Name: Beyond Automation: Using AI to Amplify Advisory and Fuel Firm Growth
Uploaded: 2025-08-20T20:39:14.423Z
Duration: 1 h 3 min 8 s
Description: Beyond Automation: Using AI to Amplify Advisory and Fuel Firm Growth

Transcript for "Beyond Automation: Using AI to Amplify Advisory and Fuel Firm Growth": Hello, and thank you so much for joining me today for this session called Beyond Automation Using AI to amplify advisory and fuel firm growth. My name is Ross Olsen. I'm a senior solution specialist here at Intuit. Just means that I could help with the problems, challenges, the workflow questions that many tax and accounting and advisory firms have. And in that regard, excited to talk to you today, not just because I've seen some of the shift in technology over the last ten years, and I've been able to communicate those changes and help firms adapt those to their workflows, but I'll second this is something still kind of new. I know that AI is not just something that was discovered last night. I know this has been something that's been sometimes a buzzword, sometimes just brought up to be brought up without any real meaning. But in this case, I'm excited because it's an application, a tool, a utility that can be used to empower your firm's growth, whatever that definition of growth would be without getting giving too much away about what we're going to be talking about. But I'm in love with this experience of learning something new. I hope that you are too. But if you're not, if there's a little anxiety, some unsureness, maybe just set up some, skepticism, that's perfectly fine. I'm glad that you're here today with us, that we can go through some of these topics. Hopefully, alleviate some of that or encourage some of that if it's excitement in regards to AI and the tools that can be used. What are we gonna be talking about for the next hour or so, approximately an hour? We're gonna start with the subtitle of this session, amplifying advisory and fueling firm growth. This is going to talk about the position of tax accounting advisory in the market today with some statistics from your peers, firms like yours, as well as how this all kind of speaks to a broader mission of what success is for your firm. And so while it may be something broadly applicable that, hey. We can do something with this tool as a catalyst, as a a way to make things go more quickly. What's that actually mean for you? So that's kind of our preamble before we jump into the Intuit, solutions, the platform that you can utilize, and then how do those different platform pieces have AI incorporated into them into them. We're gonna go into that experience. And, yes, this will be a, a session, a webinar where we're gonna be a little bit more hands on. We're gonna be looking at Intuit stuff. And I show that, because I wanna make sure that those of you that are unfamiliar with it, if you have questions about it, you can see it firsthand. You just have to read about it, take our word for it. You can take a look at it as well. And I should say too that, we will have a question at the end if you would like to learn more about these different solutions after the fact of, like, a consultation. I'll have that as an option too at the end just so you were upfront. Now if this is something where you're not necessarily as interested in adopting into solutions and utilizing our our our sessions, there's still value to see how it's done. Knowledge is power. And so even if it's something where you're not quite ready today to utilize some of these different technologies, I think just being aware of broadly how AI is being incorporated into our industry of tax accounting advisory work is going to help you as you move forward, as you evaluate your workflow, but also to help you, potentially answer or solve for some of those questions in the future that you may not have right now. And that's where we're going to kind of end things with that strategy, best practices, where to go next, and what you can do, what you should be doing as a kind of conclusion piece to what we've seen in the session today. Some housekeeping. I know it's never too terribly exciting, but first and foremost, the audio will be exclusively from your speakers. There's no dial in option. We recommend Chrome or Safari. There will be a survey towards the end of the session. Highly, highly recommend you fill that out so that we know what we can do to get better or what you like that we can do more of. If you would like to watch this session recorded, you can use the same link you accessed today, the same URL from your registration email, and you'll be able to watch this recorded after the session concludes. There will be a few polling questions, I think, four polling questions. I'll try to call those out, so you'll have those and plenty of time to answer them, and you'll be able to answer those in the polls tab. That poll tab will only appear when the poll is active. You'll see it kind of on the screen as well for you to answer. Be aware that this session is educational in nature. It's not tax advice by any stretch of the word. And quite frankly, anytime we're talking any of these webinar pieces, any content, education content, it's a snapshot in time. I don't have to explain to all of you that things move very quickly in our industry. Sometimes sometimes things can change and can make entire training, education, or pieces redundant, if not entirely redundant, at least portions of them. So be aware that things can change and that there's no broad or one size fits all approach. This session is eligible for CPE credit, one CPE credit, zero IRS CE credit. Make sure you answer those polling questions at least one, but we appreciate if you answer them all. And if you meet these requirements, you'll receive a certificate within forty eight hours to the email that you registered with. If you don't see it within forty eight hours, check your spam. And if you still don't see it, go, send an email to [email protected]. Make sure you tell us what webinar you attended and the date as well. Hey. There's our first poll. It's what is your primary reason for attending this webinar. Take about thirty to sixty seconds to answer this polling question, and I'll use some just to mention too. To engage with me to my and my team behind the scenes, make sure using the chat, the q and a option, you can engage with us. That way, the chat, of course, you can talk amongst yourselves. The q and a, if you wanna reach someone here behind the scenes, myself, I'll pause from time to time and can answer some of those questions as well as the other members of my team here. Use that q and a option as well. And one final piece of just general housekeeping, if you ever have any issues with audio, you're probably not hearing me say this, but if you're having issues with audio or video or something's not quite working right, the screen freezes, I always recommend doing a refresh. You can usually find a arrow backwards arrow key in the browser that you're in or f five for most PCs will let you refresh the screen. If all else fails, just close the tab, go back to your email, and reopen the session from your email. Perfect. We're gonna go ahead and wrap this one up. Thank you for answering this question, but we're gonna jump right on in to our content. And we're gonna begin with Amplify Advisory and Fuel Firm Growth as our leading section here. Again, it's kind of the the, introductory remarks to this, why this is important, why AI can be this type of tool to help enable firms transition to advisory growth and advisory or growth for the firm in general. So first and foremost, the title of this session is as such because advisory is one of those areas that firms many firms are targeting right now as a growth area. So whenever you think of growing into an area or expanding, it generally means you have to create some type of a capacity, some type of ability to either expand the services you're offering or reduce something somewhere else to fit advisory in as a service or potentially better organizing yourself. Maybe you're offering advisory now, but it's not quite as defined or structured as it could be. And so it's not as much about the capacity of of including a service, but getting it into your more comprehensive workflow and engagement with your clients. All that to say is that if you are in the position you're not, wanting to expand in advisory or or seeing that that work grow, you're not alone. 79% of tax and accounting firms, expect that to be the case, to grow by over a third of the work they're doing today. Now what does that mean? Why is that kind of a target or a goal for growth? Well, there's a few reasons. First, higher revenue. That's a pretty big significant reason. Generally, advisory services can be a higher revenue, service when compared to things like compliance work that need to be done. And so a high number expect that they will have higher revenues as a result of advisory services. They also plan on growing their client base. That's always kind of a traditional mindset for growth. Right? Being able to have more clients, higher volume, that always really will also kind of circle back into higher revenue when you have more clients, but also potentially growing that base not just from a pure number point of view, but from a demographic point of view, from the types of clients that are seeking your services and what services you're providing. And the third one is a fantastic one, not just for you, but for everyone at your firm, it's that greater job satisfaction. In two fold there without me getting in and making my own interpretation too broad on these numbers, that's gonna be seen not just from, you know, being able to get the work done more easily, to have work being completed, something that's a little bit more defined and easy to do with the technology they have. But I think probably most apparent is this type of work, being a trusted adviser, has always been that ideal target, that sweet spot for so many of us in the industry. Because most people in tax and accounting and advisory, they tend to really, really appreciate their customers. They want to be seen as that person that can give them that advice, that can be a trusted adviser, and that's what really makes them tick. That's what keeps them going to give be that person, that expert that's assisting them throughout. So many firms, again, have always or can point to some type of advisory piece they may have provided a client, but a lot of individuals really, really thrive in that type of engagement, that type of experience with their clients because they want to be helpers. An advisory is one of the most immediate ways to help and show the impact of that your expertise and your advice to your clients' tax, business, general situation. Now other growth areas too about advisory is, again, the focus, the the maybe the the leader in where firms would like to eventually be of offering more or having a more expanded offering in that particular segment. I think this is gonna be something that's really personal to you or really dependent on your firm, your business, and what you define as growth, where you wanna move into. Maybe it is advisory, and that's perfectly fine. But just to say that AI tools as a catalyst is a catalytic tool, something that helps accelerate a process is something that is designed, I think, at its base level to increase capacity. What does that mean? Time. That's it. Give you more time. You're not having to do a task or you're being able you're able to do tasks more quickly through automation or through AI that helps power that automation. And so, frankly, anything that can help give you that time or set another way, any goal that can be achieved by you giving more times in general is a goal that can be achieved through AI. That's where it serves in that catalyst function. And so as I mentioned, that can be through automation, doing tasks more quickly, not having to manually do things. That's workflow, that's insights, communication, all those pieces that can be done without you having to work on those, to being more efficient. Some of this ties into automation to be able to do less with more, hopefully, not less with more and more with less, or to be able to work less, but get more output at the end of the day. So efficiency is something that's interesting, but be careful. That's always something where efficiency can be very subjective. You wanna make sure you have measurements. And oftentimes, AI can provide the ability to measure how the how it itself or how other AI tools are impacting efficiency and what your metrics are for measuring that. That helps not just to understand, hey. Is this working? But as you're refining, as you're reevaluating tasks to understand this is where we need to be at or this is where we need to continue to work to improve and build that capacity. And finally, with staffing, not to say that it's necessarily a a wholesale replacement for staffing, AI tools in general, but it is something that can help empower staff that can allow them to shift work from sometimes more menial, not as important, not as value producing work to more of that work that really gives more immediate concrete value to the firm and to your clients, which again comes back to yourself, to your firm as something that you're providing as well. So those areas are absolutely impacted by AI. Now this is not necessarily a warning. This is not me saying, hey. Ditch AI. Ditch automation. Go old school. Right? Grab grab the pens and paper. But it is a warning I like to mention because when you think of these, oftentimes, there's not we wouldn't say the majority, but there can be a segment of people that feel like this is a one size fits all approach. This is the band aid that will solve all of our problems. And I would just caution you to be aware that automation in general, when we're talking about tools that amplify, are blind. What does that what do I mean by that? They don't necessarily, by default, differentiate between good and bad. I've said this before in saying that, you know, automation in general will accelerate the good just as much as accelerate bad. Or said another way, automation speeds up your good processes, the the beneficial things, but it will also speed up those bad things, those things that cause the negative extraities, the things we're not wanting to have happen. And so when you're thinking about automation in your workflow in general, you need to make sure that you're taking the bigger picture. And if you're including additional services like advisory, make sure that's part of the entire process. Try not. I know it's difficult sometimes because some firms have different departments, different segments that work through accounting, bookkeeping, tax compliance, advisory, and different elements there within. But try to at least consider the workflow from beginning to end, again, as a holistic approach, the entire model. So that when you're understanding or trying to solve for problems, you can identify how that will be impacted and understand that an acceleration here may not be an acceleration in another spot. You don't want to improve in one area at the expense of, having reduced outputs somewhere else in your process. But that's just a general kind of automation rule. AI helps with that as well. This is another area where AI can be a catalyst in that regard because it can help because it has some level of intelligence, right, the artificial intelligence, it can help reduce some of those risks of those bad things happening. We didn't intend for this to happen. Oh, good. It kind of fought for us. It kind of was was already anticipating this could cause a issue somewhere down the road. And that's really just comparing general automation, push a button and go, versus something that's being able to do those same tasks, but maybe give it a little bit more consideration than blindly following an order. Right? Taking into account what you've done in the past, different situations that have occurred for yourself, your client, the work you're doing. That doesn't necessarily mean that AI, as much as it can be a catalyst, is always going to be an autopilot. And I know you've explored, I'm sure you have, or I hope you have explored other AI solutions that can do some work for you, that can get that work done. But even then, there's always some level of, we'll say, human element that's needed at least to ensure that everything is still running smoothly. So it's not a complete set it and go type of approach that you can have for most AI. Now maybe there's something fantastic out there that will have it. But even then, it's always kind of that, what's the old old standby approach? Trust but verify. Right? We can trust it's going to do the work correctly, but let's still verify it. And that trust also plays into the fact that it's gonna do some basic preventive to make sure we're not running across as many of those negative outcomes that we could potentially have. Now what does it mean for the catalyst when we're moving quickly, right, accelerating? They're just kind of all terms to just generally say it's going to assist you with those automated pieces and that done for you work so that you're not having to do it manually by yourself or that it can be something that's kind of preplanned to be done at set intervals. Maybe the most, beneficial kind of element or space you'll see this in is just integrations. When you have workflows, even just thinking about advisory of working in an advisory space, if you're just doing tax, just doing bookkeeping and accounting, having something that can integrate across of those across those different workflows is going to be extremely beneficial. Because, again, as I mentioned, think of the holistic approach. Think of the entire workflow, the entire not just necessarily engagement, because sometimes that engagement can be limited just to what general service at the moment's being provided, but all the touch points that client could potentially have with your firm when you're making, the considerations into advisory. The other piece is just general data maintenance. Oftentimes, what can really cause issues with firms is that administrative piece of we need to update client profiles, we need to make these changes and ensuring that they're updated across all those integrations, making sure that piece is completed. So that's not necessarily something that is, you know, a task to be done like a compliance work for tax returns, but it does take a lot of time and can work to make sure that you have accurate data for other processes that rely on that data, especially if those are also automated or, driven by AI. One area that could be would be data entry. In tax and accounting and advisory, all those pieces that were manual, this has been a continual shift. Right? Okay. Hand keyed, handwritten, hand keyed all the way through now to smart integrations with direct import capabilities. So you can take the data and not have to manually do that, but also the insights around that data. And that is especially, especially useful when you're getting into advisory so that you can give clients insights, information around their current situation, around their tax liabilities, their potential future benefit or goals, and and what they need to do to see out their goals in the long term and short term to achieve them. All of those insights are beneficial. But also on the flip side to that, insights for your firm that can help your firm run more effectively. They can point out areas that you may be able to grow or expand into. And as I mentioned before, how do you measure the outcome of these different tools that you're adding? How do you measure efficiency and treat this more of a scientific approach, observing and measuring than just, let's just try it and see how we feel? There's maybe pros and cons to both, but I would argue that having a more measured risk measured guidance, a measured decision using data is beneficial. And, yes, you can get that information sometimes manually without the use of AI, but it is one area that it can expand not just your work, but the transformation of your firm because you'll be have access to those insights much more quickly than you would have sometimes in the moment that you need a decision to be made. And so the cornerstone or the bottom line to all this is that it amplifies the work of professionals. Right? It's a catalyst. And you may say it's a tool. It can do things on its own. I don't I just, you know, prompt it. It can just run for some of these. Yes. There are areas. But, again, it is a tool at this point in time. It is something that can be used with and in conjunction a skilled professional, especially in our industry, to help amplify the work that you're doing, which will help increase your firm's capacity that will allow you to grow into an area of your choice or what we're seeing come in industry and advisory. So that is the kind of the preamble to this conversation as we jump as we turn next into looking into our into its into its online platform and the different tools inside of it that utilize AI to help amplify the work that you're doing in effort to those goals, advisory or otherwise. And so we're at our next polling question now. So take about one minute to answer this polling question. Which future AI integrations would be the most beneficial for your firm? So take a moment to answer this question. If you do choose other here let me go through the responses. Bookkeeping and accounting tasks or functions, tax prep functions, tax advisory tasks or functions, client communication pieces, data insights that can identify trends or patterns for your business. And I would say data insights for your clients would be more in that advisory task or function category if you're wondering, or other. And if you say other here, please let us know in the chat what that other would be, what that ideal AI integration could be or would be for your firm, and continue to use that q and a, that chat to engage with everyone here as well as my team behind the scenes with any questions that you may have. We're gonna go ahead and wrap this polling question up in three, two, and one, and we'll move on to our next section, the online the Intune online cloud platform. Now this is where we're gonna be turning again a little bit more into a hands on approach. Let's take a look, first at the platform so that you're aware of what I'm talking about when I may be mentioning some of these things in more detail later, and then moving into a tell and show style approach. So without any further delays, let's first make sure that we understand what this cloud plat what this online cloud platform is that I'll be talking about. The essence of it is this one line accounting tax preparation and advisory together. So having that workflow beginning to end is really the core function of this platform that we'll be looking at. We'll be spending a little bit more time by design and the tax preparation and the advisory components of this, but it's very difficult to have that conversation without kind of a all encompassing view of how these three different elements are all integrated or part of the platform. So what are these products, these solutions, these pieces of software we'll be talking about? Intuit QuickBooks Online and then in particular, Online Accountant, Intuit ProConnect tax, and Intuit tax advisor. Most of them, even if you were brand new, you may not familiar with what these solutions are, you could probably guess either by general knowledge or just in their name what they cover. But to give that a quick rundown so that everyone, again, is on the same page, starting with QuickBooks Online Accountant, this is what I've called the hub in the past, one on one or even in other webinar sessions to say that this is where you can have an interconnected platform really kinda blossom, if you'll excuse analogy and expression. It's where you can make, different tasks that you have across accounting, bookkeeping, time tracking, payroll, invoicing and payment bill pay, all connected and integrated with the other two solutions that we talked about, Intuit ProConnect tax and into Tax Advisor, but also having an app store that can allow you to really customize this experience with other software solutions that will help enable the workflow that your firm needs, integrations with, CSMs, integrations with different utilities that help you and your clients, your bookkeeping and accounting clients, your payroll clients, time tracking clients, all maintained through QuickBooks Online accountant, which are, again, connected to QuickBooks Online users as well. One of the key benefits to having this be the hub or the central place is that this client list is shared. So as you're adding clients, removing clients, and as we get into even permission levels and things like that, those individuals that have access to a client will be shared across this platform, and those clients themselves will be seen in both places. So as you get to the administrative side of this, you're not having to manage multiple client bases across the books to tax, to advisory workflows that you'll be undertaking. ProConnect tax is, yes, tax preparation, tax planning and compliance, and more. It also provides a way to kind of keep client information contained, especially as it relates to that tax preparation of collaborating with them to collect documents, providing a hub for them to access those documents, but also a repository for all of that data contained inside of ProConnect, as well as being integrated directly connected to into a tax adviser, which uses those tax returns from ProConnect tax to build out advisory plans and strategies, automatically, getting those insights again through AI to say, these are the strategies that are most applicable. This is the potential tax savings for your client, and then generating those strategies, those plans as well, those customized plans. It is, again, included with ProConnect tax. So there's the workflow from books to tax to advisory that we'll be working on or looking at. And when it comes just in general, when it comes to utilizing many of the things that we're going to be talking about today, ProConnect tax will be more of in the spotlight and into tax adviser will be more in the spotlight. But it is good to mention this point that as part of that integration, as part of that key piece, right, taking data from QuickBooks online account and from those clients, which QuickBooks itself has AI agents and tools to help your business clients better manage their bookkeeping and accounting pieces. But it will help to integrate that data to prepare their returns. So you're not having to do that duplicative entry and have that data mapped directly into ProConnect tax. And then from ProConnect tax, we'll have some different utilities, AI utilities that will help enable a more efficient, a more, AI driven workflow before ending with into a tax adviser. We'll take the data that may have been prepared at different stages. AI has touched it, but now we're gonna analyze that tax return. We use additional tools and pieces, additional generative AI pieces to build out that strategy and plan for your client as well. So that should be the mapping, the kind of beginning to end process you can see. But as we go through next and look at how this how these AI tools are applied in these solutions, again, in particular, ProConnect tax and into tax advisor, you'll be able to hopefully appreciate that that's just one element. But just like I've encouraged you to kind of holistically consider your entire workflow, you should be aware that holistically, AI is going to be is going to be affecting multiple elements of the workflow, the stages here, as you're doing books to tax to advisory workflows. So something to keep in mind that just because there's one element at one stage doesn't mean that holistically AI is not a more significant component of the process beginning to end. And that's what we turn next is looking at these different AI applications to discuss them and also to jump in and take a closer look. As I am showing these, I'll give kind of a the format we'll be doing is I'll show a little bit of some info, some details about the tool. Then we're going to look inside of the program at that tool, to take a closer look to see what it's all about. So I'll be going back and forth a little bit in this section. As we do so, feel free, please, ask any questions you might have in the q and a, and we'll have myself or the team behind the scenes to help answer those. So please do that as we move along. Perfect. Our first AI tool we're gonna look at is the intelligent data import. I didn't I didn't bury the lead here. This is the most exciting. It's in ProConnect tax. The ability to automatically apply data from source documents and to do it not just in kind of a OCR, you know, identifying input, spitting out the output, but actually contextualizing the input, being able to learn from it, to be more accurate as time goes on, and also to do things that sometimes is not are not as a bit sometimes not as capable in more basic, some OCR, some ability to take source documents and import them into returns rather software can provide. And I I know tax software, tax preparation generally isn't terribly exciting. This is one of those solutions that really does excite people, and it's because it's probably one of the biggest time drains, right, to manually have to do that data entry. To I mean, sometimes I mean, there's still data kept manual. I know spreadsheets are commonly used, but no one really likes manual entry. No one the errors that can happen, the time it takes, the review process still has to take place regardless of who is doing that data entry for you. And, really, this is just one of those again, don't wanna say that any work for your clients is low value or not as important, but it's also something that is not is compliance. It has to be done. It doesn't provide that higher value. What tax and accounting professionals like of providing those insights and giving that information to their clients. And that is why it's one of the more exciting functionalities or features in the program to be able to take source documents, bring that data into the return, have it be automatically identified where it needs to go in the return is a huge time saver you see there. Saves more than thirty minutes on average. That's a very, very substantial amount of time. Now like anything else, your simple returns, right, well, it may save you a little bit of time. It's not necessarily complicated to enter a w two. But if you're more complicated returns or in scale, each return saving you a little bit of time will save a very significant amount of time as tax season or as the work you're doing for your clients go forward. So it's it does add all those small things. All those small inefficiencies can amount to a huge increase in capacity once you realize where those inefficiencies are occurring. As an aside, that's also why it can make it difficult as we get to our how to apply this stuff towards the end. I want you to be aware that if we're looking at these different pieces or as you're thinking about your workflow and how AI can be incorporated, oftentimes, you're looking for a big glaring sign that says, this is where we can improve. This is the area that needs to be changed. Most of the time, if you have that, it'll be a feeling first. Maybe you have data to support it too. But it's that thing that no one likes to do. It's the thing that people go, no. We've gotta do that today. But what I think you'll find if you get, again, more into that holistic mindset looking beginning to end, you can identify those things that aren't necessarily terrible. They're not exciting. They're not something that you may like to do, but they don't elicit that same response in some of the other work you're doing that you really are unhappy about. But finding those little inefficiencies add up over time. So while you may be able to immediately tackle those bigger challenges, those, oh, those frustrating things in your workflow, keep an eye out for those smaller inefficiencies, those little things that on their own, not a big deal. That's not so bad. But expand those across how many times you're having to do that, And now you're identifying some real gains that could have been hidden under the surface had you not stopped to realize those. So back to where we were then with this particular tool, and that's one main component of this to say, for your complex clients, wonderful. All this is gonna be automated for you. For your simple clients, that doesn't save that much time. But in bulk or in in, over time, through kind of an economies of scale. Right? Having that expanded amount of time saved for each instance can be more substantial than what you may realize at first. This tool and I'll jump into I will jump into the platform here. Let me shift things around. Let's see. There we are. And let me just move my application. Here we go. So this tool is something that, can be utilized with other utilities inside of ProConnect, like into a link or integrations with, things like Drive and Box. But, as we go into a client's return, you'll be able to see that it's pretty substantial or a pretty substantial way to automate the work being done. Let me jump into a return here. Oops. Let me sign in. I've so I've got myself signed out. That's okay. Perfect. Now that we're back up and running, we'll jump back into a client's return just to show you this particular process. And I'll zoom in just a little bit. It's not as important for us to see the data entry here, but wanted to highlight the ability to take these documents and import them into the return. Now as I mentioned, you can upload these documents. Your client can share them with you. But being able to take these documents and import them and not have to manually enter them is a substantial benefit to many firms. And this process can be done, again, more traditionally where let's take a look at the document before we do that import process. Kind of a a key functionality that also beneficial for those that are, we'll say, more traditionalist. Even if you're not wanting to go through the process of importing this without reviewing anything first or you're wanting just to see the source document side by side, having that built in while not an AI tool is still beneficial to getting these returns done more quickly. In this case, though, for bringing in this source document, I can choose to create a brand new w two or to update one that already exists. And as you work through this input, it's gonna jump to where those these input are coming from. And so you can see it's identifying these amounts. It's putting them in the correct location. And for something like a w two, there's a number, not as many insights there, but this insight is not just about where information is going to go on the return, but the accuracy as well. We have the benefit here of looking at a document that's, you know, fairly clear, fairly easy, or good resolution to to read, but being able to take that information and do and see if any adjustments being made to make corrections on that and learn as time goes on. In addition, just as a side workflow here, while you this will import all that information that's located on the return, you do have the option of adding any additional information that maybe wasn't reported or hadn't been included on the return as well. So it allows the flexibility of working with an AI assisted tool to import that information. But if there still are any changes that need to be made or additional input that's maybe not on the source document, you don't have to leave this workflow and come back or do that separately. It's all incorporated as part of one workflow that you can then take and import directly into the tax return. And, again, you can see the different documents supported here. You can do this process of uploading documents in batch, which you can then even again, I know outside of AI tools, but you can merge documents, you can take documents and split different pages out of them. And as you see here, all the documents uploaded, I can import those in batch. So I don't have to do this one at a time. I can go through all of my source documents to import. Again, an AI tool that helps not just identify, apply where they need to go, but also, again, making that accuracy, over time as it learns very, very impressive as a AI tool that helps save time. And we'd like to think we're we don't make very many of them, but also reduce some of those errors too, not just through the automatic detection, but that review process that lets you see the information side by side, in in time, maybe step by step approach, whatever works best for you, helps reduce errors as well, which are another area that on the surface may not be as easily identifiable as a time sync as something that's reducing capacity, but definitely will benefit in the long run. Wonderful. Perfect. Let's go back to our slides. So continuing on here, our next tool we wanna look at is the predictive navigation. This is a very, very useful tool that is going to help, create a more intuitive and streamlined workflow. Inside the program, you may see it. It's called Smart Nav. This is, you know, short for Smart Navigation. And it's going to learn what you've done, what other firms like you have done when they're doing work in the program to start suggesting, anticipating where you need to go next. It'll identify again those patterns so that it can see, oh, this is where we think you're gonna need to head to next, as a suggestion of some place you can go. And it's analyzing those screens, what input, the specifics of the return, to do so. And the power in this isn't always necessarily in the first use. It still is beneficial because it's giving you good suggestions if you're not accustomed to ProConnect tax, if you've not done data entry in ProConnect tax before. But it's going to, over time, evolve into a really efficient tool to reduce your time spent in the return, reduce the learning curve when you bring on new staff later, but also help those experienced professionals navigate with better speed by more ease by just utilizing that guidance. And so, again, something that may be at first isn't always as immediately beneficial, but let me jump over to that again. And we'll take a look at this inside of a return here. Perfect. Let me make sure that I'm in my right account. Perfect. And this is a simple one to see. But once you once you see this, you maybe have seen this if you're using something like ProConnect today. But as you get into a return, as you're working the return, it's really part of the navigational tools, utilities that aren't all AI of being able to see the table of contents, see where things are at. But then as you're working through the input, as you're going through and making changes, it will identify where do preparers often visit next. Again, putting a lot of significance or weight on what you're doing. So as you first start out, maybe more general recommendations, but it will start to adapt and learn your workflow so that you can use this in addition to the table of contents and the input screen to see where you need to go next to do that data input. Again, data input that may not necessarily be needed if you're importing information, importing those source documents into the software, but as a tool that will grow with you over time and help expand again your efficiency as time goes on. Our next tool is the client snapshot with Intuit Assist. This snapshot is something that you'll find within the client profile. And in general, the benefit to this or the the clear values that as you're growing, as you're small, having to manage even just your clients that you have as a sole proprietor even, so it run will run the gamut, it can be difficult, unwieldy to keep that personal, that understanding that your clients are really looking for to have that trusted adviser, that relationship that they know that you know their situation. And to manually pull that information, to get up to speed before a client meeting, before advisory can take some significant time on your own. So up to two hours is what we've been told. So it can run the gamut, of course. Sure. Sometimes it's only a few minutes if you've just worked with them and you're really familiar. But for some of those clients, maybe those that aren't as year round, that are a little bit more transactional, that can be a long and tedious process. This helps take that information in their return, summarize it for you to give you a snapshot with IntuitAssist, our, AI utility inside of both ProConnect and Intuit Tax Advisor, advisor to say, here is this client situation, get you up to speed as quickly as possible into their tax situation. Again, maybe this is providing them advisory services. You're wanting to get a quick understanding that snapshot as to your pitch to why advisory services would be beneficial to them, or maybe you're getting ready to work on their next return or work on something for them that's due as more of a compliance piece. So it can be either not just something simply for advisory, but a wonderful tool that will help identify and pull that information out quickly so that you're not having to manually retrieve or hunt down that information. And then last but not least, I know I said I started. I didn't wanna bury the lead at the beginning, but I've kind of I've kind of had a good bookend here when it comes to the beginning and end into a tax adviser as an entire platform in and of itself, an entire utility software, tax advisory utility is something that really, at its core, incorporates AI and generative AI to analyze your clients' returns. So it's going to look at what has happened with their their return. Doesn't have to have been e filed necessarily, but the return as it exists in ProConnect tax. And it will look at that data inside of ProConnect tax and automate strategies, to help provide you insights around the client, but also to help catch things that maybe you're having to do manually to identify trends or or, flags that would indicate this is a strategy that could be used for, the client. It also has Intuit Assist built into it as well. So if you're while we may suggest some strategies, maybe you'd like to go a little bit deeper and use Intuit Assist to say, which of these strategies are recommended for this client that could be best utilized by this client? And Intuit Assist would be able to provide you with those additional insights with that information so that you can better provide those insights to your clients or better identify those applicable strategies based on your client's specific situation. Also, it automatically incorporates any legislative tax law updates into those plans and projections. So it's harnessing, the power to create various scenarios from return impact to maximum contributions or deferral amount. All of that is included, so you're not having to say just a very basic bare bones planning conversation, but more of a truly dynamic, a robust conversation that gets to the core of how your client can benefit. Again, leading off of that, oftentimes, some of these insights, as we saw the snapshot, we can start to see different things that are gonna be beneficial. But having these personalized plans and reports be generated for your client automatically with the ability to customize them to make those changes as needed, and make them more personalized can be done. But by default, they're generated automatically personalized based on all of this data so that you're not having to spend time just presenting this to your client. But what I like best about that too is it's giving your client those insights with clear impact statements, steps that need to be taken as actionable items, and the return on investment that they're getting as a result of these tax strategies. So it directly communicates value to clients. And to underscore all of this, just to reiterate, all of this is part of one connected platform. So you're not having disparate solutions you're having to go to, but having these clients beginning to end to be able to even see by using Intuit Tax Advisor which clients could best benefit from tax advisory just because they're already clients inside of ProConnect tax, inside of QuickBooks Online Accountant. That's a true power of having an integrated beginning to end platform that incorporates all of these workflows, making that what we started with, right, that books to tax advisory workflow, not just a pipe dream, but a reality. Our third polling question is I guess I did mention this, and we just talked about it too within to tax adviser. It's also in that snapshot view for, ProConnect. What's the name of the generative AI powered financial assistant found inside of Intuit tax adviser? Also found in ProConnect tax in that snapshot. Is that Intuit intelligence, Intuit assist, Intuit helper, or Intuit tax adviser adviser, the ITAA? So take about a minute to answer this question, and we'll move on kind of to our conclusion piece. And I'll have one more polling question for you as well. If you have any questions or would like some more details about those other tools we just looked at, we can take a look there as well. And before I move on to kind of our wrap up, we are gonna jump into into tax advice. Like I said, I want it to be a show and not all tell, so we will take a quick look inside of there so you can get at least an initial glance, especially those tools, the AI powered functions of Intuit tax adviser. Okay. Let's wrap this polling question up here, and let me switch things over and move into our into tax adviser. Okay. Perfect. So we are looking, actually, already inside of a tax plan for a client. And so by default, as I mentioned, this is gonna pull information directly from the client's individual return. We can see that information and, of course, make any, additional changes as needed to those baselines. But this is also where we're gonna see all of the strategies suggested based on that pre strategy baseline. So it's gonna automatically generatively create these different strategies and generate the potential tax savings as a result of these strategies, allow you to review the plan, and also create, again, this automated client report that will show those detail, the summary information, the high level details, but also as you get into those different strategies for your clients of giving them what steps are needed, what is the what are the insights or the learnings around these different strategies and allowing you again, all this is automatically generated, but allowing you to customize any of this if you need to change a description or something a little bit more stylistic like the colors, the logos, all of that can be updated as well. And then as mentioned also, just a quick chat here with Intuit Assist. This is where you can engage with Intuit Assist to ask questions like show me the top three retirement strategies or business strategies or convert a schedule c to an s corporation. You can ask these questions, and we'll give you more of those insights again based on what it is seeing in this return, this, plan, this into tax advisor plan based on what it sees inside of ProConnect tax, and then to underscore this as well as you're looking at your clients, being able to see all of your clients with potential tax savings or potential strategies that they could utilize allows you to get a a high level view and a deeper dive into which clients can best benefit from those advisory services. Wonderful. We're gonna jump then into, like I said, kind of our conclusion or wrap up here. And it's, you know, strategies and best practices, how to get started, where to go next. It's, of course, as we've seen beyond just chat bots and you're making images for us. It's something that has the ability, has the powers, what this the the line says here, but it has the the potential to enhance almost every aspect of your work. Before you can decide what that means, though, or how it would enhance, you need to make sure that you have a very clear definition of what that growth or success would be. What are you trying? Again, I argue that it always goes back to capacity giving you more time or capability to expand, grow, meet your success metric. But what are those? What are those measures of success? Where do you want to be? Is it advisory? Like so many other in in the industry, is that where their business or where your business is taking you? And then if that is the case, how do you measure that? Right? What's the old saying, a goal without a plan is just a dream? Having this be a strategic, a more scientific approach will help you understand not just which tools can best be used by you, but what the impact they are having is. And then explore those tools that help address the needs that you have. Again, from a holistic point of view, sometimes the big problems are more apparent, but sometimes those little things add up over time. So what tools help you to streamline your processes, reduce errors, and elevate that client experience? Because all of those things, generally, some element of those levers will bubble up to growth or success for almost all firms. But what type of streamline process? What types of errors do you wanna reduce? How do you wanna elevate the quality of client service? Those are the questions to be answered. And then remember, this is an evolution. This is not abandoning or relegating the skills you already have. I don't have to I don't it shouldn't even included this line because I know that you know this. But all this is really saying is this intersection that we're at of talking about technology and skilled individuals and those two things coming together, while AI may be the newest technology component, that has always been the formula for successful firms. And, generally, if you wanna take that a little bit further, it's been the element for successful firms because it helps them better engage with their clients, deliver more for their clients, and create a significantly improved customer experience over whatever the prior state was. We're not just talking AI. Back in time. Go as far back as you want. It will elevate that client experience. And so the where to go next, the how to get started, shift it from whether you should, first of all, and change that mindset to how you'll adopt that technology. Where would it best fit for you? And in general, make it a cornerstone of your firm's growth and success. And that will be really the foundation of utilizing these technologies to grow, to meet your success metrics, and to use them for, again, your client's benefit. We have our last polling question here. It goes to exploring those different tools. So we talked about some of the tools inside of Intuit ProConnect, inside, Intuit Tax Advisor. And so if you would like a personalized sales demo or consultation about what you learned in today's training, those different tools inside of ProConnect tax and into Tax Advisor, please answer yes here. Otherwise, no. You can also explore this, you know, on our website. We have resources available to explore these a little bit further if you'd like to do some of your own, investigating. You can definitely do that as well. Alright. So we do want to wrap things up here. So let's go back as we finish this poll. I think we'll leave it up probably in the background for a little bit longer, but we'll continue on here. Just our our final wrap up piece here. Again, as I mentioned, if you want to learn a little bit more, definitely go to our community to learn more. If you need help with anything, you can reach out to our account and support team as well with a link included there to learn more about our software as well as other, you know, thought leadership pieces, how to grow and improve your business. You can reach out or you can explore more of our resources in education center and the tax pro center to hear from people like me that maybe work for Intuit, but also your peers, other tax and accounting professionals. Wonderful. Thank you so much for your time here today. I hope it was valuable to you. I hope it's something where you got to the very least see some of these AI tools in action and helped you frame how you can think about incorporating them again from a holistic approach from beginning to end for your workflow, again, all in benefit to your clients. So thanks again. Hope you have a wonderful rest of the day, and until next time. Bye for now.