"This represents the ninth consecutive quarter of accelerating paid subscriber growth," CEO Brad Smith said in prepared remarks during the webcast. Intuit had announced in June that it had passed the 1 million mark. Intuit declared itself on track to top 2 million QBO subscribers by the end of fiscal 2017.

And Intuit said the growth in QBO offset the decline in the sale QuickBooks desktop units, down 14 percent in the quarter and 22 percent for the year. Intuit lost $36 million for the most recently ended year, compared to earnings of $907 million for 2014.

Revenue for 2015 was $4.19 billion, a drop of 2.2 percent from $4.24 billion the prior year. Accounting changes continued to take a toll on reported results. Small business revenue was down by 2 percent and ProTax revenue was down 33 percent, both for the year, resulting from the decision to recognize revenue ratably. The changed shifted $150 million in ProTax revenue to the current fiscal year.

One of the most important  numbers is the 198,000 QBO subscribers outside the United States, an increase of 135 percent over the prior year. To date, the battle between Intuit and Xero has largely reflected Intuit subscribers that were almost entirely in this country and Xero numbers that were overwhelmingly from outside the U.S.