This article is one in a series of 'help guides' for 2025 ProAdvisor Award applicants. It deals exclusively with requirements for the U.S. ProAdvisor Awards. You can apply for the 2025 U.S. ProAdvisor Awards HERE or nominate a U.S. ProAdvisor HERE.
In past years, one of the most challenging things has been convincing ProAdvisors that the Insightful Accountant Award category 'Educator/Author' applies to ProAdvisors other than Intuit Trainer/Writer members. This may have resulted from our initially calling the award Trainer/Writer since it focused on ProAdvisors with significant 'training' or 'writing' components in their practices.
And while we have always used an applicant's response to the question that poses membership in Intuit's Trainer/Writer program as one way to 'turn on' related questions, we've also had, and continue to have, other ways for applicants to access those questions. I will make this more transparent near the conclusion of this article.
But I also want to tell you that the 'Educator/Author' category is more than just training and writing about QuickBooks. To emphasize this, I want us to examine the fundamental difference between the words 'Trainer' and 'Educator.'
Trainer/Educator
The Dictionary defines a Trainer as "someone who trains people (or animals)." However, it defines an Educator as "a person who provides instruction or education (a teacher)."
It's true; several questions in the formal application ask you to 'define your practice' based on the percent of your practice spent 'training' clients or 'training' other ProAdvisors, and it's my fault for continuing the confusion. I promise to change those questions by our 2026 application to use the word 'educating' as in "educating clients" or "educating other ProAdvisors."
2025 is a transitional year for this category. With the demise of the Intuit Trainer/Writer program, this will be the last year in which Insightful Accountant specifically references any of our questions directly related to the Intuit Trainer/Writer program.
For example, in this year's Question 93 (shown in the application excerpt below), we ask about the hours you spent performing QuickBooks training for Intuit Events (we also ask about non-Intuit events in the same question as a separate reporting element). Next year, we will ask you about hours at different kinds of events.
Question 94 (shown below) asks about your hours spent instructing QuickBooks users. Some ProAdvisors have a hard time differentiating 'hands-on training' from 'instruction' when it comes to this question. The answer to their dilemma is "both apply to this question." The hours spent teaching QuickBooks users one-on-one or in a small group count for this question. Furthermore, there is no requirement for CPE, CE, or other accreditation; even 'certificates of completion or attendance' are optional for these hours of instruction.
Writer/Author
Now let's look at the definition of 'Writer'; Webster says it is "one who writes, such as an author." But an 'Author' "writes, originates or creates a literary work."
Insightful Accountant uses Question 96 of the formal application to gather information about your writing. After announcing the end of the Intuit Trainer/Writer program, we didn't have time to modify our question orientation for 2025. Still, this question will change significantly in the 2026 application.
Regardless, the question has three focuses: "pages of content you authored/wrote" regarding (1) 'Intuit Content,' (2) Non-Intuit content for ProAdvisors or QuickBooks users, or (3) content focused on the accounting, bookkeeping, and consulting community as a whole.
Regarding the above question, a page should contain 350 words of actual content. It shouldn't include tables of contents, indexes, or pages primarily graphic.
Public Speaker
Somewhere in the middle of this, we have "public speakers," who are usually educators (of sorts). The Dictionary refers to these people as orators, rhetoricians, and speechmakers—anyone who delivers a speech or oration. Indeed, such orators are educators when the message they deliver is informative or beneficial because it is directly related to the audience.
The size of the audience doesn't matter. It might be a dozen accountants, bookkeepers, and consultants at the public library or 2000 ProAdvisors attending Intuit Connect.
Similarly, how the message is delivered doesn't matter, with a singular exception. The speaking engagement might be a live presentation in a classroom or from the main stage of a conference. It might even be a 'webinar.'
The only exception is when it is 'social media' like a podcast. Then, the presentation applies to Insightful Accountant's Social Media award, not the Educator category.
The content delivered matters. As long as it is related to a ProAdvisor's target audience of accountants, bookkeepers, consultants, business owners, or accounting software users, it's eligible for points under the Educator/Writer Award category.
That is why Question 95 (shown below) is included in the formal application. Here, you can record every hour you spend making formal presentations to the target audience. Still, please do not duplicate any hours you may have reported elsewhere within your formal application.
"I 'am' an Educator"
After reading about how you can report hours of training/education you provide to the ProAdvisor, Accounting, Bookkeeping, and Consulting community and your clients, maybe this article convinced you that you could earn valuable credits for the time you spend doing so.
You also can earn valuable credits if you write for the industry, whether it's an article published within Insightful Accountant, a Firm of the Future feature, the Woodard Newsletter, or maybe you author a textbook. Each page can earn you points.
You might now realize you could receive credit for speaking to your local technical school's bookkeeping class or the chamber of commerce about an accounting concern or delivering a presentation at a major conference.
In any of these cases, you recognize that 'you are an Educator' to some extent. Insightful Accountant wants to help ensure that you can record your information.
There is one sure way to access the Educator page of the U.S. ProAdvisor Application. The key is found at the bottom of page 7, in Question 44 (as shown below). We ask you to identify 'your' ProAdvisor Practice based on a series of categories (which are our 2025 Award Categories or sub-categories).
You need to answer the row "QuickBooks Educator/Trainer/Writer" (shown above) as either "Primarily my ProAdvisor Practice" or "A Secondary Priority of my ProAdvisor Practice."
For most of you, one or more other categories may be your Primary Practice focus. Still, if you provide the kind of educational services (training, writing, and public speaking) we discussed, then 'Educator' is at least one of the "Secondary Priorities" of your practice.
Having a clear understanding of this award's definitions and how they fit into what you do as a ProAdvisor, as well as keeping an accurate record of your 'educator' hours and pages of work, can go a long way toward propelling you into the Top 100, a categorical award, and even possibly... ProAdvisor of the Year.
You can apply for the 2025 U.S. ProAdvisor Awards HERE or nominate a U.S. ProAdvisor HERE.
Once again, we want to gratefully acknowledge our 2025 Sponsors.
