I interviewed Naveena Bereny, Global Lead, QuickBooks Certification and Training to learn more about the redesigned QuickBooks Online training and certification program that is planned to go live March
2018. The QuickBooks ProAdvisor program has always been a favorite of mine as it is the key reason that I started my own business!
If you haven’t taken the time to get certified, I highly recommend that you do so because it will help you serve your clients better. As you may know, becoming a QuickBooks Online ProAdvisor is a free program. There are also two paid levels:
- Deluxe, which include a copy of QuickBooks Premier Accountant Desktop to use in your own firm.
- Premier, which includes a copy of QuickBooks Premier Accountant Desktop, QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions, and QuickBooks Point of Sale to use in house.
For a summary of the differences between ProAdvisor Free, Deluxe, and Enterprise click here.
The QuickBooks ProAdvisor certification program was created to help us become the trusted advisor to our clients. The program provides different levels of certification to support ProAdvisors in the different stages of their journey. Once a certification is complete it will show up as a badge on your Find a ProAdvisor listing. The tests and self-paced classes are designed to be meaningful as well as challenging to ensure the credibility and respect that certifications bring.
The certification will be available in your QuickBooks Online Accountant account. The ProAdvisor tab has been redesigned. There will be two tabs, one to show your ProAdvisor benefits and one for your ProAdvisor certifications. This is to provide easy access to the training.
There are major changes related to the QuickBooks Online certification. One is that the Recertification will focus on what’s new in QuickBooks Online rather than repeating and testing on core features. The training has been updated to be more situational in order to provide better training. The recommended training path is to start with this core class.
Each year, the “What’s New in QuickBooks Online” course will be offered for the recertification exam. The update will not continue to test on core features; instead, the focus will be on what is new since you were certified previously.
The new QuickBooks Online certification exams will be available in March, and everyone will have a Common Annual Renewal date of July 31. Each year, in order to stay certified, you will take the recertifications to review “What’s new in QuickBooks Online” since the prior year. There will also be an option to repeat the “Introduction to QuickBooks Online” as needed or as a refresher.
The QuickBooks Desktop certifications will be moved to the new portal. There will be no changes to the desktop certification due dates, as they will continue to be released in the fall of every year. If you are a paid ProAdvisor, the access to the desktop certifications will appear in this new portal along with the QuickBooks Online certifications. When you take tests in the new portal, the CPE credits will not be immediately available. They will be “available soon,” however you can take the certifications, and once the CPEs are ready, there will be a path for you to fill out an assessment before year-end to receive your CPE certificates.
All of your existing certifications will migrate over to the new portal, including the desktop certifications which you will be able to access starting March 1. However, if you are in the middle of taking a certification and almost done, you will want to wrap it up before February 28. If you haven’t started, just wait until the new certification is available as “in progress” certifications will not migrate over!
Intuit will also be adding a way to expand your expertise with specialty training. The first one to launch will be QuickBooks Self-Employed. More content on other QuickBooks products will launch in the future. In addition to the online training that is found in the certification tab, there will be other opportunities to learn QuickBooks Online.
Important Dates to Remember:
- Mark your calendar to complete your recertification exam by July 31, 2018, so that you can maintain your certification status and benefits through July 31, 2019.
- If you are in the progress of taking any exams, you have until February 28, 2018, 11:59 pm Pacific Time to wrap them up.
- If you are not QuickBooks Online certified and want to take the training, we recommend you wait until the new portal is launched, because you will still need to take the recertification exam by July.
- There will be a VCon Bootcamp March 21-22, 2018 to help you get up to speed with QuickBooks Online.
There will be three topics for the VCon Bootcamp:
- What’s new in QuickBooks Online;
- QuickBooks Online certification training; and
- QuickBooks Online Accountant certification training.
Change is always exciting when learning a new QuickBooks product. The new ProAdvisor program is designed to simplify and improve the experience for the ProAdvisors. I’m looking forward to learning “What’s new in QuickBooks Online” so that I can make sure I didn’t miss anything along the way. Also, if I were to feel rusty using QuickBooks Online, I can always start over and go through the core training.
The QuickBooks ProAdvisor program is listening to feedback and providing a better experience through this new portal.
