QuickBooks will be debuting a subscription model on it’s popular Accounting, Payroll and Inventory Service (QuickBooks Enterprise). QBES is a fast-growing, important part of the product line-up at Intuit. Intuit plans to continue with, “Aggressive investment of the product,” according to a partner webinar held October 1st, 2014.

How this news affects you:

Built off the success they are having in Canada with subscriptions, Intuit is making a change to the Enterprise Solutions business model to eventually become a subscription-based only service.

If you are an existing customer:

Intuit will be gradually phasing out non-subscription QBES accounts, but does not have a concrete timeline to the process. What we do know comes from an Intuit-hosted webinar on October 1st, 2014, detailing the new Enterprise Solutions subscription model. The graphics below are screenshots from Intuit’s QBES webinar. Again, they do not have a concrete timeline to phase out existing non-subscription accounts. They did, however, drop a hint which mentioned that down the road QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions may become a fully SaaS-based product (Software as a service).

Why QuickBooks Enterprise Will Stay Competitive as a Subscription Only Service

1. QuickBooks will Stay Competitive:

Image: Intuit

Click here to compare QuickBooks Enterprise vs. Sage ERP

Intuit positions QuickBooks Enterprise as an affordable, ERP-caliber accounting option. The graph above is based on Intuit’s 5-seat (user) intervals. Intuit positions QBES above Sage from a functionality perspective. You can see from the graph that over the course of three years, QuickBooks pricing will remain low, thus staying competitive.

2. Lineup for New QuickBooks Enterprise Subscriptions:

Image: Intuit

QuickBooks Full Service Plan (FSP) is an extremely popular add-on, and in the new model, Intuit will actually make the service more affordable to the end user. In addition, payroll and additional add-ons (such as human resources) will be bundled into a simplified package to avoid add-on confusion.

3. You’ll Save Money:

Image: Intuit

Intuit debuted the savings will be incurred by moving to a subscription only model. In a nutshell, the more add-ons the user purchases, the more the user will save. Most customers utilize the QBES Full Service Plan, so most customers will save a good chunk of change.

4. Current (Expiring) Pricing vs. New Subscription Only:

Image: Intuit

The above pricing model only immediately effects new users of QuickBooks. Again using the five-seat model, QuickBooks Enterprise will now be bundling in many popular add-ons, specifically QBES Advanced Inventory, Pricing and Payroll features.

5. New QBES User Pricing:

Image: Intuit

Click here to compare QuickBooks Enterprise vs. Sage ERP