After offering a Quickbooks ProAdviser “permanent” 40% discount to clients on their online program rates, Intuit is having second thoughts. The Quickbooks online discount is soon to change.
Quickbooks Online has become a great program that provides portability and a connection between clients and pro-active accounting firms like ours. The flexibility of the online program, familiarity of the Quickbooks format, and applications like daily automatic bank transaction downloads make this product competitive at $34.95 a month. Until now, the 40% discount clients were given for signing up under a Quickbooks Pro-Adviser made this solution nearly unbeatable at $20.97 a month.
That low monthly rate for Pro-Adviser clients will be going up this year. The reason is that starting in February the Pro-Adviser discount for new clients will be going down to 20%, making the monthly rate $27.96. This is still a competitive rate for online accounting solutions and will still save clients $83.88 a year over signing up on their own.
As a Pro-Adviser who has signed up several clients under the promise of a locked in 40% discount, it’s the next part that riles me up. Intuit will be decreasing the discount for existing clients in May to the new standard 20% rate. This means that if you are already signed up for Quickbooks Online, you will see an effective 33% rate increase starting this May. This would not be an issue if we hadn’t been told by Quickbooks representatives that the 40% discount would be locked in permanently.
Quickbooks Online is still perhaps the best solution for small businesses with pro-active accountants, and the 20% discount continues to make it a competitive product. But buyer beware, that discount may not be as permanent as they say it is.
