Intuit has made its QuickBooks Online Accountant product free to accounting professionals in more than 170 countries, including Indonesia, in what the company calls a first at this scale. The software lets an accountant manage a practice, its clients and its billing from one place, and the company says the global version was developed with a group of accountants over the past twelve months.
Intuit's pitch is arithmetic about workload. It says its own research found that 43 per cent of accountants have more than 40 clients, and that 86 per cent are looking to technology to become more efficient, and it notes that only 51.6 per cent of small businesses in the United States survive beyond five years. The product includes a single dashboard for client data, automated transaction rules, workflow reminders and a predictive tool that estimates income tax and value added tax. Onboarding is run free over video calls, and a promotional subscription for clients' files is offered at one dollar a month for three months.
Free software, and what it is for
Making a professional tool free is a strategy, not a gift. Intuit already sells QuickBooks to the small businesses those accountants advise, and giving the accountants a free home makes them the channel through which new clients arrive. The company says it is the first provider to reach the accounting profession at this scale, and points to its global app store, where developers can publish tools that plug into the software.
The benefit for an accountant in Jakarta or Manila is real if the software does what it says; the risk is that free today becomes a subscription once the practice depends on it, and the release does not say how long the free access lasts. Lars Leber, a vice president at Intuit QuickBooks, frames the move around Indonesia's 62 million small businesses and the accountants who help them grow. Whether free software actually reaches them, or mainly strengthens Intuit's grip on the accountants already using it, is the question the announcement leaves open.
