Intuit announced the release of its latest new product,
The web-based product helps accountants to develop specific tax plans for their clients. The software development leader, Shekinah Cravens, principal product manager at Intuit, said the product reflects the profession's shift towards client advisory services. Today's tax professional, she said, is not looking for one-and-done compliance engagements, but for strategic partnerships with clients where guidance can be provided year round.
That's the theory behind how ITA works: Once a user has logged into the web-based service, they select a client to work with and set their starting baseline information — things like W2 or 1099 information or rental income. This information is then run through a library of tax strategies (Cravens said they currently have 27 strategies and plan to add more as time goes on) and the program outputs "Insights" about the client. It might point out, for example, that someone has maxed out their 401(k) contributions and so should back off, or that they could stand to put more into their health savings account.
The program allows for the creation of custom strategies, which Cravens said was intended to provide more flexibility for accountants. ITA also allows for toggling strategies on or off, which she said was done to facilitate scenario planning, saying accountants usually want to know how something would look with or without a particular strategy.
After then reviewing the overall strategy for the client, the program finally outputs two reports. One is a shorter proposal outlining the plan and how much money the client could save, which Cravens said would be used to pitch the client on advisory services. The other is a more detailed, granular report that explains the strategy in depth, which is intended to be given to the client once the engagement begins.
Craven pointed out that the reports, with their simple presentation of information, are part of an effort to keep the client in mind as well as the accountant when it came to the product features. She also added that the product was designed to be scalable, noting that a lot of tax practices are only just starting out with client advisory services. In interviews with tax professionals, she said, Intuit observed that, in a lot of practices, it was only the main firm owner doing advisory engagements while everyone else was doing compliance work. With automation features taking a lot of the grunt work out of advisory, she said that such engagements can be done by many more people, expanding the firm's ability to offer advisory services.
"We kept that in mind, so you will notice with our product, the focus has been on automating the whole workflow. Our focus has been on standardizing different strategies, on generating estimated tax savings, and ensuring communications with the client are simple and sure and [the client] knows what has to be done," she said.
Craven conceded that Intuit has "not really had advisory as its domain" but now is "really homing in on tax advice." She said, though, that in the long term the company does plan to focus more on software that supports advisory work in general, and this new product is reflective of this shift.
"I would say Intuit will be going after that … . We're focused on automation of compliance work but also on shaping the industry towards advisory, and we think those two steps go hand in hand. Once you automate compliance work, the next thing accountants are going to need are tools helping share advice to their clients," she said.
Craven said that — while the product shares a design aesthetic with other Intuit products, and was built using the company's own design library — the program, and the strategies and workflow automations that it contains, were built from the ground up.
"I would say it was a combination of both. We were able to leverage Intuit's strengths and expertise to bring this product to life, but we also had to build a lot of this content from the ground up," she said.
ITA, which was two years in the making, supports federal taxes and state taxes for primary state of residence. It also integrates with Lacerte and ProConnect Tax. Pricing is based on client credits; one purchased credit equals one client, for whom the accountant can generate an unlimited number of tax plans within a calendar year.
