BY STEVE FISHER
COSTCO SERVICES
have offered Intuit’s
QuickBooks Online and
Payroll Services for 15
years, with tens of thousands of Costco members saving time and
money by using them.
QuickBooks Online is
an easy way to track expenses, manage and
pay bills and send invoices. Payroll Services
gives business owners an intuitive tool to pay
employees, file payroll taxes and much more.
The Connection recently spoke with Sasan
Goodarzi, Intuit’s executive vice president and
general manager of the company’s Small
Business Group, about the services, how he’s
looking to up their game and how the company is aiming to help small businesses.
The Costco Connection: Please tell us
about your experience at Intuit.
Sasan Goodarzi: I’ve been with Intuit for
about 12 years. I have led a number of different businesses at Intuit, from our accountant
business to [being] the [chief information
officer] of the company for a couple of years,
and [I] led our Turbo Tax business for the last
three years, prior to my current role.
There are about 800 million self-em-
ployed and small businesses worldwide.
Almost 70 percent of the jobs that are created
in developed countries are from small busi-
nesses. These are folks who get into business
because they love what they do.
But 50 percent of them go out of business
within the first five years. A lot of it has to do
with the fact that they’re passionate about
what they’re doing, or the product
that they have, or the service that they provide,
but they don’t know
how to run their business. That’s because
they didn’t get into business because they love
business; they got into it
because of the product that
they’re passionate about. Our
mission is to fuel the success of small businesses and the self-employed.
CC: What needs did you see in QuickBooks
Online and Payroll Services for the Costco
member?
SG: One of the things that we’re trying to
help Costco members with is actually understanding the basics of: How many invoices do
I have outstanding? What did I get paid this
week? How much cash do I have to be able to
CONNECTING
Intuit’s QuickBooks Online and Payroll
Services are available to try, risk-free, for
30 days. Go to
quickbooks.com/costcobiz.
Intuit’s QuickBooks Online and
Payroll Services: Helping businesses
Intuit = Intuition
Sasan Goodarzi
make payroll this week? Where am I going to
fall short? We believe that we can build on our
platform and innovate to help them understand their cash flow immediately.
CC: Can you explain what innovations you
will be instituting?
SG: One is what we call “understanding where
you stand in less than five minutes,” through
QuickBooks Online, to have an instant view
of your [profit and loss]. And one of the big
innovations that we’re going to be coming
out with in the months to come is to help you
see that the invoice you sent was viewed, the
invoice was paid. Or, if it didn’t get paid, why?
What’s the action I need to take?
CC: How is Intuit helping small-business
owners, aside from the service o;erings?
SG: One thing we’re trying to do is built
around the notion of educating students in
high school and in college to more broadly
build their business acumen. A second initiative is what we call “Small Business, Big
Game” to provide visibility to the power of
small businesses, where small businesses will
share their story. We will have a committee
that looks at all the stories and narrows them
down to a few finalists to be voted on by the
public. The one that gets the most votes gets
a Super Bowl commercial, paid for by Intuit.
CC: What do Costco members get from
QuickBooks Online and Payroll Services that
they can’t get from other similar products?
SG: With two payroll services completely
integrated into QuickBooks Online, members can run their entire business from one
place. Our Enhanced Payroll enables users to
easily run payroll themselves in minutes. Just by entering a few basic
details about the employee and
hours worked, a check or
direct deposit is automatically generated. When
taxes are due, all necessary forms are auto-filled so you can e-file them
right from QuickBooks. Our Full
Service Payroll is just what it sounds like:
a payroll expert taking care of payroll and
payroll taxes for you, with a guarantee that
they’ll be done on time and accurately. C
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INSIDECOSTCO
OUR DIGITAL EDITIONS
Click here for a short video on how
QuickBooks Online is helping one
small business. (See page 11 for details.)
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