Streamlining Our 2026 Awards - Part 3

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a small part of our efforts to "streamline the 2026 Awards Application" in part 1 of this series. During the interim, I wrote about the New Tax Advisor Award and how that new Awards' Group' fits into the overall scheme of the 2026 (and future) awards.

For 2026, Insightful Accountant will recognize the following four Award Groups:

              The Top 100 (U.S.) QuickBooks ProAdvisors,

              The Top 25 (U.S.) Up-n-coming QuickBooks ProAdvisors.

              The Top 50 International QuickBooks ProAdvisors, and

              The Top 25 (U.S.) Tax Advisors

For general information about the requirements related to these groups, refer to my article, "Preparing for the 2026 ProAdvisor Awards – Current Certifications".

Insightful Accountant will also recognize^* the ProAdvisor of the Year (from the U.S. Top 100) along with the QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, QuickBooks Educator, QuickBooks Social Media Evangelist, QBO/IES Mid-Market Specialist, QBO App-ologist, QBD Integrations Specialist, Niche Practice, and Client Accounting Services, ProAdvisor Categorical recipients—additionally, the Top Up-n-Coming ProAdvisor and the International ProAdvisor of the Year, as well as the Top Tax Advisor for 2026.

Nominations and Applications for 2026

To accomplish this task, Insightful Accountant will utilize three online (survey) forms for 2026. These are the 2026 Awards Nomination form, the U.S. Awards Application form, and the International Awards Application form. The following provides a synopsis for each of these three forms.

2026 Awards Nomination form – Third-parties may nominate a U.S. or International ProAdvisor, as well as a U.S. Tax Advisor. ProAdvisors or Tax Advisors do not need to 'nominate' themselves using this form; they can proceed directly to the appropriate U.S. or International Application forms. The nominating party must have sufficient information, including the nominee's contact information, to finalize a nomination. When individuals (qualified for nomination) are notified, they will be advised of the nominating party.

U.S. Awards Application form – This form is restricted to applicants from the United States or its territories. Only U.S. 'Certified' QuickBooks ProAdvisors and 'Intuit Certified Level-1 Tax' (at a minimum) Advisors may use this form to apply for the awards process. Other minimum requirements include Client servicing (in a variety of settings) during 2025. To accommodate the addition of 'Tax Advisors' as part of this application form, substantial changes have been made to the application over the 2025 form. Within the form, different tracks have been implemented to direct an applicant to the correct pages for their respective' Award Group' or 'Award Categories' (as referenced near the beginning of this article).

International Application form – This form is restricted to ProAdvisor applicants from outside the United States or its territories. Certification and Client servicing requirements exist. To streamline the application process, major form revisions shorten and simplify the form for 2026; those will be covered in a future article.

New for 2026 – Self-generated U.S. Application Short-form

To reduce the time required for returning applicants to complete the U.S. Awards Application form, Insightful Accountant is introducing a new, self-generated short form for applicants. This new option first allows you to decide whether you wish to update information from your 2025 (and 2024) Application forms.

Selecting this option means that some 2026 form data is automatically completed on your behalf, allowing you to skip that data during the application process. As part of the application process, applicants must consent to the use of prior data.

For example, if you indicated in your 2025 Application (or 2024 Application) that you had been a ProAdvisor for 20 years, you don't need to report 21 years in your 2026 Application, as we already calculate this information.

Even if you have relatively minor changes, such as having 6 team members in your firm now, but only 5 last year, then you don't need to update that. On the other hand, if you went from 5 team members in 2025 to 15 team members this year, then that needs to be updated.

The example below illustrates how applicants can choose to update specific data that otherwise would be transferred from their 2025 (or 2024) application forms.

With one or more Award applications under your belt, we don't believe we need to 'question' you into our determining what award categories you fit best in. Therefore, short-form applicants will select as many of the award categories as they consider their QuickBooks practice aligns with. However, if you didn't indicate any changes to your categorical alignment in questions similar to those shown above, then you may not be required to respond to the question below. In this case, we carry over your categorical information from the 2025 and 2024 applications.

By the way, we don't need to know (in the above question) about any 'tax' services you provide because you will have told us (earlier in the application) if you have a ProAdvisor Practice, a Tax Practice, or both.

Streamlining by choice is another aspect of this year's application process. This year, if you are eligible for an award category, you turn on the related questions by checking a box. You can even turn on the question, review it, and if you decide you don't want to answer it, return to the top of the page and uncheck your previous response; then all the questions disappear (as shown in the illustration below).

In our next installment of this series, we will examine how Insightful Accountant has streamlined the application process concerning App utilization. In the meantime, please support the 2026 Advisor Awards by visiting our  ProAdvisor Awards Sponsors webpage!

Disclosures:

This is an editorial feature, not sponsored content. No vendor associated with this article has paid Insightful Accountant or the author any form of remuneration to be included within this feature. The article is provided solely for informational and educational purposes.

As used herein, Intuit and  QuickBooks, Intuit Academy, and "TurboTax Live" refer to one or more registered trademarks of Intuit® Inc., a publicly-traded corporation headquartered in Mountain View, California.

Any other trade names or references used herein may refer to registered, trademarked, or copyrighted materials held by their respective owners; they are included in the content for informational and educational purposes only.

Note: Registered Trademark ® and other registration symbols (such as those used for copyrighted materials) have been eliminated from the articles within this publication for brevity due to the frequency or abundance with which they would otherwise appear or be repeated. Every attempt is made to credit such trademarks or copyrights within our respective article footnotes and disclosures.

Footnotes:

^*- Award category determination and recognition are at the discretion of the Awards Committee.