I just got back from the fourth annual QuickBooks Connect (QB Connect), an annual conference organized by QuickBooks from Intuit in Silicon Valley California. The event was the perfect combination of information and inspiration for small business owners and accountants who help them.
The conference was launched by Intuit's CEO (NASDAQ: INTU), Brad Smith, who recalled that 60% of all new jobs in the world are created by small businesses. "Globalization," he said, "has reduced and expanded the world, opening up new opportunities and creating new competition" for small business owners.
Quoting Thomas Friedman, columnist and best-selling author of The New York Times, Smith reminded the crowd that we live in an era of "exponential change" that can be both exhilarating and disorienting. The change is, says Smith, "a two-sided piece, with the challenge of one side and the opportunity of the other. Our job as entrepreneurs is to turn the issue of challenge into opportunity. "
Smith acknowledges that this is not an easy task, but we have no choice. "We can either head to the future," he said, "or lose us in the past." So, how do we do that? Smith recommends that we find our moral centers and give us permission to change. Do you want to find your center? Ask yourself these questions:
- What are your values? What do you and your company represent? How do you treat others?
- What is your mission? What impact do you want to leave on society?
- How do you define success?
Smith says that although this exercise may seem "too Californian" for some, Intuit regularly looks at its core values - the three B's: be bold; to be passionate; to be decisive and the three We: we learn quickly; we win together; and we deliver awesome.
At the heart of all this is giving back. Smith believes that "when small business owners thrive, we all prosper." With this in mind, Intuit has announced a series of new products and product enhancements designed to help small business owners (and their accountants) to success.
Innovations at QuickBooks Connect 2017
Here is an overview of some of these innovations.
Payments to Small Businesses
The sad truth is that 64% of small businesses have unpaid bills for 60 days or more. Intuit thinks that one of the main reasons is that most small businesses create and send invoices by "obsolete and manual" methods. Intuit introduces effortless billing where small businesses can create electronic invoices. Payments-enabled ", which means that their customers and customers can click on a link to send a payment. Intuit says that this process allows you to create invoices in less than a minute and allows bills to be paid twice as fast.
The company streamlined the setup process, allowing small businesses to create a payment account in one minute in three clicks, instead of the current 48 hours and 33 clicks.
There is also a Gmail integration, so you can send an invoice, view its status and get paid online directly from Gmail. This feature is available to any company using Gmail. You do not have to be a QuickBooks customer.
If you use GoPayment, you can now use a Bluetooth enabled mobile card reader that accepts both magnetic and smart card credit cards and works with both iOS and Android devices.
QuickBooks Assistant
This is a virtual assistant or chatbot, similar to Alexa or Siri from Amazon, who "combines data-based information and natural language processing" to ask you about the amount of your winnings . last month or last year to your profitability, your tax obligations and more.
The use of the QuickBooks Wizard saves business owners time, giving them instant access to their financial data and allowing them to retrieve this information from anywhere and anyplace. no matter when.
Currently, the wizard is available for iOS and Android devices and will be available for QuickBooks Online next year.
QuickBooks Capital
As we have already mentioned in Small Business Trends, Intuit launched QuickBooks Capital, a loan program designed to provide loans to small businesses that otherwise would not qualify. Rania Succar, director of QuickBooks Capital, said that Intuit is studying other potential applications for QuickBooks Capital's credit model, which could transform more widely the experience of loans to investors. small enterprises.
Alex Chriss, director of QuickBooks products, also pointed to the power of "Smart Connections," which connects more than seven million QuickBooks users, 500,000 accountants and 5,000 developers. applications. The Find-A-ProAdvisor program already connects nearly 1,000 business owners to accountants every day. Chriss says QuickBooks customers should look for a new program that will connect freelancers and independent contractors to small businesses that need help.
All of these innovations are designed to help you thrive. The management of a business can be overwhelming and, all too often, small business owners feel isolated. But Smith says that Intuit wants to make sure that "nobody is alone – that you have the power of a lot behind your back." As they say in Game of Thrones, "Winter is coming But when the snow falls and the winds blow, the lone wolf dies – but the pack survives. "
Images: Intuit