Despite the growth, 75 percent of QuickBooks revenue comes from the desktop units. The company attributed that partly to the accounting profession.

"Accountants have been slow to migrate their customers on line," SVP Dan Wernikoff said the "installed base is aging gracefully" and Intuit expects to see an increase in revenue per customer from the desktop crew. He said part of the reason is the increasing number of products purchased by customers with much of the increase coming from payments and payroll and subscriptions to QuickBooks desktop versions.

Meanwhile, the software company raised projections for QBO unit growth.The company had expected to hit 2 million by the time its fiscal year ends on July 31, 2017, but has raised the estimate by 200,000 subscribers. The company crossed the 1-million subscriber mark in June.

Lack of certain features, particularly inventory, and data migration issues help hold down the migration to QBO. Wernikoff says Intuit is working to close those gaps. Despite the resistance of some of the desktop to change, the business coming via QBO represents a big gain in customers. In earlier remarks during the webcast, CEO Brad Smith said 84 percent of new QBO customers "are new to Intuit and new to accounting software."