"We are strengthening the connection between our accountant community and our small business ecosystem," Smith said. Smith said moves also reflect Intuit's increasing focus on "multi-service" firms that offer both tax and accounting services.

Smith noted the company's decision to give QuickBooks Online Accountant to practitioners for free and executives acknowledged what they called a modest, recent price increase for QuickBooks Online. Overall, Smith said Intuit is "backing off revenue growth short-time" as it builds this part of the business. CFO Neil Williams said Intuit expects professional tax revenue to be flat for fiscal 2017.

Intuit also increased the collaboration built into QuickBooks and its ProConnect tax software products. These are Lacerte, ProSeries and ProConnect Tax Online (formerly Intuit Tax Online).

Meanwhile, Intuit announced that Matt Rhodes, VP of investor relations for six years, is moving to Plano, Texas, where he will be VP of finance for the ProConnect operations. He replaced Bill Chase who recently left the company.