How Intuit QuickBooks Is Shaping The Future of Small Business Finances

Intuit QuickBooks has long been the leading software helping small business owners manage their cash flow and bank account balances.

Over the years it’s extended those services to payroll, accounting help and more.

Recently Intuit QuickBooks is moving into directly providing financial services to its customers as well.

Ramon Ray, small business expert and founder of SmartHustle.com interviewed with Rob Daniel, Director of Product Management at Intuit QuickBooks. His career has taken him from Facebook, to Uber and now to Intuit.

At Intuit he’s tasked with building relationships with banks and ensuring Intuit QuickBooks can help business owners improve their cash flow.

 

 

Cash Flow Management is Tough

All companies have cash flow challenges.

Large companies are so big they can rely on their size and internal teams of professional money experts to help.

They have a controller, CFO, teams of accountants and etc.

They have existing relationships with banks and they have millions to billions of dollars of revenue that banks will pay more attention to them, than very small businesses like us.

Small businesses are owner-operators.

Rob explained that not only are we serving our customers and creating our services but we’re also balancing our books and have challenges funding our growth.

Intuit’s Evolution – Software to Cash Flow

Historically Intuit Quickbooks has provided software that helps its customers connect to multiple bank accounts and manage their cash flow in one location.

The software lets business owners see a full picture of their money.

Intuit QuickBooks continues to evolve and has recently launched two new offerings:

“Get Paid Up Front” and “Early Pay”

These two new offerings are moving Intuit QuickBooks a step closer to not only providing software to help business owners manage their money but also helping them get the CASH they need to grow.

With Get Paid Upfront, companies no longer have to wait 30, 60 or 90 days to get paid, after they invoice a client. Intuit QuickBooks will advance them the funds, in effect a loan, at a rate of 3%.

They can get paid almost immediately, via Intuit QuickBooks .

With Early Pay, employers have the option to give their employees access to money between pay cycles.

For example, via QuickBooks Payroll, the business has the option to pay their employees between pay cycles

With Intuit QuickBooks Early Pay, employees can opt to get paid earlier.

This early pay option is not only great for employees but it could be a good tool for employee retention as well.

Quickbooks Knows Who You Are

When applying for financing from your bank or other financial institutions, they don’t know you.

Therefore you have to submit a lot of data to them.

However, Intuit QuickBooks already has your data and the data of many of your customers, for that matter.

They are able to use this data to provide funding to you much faster and easier than other financial institutions.

Intuit Quickbooks Future

Rob explained that Intuit QuickBooks can be expected to offer even more access to capital and credit options.

Currently, Intuit QuickBooks has a term loan business, for larger sums of money. Expect Quicbkbooks to soon offer revolving lines of credit. To be used, or not used, when needed – on-demand capital.

Intuit QuickBooks already has a checking account product, we can expect a credit-based offering coming out as well. Intuit QuickBooks can be expected to offer not just checking or bank card services but also credit (or spend) services as well.

Automation in finance is going to be another powerful feature we can expect from Intuit QuickBooks . Understanding and saving for sales tax and other taxes is a challenge for many small businesses.

Intuit QuickBooks is working on solutions to automate money savings and set money aside. Automatically setting aside money for customers based on their sales volume. “Money movement automation”.

What’s also exciting is that Rob and his team want to provide simpler services to business owners who are not even “in business” yet.

Intuit QuickBooks has a current solution, Money by Intuit QuickBooks . These business offerings will increasingly be available to people who might not be formally in business. Such as babysitting, landscaping or etc. Intuit calls this “early starts”.

To enable them to “put their toes” in the water of financial services that are customized just for their beginning stage of business.

Finally, Rob’s very excited about Intuit’s recent acquisition of Mailchimp. To help business owners GET NEW customers with Mailchimp, finance your growth, manage your business and run your entire business in the background. The entire business run from ONE location, all within Intuit QuickBooks .

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