At Intuit, Inc.’s QuickBooks Connect event in San Jose, CA, this year, consideration of the needs of small businesses and their owners is necessarily bringing accountants into the equation.

For Jim McGinnis, VP of Intuit’s accountant segment, this is naturally a high-priority part of the QuickBooks formula. McGinnis spoke to Jeff Frick, cohost of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during QuickBooks Connect 2015, and he detailed some of the most important parts of involving accountants in businesses and bringing those teams up-to-date with tech practices.

Accountant transitions

“Our mission since founding the company 30 years ago is to improve people’s financial lives so profoundly they can’t imagine going back to the old way,” said McGinnis. He went on to outline his own department’s mission as, “We help accountants help small businesses.”

In order to meet these goals, staying current with new developments is a must. “There are some major things happening out there, like data, like mobile, like cloud-computing, that are causing people to shift from the old desktop way to the cloud way,” he said.

As McGinnis emphasized, being willing to move out of the comfort zone, either as an individual or as a business, helps foster growth and a better understanding of yourself. “It’s about getting on the cloud, it’s about becoming a trusted advisor instead of billing hourly, actually getting paid for the advice that you give small businesses, and finally using things like LinkedIn and Facebook to get connected and build your message,” he added.

Growing new systems

Intuit’s QuickBooks has moved from being simply a finance management application to a full ecosystem, thanks to the move online and expanded usages. In addition, the days of program conflicts between new versions of QuickBooks applications and the latest Windows OS are over thanks to the cloud’s sync capabilities.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of QuickBooks Connect 2015.

Photo by SiliconANGLE