QuickBooks Get Connected has now completed its Canadian dates, stopping in Laval, Calgary and Toronto.  This is the QuickBooks-related conference for Canadian bookkeepers and accountants who regularly use the product, and is vital to staying up to date with QuickBooks.

On June 17th and 18th, 2026, I attended the Toronto event.  It was 2 days filled with learning, networking, product updates and the exploration of opportunities.  As a firm that has been actively using QuickBooks Online (QBO) for most of its clients since inception, the QuickBooks Conferences are a must-attend for me.

Since the conference is really intended for bookkeepers and accountants, this article will be more meaningful for that audience.  However, there will be some golden nuggets for business owners or managers who use QBO regularly.

This article goes over my biggest takeaways from the event.

Intuit Accountant Suite

Since QBO first came online, accountants and bookkeepers have accessed client files through QBOA (QuickBooks Online Accountant), allowing them to serve their clients without taking one of the coveted user spots.  (QuickBooks subscriptions have a limited number of users and to get more user slots usually entails upgrading the subscription – and the cost.)  This is changing.  At KATA, we’ve already embraced the Intuit Accountant Suite (IAS), anticipating that Intuit will eventually sunset QBOA.  At first glance, the product appears to be extremely powerful.  It will allow firm owners and managers to:

• Set-up month-end processes directly within the Intuit Accountant Suite ecosystem using the Books Close feature
• Group clients based on type or industry for easy review or analysis
• Seamlessly move from books to tax
• Have a bird’s eye view of how the various bookkeeping client files are progressing including:
  • Seeing what payroll is due when, and easily seeing where the payroll process is
  • Identifying where each file’s workflow is in the Books Close workflow in order to stay on top of client files
  • Easily see what stage the tax filing workflow is
  • See client files by type or industry to analyze systemic challenges, benchmark the clients and have a deeper understanding of how the team handles each group of clients
• Assign roles to the firm’s team with a high degree of customization to ensure that team members only have access to the sections of client files they need to access
• Use Intuit Intelligence, Intuit’s proprietary in-platform AI, to understand various things about the client files, trends and so on.  (Right now, it mainly provides insights, it doesn’t “do” much work, but we anticipate that this is coming.)

The Hard Truth

Payroll and Inventory

Any bookkeeper or accountant with significant experience will tell you that some things work really, really well in QBO, and some things don’t.  For instance, since its original release, QBO has had challenges with Payroll and Inventory.  This has led to the adoption of other apps into the accounting ecosystem that integrate with QBO through API (Application Programming Interface) connections to fulfill Payroll and Inventory requirements more effectively.

For most businesses, Payroll is the largest expense item, and for retail and manufacturing businesses, Inventory control and understanding the costs of goods sold are vital to the company’s success.

ProTax

ProTax is the Intuit Cloud Tax program that connects directly into QBO.  It’s great for certain types of basic returns, both T1 Personal Tax Returns and T2 Corporate Tax Returns.  However, for a firm like KATA, the software is insufficient, missing several key abilities that are required in preparing tax returns that are beyond the basics.  For instance, connecting related and associated companies is not yet possible, and T3s (Trust returns) and T5013s (Partnership returns) cannot be done through ProTax.  This is why KATA is using Intuit Profile, the professional tax software package that has been out for years and can do much, much more.

In addition to not being able to handle certain types of tax returns, ProTax can’t help with form creation like Profile can.  For instance, it can’t produce T5s (which are needed for private corporation dividend reporting) or T5013s (the slips reporting partnership income or loss).

The Reality

Since Intuit Accountant Suite only pulls from the Intuit Ecosystem and to have effective inventory, payroll and tax filing, third party software is required, IAS cannot be leveraged optimally.  Frankly, we’ll likely use it in a limited fashion.

The Hope

It is my hope that Intuit will realize this exact challenge that firm owners and managers face, and will invest in their Payroll, Inventory and Cloud-tax offerings so IAS can be used to provide maximum benefit.

Consolidation of Power

Having attended QuickBooks related conferences since 2015, I’ve seen a lot of changes in Intuit’s strategy over time.  The first conference was very small.  A one day event speaking about QBO in the morning and Profile in the afternoon.  At that first conference I attended, there were 4 app partners:  Method CRM, Jobber (a scheduling and tracking app for trades), Receipt Bank (now Dext) and Hubdoc (before it was bought by Xero).

At that conference and other early conferences, the message was that QBO would be the core of the accounting ecosystem and power-users would be able to connect best in class apps to be able to build the optimal accounting ecosystem for their clients.  The idea was that the bookkeeping or accounting professional would be able to create significant value for their clients by building the best custom accounting ecosystem for their specific businesses.

The story has changed.

Recently, you won’t find any payroll companies, and in fact, you’ll find fewer and fewer app partners in general.  I believe there were only 12 at Get Connected Toronto this year.  Earlier in KATA’s journey, I had the opportunity to attend the big QBO conference in San Jose.  At that conference, there were nearly 100 app partners.  Intuit now competes directly with many of the app partners, and charges all app partners fees for API access once they achieve a certain amount of activity.

Intuit is looking to drive revenue by encouraging end-users to buy only Intuit products.  It increases their profit margin.  Normally, I wouldn’t have a big problem with this.  However, it is vital that the products work well.  At this time, I’d like to see improvements in Payroll, Inventory and Time tracking with QB Time in order to secure my buy-in.

With the consolidation of the marketplace and QuickBooks being the most popular accounting software for small business, price increases, such as the recent 35% increase for QBO Plus (from $80 per month to $110 per month) are to be expected.  The competition, who are essentially following QBO’s lead in pricing, are following suit, often charging just a few dollars less.  Since power is so concentrated with QuickBooks, they have chosen to make fewer products available.  QBO Essentials, a kind of in-between product, is no longer available to the public.  This is currently only available through a ProAdvisor like KATA.  This means that the general public can purchase Easy-Start, a basic package, but then need to upgrade to Plus if they need any additional functionality.  Also, with the advent of QBO Advanced, it is clear that Intuit is striving to capture more of the mid-market.

We should expect significant near-term price increases.  South of the border, QBO plus is going to $140 USD as of August 1st.  I think we should expect another very significant price increase in 2027.

Combining this behaviour with other cost-pressures on small businesses, the market is ripe for a reasonably priced, hopefully Canadian, competitor.

Intuit Intelligence

With the release of Intuit Accountant Suite and the consolidation of market segments in the Intuit platform, Intuit Intelligence should, in theory, put significant power in the hands of business owners.

A Word of Caution

As with all AI, “Trust, but verify” is the key concept.

Having tested Intuit Intelligence, I will say it can deliver some good, fast responses.  However, there are some key things to remember:

• The response is only as good as the query and the underlying data.  If the bookkeeping is questionable, the AI generated response will also be questionable.
• The AI response is based on probabilities, not facts.  Since Intuit Intelligence gets its information from the entire ecosystem, the response you receive might not be appropriate.
• Be sure to check the response to see if it makes sense given the context of what you’re trying to discover.

The truly scary part of this product is that business owners who aren’t well versed in the use of AI or in bookkeeping, will probably blindly accept whatever the AI tells them.  If the answer is wrong, the decisions based on it could be well off base.

In a recent LinkedIn discussion, an individual prompted the in-product AI and got a response that didn’t “feel” right.  They asked the question again, and got a different response.  They decided to ask the question a couple more times and ended up getting a different response every time.  (It is vital to note that this is anecdotal and unverified.  I have not seen any direct evidence that this actually happened, but the cautionary tale is worth telling.)

Some Key Details

At this time, Quickbooks business accounts (all of the different subscription plans) get 25 prompts per month.

Intuit Accountant Suite Core (the free plan replacing QBOA) provides the firm 200 prompts per month, while the Intuit Accountant Suite Accelerate plan (free until the end of the year, and then $145 per month) provides 1,000 prompts per month.

It’s vital for firm owners to understand that they need to be prompting from inside of Intuit Accountant Suite so they don’t use up their client’s prompts.

I expect these to be the limits for the short term, and then additional prompts to be made available for additional fees.

In the End…

Intuit Intelligence will continue to improve and eventually provide significant value to those who have clean data and good prompting skills.  Developing your team’s AI literacy and training how to prompt AI will be vital to make the most out of this product without wasting your resources.

I look forward to the day when Inventory, Payroll and Time have improved to the point where it IS possible to go completely into the Intuit ecosystem, and have the confidence that clients are being served in the best manner possible.

The Use of AI in Small Firms

Ironically, one of the most talked about subjects was the use of AI by small businesses.  The ability to code, create apps, solve problems, do research and create AI agents is real – Just check out KATA Concierge!

The KATA Concierge was developed by Successful Smart Business Co, Jules.ai.  An AI chatbot that lives on your website and has real conversations with your visitors — answering questions, guiding people to the right offer, and moving them toward a next step, even when you’re asleep. It’s like having a knowledgeable, warm team member available 24/7 who never gets tired and never goes off-script. 

I attended a session about maintaining trust in a world of AI.  During the session, the idea of an AI Transparency Policy came up.  I sent a message to the team to the effect of, “We developed our AI Use Policy together at our retreat last September, but we need an AI Transparency Policy.”  Candice, from our team, took our AI Use Policy, fed it to KATA Concierge and asked for an AI Transparency Policy.  It gave her a branded PDF ready for review and approval – and all of this happened while I was still in the session!

In full disclosure, Jules.ai, upon which KATA Concierge is based, was developed by my wife, Julia Katsivo Carter.  What is phenomenal is that she was able to do this with her phone from bed while nursing a newborn!  She has also developed one app that is getting vetted for Google Play and another that is in progress.  Oh, and she has no training in coding.

Small Things, Big Impact

The ability to “Vibe code” and create your own apps and tools is going to explode.  Things that used to take days will take hours, and things that took hours will now take minutes.  I fully intend to find the whitespace this summer to develop a few key apps for our team internally at KATA so we can serve our clients better.

What’s ironic is that it’s only a matter of time before these tools allow someone to build accounting software that could end up being a competitor for QBO.  I wonder if we’ll still see sessions on Vibe Coding next year…

Balance is Essential

It’s easy to get excited about AI and really go deep quickly.  Beware, playing with it at night is not conducive to a good night’s sleep – it can be very addicting!

Another consideration is, the root understanding of the person designing the products needs to be there.  After all, without the underlying knowledge, how do you know if it’s working properly?

A final concern to mention is that AI tools cost.  Generally, you subscribe for or buy tokens, and as you use the AI tool, it uses up tokens.  As society becomes more and more reliant on these AI tools, they will be in position to raise prices whenever they see fit, and those businesses relying on them will have no choice but to accept the increased cost.

The Future is Bright

Despite the warnings, the naysayers and the concerns about ethics when it comes to the use of AI in small businesses, there is more opportunity than ever.  Small businesses who learn about the use of AI, who understand how the system works, and who do not just blindly give up control to AI, will be in a very strong position to be even better at what they do.

I encourage everyone who reads this article to go check out KATA Concierge on our website.  It’s just the beginning…