In June 2015, Intuit® celebrated the milestone of serving 1 million small businesses around the world. Today, a little less than two years later, we are thrilled to share that we’ve crossed another significant milestone, doubling that number to more than 2 million global QuickBooks® Online (QBO) customers now powering their prosperity on our platform!
It’s a milestone that we celebrate with you, our customers and partners, because none of this would be possible without you. Together, we’ve built the largest and fastest growing global small business ecosystem on the planet. We’re driving entrepreneurial success for yourselves, small businesses, self-employed workers and app developers who dare to dream. We’re unlocking the power of millions – 2.2 million in 192 countries to be exact – and giving you access to the world’s largest small business platform and the collective power that comes with it. With each new customer – and 1,500 new small businesses who start using QBO every day – our products get better, smarter and easier to use.
2 Million Strong … and Growing
“Our strategy of a vibrant “One Intuit Ecosystem” is gaining real momentum. More ecosystem connections between customers and products creates greater value for our customers, and sources of competitive advantage for Intuit,” said Brad Smith, Intuit’s chairman and chief executive officer, during a call with investors and media today. “Customer growth continues to accelerate, driven by improvements across our platform serving the self-employed, small businesses and accountants. We continue to drive strong growth in both our core U.S. business and international markets.”
There’s proof across the ecosystem that the QBO platform is thriving:
- Total QBO customers grew 59 percent in the last three months, up from 49 percent growth in the second quarter.
- Outside the United States, the QBO customer base grew 70 percent year-over-year to 433,000 subs, up from 61 percent growth in the second quarter.
- QuickBooks Self-Employed customers doubled to 360,000, up from 180,000 last quarter and 75,000 a year ago, driven by a unique integration with TurboTax that has surfaced nearly 4 million self-employed tax filers.
- QBO payroll and payments businesses grew 19 percent and 9 percent this quarter, respectively.
QuickBooks is also delivering unique benefits to customers:
- QBO learns and categorizes over 70 percent of transactions, saving small businesses an average of 11 hours each month.
- Small business owners who use QBO get paid twice as fast as those who don’t.
- 83 percent of QuickBooks customers say they are more confident about their financial data.
- 89 percent of small businesses say they are more successful when they work with an accountant. Intuit uniquely brings those two groups together serving 300,000+ accounting professionals worldwide, with 600,000+ QBO customers now linked to a QBO Accountant customer.
- There are 200,000 QuickBooks ProAdvisor accountants worldwide that are dedicated experts in QBO and ready to help you.
- The Intuit Developer Group has the world’s leading small business Apps Store, and offers best-in-class developer tools. Today, we have more than 1,545 apps on the platform to help you meet the unique needs of your business.
The Future of Your Business
In a blog post today, Sasan Goodarzi, executive vice president and general manager of Intuit’s Small Business Group, described a new version of “Main Street” that has emerged on global platforms such as Facebook, Amazon and eBay. There is now a global village built on, and connected through, technology rather than brick-and-mortar. Sasan argued that although mega-platforms have made this new global village possible, “The future belongs to those who have always made Main Street prosper – small business owners and entrepreneurs.”
But, the road to small business prosperity isn’t an easy one. We know you face stiff competition from global platforms and big corporations. We know it’s a struggle just to stay afloat, and it’s our duty at Intuit to level the playing field and perhaps even help tip the odds in your favor, and we’re in a unique position to do just that. In fact, based on the deep technical groundbreaking work Intuit has done over the years, we currently have about 100 pending patent applications and 30 artificial intelligence and machine learning-based products or features in production that are touching customers with real-time experiences. And, more are underway in our development pipeline.
As the QBO platform grows, so does our customers’ collective power. More customers means more data, and more data means more insights. More insights means we can provide a better, more holistic credit score for a small business and provide insights on pricing, payroll, payments and inventory strategies for small business owners that previously only big corporations could access. It’s just some of the ways we’re unlocking the power of many for the prosperity of one.
What Powering Prosperity Means to Us
Recently, Intuit employees who work in our small business products were asked to share what powering prosperity would mean to people in their lives who were small business owners. Here’s what they told us and why they have never been more inspired to deliver for them and for you:
“For my best friend, prosperity means being able to take his family on his boat that his barbershop paid for.”
“For my brother-in-law John, prosperity means being successful enough to give back to his community.”
“For my daughter’s ballet teacher, prosperity means the freedom to dance, learn and share the joy of creativity.”
“For Roger, prosperity means being able to send his daughter to college.”
Prosperity can mean a million things to a million different people. Whether it means buying a house, opening a new store, expanding their product line or sending their kids to college, we’re here to help make it happen. Tell us what prosperity means on social media, using the hashtag #MorePower2You.
