Today’s is what we call "Top 100 Tuesday" around Insightful Accountant. That means we do our best to feature something (or someone) regarding our ProAdvisor Awards.
This week, I have the pleasure of advising you on some significant changes impacting all ProAdvisors and the 2024 ProAdvisor Awards process.
I hope you will give us a big round of applause when you hear about these changes.
As we announced on Oct. 10, we are launching a completely new "International ProAdvisor Awards" process, which will recognize between 20 and 50 ProAdvisors from countries worldwide (excluding the US and US territories). These new awards will culminate in the "International ProAdvisor of the Year for 2024," which will be presented during the "Scaling New Heights" conference next June.
With the advent of the separate international program, the previously allocated 20 international applicant positions within the Top 100 ProAdvisor list have been reallocated for domestic applicants. This means 20 additional applicants can be recognized from the US and its territories.
In other words, Insightful Accountant will recognize 100 Top ProAdvisors from the US (and its territories) for 2024, 25 Up-n-Coming ProAdvisors, and as many as 50 international ProAdvisors from around the globe. Of course, we also will recognize the best of the best regarding the highest-ranked ProAdvisors within each of the three lists, along with various categorical winners.
We are not just changing awards, but our awards' process for 2024.
These changes begin with an earlier-than-ever “Call for Nominations.” Within the next few weeks, Insightful Accountant will launch the nomination process in which ProAdvisors, near and far, can nominate either a fellow ProAdvisor or themselves for this year’s awards.
- ProAdvisors nominated by someone else immediately will be notified of their nomination via email and provided a link to their formal application.
- ProAdvisors nominating themselves will find they are immediately taken to the formal application. Yes, that means only one form, not two.
- The formal application now includes automatic determination of eligibility based upon the minimum criteria for domestic and international applicants. The information you provide self-validates your eligibility to continue in the process.
Building upon the success of last year’s come and go application form, we’ve made it possible for applicants to start their application, close it, access it via a unique URL, return and then complete any or all portions at any time.
This year, you can even reopen your application and make changes after you have finished it, right up to the time the application process is closed by Insightful Accountant.
- If you discover you missed information, received new training, or earned a new credential, you can re-open your application, provide the new information and resubmit it. All made possible by a unique URL access for you alone.
- It also means that Insightful Accountant can (and likely will) ask you to reopen your application form to respond to changes or additions in questions when we are advised of specifics that might benefit you.
While adding even more criteria-based questions to our formal application, we also have used AI to streamline the questions displayed based on your answers to questions as you go through the process.
- One area of this involves our "App Interaction" questions. While we have added more apps this year, you select only those you interact with and tell us the details of your interactions in a single question. You no longer need to go through multiple sections of the app analysis to earn points for app use, referrals, sales, certifications or implementations. One list does it all this year.
We also have provided an opt-out functionality that permits you to decide if you don’t want to be considered for an awards category where you preliminarily meet the minimum criteria.
- This includes areas like Up-N-Comer, Client Accounting and Advisory Services, Business Process Outsourcing, Niche (Specialized) Practice and QuickBooks Educator (Trainer/Writer).
To ensure ProAdvisors being nominated by someone else have plenty of opportunity to complete their formal application, we will end the third-party nomination process a minimum of 30 days before the formal application deadline.
- This should give any nominated ProAdvisor sufficient time to review and complete their formal application.
- But ProAdvisors can still self-nominate themselves and go directly into the formal application during that time.
Beginning earlier also means that we can accelerate the entire schedule so that ProAdvisors are not attempting to work on their formal applications during the March/April tax seasons. Formal applications will be closed no later than early February 2024, followed by the voting process.
- Peer voting—with one ballot for qualified domestic candidates and another for qualified international candidates—should be completed by mid-March 2024.
The lists of the Top 100 ProAdvisors (from the US), the 25 Up-N-Coming ProAdvisors and as many as 50 International ProAdvisors will be issued no later than 30 days before the "Scaling New Heights" conference. The ProAdvisor of the Year, the International ProAdvisor of the Year and other categorical winners will be presented on stage at the conference in June 2024 in Orlando, Florida.
So, as you can see, these changes mean that we will be recognizing more ProAdvisors than ever before. We also will start the process earlier and give ProAdvisors more time to complete the rigorous formal application at their own pace.
We have provided more flexibility in application form content and trimmed down the number of questions for many ProAdvisors without outliers necessitating additional documentation. And, we are doing our best to wrap up most of the process before the US tax (March/April) deadlines.
Starting early also means you must prepare earlier than ever. Remember we ask you questions about "Your ProAdvisor Practice," not your firm's business as a whole.
- Now is the time to gather your CPE/CE certificates and your other training (hours) certificates of attendance.
- Verify that your Intuit ProAdvisor profile is correct and up-to-date and available for viewing (public access).
- Make certain you have copies of your most current QuickBooks ProAdvisor Certifications (you will be required to upload one of them this year for the first time for self-validation).
- Get the details of your practice dynamics: numbers and types of clients, services you actually provide, compute the relative percentages of each.
- If you participated last year, think about what might have changed or what you may have forgotten that needs to be included this year.
- Identify those favorite Apps (or third-party software) you use, your firm uses, you recommend/refer, you resell or wholesale bill, you are certified in and you are an authorized installer/implementer for. Gather the details so you know how many, how much, and how long you spent for each of these app factors.
We hope this will not only be the "biggest," but also the "best" ProAdvisor Awards process ever.
I look forward to your participation when we begin in the next couple of weeks.
Murph
About the Insightful Accountant ProAdvisor Awards
The Insightful Accountant ProAdvisor Awards Program recognizes the best QuickBooks ProAdvisors worldwide. For 2024 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 QuickBooks knowledge to utilizing the best tools & partner apps within the QuickBooks ecosystem 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.
Footnotes
*-country equivalency is based upon the offerings Intuit makes available for Accountants, Bookkeepers, and Business Advisors within each country or Intuit Region. For example, in a country like South Africa, even though Accountants can sign up to become ProAdvisors to access QBO-Accountant, it doesn't offer (at the time this disclosure was written) QuickBooks' ProAdvisor Certification' but does offer QuickBooks Online Accountant Certification and various supporting courses.
** - Insightful Accountant actively monitors such available offerings during the nomination and application process to determine candidate qualification and equivalency and will always coordinate with Intuit officials and the QuickBooks ProAdvisor Program should questions arise.
Disclosure
As used herein, QuickBooks® and QuickBooks ProAdvisor Program refer to one or more registered trademarks of Intuit Inc., a NASDAQ "INTU" publicly traded corporation headquartered in Mountain View, California (USA).
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