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Intuit's acknowledgment that it is developing a practice management suite isn't a great surprise. After all, the company has said it would provide more software applications for full-service accounting firms and time and billing/practice management is an important part of that technology line up. The company has not given a detailed description of the elements being readied or when they will hit the market. The suite would track client data, documents, project statuses, due dates and invoices across the firm and would also manage time and billing.  A spokesperson also described it as streamlining client data exchange through electronic file uploads and file sharing via a secure exchange connection, along with integration with Lacerte, QuickBooks and Outlook.

Although the word “portal” wasn’t used, the description suggests the use of Web portals, which are increasingly used to publish documents, distribute electronic messages and send invoices. All of this could be integrated on the same platform, something that’s not always true of packages that vendors call “suites”.

There are some important elements here that have been missing from the Intuit product line up and if even a small percentage of the thousands of firms using QuickBooks for their own accounting or for client write-up services buy this new product, Intuit will have a major share of the practice management, document management and workflow markets in the tax and accounting business.

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