Strength In Ubiquity

It would be tough to find a software application that's more prevalent among small businesses than Intuit Inc.'s QuickBooks. So when the Mountain View, Calif.-based vendor ships a new release of the ubiquitous accounting and financial management package, solution providers take notice.

Intuit unveiled QuickBooks 2009 in late September and began selling the product last month. Highlights of the software upgrade include online banking capabilities, the ability to provide users with a snapshot view of a company's finances and tools for building a Web site that Intuit hosts for free for one year.

"It's all about saving time and working more efficiently," said Michael Kraner, CEO of Primary Support Solutions Inc., a New York-based solution provider and QuickBooks reseller, summing up the enhancements in the new release. He estimated that as many as 90 percent of his clients are QuickBooks users.

QuickBooks remains a pillar of Intuit's sales and a mainstay for its 50,000 channel partners. Altogether some four million small and midsize businesses use the software program. QuickBooks sales reached $622 million in fiscal 2008 ended July 31, accounting for a significant piece of the company's $3.1 billion total revenue. Intuit expects QuickBook sales to grow between 8 and 12 percent in fiscal 2009 to as much as $695 million.

Intuit is hoping that QuickBooks 2009, which the company calls a "major upgrade" of the product, continues that momentum. "Intuit QuickBooks 2009 is one of our best releases in years, giving small businesses more reasons to be optimistic even in tough economic times," said Rick Jensen, senior vice president and general manager of Intuit's Small Business Group, in a statement when the product was announced.

One of the most significant enhancements in QuickBooks 2009 is the Client Data Review feature that lets accountants review and fix errors in financial data in account balances, charts of accounts and other categories using a single screen. Intuit said that can save accountants as much as 30 percent of the time they spend with each client.

Using the new Company Snapshot feature, users can get a comprehensive view of which customers owe money and generate a list of outstanding bills (see screenshot). "I think this will help all my clients to save money because it streamlines their financial processes," Primary Support's Kraner said. "It's all about saving time and working more efficiently."

With the new online banking capability, users can connect to financial institutions and download transactions directly into QuickBooks. Intuit said that will give small businesses more control over their cash flow by letting them see what checks have cleared, what transactions are pending and what their balance is.

Using technology Intuit acquired last year when it bought Homestead Technologies Inc., a provider of Web services for small businesses, QuickBooks 2009 users can build a Web site that Intuit hosts for free for one year. The company said its research showed that while only about one-half of small businesses have their own Web sites, 95 percent want one.

While Intuit takes care of its bread-and-butter small business customers with QuickBooks Pro and Premier 2009, the company hasn't neglected the midmarket. Intuit has marketed its QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions for midsize businesses since 2002. But in September the company took another big step when it debuted the Intuit Enterprise Suite, a set of on-demand applications that customers can tap into using QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions 9.0, the current release of that product.

It's a bold move that will bring Intuit into competition with other SaaS application vendors including Salesforce.com (San Francisco), NetSuite Inc. (San Mateo, Calif.) and Microsoft (Redmond, Wash.).

Laura Madeira, owner of American Computer Staffing Inc., a Dallas-based solution provider that resells QuickBooks, is already working with the Intuit Enterprise Suite. "I can pretty much say every [QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions] client needs some multifaceted, industry-specific application that goes beyond QuickBooks," she said. "It's a great product to be involved with."