International ProAdvisor Recognition

by

Early last December Insightful Accountant announced a new ‘International Awards Program’ in recognition of the growing number of QuickBooks ProAdvisors outside North America.  At the time who knew that COVID-19 would change our world in so many ways, not to mention have an impact on the lives of so many individuals.

In addition, I was not expecting as significant a decline in my own health to limit my ‘bandwidth as Awards Administrator’ in developing the necessary country-by-country criteria. Because the same certifications are not available for either ProAdvisors, Bookkeepers or Accountants ‘around the world’, it soon became clear that crafting individual standards for each country, within the five regions was going to be an overwhelming task to be undertaken in a single year’s time along with the other duties I have to perform. The result was we were not simply able to offer the International Awards for 2020. I am truly sorry for that!

After a great deal of reflection, Insightful Accountant has also decided we are not prepared to move forward with the International Awards program for 2021 either.

As a result, Insightful Accountant will once again recognize an International ProAdvisor from ‘the Americas’ (excluding the United States), and an International ProAdvisor from the remaining portions of the Globe (aka: ‘Non-Americas’) as part of our ProAdvisor of the Year/Top 100 ProAdvisor Awards process for 2021. These are essentially the same two awards we set-forth and recognized in 2019.

Insightful Accountant remains committed to recognizing the maturing ProAdvisor community that includes more accountants, bookkeepers and business consultants who are joining the ranks of ProAdvisor from around the world, many of which are getting certified where certification is being made available to them. But at present, actual ProAdvisor certification is limited to a relatively small number of countries outside the US and Canada, which was one key factor that made the separate International Awards very difficult to accomplish.

Based on our efforts in attempting to create the totally separate International Awards we have re-fined our formalized mechanisms involved in the two international categorical awards we will recognize, and this should be evident in our ‘formal application’ later during the 2021 awards process.

We also realize some individuals asked 2 years ago why we chose to ‘divide’ the International award the way we did, saying things like ‘why didn’t you use Northern/Southern Hemispheres,’ or ‘use Eastern/Western Hemispheres?' Our rationale was simple, the complexity of geo-location related to the awards… resulting from the more than 40 countries in the world located in more than one hemisphere. So, if you are a participant in the QuickBooks ProAdvisor Program in Canada, Mexico, Central or South America or the Caribbean islands, you qualify to be nominated for our International ‘Americas’ Award (from a geographic standpoint1). If you a participant in the QuickBooks ProAdvisor Program and you live anywhere outside 'the Americas' and United States, then you qualify to be nominated for our International ‘Non-Americas’ Award covering the remaining portions of the Globe (from a geographic standpoint1) .

For International participants you should be aware that Intuit offers multiple training opportunities ranging from self-paced study, to webinar-based instruction, to virtual conferences, and other training throughout the year. To help you find training in your country we have included a few official Intuit websites (based upon our most common international readership) below, unfortunately we cannot list every country or related Intuit website.

1- other basic criteria or requirements for nomination may exist and will be included in the disclosures at the time nominations are announced.