Intuit Inc.

(650) 944-6000

2535 Garcia Avenue

Mountain View, CA 94043
www.intuit.com
 

Sales

$1.6 billion

Business Description 

Our mission is to transform the way people run their businesses and manage their financial lives. Our goal is to create changes so profound and simple that customers wouldn’t dream of going back to their old ways of keeping their books, managing their businesses, preparing their taxes or organizing their personal finances. Our products and services fall into the following principal categories: QuickBooks® small business accounting and business management solutions; small business products and services that include payroll, financial supplies, technical support and information technology management solutions; TurboTax® consumer tax products and services; ProSeries® and Lacerte® professional tax products and services; Intuit-branded business management solutions designed to meet the specialized requirements of businesses in selected industries (which we call “Verticals”); and our other businesses, which consist primarily of Quicken® personal finance products and services and our Canadian business. 

PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

Intuit offers products and services in six business segments: QuickBooks, Small Business Products and Services, Consumer Tax, Professional Accounting Solutions, Vertical Business Management Solutions and Other Businesses. Our primary products and services are sold mainly in the United States.

QuickBooks

Our QuickBooks product line brings extensive bookkeeping capabilities, as well as business management tools, to small business users in an easy-to-use design that does not require customers to be familiar with debit/credit accounting. We offer a range of products to suit the needs of different types of small businesses, including QuickBooks Basic, which provides accounting functionality suitable for smaller, less complex businesses; QuickBooks Pro, which supports up to five multiple simultaneous users; QuickBooks Premier, for small businesses needing more advanced accounting functionality; QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions Business Management Software, designed for businesses with up to 250 employees; QuickBooks Premier: Accountant Edition, for accounting professionals with multiple QuickBooks clients; QuickBooks Point of Sale, an add-on product for retail businesses; and Premier and Enterprise versions of QuickBooks that are customized for contractors, nonprofit agencies and healthcare providers. As part of our Right for My Business strategy, we expect to introduce additional versions of QuickBooks during fiscal 2004 and beyond.

Small Business Products and Services

Small Business Service Solutions. We offer a variety of technical support options to our QuickBooks customers through our Small Business Service Solutions group. These include a free self-help information section on our QuickBooks.com Web site as well as a variety of support plans that are priced based on the level of personal assistance and response time the customer requires.

Payroll. Our payroll business provides solutions to help small business owners better manage key tasks relating to their employees. Our current payroll offerings consist primarily of two solutions:

• Our QuickBooks Do-It-Yourself Payroll offers payroll tax tables, forms and electronic tax payment and filing services on a subscription basis to small businesses that prepare their own payrolls.

• Our outsourced payroll services consist of our QuickBooks Assisted Payroll Service and our Intuit Payroll Services Complete Payroll. QuickBooks Assisted Payroll Service is an online payroll service that handles the back-end aspects of payroll processing, including tax payments and filings. It is integrated with QuickBooks, which minimizes customer data entry. Our Intuit Payroll Services Complete Payroll provides traditional, full service payroll processing, tax payment and check delivery services. We offer these services with QuickBooks integration or on a standalone basis. Complete Payroll includes the business of CBS Employer Services, Inc., which we acquired in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2002. It also encompasses our former Premier Payroll Service, which we had marketed and sold jointly with Wells Fargo Bank. In February 2003, we acquired the rights to brand and market the offering directly to Premier Payroll Service customers who currently use Intuit’s service.

Financial Supplies. We offer a range of financial supplies, such as paper checks, envelopes, invoices, deposit slips, stationery and business cards, designed for small businesses and individuals. We also offer tax forms, tax return presentation folders and other similar items for professional tax preparers. Our customers can personalize many products to incorporate their logos and use a variety of color, font and design options.

Small Business Online Services. Our more recent QuickBooks products offer a variety of optional business management services for an additional fee, including QuickBooks Online Billing, which allows small businesses to bill and receive customer payments electronically; QuickBooks Merchant Account Service, which enables small businesses to accept credit card payments from their customers; QuickBooks Shipping Manager, which gives small businesses access to Federal Express® shipping and tracking information that is integrated with QuickBooks; and the QuickBooks Business Mastercard®, which allows small businesses to download their credit card transactions directly into QuickBooks.

Information Technology Solutions. Our Intuit Track-It! line of products and services offer businesses robust tools to track and support their information technology assets and resources. As part of our “Right for My Business” strategy, Intuit Track-It! products provide comprehensive asset management, help desk and knowledge management solutions to businesses.

Consumer Tax

Consumer Tax Preparation Offerings. Our TurboTax products and services are designed to enable individuals and small business owners to prepare their own federal and state personal and business income tax returns easily, quickly and accurately. They are designed to be easy to use, yet sophisticated enough for complex tax returns. We offer a range of customized desktop software products as well as TurboTax for the Web, an interactive tax preparation service that enables individual taxpayers to prepare their federal and state income tax returns entirely online. One of our premium offerings, TurboTax Premier, addresses the unique income tax needs of investors, those planning for retirement and rental property owners. In addition, our innovative Instant Data Entry feature enables taxpayers to import data directly into their tax returns from Form W-2s (wages), Form 1098s (mortgage interest) and Form 1099s (interest, dividends and stock transactions) from approximately 70 participating financial institutions and payroll service companies. This feature saves TurboTax users significant time and increases accuracy.

Electronic Filing Services. Through our electronic filing center, customers of our desktop and Web-based tax preparation offerings can electronically file their federal tax returns, as well as state returns in all states that support electronic filing. For the 2001 and 2002 tax years, we were the exclusive provider of online tax preparation services on the Yahoo!® Finance Tax Center, and for the 2002 tax year our online tax services were also offered through the websites of approximately 1,500 financial institutions, electronic retailers and other merchants.

Intuit Tax Freedom Project. Under the Intuit Tax Freedom Project, a philanthropic public service initiative of the Intuit Financial Freedom Foundation, we provide online federal income tax return preparation and electronic filing services at no charge to lower income and other underserved federal taxpayers. We are a member of the Free File Alliance, a consortium of private sector companies that signed a three-year agreement with the federal government in October 2002 under which a number of private sector companies, rather than the federal government, are providing Web-based federal tax preparation and filing services at no cost through voluntary public service initiatives. We donated approximately 1.3 million federal units under this program in fiscal 2003.

Professional Accounting Solutions

Professional Accounting Solutions provides software and services for accountants in public practice who serve multiple clients. In addition to solutions sold directly to accountants, Professional Accounting Solutions also takes the leading role in generating revenue from Intuit products sold or referred by accountants to their small-business clients.

ProTax. ProSeries® and Lacerte® tax preparation software products are designed for tax professionals who prepare tax returns for their individual and business clients. Customers can elect to license professional tax products for a flat fee for unlimited annual use, or use them on a “pay-per-return” basis. ProSeries and Lacerte customers can file their clients’ tax returns through Intuit’s electronic filing services. In addition, Lacerte Tax Planner helps tax professionals provide tax planning services to their clients, and ProSeries Fixed Asset Manager is a time and effort-saving system for managing asset information.

Accountant Relations. Accountant Relations is responsible for advising accountants on how Intuit solutions can help them better serve their clients, manage their practices and grow their businesses. To help familiarize accountants with Intuit products and services, Accountant Relations administers the Intuit Accountant Training Network, which provides training and information to accountants in more than 50 cities nationwide. Accountant Relations also provides a collection of subscription-based membership and communication programs, product certifications, an informational Web site and Web-based tools for accounting professionals. Additionally, Accountant Relations drives Intuit’s strategy for developing a network of accountants who recommend and promote Intuit business and financial management solutions to their small-business clients and other accountants.

Accounting Solutions. Accounting Solutions develops offerings that help accountants better serve their clients, manage their practices and grow their businesses. QuickBooks Client Manager: Accountant Edition is a new client information and task management tool designed specifically for the needs of professional accountants. It employs a single, easy-to-use interface that enables accountants to organize and use client information stored in other software programs such as Lacerte and ProSeries professional tax software and Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. QuickBooks Client Manager is a stand-alone desktop software package that works with or independently of QuickBooks. Intuit® EasyACCT® Professional Accounting Series allows accountants to create financial statements and prepare tax forms (such as W-2s and 940s) for their clients. Accounting Solutions also supports software products from other Intuit business units that are developed or adapted for use by accountants. For example, QuickBooks Financial Statement Reporter enables accountants who use QuickBooks Premier: Accountant Edition 2003 or QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions Version 3.0 to easily create a complete, professional set of financial statements.

Company Growth Strategy

Intuit has a tradition of successful customer-driven innovation, using technology to address complex customer problems and develop solutions that make things easier. By applying strategic and operational rigor to this foundation, we believe we can accelerate our customer-driven innovation and deliver stronger revenue and profit growth.

There are four key fundamentals that support our growth strategy:

• We deliberately choose to be in businesses with large, underserved market opportunities where we believe we have the strategic and durable advantage to produce long-term profitable growth.

• We use operational rigor and process excellence methodology, tools and resources to execute more effectively on a daily basis. Our goal is higher service levels at lower cost.

• We expand our tradition of customer-driven innovation by looking for new, large customer problems and challenging conventional wisdom to create solutions for customers and profitable growth for Intuit.

• We apply strategic rigor to identify new adjacent markets and acquire companies that help us expand our leadership positions in our small business and tax businesses. Our goal is to create new growth platforms that drive faster profitable growth.


By being both disciplined and innovative, we can improve execution and deliver more — for example, by tightening development cycles, we can introduce more new products more quickly. The new products drive stronger growth and give customers a broader range of offerings to best meet their needs.

Customer-Focused Product Strategy

We strive to deliver a range of products and services that can provide a compelling customer proposition for a wide variety of customers with differing needs. In fiscal 2003, we continued to execute on that broad strategy and added key people, processes and infrastructure to our organization.

In September 2001 we announced our “Right for My Business” strategy. The primary purpose of this strategy is to address the market opportunity for businesses with up to 250 employees. Our goal is to offer the right solution for each small business in our targeted markets. Our Right for My Business strategy has two separate components. The first is focused on our QuickBooks products and related small business products and services. The second is focused on our Vertical Business Management Solutions products and services.

Here are the key elements of the QuickBooks and small business component of our Right for My Business strategy:

• We have been expanding our QuickBooks product line to offer easy-to-use, industry-specific versions of QuickBooks, which we call “flavors.” These products include QuickBooks Premier: Accountant Edition for accounting professionals and Premier and Enterprise versions of QuickBooks for contractors and healthcare providers.

• We are also offering versions of QuickBooks designed for bigger, more complex businesses — including QuickBooks Premier for small businesses needing more advanced accounting functionality and QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions Business Management Software for businesses with up to 250 employees.

• We offer business solutions that go beyond accounting software to address a wider range of business management challenges that small businesses face. For example, we offer QuickBooks Point of Sale, an add-on product for retail businesses. We also offer a broad range of payroll services and financial supplies, as well as software solutions that help businesses manage their information technology resources and assets. In the first quarter of fiscal 2004, we announced QuickBooks Customer Manager, a stand-alone desktop software package that works with or independently of QuickBooks. This new product is designed to provide small businesses with integrated tools to manage their customer relationships.

• We continue to expand the Intuit Developer Network. This initiative encourages third-party software developers to develop applications that exchange data with QuickBooks and other Intuit products by giving them limited access to application programming interfaces for certain of our software products. At the end of fiscal 2003, there were approximately 300 third-party applications available for QuickBooks and other Intuit products. These applications allow our customers to derive even more value from their Intuit software.


Under the Vertical Business Management Solutions component of our Right for My Business strategy, we provide Intuit-branded business management solutions designed to meet the specialized requirements of businesses in selected industries (which we call “Verticals”) that want more complete and customizable functionality. These currently include business solutions for the construction industry; nonprofit organizations, universities and government agencies; commercial and residential property managers; and wholesale durable goods distributors.

Multi-year customer-focused strategies are also reshaping our other businesses:

• In connection with our Consumer Tax “Right for Me” strategy, we have introduced new functionality in our TurboTax Premier desktop products to address the unique needs of investors, those planning for retirement and rental property owners.

• Under our Professional Accounting Solutions’ “Right for My Firm, Right for My Clients” strategy, in the first quarter of fiscal 2004 we announced QuickBooks Client Manager, a client management tool for professional accountants that works with or independent of QuickBooks and our Lacerte and ProSeries professional tax preparation software.

• In fiscal 2003, we introduced Quicken Premier, which offers more robust investment and tax planning tools. In the first quarter of fiscal 2004, we began offering Quicken products with improved ease of use and reduced setup and maintenance time so that customers can more readily enjoy the benefits of complete and up-to-date financial records in one place.
 

Ticker

INTU

Intuit is in the following categories in the directory:

Accounting Software -  Category Directory

Tax Preparation -  Category Directory

Payroll Services -  Category Directory