Earlier this month, I attended QuickBooks Connect 2019 in San Jose, California. This was a great event to meet accountants, bookkeepers, and the people who work with them (like other software services). Over the two days of the conference, we heard from Intuit’s CEO Sasan Goodarzi, experienced accountants digging into topics like cash flow, and high-profile entrepreneurs like Ashton Kutcher, Rent the Runway CEO Jennifer Hyman, and Common.
At Inventory Planner we’re often asked about cash flow forecasting. In fact, 87% of small and medium businesses have cash flow pain. Rhondalynn Korolak, CA, LLB, walked through strategies to combat “your chronic cash flow crisis”. One key takeaway was to focus on improving profit margins through increasing your price. Most merchants have price flexibility meaning that their customers will not be turned away by a slight increase to the price. Not only do you stand to increase conversion but it may also increase the perception of quality and the value of your product. Another takeaway was looking at where cash is “trapped”. Are you paying bills earlier than you need to? Do you have invoices due to you that need to be collected? Find the bottlenecks in your cash flow to see where the problem is – then spend your time remedying that issue.
One thing that stood out to me after talking with bookkeepers and accountants including small businesses and large firms is that they prefer to use QuickBooks Online, moving their clients off of QuickBooks Desktop. From my time as a merchant and trying to convince my bookkeeper and accountant to move to QuickBooks Online (it was a hard no just a few years ago), it’s clear that the flexibility of using the cloud-based system provides better coordination of information and in turn better results for QuickBooks Online users. This is clearly reflected in Intuit’s own marketing and development priorities as well.
Heading into an accounting conference, I certainly did not expect to hear Common rap…about his accountant. Enjoy!