Advisor Awards-Tips: Save Yourself Time

If you have participated in the U.S. Awards process either last year (2025) or the prior year (2024) you have the potential for saving yourself considerable time in completing your 2026 Application form if you follow these tips.

Time Saving Tip # 1

Your time savings opportunity begins on Page 1 of the formal application with our question, "Is this your 'first time' participating in these Awards?"  If you participated in either the 2025 or 2024 Awards Process, and completed a formal application, some information in the 2026 Application may not be required unless you wish to update it.

Because you completed a 2025 or 2024 Awards Application form, certain information can be shared from the Application data you provided in those forms. As a result you will notice that many areas of this year's application are reduced or omitted (at your option) and you will be asked only if you wish to supplement certain data.

Just be certain to mark the appropriate response to the question (as shown above). Regretfully, we can't offer this option for Award participants who didn't complete 2024 or 2025 Application forms. Please know also, that we plan to have a similar option available to our International Applications for 2027.

Time Saving Tip # 2

Have your most current QuickBooks ProAdvisor Certificate already on your desktop (or a file where you keep it safely). By ensuring that you have already downloaded your most current QuickBooks (Level 1, Level 2 or Desktop) Certifications to your computer you will save yourself valuable time when you reach our question, "Verification of US ProAdvisor Certification" (Certificate Upload Required). You also need to ensure that you saved the file in an 'image file' format. 

The same holds true for Tax Advisor. Ensure that you have your Intuit Academy Tax Level 1 Certificate downloaded to your computer. That way, you can easily upload it into your 2026 Application form when you reach our question, "Verification of Intuit Academy Tax-Level 1 Certification" (Certificate Upload Required). Once again, ensure you saves your certificate in an 'image file' format.

Time Saving Tip # 3 

Take advantage of your 2024 or  2025 submitted applications. Over the last 15 years, data from our ProAdvisors tells us that very little changes in their applications from year to year with the exception of 'current certifications', 'training taken', and 'apps uses' unless they have experienced a significant growth in clients, or staffing.  Most ProAdvisors have already transitioned from Desktop to Cloud by at least 60% of their business; and those that have not remain almost 100% Desktop.  Since our scoring factors essentially remain the same from year to year, and some factors increment naturally, our 2026 scoring takes these factors into consideration.  We really only need to know what significant changes have changed in your practice to ensure you have a proper score for 2026.

Accordingly, we let you decide, do you want to complete the entire application form, or only areas we need to score you for 2026 along with areas you wish to supplement. Based on how you answered the question we addressed in Time Saving Tip # 1 above, you have such option if you completed a 2024 or 2025 Application form. And, our question, "'New' for 2026 - Pick Your Content Updates Option" begins this process with the same basic instructions I've just provided. But to save you time, a preclude you from having to complete all 23 pages of the application, we must have your "consent" to use your old information, and provide you with 'update opportunities' only.

To recognize these time saving opportunities, check the box: "I prefer (and consent) to only updating the information I specify below.

Time Saving Tip # 4

After having selected the consent option (shown above), the next question asks you to tell us those areas from your 2025 (or 24)Application need to be updated for 2026. Read each of the areas carefully and decide if you need to provide updates, be certain to check ONLY those are needing to be updated.

Even when you do, select an area for update, that doesn't mean that you are going to be redirected to the entire page of related questions. Rather, you may be asked just one or two questions to clarify your response. In those cases, the related questions will typically appear further down on the same page as this question.

Time Saving Tip # 5

Tell us what Award Category or Categories you believe best fit your QuickBooks ProAdvisor Practice. You better than anyone else know your practice, and you should understand our awards structure by now. We believe you are in the best position to determine which awards you most likely could qualify for. 

When combined with your responses to the prior question (discussed in Tip # 4), you could potentially turn on the Application page related to that category; however, it's possible that you might not depending on how your prior score (from 2025 or 2024)was ranked in those categories. 

Time Saving Tip # 6

If your tip 4 and 5 related question responses do turn on one or more category pages, you are still not required to answer those questions with one exception which I will address in a moment. Below is an example of a category-related application page. 

Even though your earlier responses turned-on this page, you can disregard the questions for this category simply by NOT sliding the toggle to the right to the "Yes, I wish to answer questions regarding this category" position. Without turning them on you should be able to proceed to the next page without issue. Once again, your prior score from 2025 or 2024 will stand for any such category unless you supplement it with 2026 responses. 

There is one exception to the option to skip a category-related page. That exception is the new page on for ProAdvisors with a Tax Practice (or also for Tax Advisors). We've crammed significantly more information into this inquiry for 2026 than in our 2025 application. As a result, if you wish to be considered for 'Tax'  you must complete the Tax-related application page if it is turned on, you do not have an option to turn it off; however, it should not display unless you provided indications that you had a ProAdvisor Practice with a Tax Emphasis, or you were an Intuit Tax Advisor.

Conclusion

If you qualify, you can save yourself considerable time in completing your 2026 Top U.S. Advisor Awards Application simply by following Tips 1 through 6 above. But remember, the choice to save this time is yours, you decide if you want Insightful Accountant to use your carry over information and related scoring from 2025 (or 2024) or if you want to build an entirely new Application for 2026.

2026 Award Program Sponsors

Sponsors are the lifeblood of these awards; without sponsors, the Top Advisor Awards would not be possible. We want to thank each of our 2026 Award Sponsors. 

You can find out more and support our 2026 Advisor Award sponsors by visiting our ProAdvisor Awards Sponsors webpage!