Another reason is that the "installed base is aging gracefully" and Intuit expects to see an increase in revenue per customer from the desktop crew. That stems partly from the increasing number of products purchased by customers with much of the increase coming from payments and payroll and subscriptions to the desktop version of QuickBooks, as opposed to license sales. Lack of certain features, particularly inventory, along with data migration issues help hold down the migration to QBO. Wernikoff says Intuit is working to close those gaps. Despite the resistance of some of the desktop to change, the business coming via QBO represents a big gain in customers. In earlier remarks during the webcast, CEO Brad Smith said 84 percent of new QBO customers "are new to Intuit and new to accounting software."
Meanwhile, the software company raised its projections for QBO unit growth. The company crossed the 1-million subscriber mark in June. It had expected to hit 2 million by the time its fiscal year ends on July 31, 2017. However, Intuit has upped the estimate by 200,000 subscribers.
60 PERCENT OF NEW USERS BUY QBO Featured
Sixty percent of new QuickBooks users are starting with QuickBooks Online. That number was reported by SVP Dan Wernikoff as Intuit held its annual investor's Day webcast this week. The company also expects that number to grow. But the executive admitted Intuit has been surprised that despite the move to the cloud 75 percent of revenue still comes from the desktop business. One reason is the accounting community. "Accountants have been slow to migrate their customers on line," Wernikoff says.
