The first unit, the Accountant and Advisor Group, will recruit accountants who use and recommend its small business applications and will be led by SVP Jill Ward, who had been in charge of Accounting Professionals. Besides maintaining responsibility for ProAdvisor programs worldwide, Ward is in charge of the development of Intuit's Virtual Office for accounting professionals.

 The mission of the ProTax group was described as capitalizing on the shift to cloud and mobile-based solutions. Its head will be CeCe Morken, who has been SVP of Intuit Financial Services for three years. 

Intuit is selling Intuit Financial Services, the group that markets software to financial institutions such as banks for $1.03 billion. And it also wants to sell the division that sells applications to the health care industry. It is part of a continuing move to focus on products for consumers and small businesses. Private firm Thoma Bravo, which also owns project software company Deltek, will operate the company that sells digital banking and mobile software from Westlake Village, Calif. Intuit said it would use proceeds from the all-cash deal to repurchase stock.

The move continues a trend that was evident a year ago when the company sold its Homestead web hosting business. Earlier last year Intuit purchased DemandForce, which provides web-based marketing services to small business.

The financial services and healthcare businesses are  expected to have $340 million in revenue for the year ending July 31. Financial services had revenue of $285 million for the first nine months of fiscal 2013, a 5-percent increase. There were 11,067 end users on April 30,  up 1.7 percent from a year earlier. Mint.com will remain with Intuit and become part of its consumer group

The medical business originally provided software designed to help consumers understand medical bills, but Intuit could not figure out how to appeal to a broad market.

Besides creating the two new groups from the Accountants' division, there was also some shuffling of product management. The new Intuit Practice Management, which has been run under the professional tax operations, will be under Ward. Her other responsibilities include QuickBooks forAccountants and QuickBooks Online for Accountants. Morken directs operations for ProSeries, Lacerte, Intuit Tax Online, Canada ProTax, Tax Research and TurboTax CPA Select. 

The transition is expected to take about 90 days with Ward also responsible for the ProTax Group until that work is completed. 

Bob Scott

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Bob Scott has provided information to the tax and accounting community since 1991, first as technology editor of Accounting Today, and from 1997 through 2009 as editor of its sister publication, Accounting Technology. He is known throughout the industry for his depth of knowledge and for his high journalistic standards.  Scott has made frequent appearances as a speaker, moderator and panelist and events serving tax and accounting professionals. He  has a strong background in computer journalism as an editor with two former trade publications, Computer+Software News and MIS Week and spent several years with weekly and daily newspapers in Morris County New Jersey prior to that.  A graduate of Indiana University with a degree in journalism, Bob is a native of Madison, Ind