Few companies dominate a sector the way Intuit dominates small business accounting software. According to the company, five of the six million small businesses using computers to do their books use Intuit products. Two million use QuickBooks, which accounts for eight of every 10 retail accounting software sales (source: PC Data). But with an 80% market share, Intuit must look elsewhere for growth; and financial services are a natural fit. With Intuit aggressively integrating banking and Internet functionality into QuickBooks, bankers should be on notice. Intuit and its bank partners are after your clients.

Source: Intuit, 9/98 * Online banking is available from 40 participating banks (9/4/98); online banking debuted in Quicken in Oct. 1995.

After nearly four years as a small business, we are beginning to appreciate Intuit’s strategy. QuickBooks is becoming not just an accounting program, but a place where small businesses can manage their entire customer file
. The program still suffers from the slow development cycles associated with shrink-wrapped software. But as Intuit ports the functionality to the Web, businesses will be able to log in to QuickBooks.com to manage all types of paperwork; from billing to payment processing to tax preparation; those repetitive, non-revenue producing activities that can be a continual thorn in the side (we speak from experience).

Fortunately, there are several ways to play in this game: pay Intuit for a direct connection to QuickBooks; work with other software providers; or build your own service on the Web . We believe business owners will pay considerable sums to off-load financial operations if the service provider is 100% trustworthy, has adequate capital, and a fiduciary responsibility; like a bank for instance. And we’re not talking about raising checking fees by a
buck or two. A business might conceivably pay hundreds or even thousands per month if it improves their bottom line and simplifies back office operations and paperwork . We’ve dubbed this service offering, The Virtual CFO, and we expect to see it on Web sites in late 1999.