2004 QuickBooks Consultant's Conference Report
At the beginning of this month, we held our 2004 QuickBooks Consultant's Conference in Boca Raton, Florida. This three day event included 26 speakers from The Sleeter Group, Intuit, Developers and other leading QuickBooks Experts from the industry. The turnout was tremendous, and we all learned a lot.

First, let’s talk about the parties. The night before the conference, we held a private cocktail reception for 60 members of our Consultant's Network, and many of them got to put faces to names they’ve known for years. It was fantastic, and really set the conference in motion. We also held a reception open to all conference attendees on the 2nd night of the conference, and this proved to be great networking time for everyone. Suffice it to say, the parties were a great “feature” of the conference.

The first day began with Joe Woodard talking about how to build your consulting practice, how to look at four different levels of client engagements, and how to streamline your business to give more client satisfaction while billing more time. As always, Joe’s talks inspire us all to really go out there and make our business run better. The rest of the first day included sessions with technical solutions for construction, retail, non-profit, and professional services businesses.

The second day of the conference was devoted to Intuit, and their introduction of QuickBooks 2005. Executives and product managers presented the new version updates and improvements. One of the most well received new features was when Tina Gray demonstrated the new Financial Statement Designer, which is a HUGE improvement over the Financial Statement Reporter from the previous year. And best of all, it’s included for FREE in the Accountant Edition of QuickBooks 2005. There was also a "Feedback to Intuit" session at the end of the day. This feedback session was very productive and the audience really appreciated that Intuit was there to listen.

The third day began with a keynote presentation from Rene Lacerte, CEO of PayCycle. He gave a great overview of technology trends, and how accountants can capitalize on them.

We then announced our list of Ten Awesome Add-ons for Consultants. These are a special group of “utility-like” add-ons that QuickBooks consultants will find extremely useful. What is an Awesome Add-on?