Intuit has reached deals to provide basic product capabilities from Bill.com and Box. The agreements give ProAdvisors free accounts with Bill.com and free document management features from Box to accountants and clients. Together, the deals suggest Intuit will enter more "freemium" arrangements with third parties.With the Box deal, Intuit and Box are betting that their ability to expose their products to each other's customers will enable the partners to interest new customers.
Box users who have previously not thought about accounting software may "they realize they need an accounting solution underneath it," says Intuit SVP Dan Wernikoff.
The QuickBooks Client Document Center powered by Box, which will be available early next year, will come will give users of QuickBooks Accountant the ability to request and receive documents from inside the accounting application. QBOA users get a 10GB Box account. Accountants will be able to receive documents from their clients.
On the invoicing side, QuickBooks ProAdvisors receive a free account with Bill.com of up to three users.
"it's a baby step of moving from a QuickBooks only program to the QuickBooks ecosystem," said Luis Sanchez, leader of the ProAdvisor program. He notes the ProAdvisors using Bill.com's invoicing processing will pay transaction fees.
Intuit has been talking about integrating the applications small businesses use with QuickBooks Online, which becomes a hub for applications and the business hub for Intuit itself.
The alliances also show the company's willingness to turn to third parties to get functionality to QuickBooks customers more quickly than it might in developing its own products.