By now, almost all users of QuickBooks Online-Accountant have heard the news that QBO-Acct. will be replaced by Intuit Accountant Suite (IAS) at the start of 2027.
Currently QBO-Accountant users can option into IAS and can choose either the Core (Free) version of the product, or the Accelerate (Paid) version; however, Accelerate is being made available on a free trial basis until early next year as well.
Many QBO-Accountant users have asked questions like,” are there features currently in QBO-A that will not be available in the Core (Free) version,” and “what differentiates the Accelerate version from the Core version?” This article does not attempt to answer the first of these two questions; however, in response to the second question, we will look at the two primary features that set Core and Accelerate apart.
Currently*, there are two features that differentiate Intuit Accountant Suite Accelerate from Intuit Accountant Suite Core, Client Insights and User Groups. While these two features are those that most notedly set Accelerate apart from Core, it appears that Intuit will make future ‘tools’ and ‘features’ available to Accelerate subscribers that will not be included in the free Core version.
You access this feature from Work and then selecting Client Insights. This opens the Client Insights Overview dashboard. From here you can look at Balance sheet data, P&L data, and Bookkeeping data.
You can select the date range that is most relevant. You can do a custom month or any of the pre-selected ones. You can also use those previously configured client custom fields and segments you've created to create specific views. You can also add up to three to then create these segmental views. There are also product filters including lead filters. Data is automatically updated and pulled from your client's data every 24 hours, but you can manually refresh at any time. You can also extract to .CSV any data you want to see here.
Intuit has been and continues to plan for new columns or KPIs. Right now, there are mostly P&L and Balance Sheet based KPIs, along with Payroll and Bill Pay KPIs. You can select the KPIs that are most relevant to your clients and see them in one view.
There are also some bookkeeping or books health KPIs, like total number of transactions or less reconciled date or unposted transactions.
Client Insights also lets you highlight the clients that had the most significant changes compared to a previous period. Intuit uses AI to identify when there is an anomaly for that client. The AI might disclose, “There’s something unusual related to expenses.” When you click on Intuit Intelligence sparkle, you'll see the description and root cause analysis of the issue. There is also a link where you can find out exactly where you dive deeper into the root cause analysis. Whether it's caused from an error in categorization or is something unusual needing to be flagged for a conversation with your client. And because Intuit Accountant Suite now allows you to open multiple tabs within the product, can open up the root cause analysis details without losing your overall context in the Accountant Suite.
You can not only create multiple views of your Client Insights by sorting and filtering as you may require, but you can save up to 50 different view configurations and name each of them to fit your specific needs. To facilitate that process, Intuit even provides a series of templates, but even when using a preconfigured template, you can make changes to meet the specific needs of your firm, or a particular set of clients. And remember, if there is a missing KPI right now, just submit feedback because Intuit plans to keep rolling out more and more ‘industry specific’ KPIs in the near future.
You access this feature from Manage Users and then selecting User Groups. This feature is for firms who need to manage their client access at scale.
To create a new user Group, from the Firm hub, select Manage Users, then choose User Groups.
Select Create new user group. First, you must ‘name’ your User Group. You will now select the Users you want to add to a Group. You are automatically added to the Group as the Primary admin. But you must add at least one other team member (User) in order to proceed to the next step.
Next, you're going to assign a Default Role. Now, this is a Client Role, not a Firm Role, In the next step, you'll select the Clients to add to this Group. The Users you selected in starting this Group will get this access to all Clients you added.
After a Group has been set up, which are not mutually exclusive, the same Users could be added to multiple Groups, and Clients can be added to multiple Groups as well. This provides a clear way to assign which of your Intuit Accountant Suite team members, who are Users, to the various Clients they need to work with, and for the specific purpose ‘role’ they need to provide to those clients.
You can do a lot with this Group functionality, it makes it easy to assign permissions for your users to work with one or more multiple groups of Clients, and to ensure that Clients can be serviced by any number of your team members (Users) that are appropriate for that Client.
Well, I’ve pretty much outlined for you the two features that differentiate the Intuit Accountant Suite ‘Accelerate’ product from the core version of Intuit Accountant Suite. Right now, you can still ‘try out’ the Accelerate version of Intuit Accountant Suite until January 20, 2027 (the date has been extended within the past week from August 1, 2026). After that date, the ‘Accelerate’ version of Intuit Accountant Suite will cost $149.00 per month, while the ‘Core’ version of IAS will remain ‘free’.
Disclosures and Footnotes:
Content adapted in part from Intuit media sources and in-product 'help' within Intuit Accountant Suite 'Accelerate' (trial version). Insightful Accountant publishes such adaptations for educational and informational purposes only.
Content images taken from actual licensed Intuit product subscriptions.
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