From QuickBooks Desktop to AI-Driven Finance in the Cloud

Becky Munson:Excellent. Thanks, Janelle. So I'll take us through our objectives. Today, our goal is to help you understand why the era of desktop software is ending and how cloud accounting is transforming your role with AI-powered insights, automation and visibility. And we'll talk through a clear migration path if you are still on the desktop journey and needing to make that transition. We'll help you understand what's available to you in the Intuit ecosystem and how our team might be able to assist you. Our agenda today is to talk about the state of finance and technology. Talk a little bit about why the QuickBooks desktop era is ending, how cloud is changing, and how AI is turning finance into real-time strategy, choosing the right platform, whether it's QuickBooks Online versus the Intuit Enterprise solution, and how you might take those steps for migration.

So let's take a look quickly at EisnerAmper. Most of you probably know a lot about the firm because you came here through our networks. But if you aren't familiar with EisnerAmper, we are in a top 15 accounting firms in the overall top 100. We're the largest in the New York market, and that is where our home office is located. The firm's about 1.2 billion in annual revenue with almost 5,000 employees. And we work across a wide variety of industry areas. So we can do everything from audit to tax, which are pretty traditional professional services firm tasks. And then we have a wide variety of advisory services across a multitude of industries and very specific niches. And we have a robust outsourcing practice where you can hire our team to handle your day-to-day items. So we work in dozens of industries and have teams specializing in those industries.

You can see those here. And there's almost nothing we can't do across a professional services need for our clients. So if you're not familiar with EisnerAmper already working with us, we'd love to talk to you about any or all of these opportunities, not just the technology conversion conversations we're going to have today.

All right. So let's talk a little bit about how things are changing in finance. The roles historically have been very focused on making sure we get the day-to-day minutiae taken care of, bills paid and customers invoiced and all of those important pieces. And then looking backwards at what happened last month, getting our reporting sorted, making sure that we understand where we've been so that we can hopefully think about where we're going. Typically, the close takes a number of weeks and often we're delayed in getting those final reports resolved. Data is put together manually. Someone is sitting at your computers in your offices keying in information. And that compliance piece of reporting is really the driver. We need to make sure all of our stakeholders are getting what they need to get and we don't have a lot of time for other things. So when we think about how that has transformed with current cloud technology, what we see is information is coming in in real time.

It's continuous. We can connect all of our systems in ways we never used to be able to do. We have some ability to predict what's happening in real time or close to it. The systems can analyze what's going on for us and give us feedback so we know what's happening more strategically in real time. And now the controller and CFO, whether that's an in-house team or an outsourced team, they really need to be looking forward and quickly at what's ahead, what's coming at us. So the way systems used to be built and the way systems function now have changed dramatically. And with the new pace of technology and the new pace of the world, we want to assist our controllers and CFOs in making that leap into that new technology environment. So we're going to launch poll number two. So we want to get a little bit of a feel for who's here and where you're at in your overall journey.

So our first poll or second poll technically is where are you currently at in your QuickBooks journey? So are you considering a QuickBooks? Are you currently on desktop and you don't want to change? You're using desktop, but you're exploring your options. You're using QuickBooks Online. You're interested in the Intuit Enterprise Suite, or you're not in an Intuit solution now, but obviously by being here, you're interested in maybe what that could mean for you. So you've got about a minute to answer the questions in the poll, and we will get to see those results in just a second. Janelle, when you started with your practice, were you starting on QuickBooks Desktop or were you always in the cloud?

Janelle Fox:I was on the desktop when I first started right out of college, which really is dating me. But then I actually switched to QuickBooks Online from my full client base very, very early. I think it was back in like 2010. I was moving everyone over to QuickBooks Online. How's my audio by the way? Someone was very nice to say, is it sounding better?

Becky Munson:It still sounds a little bit garbled. We're not sure what's going on there, but I think our behind the scenes folks are taking a look. So I'm similar to you. I was also, I had used desktop prior, but early in my career have been in the cloud and always in the cloud since. So definitely seeing all the changes that have come from being in the cloud and the way that that technology has transformed from very early stage to now where it is truly AI driven and AI focused, which has been an exciting transition.

Janelle Fox:Absolutely. Been a journey.

Becky Munson:All right. Let's see. I think we're just wrapping up the last for the poll here. We should see those results. There we go. So most notably, a good number of folks here are in QuickBooks Online. So that's really exciting to hear. We're going to talk a bunch about how that AI technology is now in the QuickBooks Online ecosystem and what that looks like. We've got a few folks who are interested in that Intuit Enterprise Suite. So we'll talk a little bit about that. And certainly a good chunk of you looking to move from that desktop product. So hopefully those of you who are in your in desktop and not necessarily considering a change, by the end of this, we hope to inspire you to consider a change. That's the goal here for this event. All right, let me move us forward. So Janelle, I think I'm going to pass over to you.

Are we feeling like your audio is good or do you want me to keep going?

Janelle Fox:Well, let me. I'm talking for a second. How does it sound? I did switch to another mic.

Becky Munson:Yeah, we still have that interference for your microphone there. Let me take a couple of slides and let's see if we can troubleshoot there.

Janelle Fox:I just switched again. Does this sound better? Oh, much

Becky Munson:Better. Okay, you're good to go. All right. Awesome. You can take on over on how the systems have evolved here.

Janelle Fox:Okay, awesome. So glad that's working. And thanks to everybody for your patience. That polling question was a really great segue to how finance systems have changed. And it's really because the finance systems have evolved over the years to support the expectations that you all have on your finance role. So every category of business software has really followed the same arc over the last, I mean, 30 years probably. They have gone from desktop server-based software where your software was installed on local machines or on in-house servers. Maybe IT owned the hardware, the backups, the security. Some of you may still be in this as well. And access was typically limited to an office, but now maybe you have a Wrightworks or something like that where you're able to do a sharing. But it's really the one system at a time. Your updates were more manual or occasional.

And then we moved into cloud-based, which for Becky and I, we adopted that fairly quickly. And this is where it was hosted and maintained by the provider of the software. You could access it from anywhere. You could get it from a lot of different devices, and it's automatic and continuous updates with data that could flow in between different systems. And now today we're in the AI-driven phase where software isn't just holding data, but it's actually analyzing it, reading it, forecasting some outcomes for you, giving suggestions, flagging exceptions, recommending next steps. And it's actually learning from all the data that it has at its fingertips. And that really has given finance professionals the ability to free up their time and focus less on the data entry and more on the future judgment calls. So accounting software is really following the same path as many other categories of software has.

And the shift is already underway. As we all know, we're in that AI-driven phase.

According to Intuit's 2026 AI impact report, the shift being underway is actually being shown in the data. So 77% of small and mid-sized businesses are regularly using AI in their operations. And 78% of businesses are saying that AI has actually improved their productivity. And that was actually just 46% back in July of 2024. So you're seeing a real shift in how AI is helping our organizations and businesses run better. But here's the number that actually really matters. And that's in a survey in December of 2025. We had done a survey of 1446 finance leaders. I'm sorry, AICPA and the CIMA had done a survey of finance leaders, and they found that 88% of those that took the survey expected AI to transform the profession within the next two years. But only 29% of them felt that their organization was actually ready for it. And so that gap is really the whole reason that we're having this conversation today.

Again, the shift isn't in the future, it's already here. And so the question is, are we in the 29% who are ready or the majority who are not yet? I'm sorry, the 88%.

So with that being said, based on where the profession is and the tools are that you use every day to run your business, I'd love to take a second to do a poll question. And seeing all of that, what is your biggest concern about switching to a cloud solution if you haven't already? Is it migration accuracy? Is it the amount of time it's going to take to make the switch? Is it learning a new tool because you're comfortable with the old one? Is it potentially the cost? Or do you not have any concerns? Or like I said, have you already made the switch? We'll give you a minute to take a look at that.

Becky Munson:All right. While we wait, we had a great question right out of the gate come up on cybersecurity. So let's talk about that for just a minute while people answer our poll. So the question is, how is cybersecurity impacted in a scenario where a staff member accesses QB via the cloud and their device is compromised? So I think that's a really important question and a key driver when we think about cloud and certainly AI enabled technology. And QuickBooks Online and Intuit Enterprise Suite both have robust separate security protocols. So if you get onto someone's computer, they still need a set of credentials and multifactor authentication to be able to log into that file. So there's that added layer. And then if your organization is also using SSO or other types of credential technology, the system is going to work with those as well. So you'll be able to add in those layers.

So just because someone gets on a device does not mean that they're able to get into these cloud systems without additional technology or additional credentials. So I think that's really helpful. Looks like our poll results are up to now.

Janelle Fox:Yeah. Yep. 15% of you said migration. Understandable. About 12% of you is the time it takes to do it. 21% learning a new tool. Let's see. It's pretty even across the board, which is interesting, but all definitely concerns. But I love, and we'll talk a little bit more about this, Becky, about what a migration actually looks like and how our team has really evolved even the migration process to ease some of these concerns. So we'll talk about that in a little bit. Great. All right, so let's talk about now Intuit, which is what I love to chat about is how our products have actually evolved to keep pace with both the expectations on the finance professionals as well as where the software industry has gone. So QuickBooks Desktop was really, as we talked about, built for record keeping. It was for your historical reporting. It was typically bookkeeping for just one specific business.

There was manual reconciliations that took place in that, and it really has done the job and still continues to do a great job for a very long time. And then QuickBooks Online, when we moved into that cloud phase, it was built for real-time visibility. It was built with automatic bank feeds, multi-user access because you could access it anywhere. And it started to give you the ability to have those continuous or faster closes because you were able to have the data come in from your bank feeds and such. And so now we've launched Into an Enterprise Suite, which is our multi-entity system, and that goes further even more. That actually has the intelligence layer. It's built for more strategic advisory, more predictive AI and forecasting, that multi-entity consolidation that we need for so many of our businesses, and even peer benchmarking. So the practical reality of where this is all going is that Intuit is actually not even selling our desktop versions to any new customers.

We do still do the enterprise QuickBooks desktop enterprise, but not to the other desktop versions. And so in addition to that, existing subscriptions, they can still renew, but we just don't support discontinued versions, which means once your version has reached an end of life, the security patches, your bank feeds, and any live support has actually ended with that subscription. And lastly, I think I would say investment from Intuit has really shifted from the desktop to the cloud because that's where the demand is. So any new features, any AI, any innovation, that's all landing in our cloud-based, which is our QuickBooks Online and our Intuit Enterprise suite products. And it's just not going into desktop anymore. And so that's the reality of the state of where that server-based software is, because we're moving into that AI-driven software phase. We are in that phase.

But one thing I think that we don't talk about a lot is what we like to call as accountants, the opportunity costs or the hidden costs that we don't get to see every day. The things that maybe don't necessarily show up on our P&Ls as an expense. And so there's two different costs that I like to talk about. One is the cost of the organization to stay on a desktop-based server software, and then the cost to us is finance leaders. So for the organization, typically, leadership ends up making more of those strategic and operational decisions on the data, maybe more historical data, just because our closed processes is slower or after the end of the month. In addition, a lot of things we don't think about is when we have finance teams for our organizations, it's harder to recruit and retain finance talent because when they're coming out of school, they're now accustomed to having these better, more sophisticated tools, and they expect to work on those modern systems.

Server, backup, IT maintenance costs, it's all built in as overhead, but that continues to be included and shows up. And then hardware failure or breaches, they can actually be business continuity events. And so there is a cost of the organization that's beyond the subscription cost that a lot of times I see our business leaders focus on subscription costs, but aren't able to take in all of those other pieces that maybe don't, like I said, show up on the P&L. And then for the finance leader, there actually is a cost to us as finance leaders. I say us because I believe I'm still a finance leader as well. And what we're doing is we're spending a lot of our time on that compliance, that data entry, that reporting, and not necessarily strategy. And as we said in the beginning, our finance roles have evolved, and we're actually expected to be at the table helping to make those strategic decisions.

So even though you are capable and expected to do those more strategic and operational decisions, you often get stuck in the more compliance data role because it just takes time to do it within the tools that don't have the additional AI capabilities. And so every question that you get, you have to do some manual polls. I see consolidation of spreadsheets. I do see a lot of work that just requires you to be in the weeds a lot more where the cloud-based and AI-driven platforms allow you to pull yourself out. And so your capacity keeps shrinking, but the demands on you keep growing. And so there is the cost to you as a finance leader that you aren't able to do your job due to time constraints as well as you could.

But I don't want to just focus on here's the cost. I want to talk about what the gains are too, because I feel like we get really hung up on the things that are maybe pulled down by staying on desktop, but I want to talk about what the wins are. So first I want to talk about AI-powered insights. Again, we're in that phase. So the AI-powered insights gives your teams are able to take their cashflow, and instead of doing that manually in a spreadsheet, now we can move in QBO or into an enterprise suite. We can actually start to do those forecasts automatically. We can do it more daily. We can review it faster. In real-time visibility, we talked a little bit about this already. In desktop, a lot of times you're stuck in the day-to-day, your P&L and your budget to actual are available most likely after that month and close when you actually sync your transactions and get the data.

But with cloud platforms, they're actually available every single day thanks to those bank feeds. And even now they can match themselves, they can apply them and put them to the expense categorization that it is seeing as historical where it would be posted. And it really gives you that day-to-day on-demand visibility. From an automation perspective, your teams probably have been matching those bank transactions one by one. But within our cloud platforms, like I just said, you're able to do that more actually automatically. The system can go in and do those matchings and make those recommendations for you so your bank feeds can be posted much faster. And then lastly, the shared anywhere access. Not only are so many finance professionals working remotely now and even potentially having those server costs so they can access their desktop files when they're working remotely. It also gives you the ability to share this with any other advisors that you work with and give them that full-time visibility.

So like Becky, you and your team are working with businesses every single day, advising them, and you're able to go in. And when they're asking you a question about what should I do with my business and why does it look like I have a net loss? You're able to go in and take a look at that and have a real live conversation versus the, "Can you send me your file? I'll take a look at it. I'll give you a call back." You can do that real-time visibility.

Give me one second.

Becky Munson:Yeah, Janelle, it's such a great point that shared anywhere access really makes a huge difference for our team as an outsourcing group where we're coming in and fulfilling that finance function. So obviously ease of access for us, big, big data point in how we work with our clients. But we also hear from our clients, we provide these technology conversion services. So some of our clients are just coming to us for that help. And what we see is their teams are able to work together in a much more seamless fashion. And I think that shared anywhere access without having to log into a hosting platform, without having to make sure you're in multi-user mode, if you need to do administrative tasks, you don't have to kick everybody else out of the file. All of those really hidden time sucks for getting those types of things done inside of those desktop files.

Even when they're hosted, that shared anywhere cloud access just makes a huge difference in their team. So AI and all the cool things going on in accounting technology are one thing, but just some of those livability changes can be pretty immense when you move from a desktop or hosted desktop product into a true cloud environment.

Janelle Fox:Absolutely. I mean, the little things add up. So I love that. And actually you mentioned AI is good, but the day-to-day is also awesome. But let's talk a little bit more about AI because that really is the state of where we're at. And so I'd love to just pass it over to you and talk a little bit about how AI is revolutionizing those tools that all of our finance professionals are using today.

Becky Munson:Yeah, it's such an exciting time and conversation, especially for finance teams, because I feel like I've been in cloud now, I hate to say almost 20 years, which is amazing to me that that time has passed. But when we think about what we were promised in cloud 20 years ago, some of us have still been waiting for it, and now it's here. AI is really doing and helping with the things that we envisioned when cloud was new to all of us a long time ago. And so what's interesting about AI and where it's at today is it's everywhere. Every software you buy, everything you see, I think in general is AI driven. And so these are obviously your accounting systems. That's what we're talking about, but it's in your payroll systems, your CRMs, all of your business tools, your email. If you're in Google Suite or in Microsoft, it's in every bit of that.

It's in all of your applications. You can chat with an AI right inside Excel if you need to. And so when we think about that, there's a lot of overlap in how AI is showing up for most of us. And how we use it and the strategy around it is really key to success because you can have a little bit of AI fatigue in all of this because you've got to understand each individual software's AI capability and what it does or doesn't do. And then think about how it applies to your team and how are you going to train them and all those pieces. And so it can be a struggle to just understand what's worth it and what's not, and what is actually helping you and what's creating maybe more noise than you had hoped for. So when we think about how that is changing and all of the areas that AI is embedded, now you can use it in every area of your business.

So you might use it to help you with a sales or marketing campaign and you might use it in your accounting system and you might use it for deep research. And all of those things might be separate technologies. And what's exciting about AI is we have so much available to us, but it is also some of the most daunting to figure out. And when we think about how Intuit has tackled this, Intuit's AI fits into all of these categories. So Janelle, do you want to talk a little bit about the agents that Intuit has built inside of especially the advanced online system and the Intuit Enterprise Suite system?

Janelle Fox:Yeah, sure. I mean, the beauty is it's always AI, but human in the loop. And so what we've done is we build the automations around the bank feeds, around helping you to determine is there a tax liability? What sales tax payment analysis needs? How much do we owe? It's helping you to determine and collect payments. It's being embedded everywhere where instead of having to create an agent, you're now able to deploy these agents, but also you're able to look at them when they've done the work. So now it's just having them in the system for you, which is really nice. And you're able to determine, do I want to use this or not?

Becky Munson:Yeah, I think it's so exciting. And we see it. Intuit has a wide range of solutions. Obviously we're talking about accounting today, that's my expertise. But there are a lot of things in the Intuit ecosystem that can help with all areas of business. And certainly we can point you to the right folks to help with that. But the AI components are really key to all of those things. And so when you want an end-to-end solution, this can certainly be an option if those options are working for your business. So when we think a little bit more about AI as a driver of the business and where we're going, the entire overarching theme is making sure that we have good quality, good oversight, as you said, human in the loop. We want to be sure that everything that goes out, everything we do, someone's able to take a look at because that piece has a big impact on how it impacts our clients or our stakeholders if we're issuing financial reports.

So these types of agents working inside the file for you, they can post transactions, they can do a lot of what your day-to-day folks would do right inside your file, right inside the QuickBooks product or the Intuit Enterprise Suite product. So if you're spending a lot of time on some of that data entry minutia, these agents right in the system can be a great help to your team. But there's always a person taking a look at that, making sure it's doing what's expected, and looking at those AI powered insights to make sure that it's what we actually want to see and that we're doing that correctly. And as you give information to the system, it's going to learn and improve. So it knows a lot about your business inside of your file ecosystem. And that's unique to each business. Intuit's not looking at that or sharing that or doing anything with it.

But inside of your business ecosystem, it's looking at all your information, all your history and giving you the most up-to-date information based on what you have going on. And I think that's just so helpful when we're trying to make decisions day-to-day as business owners and especially in your finance teams. So making sure that everybody understands all of the pieces and has the most up-to-date information is going to be beneficial for everyone. So when we look at how this works, Janelle, there's such an interesting stat here. Do you want to tell us about that customer survey? Oh, we lost your audio, Janelle. You might be on mute.

Janelle Fox:Yep. There we go. Sorry about that.

That's all right. Yeah. So yeah, we had done a study that 78% of our customers said that Intuit AI makes it easier for them to run their business. And that really goes across a wide span of different folks that you'll be working with. So for accountants like Becky, when she's able to see your file, she's able to, in real time, do more high value analysis work. If she actually works and has an engagement with the organization, she's able to focus on the things that really matter versus just getting that data entry bookkeeping piece done. For the business owners themselves, they get that faster picture of growth, time and money saved. So they're able to see, again, that real-time visibility into where things are at versus looking at maybe where the errors are in the financials or what happened three weeks ago or something like that.

Employees, they're using it for their mundane tasks. We talked a little bit, and I think it might say on another slide, but just in asking questions, just knowledge base, they're able to ask more questions, move a little bit faster, get answers. I've seen someone who's actually made an agent that is almost like a customer service for their employees. So if they have a question about something in their business or policies, they're able to just go ask the agent before they go to any of the leaders. And so employees are also finding that they're saving time in their calendars, et cetera. And then your customers and vendors, they're able to pay faster. They're able to do things online real time, automatic payments. They're able to receive invoices instantly. They're able to send you invoices instantly. And they might even have cut out someone who has to create invoices because they just say a job is done and the agent now is automatically creating those invoices.

So we're really seeing across the board in all these different buckets of folks that do interact with the finance of your business, that they're actually having impacts in different ways.

Oh, I can't hear you, Becky.

Becky Munson:My turn to be on mute. Tell us a little bit about how Intuit is helping the adoption gap. AI is overwhelming. It's overwhelming for me, and I feel like it's all I talk about. How are we helping our business owners manage this?

Janelle Fox:Yeah. So I think embedded, not bolted on. I think that's, like you said earlier, you're having to learn how AI is working in all your different systems versus having it within a system that you're already working in. And so that actually helps you to learn it at a quicker pace and not have to figure out how to make all those connections. And I think that's really beautiful. And we'll talk a second about just our platform and how you can really look at your business holistically and get the data insights that'll allow AI to learn and learn about your business and help make better decisions on your behalf. We have experts that can help you with the platform. Becky is an expert that can also help you with the platform if you work with her and her team. And so we can help you to actually understand how to adopt and utilize it within our system.

So we give you that additional level of support. Let's see. From a stage trust building, AI handles routine work first, and then it has that human overlay. So the way I like to look at agents is it's like I have oversight of a person doing work. And so I'm able to go in and I give it, I want it to do this. So when I start to give it that job or that workflow to do, I now monitor that and make sure that I get trust with it. I don't go in and just start using every agent and hope that it works out, which we all know we review the financials and the financials always tell us if something went awry. But I ease into it. So I start using AI in a way that deploys, I can monitor it, I make sure it's doing what I need it to, and then I can evolve in and do a little bit more.

And then again, that review and edit control where you're able to go in and say it did the work, but now I get to check it and I get to adjust if things didn't play out like they should have, if there was an error in what was done with the agent itself. So we get to be the final decision maker in all the work. And that puts us really, like that says in that review control, that review stage, which is where we want to really start our work.

And that leads me to our platform. So all the things I just talked about are actually built with our Intuit platform. We talked about how Intuit has evolved over the years to get to this place. So not only do we have the Intuit connected platform, which includes everything from payroll to bill pay to invoicing and receivables, even marketing, workforce, human capital, now we've layered in this Intuit intelligence, which is really that embedded AI that gives you automated workflows, real time insights, and it can work across all those different functions, not just in your financial management piece. And what's beautiful also about our Intuit platform is it's always been open. We have a huge list of apps that are in our marketplace. And I know Becky, you wanted to talk a little bit about that. I bet you have a ton of experience with your customers who have really pulled in many different apps depending on their industry and their needs.

Do you want to talk a little bit more about that?

Becky Munson:Yeah, we definitely do. It's probably one of the best things about working in the Intuit ecosystem and with the QuickBooks or Intuit Enterprise Suite platforms is if it doesn't do something that you need, when you're in the cloud, all of a sudden you could connect all of these different systems together and have the data move back and forth, have things kind of launch automatically. Like you said earlier, Janelle, having those agents doing the work behind the scenes when something happens. So it allows for all of these tools to be part of the product itself. Intuit's done a great job of building out those capabilities. But if that's not what you need or it's not enough for some reason, you can go to the marketplace and bolt on additional things that give you what you need. And for a lot of folks, that modular approach makes a lot of sense at certain stages of business growth.

So we see the benefit to both an integrated platform for the basics and then having that expandability when you need it in order to meet your particular business needs. And for our clients, that's just such a key component of why we like this setup so well.

All right. Well, let's jump into our next poll. I think we had just a few minutes without a poll. And so what's your timeframe if you're moving off of desktop? We're curious where you're at in your process. Are you already planning to make that move in the next six months, 12 months? Or we're not sure yet. We don't know where we're going. And I think Janelle, the burning question in the chat as I've been watching it over the last few minutes is when can we expect Intuit to phase out desktop enterprise? What is happening with that product and what are their options?

Janelle Fox:Yeah. So at this time, there is no plans to phase out the desktop enterprise version. However, I do think that our cloud products have come a long way. And what I often find with the clients that I work with, with the firms, they often haven't looked back at the differences or the lack of differences between desktop and our online platforms. And so I highly encourage you to take a look at all of the features and functionalities that are available in all of our different product subscription levels. And then of course we have Intuit Enterprise Suite, fairly new to our lineup. It has really just got that higher level multi-entity consolidated intercompany journal entries. It is open just like our other QuickBooks Online product level, subscription levels. So you can utilize other third party apps. And I know, Becky, you and I have talked that that's how you move.

You say there is no one that I believe needs to stay on desktop because there is an ecosystem that we can manage to get all of their data in one place. Is that right?

Becky Munson:Yeah. Our focus is really on moving into that more modern technology. And there's lots of reasons for it. Obviously the ecosystem just helps everyone work better. But we also think about data security, the way older software is written and encrypted versus newer software, what it means to have older systems inside of our newer environments and how that may or may not work together with those bigger network drivers. And so I think when you really get down to it, having access to your data is the most important thing. And as you continue to see software modernized, we don't want anyone to end up in a situation where they lose access to data. And so getting it into a modern system just really makes a big difference in keeping that continuity and keeping the business going, but then also being able to plug in all of these different tools.

Looks like we have our poll results are up. So thanks everyone for entering that. Looks like a lot of you are still figuring out what your timeline is going to be. So hopefully we can continue to help you think more about what that looks like as we go forward. Let's see. We have another question that I think maybe we can answer quickly in the chat before we jump into migration.

I'm not sure I understand this question, but each project is a single purpose entity. So how do you use projects in the online system, Janelle? That module of QuickBooks Online Advanced and certainly Intuit Enterprise Suite has come a long way. I think a lot of folks, that project management or cost accounting type work was a key driver for staying in desktop enterprise. How has that modernized inside of the new technology?

Janelle Fox:Yeah, I mean, I use projects in a few different ways. I use it from a nonprofit perspective. I use it from a construction perspective. Really, there is actually a whole project platform and dashboard now where you're able to manage those budget to actuals by project. The one thing that's thrown me off in the question is the project being a single entity. So I'm not really sure exactly how that's playing out. But from a construction perspective, I have been in QuickBooks Online managing my customers, my construction clients' projects, and it has worked beautifully. And I do it now for my church that I do work for and use it that way. It's really come a long way and it really helps me to analyze how different subsets of my business are doing, whether that's customers, grants, however you determine to use it. So I highly recommend they take a look at it.

And I know that in an Intuit Enterprise Suite, we've even evolved it more so that it's become more dynamic.

Becky Munson:Yeah. And I think that's really the key with Enterprise Suite. Some of the cost accounting components or being able to break costs out to a very detailed GL level by project are now capable inside of that system. And so

Whereas that maybe wasn't a key component of the QuickBooks online ecosystem, even in the advanced files. Now with Enterprise Suite, you do have that cost allocation. You're able to tie back and break out those project costs at a very deep level and do it for multiple entities. So with that multi-entity environment, if you've got projects that need to be its own entity and maybe they're even short-lived, you can add those as needed, remove them as needed, do that typical cost accounting inside of there. And it's a more incremental cost structure than say dozens of advanced files. So that multi-entity environment of the Intuit Enterprise Suite is really designed to make it easy for organizations that have multiple different LLCs or different components to take care of that. Well, let's jump in a little more on migration. So as we've talked about a little bit in the conversation so far, EisnerAmper provides technology conversion services in our outsourcing team.

And so we can help a business take the next steps and figure out what makes sense. So why would you hire someone like us? You certainly can work with the Intuit team to get a file converted and they're happy to do that as a service. But for us, we're going to come in and be alongside of you for the process. So this is where we maybe move away from that AI function and say, we want to talk to people and we want someone to really help answer our questions and figure out what we need, validate that data and help us move forward, especially when we maybe don't have the extra capacity in our teams, in our finance teams to take care of this. So our team looks at it a few different ways. One is we want to help you keep all of your history.

I think for a lot of folks, we convert big files. People who've had their desktop files since the '90s. And so everyone wants to keep all that history. It's such rich information for your business. We're going to help you take a look at all of that, figure out what can you keep, what's feasible, what makes sense? How can we get the file in a state that it's something we can convert? We're going to help you get set up so that you can use the system to your best advantage. So based on your business's needs, we're going to talk about that, really understand the skillset of your team. Do they need training? We can provide that and help you get that system set up properly so that it works for you without you having to learn a whole new backend setup for yourself. And then we can bolt on those extra applications, make recommendations about systems that might add to the capacity of what the Intuit products can do for you, and then provide you ongoing support.

So we have a newsletter that goes out. We talk about QuickBooks and other items. We talk about how technology is changing and what's new. We test all of this stuff on a regular basis behind the scenes and then provide that knowledge to our clients. So we're able to be that support system for you so that your internal teams can continue to focus on getting the invoices paid and clients taken care of and all of the things that you need to do in your business. So there are a number of options. Pricing can vary across these depending on your needs. And certainly at the enterprise suite level, that is a custom pricing process to help you pick the package set up that's right for you. But we can use everything from a simple one user license of QuickBooks online all the way up to Advanced, which gives us up to 25 users and all of the automation and much of the AIs and things that you might need.

And then Enterprise Suite is your multi-entity complex business enterprise replacement. So it's designed to take the place of that desktop enterprise product. We can meet with you to talk about pricing and scaling and how all of these things might make sense and help you make a selection that works best for your business and where you're at now, and then help you grow into where you might want to be at a later date. So our team does this. We sit down with you to choose the best file. We're going to look at your current state and help understand what it's going to take to make that transition, to keep as much of your data as possible. We can schedule training for your team. Our conversions typically take one to three business days. We try to do them on a Thursday or a Friday and have a file up on a Monday.

So we have a nice cadence of work. We can often convert files that might be in a state that needs some cleanup. We can take care of those things for you. And then once you're up and running, we can, again, train your team, do support, break fix, all of those things. So our team is there to help and to make sure that you have everything that you need.

So some feedback. If we leave AI and automation and cloud, all those things on the table, just some feedback from our clients on the benefit they've seen on moving from desktop to online. We've done over 4,000 file conversions in the last three years. Obviously the change with Intuit no longer selling or supporting the Pro and Premier product meant a lot of our clients needed to make this move. Our team has seen a lot and we've talked about a lot of these things already. Shared access. The team can work together and with the accountant without having to send files back and forth. And they can integrate anything that they might need or want to. And anything that doesn't have a built integration, Intuit has an open API and our developer teams or others can help you make those custom connections. You can search across all of your data and all of the different platforms and all the different components.

It's easy to find things. And the system keeps track of the history and that history can be used to program an agent to do that data entry for you. So lots of continuity in the way we think about those files. So please feel free to reach out. Obviously you can choose to work with the Intuit team or our team. We're happy to help you make that transition and understand how to best select those products. But that migration path can be pretty straightforward depending on the size of your file. And it can also be complex depending on what you want to connect. So let's do our last poll. We're coming to the end of our time. So this poll is for me. If you'd like us to reach out to you and help you or answer questions, we would love to do that. If that's not something you want, you can tell us that too, and we certainly won't, but we want to make sure that we're here and a resource for you as you go.

While we're doing that, let's take a couple more questions. So let's see.

Janelle Fox:I saw a ton in here about price. I've been trying feverishly to answer as many as I can. They're coming in hot and I really appreciate it. But price seems to be a big discussion, which is always one of our higher friction points. I really encourage you to go ahead and take a look. I mean, we have SKUs depending on what you actually need to get out of the system. I believe I answered one about what about entities that have little or no activity? Definitely look at it because you have to look at both the subscription costs, but we talked about earlier the costs that are not just subscription. And I know when we look at budget, we're saying, "Well, we were paying the subscription and now we have the subscription costs." Absolutely matters, but consider the efficiencies that you'll save and the additional advisory type work you'll be able to do, as well as maybe the capacity on your team or you of what you've been having to do through the desktop system.

But I really encourage you to go back and take a look at the different product subscription levels. And comparatively, the desktop prices continue to increase. And so while maybe at one point it felt like the subscription for a cloud-based online was more expensive, I don't know if that's actually the case if you are in a subscription, especially a lot of folks in the chat are talking about how they have multiple entities. I think it would be worthwhile to go ahead and take a look at. And they also are always offering promotions where they have discounted rates for a longer period of time where you can check it out. So take a look. You may be surprised. And I'm sure Becky, you see this a lot, but I know we only have a couple minutes. And so I don't know if we want to take a few more questions to try to get some answers for folks, but that one was one of the bigger ones.

Becky Munson:Yeah, I think certainly reach out. Let us help you. We're happy to walk you through pricing and have the conversation. And there's no charge. We can certainly have a conversation about what a plan should look like with you on that upfront. So let us help do that. I think we're out of time for questions. There are so many here. They're coming in fast and furious. We will answer all of your questions individually and get back to everyone with those answers after the webinar. Thank you so much for participating. And Savannah, I'll hand it back to you. I think I just have one more slide, which is my contact information. There's a booking link here. These will be available. Please, if you need anything now or in the future, you can just reach out to me and we'll get you connected to the team.

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