Intuit's first year of providing professional tax advice to Smith said that program needs to be more targeted because the message that free professional advice was available appealed to some consumers more than others. The company believes that will help Intuit more profitability deliver the service which was provided in the past tax season by 700 tax professionals that included CPAs. But the move to do-it-yourself preparation remains strong, he said.
"We see fundamentally shifts in the market continuing to occur. We had data that suggested, and results from this tax season that suggest, there are in the neighborhood of 40 million filers out of those that go to tax stores and to certain groups of CPAs that would be willing to filing tax using a do-it-yourself solution if they were assured that they also had somebody there to answer questions there if they were needed.
The kinds of CPAs that Smith meant were not described nor were more specifics about how the program might be adjusted for the 2013 filing season. However, overall in 2012 executives "saw a lot of things we liked." That included a 9-percent improvement in net promoter scores for customers that went to a store the prior year. Intuit also got a 34-percent increase in the number of first-time filers using TurboTax.Smith also hinted at a number of consumer product initiatives for the year ending July 31, 2013. This included new life for Quicken, which has been separated from Mint. The latter was joined with the financial services group. The combination had problems. For example, Smith said if the company tried to speed development of Quicken; that slowed Mint down. On the other side, the banks that are served by financial services are asking for Mint-like capabilities.
Without providing specifics, Smith said the market would new the "next chapter" of Quicken that would "drive the viability of the brand." That seems likely to involve the web and perhaps mobile features as he noted that Quicken had been oriented to the desktop world. He also talked broadly about targeting "nonconsumption" - meaning those that do not use the appropriate products. That meant products designed for "people using spreadsheets", although Smith went no further in defining the target areas.
The company also is readying a bigger push for its international product, QuickBooks United Nations, which was introduced last month. Although there has been little marketing, that product is now used in 78 countries. Smith said QB United Nations is a platform that lets developers and users tailor the application for their language and country.
