don't even ask you that question. How about those apples?
I personally want to thank each and every one of you who participated in this year's ProAdvisor Award 'Application process'. You are all 'the Tops' in my book!
I also want to personally thank all of the sponsors (shown below) of the 2025 ProAdvisor Awards process. I know that without you, there is absolutely no way Insightful Accountant could provide this awards program.
Murph
About the Insightful Accountant ProAdvisor Awards
The Insightful Accountant ProAdvisor Awards Program recognizes the best ProAdvisors worldwide. For 2025 Insightful Accountant will offer the U.S. ProAdvisor Awards, ultimately recognizing the ProAdvisor of the Year, the Up-n-Coming ProAdvisor Awards, ultimately recognizing the Up-n-coming ProAdvisor of the Year, and the International ProAdvisor Awards, ultimately recognizing the International ProAdvisor of the Year. Various ProAdvisor Categorical awards are also recognized during the process.
Applicants for these prestigious programs are ranked based on their performance across various categories, measuring everything from knowledge to utilizing the best tools & partner apps that contribute to solid practice growth.
Since their inception, Insightful Accountant has served as the awarding entity and administrator for these awards. Intuit QuickBooks and the QuickBooks ProAdvisor Program have participated in a sponsoring advisor capacity.
About Insightful Accountant
Insightful Accountant is an independent news and information source written specifically for the small business advisor who needs to stay current on the latest news and offerings in accounting technology, including updates from Intuit and the hundreds of add-on products for QuickBooks serving the small business ecosystem.
With information and insight specifically written to help advisors better serve their clients while building their firm, Insightful Accountant is unlike any other news source serving this space. In addition, the people driving Insightful Accountant bring their unique skills and perspectives to the news site.
* - other/alternative scoring adaptations (of a similar nature) may apply.