Intuit Enterprise Suite: The All-in-One Solution or Just Another Bundle?

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Brace yourselves, folks! Intuit has just dropped the Intuit Enterprise Suite, an AI-powered, all-in-one extravaganza designed for those larger-than-life businesses that have outgrown their training wheels.

What is Enterprise Suite? The Intuit Perspective

As companies grow, their needs become a tangled mess of high-maintenance account management, juggling a circus of software, and losing precious time hopping between QuickBooks, third-party tools, and those beloved spreadsheets.

Enter the Intuit Enterprise Suite: your supposed one-stop-shop for cutting through the chaos. It "promises" to slash those mind-numbing, repetitive tasks with streamlined processes, supercharge productivity with automation that would make a robot blush, and serve up insights faster than you can say 'decision-making.' Here's what it's packing:

• A multi-entity financial management dashboard that's like a financial crystal ball
• Mailchimp's marketing magic to woo and keep your customers coming back for more
• AI that handles cash flow management and planning like a pro, while keeping an eye on your business performance 24/7
• Lightning-fast payments with invoices that practically pay themselves, plus automation for accounts payable and receivable across all your entities
• Tailored solutions for industries like construction, non-profit, service, and project-based businesses that think they're special

Intuit is rolling out the red carpet for the $89B mid-market businesses that are drowning in operational chaos, thanks to their patchwork of services or outrageously priced ERPs.

Want all the juicy details? Check out the press release here if you dare. Intuit also has a pretty good article on its Firm of the Future website.

What's Dan's Take On This?

On the surface, this seems like the packaging or bundling of Intuit's Online integrated systems, namely, QuickBooks Online (it's not clear which flavor or if you can mix and match), Mailchimp, QB Payments, QBO Payroll, and QB Bill Pay, all connected together by some twine of generative AI product, Intuit Assist and Spreadsheet Sync for multi-company reporting. Personally, I haven't had the chance to play with it yet, but as time goes on, I'm sure there will be more real-world information out there, other than a shiny new press-release. 

(Update: I did attend a webinar discussing the new features - I wrote a new Blog article you can check out here)

I'm reminded of the launch of QBO Advanced in 2018 where the 4 major advancements were, shall we say, underwhelming. To be fair, since then, QBO Advanced has had a lot of development, and has included some significant improvements with its core feature set, which has come with an $85 a month price increase since it's launch as well.($150 in 2018 - $235 currently)

Do I want all my eggs in one basket?

The feature advantages of handling these core tasks that involve money movement are numerous. Having your payroll inside of your QBO company file has a distinct advantage when it comes to project-based job costing, for example, QBO Payments automatically being recorded, deposited, and reconciled once the invoice is paid, dnd a QBO invoice for one user being automatically turned into a Bill for another user is a pretty slick time saving feature. Intuit's own services can be granted a slightly unfair advantage when you when you literally own the end-to-end experience. Then there's the AI component to streamline workflows even further. I can imagine a world where Mailchimp would be able to analyze customer trends and create a specialized marketing offer for repeat business and craft the messaging in a variety of tones. Data is the newest commodity these days, and all of your business data is accessible, which is a double edged sword.

With all of your key workflows surrounding the movement of money, that requires a significant amount of trust. Intuit takes data protection very seriously, but it doesn't take long to find out a horror story or two when it's come to challenges Intuit has had with money movement. NSF holds on Payroll, ACH funding delays, bill payments being sent to the wrong place, are just few examples of how Intuit has handled or mishandled money movements in the past, and if you have all of your workflows in one place, you only need one bad egg to spoil the entire experience. You might be better off compartmentalizing your workflows and dealing with the integration disconnects so that you can be nimble with another service provider if you need to make changes. 

How much is this?

Like most answers, it's an adult diaper answer.....it depends. Intuit is not announcing the cost, because it will vary from suite to suite, but I'm sure they will be able to offer some pretty good discounts the more services in the suite that you have.

Another facet is sometimes these bundles aren't as cost effective as they appear. Case in point, the QBO Payroll offering, where if you opt into Premium or Elite, you get QB Time included, but every employee pays the premium for that QB Time access whether they are using it or not.

Bottom Line

Well it's shiny and new, and we are first greeted with all of the promises of the Intuit marketing machine to say how great it is. time will tell if the juice is worth the squeeze. Stay tuned for more as time goes one.