In this episode of The Accounting Technology Lab, hosts Randy Johnston and Brian Tankersley analyze Intuit’s recent announcements following Intuit Connect, focusing on major QuickBooks Desktop (QBD) price increases, and Intuit’s reported $100 million annual relationship with OpenAI. The Accounting Tech Lab is an ongoing series that explores the intersection of public accounting and technology.
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Transcript (Note: There may be typos due to automated transcription errors.)
Randy Johnston, Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 00:00
Randy, welcome to the accounting Technology Lab. Brought to you by CPA practice advisor. With your host, Randy Johnston and Brian Tankersley,
Randy Johnston 00:09
welcome to the accounting Technology Lab. I’m Randy Johnston with my co host, Brian Tankersley, we have some important announcements from Intuit we’d like to discuss these all occurred after the Intuit connect conference this year. One of them was the recent announcements in early December on QuickBooks, desktop pricing, and also the announcements of the open AI relationship. So we know these will affect your decisions now and into 2026, and beyond. So Brian, you know you’ve read the announcements as I have. What do you think our listeners need to know about this open, ai, 100 million dollar a year contract?
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 00:51
Well, I will say, first off, that Intuit has, you know, they have, they have always kind of asserted an ownership of clients and data, and that’s something that has always given me pause about them. You know, I want, I want to love them, okay, but it’s really given me pause with QuickBooks, QuickBooks Online Live, and TurboTax live, and then their inability to opt out of AI training with the information. And now we see that Intuit has $100 million year contract with open AI to put their to implement their AI models across all those products. And of course, with no opt out in there, that means your data is going to get used for that, which is something that kind of gives me pause there, but they’re but they’re integrating, again, Turbo Tax Credit, karma, MailChimp and QuickBooks into chat, GPT to be able to give financial guidance in chat. You know, we’ve seen stuff where data can, data can go into these models, and the training data can go in and then be brought out. Now, maybe they’re anonymizing all this data. We don’t know, but it’s another, you know, again, it’s, it’s another thing that they’re doing that that makes me wonder about the privacy and data control concerns here.
Randy Johnston 02:09
So Brian, you know, to your point, and a piece, I read the details around the permission data, and it was not clear what was going to be moved back and forth. And, you know, an alternate concern that I have right now for users of chat GPT is because of their lawsuits related to suicide, the E discovery rules that have been put in place say that all chats and all results have to be retained for five years. Okay? Now, if that’s the framework all open AI chats have to be retained for five years. First, I’d like the firms that are listening to us to reflect on their records retention policy. Is a five year retention okay for you, and then further, you’re absolutely right if Turbo Tax Credit, karma, MailChimp and QuickBooks Online, and I believe, also Intuit Payroll have this interaction with the AI models. It was one thing when we were running on intuits AI model. It’s another
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 03:15
thing that was not public facing, that that was not public facing. It’s a whole different You’re right. It’s a whole different kettle of fish now that we’re doing, now that we’re doing something with a public facing, very popular AI model that that hundreds of millions of people have access to go in and to do queries off
Randy Johnston 03:35
of, yeah, and I’m optimistic that open AI will can, you know, improve their data controls when they become public, but that’s a two year run right now, just like, you know, anthropic Claude is on their one year run trying to get to be public, because the way public companies have to handle data, like Microsoft learned the lesson on handling data, is A whole different deal. But you know this idea of permissioned into a data where chat GPT can answer tax and life event questions. I thought it was fascinating that Sam Altman, when he converted to code red the first week of December, when Gemini pro came out and surpassed many of chat GPT capabilities from an accounting procedure perspective, said I never thought people would use them for romantic relationships and counseling and all of these life things. So when you think about life event questions, hey, I’m getting a divorce, what’s the best way to protect my assets? You know, those types of questions here to estimate refunds and suggest tax moves, and you know in this platform where they’re supposed to be able to act immediately. Again, how many of your clients would you recommend that they self serve on tax strategy decisions?
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 05:00
Well, and that’s the thing, is that people don’t know what they don’t know. And the problem I think, that you have with respect to tax strategies delivered by AI is that it’s really only as good as the training data. And, you know, I was reflecting on a conversation I had with with my with my dentist the other day, you know, my den, my wife’s best friend just passed unexpectedly, and my dentist had no idea that she died. Okay? And you think about the treatments that doctors give, there is no back end knowledge that, hey, this really went sideways for this person. And you know that that could happen here, you know, I’ve said for a long time, you know, the the AI based tax software is going to be great until humans don’t look at it, and then people get audited, and then what’s going to happen then,
Randy Johnston 05:50
yeah, well, and you know, our tone today, friends may sound a little pessimistic, because both Brian and I have had close friends pass away in the Last 30 days, and it’s probably made us far more aware of life consequences. And you deal with this every day. All of us do have friends, family and clients that you know eventually their lives in we all are faced with that. But this is, to me, a far more of a strategy decision. And in you know, maybe all decisions are personal and all finances are personal. But you know, in my world, I try to share my financial situation and decisions with my family, because they’re going to have to deal with it once I’m gone.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 06:38
And that’s right, and that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s right, and I will say that I have, you know, I, I will just put an open invitation to into it anytime we’re ready to have a conversation with you, off the record about about privacy, if you think we’re getting any of this wrong, okay, if you think we’re describing this inappropriately, We want to talk to you, because it is important to us that we are telling the truth and not, you know, and again, if we’re if you think we’ve got this dead wrong, we’d love to speak with you.
Randy Johnston 07:12
Yeah, that’s absolutely the case. Well, so there’s promise when I see announcements like this, because here you get cash flow projections, you get AR, you get invoicing, you get lending, options, marketing help, and maybe this transitions the profession to advisory and oversight rather than transactional rules. But you know, this is a real innovation, if it works right, and it is also a high risk maneuver. And I guess maybe that’s the way I would think about this is, you know, with high risk comes high reward. With high risk comes high failure also,
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 07:54
well, but you got to understand that Intuit is also running against the likes of digits and puzzle and campfire and many others that are that are that are not retrofitting AI into their platform, but designed their platforms with AI at the core of it, I’ve been doing some stuff with digits lately, and I know you and I are going to talk to talk to Jeff, the founder of digits, and in his upcoming podcast that we’re actually going to record later today, record later today. And you know, it’s, it’s a different experience when you’re working with those platforms. I’m not going to suggest that I have, I have detailed the privacy at the same level of that I have the Intuit one, but I will say that. I will say that the experience is different and into it rightly so is concerned. I’m sure that their cheese is going to get moved and so they’re throwing they’re throwing the kitchen sink, it seems like at everything.
Randy Johnston 08:52
Yeah. And to your point, Brian, in separate episodes, we’ll have an interview with Jeff Siebert of digits, who’s the CEO. And we’ve known Jeff for some time because we thought he had a good reporting tool. And when earlier in 2025 they released their actual accounting and about two weeks before we record this episode, they released their new automatic reconciliations. You know, all those are big moves forward. Also in a separate episode, we’re going to talk about these AI powered ledgers, because at this point, there’s, you know, half a dozen or more that are hitting the market, and it’s going to move change the way we deal with our client accounting services. Well, Brian, we’ve got another major topic really to talk about here, because the other significant thing is QuickBooks, desktop on received major price increases that are going to be effective February one of 2026 now you can look these up in a linked article, but you know the bottom line here is QuickBooks Desktop Pro Plus. Going to go from $1,000 $200 a seat to 12, 1150, let’s do the real numbers 999, 211 49 to 30, a seat and Premiere is going to go from 1399, 300 to 1609. 345 so in effect, we’re seeing, you know, pretty significant price increases. But this isn’t even the toughest part of it, because the other editions we’re going to talk about, the accountant edition and Enterprise Edition have even greater increases than these 150 to five or $400 class price increases.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 10:39
Okay, so I predicted this seven years ago, that the way they were going to kill off desktop was that they were going to they were going to go in and they were going to raise price until people screamed, and then they were going to keep raising price until they went to something else. And so I will just categorically say that it is my opinion that you need to be getting off of QBD by the end of 2026 because I don’t know. We won’t know until this time next year whether or not they’re going to renew it and allow it to be sold for another year. Okay, I and I’m not suggesting you go to QBO categorically, but I am saying that it’s time to do something in 2026 if you haven’t done something already, because this boat is going down, and we don’t know when it’s going down, and the last thing I want is for you to have 80 clients on this and then suddenly have to make 80 conversions to a new system that nobody knows, and have to answer all the questions from 80 business owners all at the same time. I mean, that’s, I think you need to figure out an orderly exit at this point.
Randy Johnston 11:43
Yeah, the number that I’ve been using, independent of you Brian, is 2027 and the other question I’ve routinely asked, and it has been a pleasure to see many of you in the fourth quarter of 2025 at events, because literally, I’ve spoken to 1000s of you, and many of you have walked up to ask about our episodes and direct questions, but here’s the net on this. The most frequent QuickBooks Desktop question I’ve gotten is, what can I use for QuickBooks Desktop clients, since QBO doesn’t work, in other words, it doesn’t have the right inventory or costing, or whatever feature that you’re missing. And the short answer that I’ve been giving, I believe correctly, is perhaps Zoho books, soft ledger X, Ledger O, do, and although it’s a little early, dual entry, so all of those products, I think, have the similar or superior features to QBD.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 12:46
Now, let’s not forget custom books that also has a multi client interface in it. That’s that’s also very good. And you know, Fresh Books is not long on inventory features, and Xero is not long on inventory features either, although they’re getting better, but they both have good multi client interfaces too. So I think it, I think you’re absolutely there are a lot of outstanding choices out here that that you can use. And I think you know the we’ve covered all of these in previous Technology Lab episodes. And I will try to get some get some links out to Isaac of where we’ve talked about some of these products, so you can go back and listen to those episodes if you want to learn, learn our take on some of those platforms. Yeah.
Randy Johnston 13:29
But you know, the net on this friends is pretty straightforward. It’s our opinion that it’s time to plan the move, and you’re going to need to do due diligence. And a year ago, at this time, we really only thought for client accounting services. In CPA firms, there were only four or five viable alternatives, zero, QuickBooks, online, sage, intact and Iris accountants, world Accounting Power, Zoho books, and perhaps in the right situation for not for profit apples, we’re kind of our mainstream recommendations today, I routinely refer to 20 different products. And you know is, we’re not going to have 20 winners here. I don’t think maybe we will, but you know, that’s I just want you to be aware of that. So that gets us to the accountant edition price increases. Talk about an oh my, you know, I did get to meet George Takei Takai of Star Trek frame fame at one hot time. Sorry about tongue tie in there. But you know, George has this phrase, and he’s got a deep voice, much deeper than mine, but he often will put his hands on his face and say, oh my, that’s what I said when I saw these desktop accountant prices.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 14:49
Yeah, I mean desktop accountant 1199, to 1799, for one user, pro advisor bundle. That used to be $200 or something like that, one cent. Nine now, going from 999, to 1499, and the enterprise bundle, which is, I think this actually was the 179 version, is going from 1599, to 2399 Okay, and there’s, there was a movie back in the early 2000s called, he’s not that into you, okay? And that’s what I would say here, is that is that Intuit has decided that they’re not that into us, especially if you want to use desktop, and that’s that’s their decision. But I just want you to, I just want you to see these numbers in here, because it’s not only going to cost your clients a huge amount of huge amount more money, it’s going to cost you a lot more money to be able to be in a position to support them with the software that you need
Randy Johnston 15:51
and these price points, Brian, you might as well be up in mid market products, or certainly in what I’d call tier Four products that are far more capable for far less.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 16:03
I mean, I mean, 2399 that’s 200 a user a month. Okay, that’s, that’s what NetSuite and intact and and though, and the, you know, the tier two, tier three products cost, not the tier, yeah, we’re not talking about the tier four products that are, that are the that are the things you use when you graduate from QuickBooks. Okay, we’re talking about the stuff up here that’s just below SAP. And so the the thing about this is that it’s just, you know, and it’s not really as much about the money as it is about the as about change. Let’s look at some of these other things in here. Okay, QuickBooks Enterprise, okay, six users, enterprise, white gold, $6,598 $6,598 okay, so that’s about $100 a user a month or thereabouts. Okay, it’s not, it’s a little less than that, but it’s about $100 a month, okay? For a single user, 200 200 over 200 a month, for quite gold, okay, you know, again, you can see these price increases and these are up, but you know, so the the six user price is up about 15% if I’m doing the math right in my head here, you know, maybe 14% something like that, and the white gold is up 10% but again, one user at 2467 and this was 400 or $800 not too many years ago,
Randy Johnston 17:31
not too many years ago. That’s right. And so for those of you that are just listening, I’m just going to blow these out pretty quickly. The QuickBooks Enterprise white gold is going from 2243 to 2467 for a single user, going from 5737 to 6598 for six users. The QuickBooks Enterprise silver is going from 1703 to 1873 and the six that’s all for a single user, single user, and the six user goes from 5746 to 6608 and you’re right, Brian, it wasn’t that many years ago. I guess that’s another good exercise for us to do at some point in time, is just show the increase over time on these. But I guess it’s not material, frankly. But you and I do have the same recollection that enterprise, you know, was only a few $100 per user. And here’s the other problem, friends, is these products have problems with performance when the data sets get too big. So the problem is, many of your clients, possibly even you, are staying on the system because the user interface is familiar and you you know a lot about it, but it’s kind of sluggish at times, and that issue has continued to plague QuickBooks Desktop throughout the years. So again, there’s reasons that it runs slow. There’s reasons and ways you can make it run faster. But you know, I guess we’re ending the legacy era with this podcast, the legacy area of QuickBooks Desktop, we think, is coming to a close,
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 19:07
and this is going to create people problems for you, because there are, there are a lot of people who have used QuickBooks a lot, and it’s what they know, and it’s what’s comfortable. And you know, the online version is just not the same product. Okay? It is a different code base. You know, I had a discussion, Gosh, 1517, years ago with rich Walker, back when he worked for Intuit, about this, and at a Dallas event in 2008 and he said that, you know, it’s completely different code base, and it’s for a different customer, and it will never have the same UI. And so that’s the problem that you’re having to deal with now, is you have people with all this institutional knowledge that is not worth what it used to be. And so they’re having to figure that out.
Randy Johnston 19:52
Yeah, and Brian, as you’ve said in other contexts, to many users, quick. Books, desktop is accounting.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 20:03
It’s not a tool for accounting. It is accounting, yeah, and so it makes, it makes people that that, that, again, have, don’t have detailed debit and credit understandings because of education or whatever, they have more of a process understanding. It’s very, very threatening to these people, and it’s going to cause turnover at firms when you make these changes. But the problem is, where are you going to go? You know, this product is dying, okay? And you got to go, yep.
Randy Johnston 20:32
So this is a bit of a Ghostbusters problem, if you will. Now, the other thing that also occurred was these per employee charges in QuickBooks Desktop. So again, I’m going to read these for those of you listening. But if the number employees is one to nine, it’s $3 a monthly per employee fee. And if it’s 10 to 29 it’s 250 if it’s 30 to 99 it’s $1.50 if it’s 100 to 219 it’s $1 and if it’s 220 plus, then there’s no extra charge
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 21:04
per no extra charge for 220 and forward, but you still have to pay for one to 219 at those rates we’ve just cited.
Randy Johnston 21:12
Yeah. So notice that that’s a another little twist on the pricing, and if we continue on price increases payroll, then comes of age. And you know, again, here’s where many people want the integration capability of QuickBooks payroll, and I appreciate that. And again, to set this up for Brian’s comments, QuickBooks Desktop payroll, basic goes from 550, $7 per employee to 640, $7 employee. And enhanced goes from $707 per employee to 805, and $7 per employee. And if we look at QuickBooks, desktop payroll, legacy, which is probably more in tune with many of what you’d be thinking about here. You know the unlimited four plus employee fee was $1,100 with a $5 direct deposit fee, going was already shocking, right? Going to 1270 with $5 direct deposit fee, and if it was enhanced, payroll limited for one to three employees, is 850, with a $5 direct deposit fee, going to 980, with a $5 direct deposit fee. So I’ll turn it to you, but I’m just going to say in general, we have routinely, over the last five to seven years, recommended alternate payroll solutions to into its payroll for a variety of reasons, not to mention pricing. But we’ve also been appalled at how payroll vendors have increased prices, and we think that’s come from a couple of different paths. One, private equity purchases of private of payroll companies have led to some of those price increases, and there’s been some other just, oh, the market can bear it. So everybody’s moving these numbers up. And then the other way that I’ve been saying it, and I this is a sad statement for me to have to make. It’s almost like the providers of software to the profession have decided that CPA firms are making too much money, so they’d like to move about 10% of the profit from your firm into their businesses. And you know, you’re, unfortunately, probably going to have to respond with price increases to your your your clients, on all sorts of different fronts to accommodate these additional technology charges. And the thing that aggravates me on that is price increases for technologies for no visible upgrades of software or technology. We’re just raising prices because our costs are up and because we can. And, you know, I just, I categorically disagree with that. If you’ve structured your business so you’re making enough dollars, yeah, you may have inflationary adjustments, but you know, if you’re supporting and building a product, make the dog gone thing better, and have that as part of your cost of doing business.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 24:27
And, and, you know, the the, if I had to describe this in one word, I’m trying to decide between two words, the words are rapacious and unconscionable, and, and it’s just, it’s just crazy. Okay, now that, having been said into it’s a public company, public company is going to public company. So you got to, you got to deal with it. And you have that now the ACH fees, it looks like they’ve, they’ve changed those a little bit new ACH fee. And I don’t have this came out of a this came out. Of murph’s great article out of insightful account that, you know, I don’t have the categories in here, but it looks like you’ve got, you’ve got a 1% 1% charge on ACHs. Okay, now this is, this is an interesting number that also so, so we have this. It’s just a, you know, it’s just going to be a lot more expensive to do desktop. Now, this is the other piece, this side of into its investor day presentation that came out in September. And this shows you the QuickBooks Enterprise and the desktop customer split. And so they’re saying basically that over the last five years they have shed about about 100 I guess, about 100,000 desktop customers, and they have increased the percentage that are on enterprise. Okay, so you can see that number has come down. And I think it’s going to come down at a at a appreciating rate in their fiscal 26 as people, people get off, you know, again, folks, train, you know, the we’re coming to the end of the A line, and it’s time to get off the train. Okay, is what I is how I would kind of wrap this up. It’s, you know, again, and we understand why they’re doing it. They want to get into AI. They want to do things with data. We have concerns about the data. We’ve said that the uses of data, and, you know, again, it’s it’s time to do something different,
Randy Johnston 26:31
yeah, and you know, on this, this is not a surprise, because when all of the other versions of QuickBooks Desktop were discontinued, enterprise was a natural landing zone. It allowed you to perhaps get a little better performance, preserve the path on this for a little bit longer. But my forecast still stuck. I think it’s 2027. Is about how it’s going to land out so
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 26:57
an enterprise, and as soon as they can get, as soon as they can get market share for their Intuit enterprise suite, the QuickBooks Enterprise is going to drop like a hot potato, and those prices are going to go the same way that that desktop has, okay? Well, so you may be able to, you may be able to do something in the short run, but in the intermediate term, maybe, but in the long run, you’re going to have to do something different.
Randy Johnston 27:21
Yeah, well, Brian, sorry to interrupt you there. But any parting thoughts for our listeners, because we’ve run pretty long on this podcast today, and we just want to be conscious of you. I think you’ve got the message. Any parting thoughts?
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 27:33
Brian, yeah, I think, I think I’ve shared them. You know? I think it’s, I think it’s time to do something different. Now you can do CBO, you can do something different, but, but I think, you know, the the reality is that you have, you’re going to have some hard decisions. For a lot of people that have been married to QuickBooks for 2030, years. You know, the the trains come in, the train lines coming to an end, and you’re going to have to do, you’re going to have to do something different. And so that’s something that that you need to plan on doing in 2026 so that you don’t get caught waiting at the train station with nowhere to go. Yeah.
Randy Johnston 28:10
So all of that said friends, you know, I told you it would be a little bit of a downbeat episode, partially because of the deaths we’ve had in the family. I guess we have deaths of QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Enterprise, eminent. But on a happier note, I guess we’ll say Happy New Year and happy replacement software hunting. Until another time, we’ll we’ll speak with you again in accounting Technology Lab. Good day.
Brian F. Tankersley, CPA.CITP, CGMA 28:39
Good day. Thank you for sharing your time with us. We’ll be back next Saturday with a new episode of the technology lab from CPA practice advisor. Have a great week.
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