Intuit, Inc. provides business, financial management and tax solutions for small businesses, consumers and accountants. The Company’s principal products and services, including QuickBooks, TurboTax, Lacerte, ProSeries and Quicken, small business management, tax preparation and filing, and personal finance. The Company's primary products and services are sold mainly in the United States.
Segments
The Company has five business segments: QuickBooks, Payroll and Payments, Consumer Tax, Professional Tax and Other Businesses. The Company’s Small Business division consists of two segments, its QuickBooks segment and its Payroll and Payments segment.
The Company’s QuickBooks segment includes QuickBooks accounting and business management software and technical support as well as financial supplies for small businesses.
The Company’s Payroll and Payments segment includes payroll products and services and merchant services for small businesses.
The Company’s Consumer Tax segment includes its TurboTax consumer and small business tax return preparation products and services.
The Company’s Professional Tax segment includes its Lacerte and ProSeries professional tax products and services.
The Company’s Other Businesses segment includes its Quicken personal finance products and services, Intuit Real Estate Solutions, Intuit Distribution Management Solutions and its business in Canada.
Products and Services
QuickBooks
QuickBooks Software: The Company offers a range of products to suit the needs of different types of small businesses. The Company’s products include QuickBooks Simple Start, which provides accounting functionality suitable for small, less complex businesses; QuickBooks Pro, which provides accounting functionality suitable for larger businesses, including those with payroll needs; QuickBooks Pro for Mac; QuickBooks Premier, which provides small businesses with advanced accounting functionality and business planning tools; and QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions, designed for larger mid-market businesses. The Company’s Premier and Enterprise products also offered in a range of industry-specific editions, including Accountant, Manufacturing and Wholesale, Retail, Non-Profit, Contractor, and Professional Services. In addition, the Company offers a web-based version of QuickBooks called QuickBooks Online Edition that is suitable for multiple users working in various locations.
QuickBooks Technical Support: The Company offers approximately 30 days of technical support for its QuickBooks offerings. The Company also offers various additional technical support options to its customers. These include support plans that are sold separately; a self-help information section on its QuickBooks.com web site; and access to the online QuickBooks Community at www.QuickBooksgroup.com.
Financial Supplies: The Company offers a range of financial supplies designed for small businesses and individuals for use with QuickBooks. These include paper checks, envelopes, invoices and deposit slips. The Company also offers tax forms, tax return presentation folders and other supplies for professional tax preparers.
QuickBooks Point of Sale Solutions: The Company’s QuickBooks Point of Sale offering helps retailers manage customer transactions and inventories. The Basic version is suitable for single stores that want to process sales using barcodes and track inventory and customer purchases while the Pro version offers functionality, such as serial number tracking and the ability to process layaways and special orders. The Pro Multi-Store version allows the transfer of information between stores. The Company sells this software with or without the accompanying hardware.
Intuit Developer Network: The Intuit Developer Network is an initiative that enables third-party software developers to build applications that exchange data with QuickBooks and other Intuit products by giving them access to certain application programming interfaces. Developers who register with the Intuit Developer Network have access to the new QuickBooks software development kit, QuickBooks software downloads and member benefits such as QuickBooks marketing tools, development kit forums and one-on-one engineering support. As of July 31, 2006, approximately 450 third-party applications were offered for QuickBooks and other Intuit products at www.marketplace.intuit.com.
Payroll and Payments Segment
Small Business Payroll: QuickBooks Payroll is a family of products sold on a subscription basis to small businesses that prepare their own payrolls. These include QuickBooks Standard Payroll, which provides payroll tax tables and federal forms; QuickBooks Enhanced Payroll, which in addition to the Standard features also provides state forms and workers’ compensation tracking; and QuickBooks Online Payroll, for use with QuickBooks Online Edition. Direct deposit and electronic tax payment and filing services are offered with some of these offerings. The Company also offers QuickBooks Assisted Payroll Service, which provides the back-end aspects of payroll processing, including tax payments and filings, for customers who process their payrolls using QuickBooks. The Company offers full service payroll processing, direct deposit, check delivery and tax payment services through its Payroll and Premier Payroll Service.
Merchant Services: The Company’s Innovative Merchant Solutions (IMS) business offers a range of merchant services to small businesses. These include credit card, debit card, electronic benefits, check guarantee and gift card processing services as well as web-based transaction processing services for online merchants. In addition to processing services, IMS provides a range of support for its merchants that include customer service, charge-back retrieval and support, and fraud and loss prevention screening.
Consumer Tax Segment
The Company’s Consumer Tax business offers various tax return preparation products and services. The Company’s solutions include:
Consumer Tax Return Preparation Offerings: The Company’s TurboTax products and services are designed to enable individuals and small business owners to prepare their own federal and state personal and small business income tax returns. The Company offers a range of desktop software products as well as TurboTax Online, an interactive tax preparation service that enables individual taxpayers to prepare and electronically file their federal and state income tax returns entirely online. In addition, its innovative Instant Data Entry feature enables taxpayers to import data directly into their tax returns from Form W-2 (wages), Form 1098 (mortgage interest) and Form 1099 (interest, dividends and stock transactions) from participating financial institutions and payroll service companies.
Electronic Filing and Other Services: Through its electronic filing center, the Company’s desktop and web-based tax preparation customers can electronically file their federal income tax returns, as well as state returns in various states that support electronic filing. For the 2005 tax year the Company’s online tax services were offered through the web sites of approximately 1,900 financial institutions, electronic retailers and other merchants and on Yahoo! Finance Tax Center. The Company also offers services that enable taxpayers to pay for their tax products and services with their anticipated refund and the Company offers incorporation services to small businesses.
Intuit Tax Freedom Project: Under the Intuit Tax Freedom Project, a philanthropic public service initiative of the Intuit Financial Freedom Foundation, the Company provides online federal and state income tax return preparation and electronic filing services to eligible taxpayers. The Company is a member of the Free File Alliance, a consortium of private sector companies that entered into an agreement with the federal government in 2002 that was renewed for four years in October 2005.
Professional Tax Segment
The Company’s Professional Tax segment provides various software and services for accountants and tax preparers in public practice who serve multiple clients. The Company designs, creates, sells and supports offerings that help professional accountants and tax preparers provide accounting, tax planning and tax compliance services to individual and business clients and that help them manage their own practices. The Company’s tax software product lines include Lacerte and ProSeries. Lacerte software is designed for full-service accounting firms that prepare the complex returns. The Company offers three versions of its ProSeries software: ProSeries Professional Edition, designed for year-round tax practices that prepare complex tax returns; ProSeries Express Edition, designed for tax practices that focus on helping taxpayers obtain their tax refunds; and ProSeries Basic Edition, designed for the needs of smaller and seasonal tax practices. The Company also offers EasyACCT Professional Accounting Series, which allows accountants to create financial statements and prepare tax forms such as Form W-2 and Form 940 for their clients, as well as various other software products that help accountants provide a spectrum of services to the clients.
Other Businesses
Quicken Software: The Company’s Quicken line of desktop software products helps users organize, understand and manage the personal finances. Quicken allows customers to reconcile bank accounts, record credit card and other transactions, write checks, and track investments, mortgages and other assets and liabilities. Quicken also allows customers to flag their tax-related financial transactions and download that information into its TurboTax consumer tax return preparation software. The Company offers basic and deluxe versions of the product as well as Quicken Premier, which offers investment and tax planning tools; Quicken Premier Home and Business, which allows customers to manage both personal and small business finances in one application; and Quicken for Mac.
Quicken.com and Other Online Services: The Company’s Quicken.com personal finance web site gives Quicken customers access to web-based financial tools, resources and information about various personal finance topics and allows Quicken personal finance software users to monitor their investments online. The Company offers other online services that the Company sells separately, including Quicken-branded bill payment. The Company also offers access to online banking and investment tracking services from various financial institutions that pay the Company to offer this access.
Other Consumer Solutions: The Company’s other consumer solutions include Quicken Medical Expense Manager, which helps users track and manage health care costs, and Quicken Rental Property Manager, which helps users track and manage rental property-related income, expenses and tenant information.
Intuit Real Estate Solutions: The Company’s Intuit Real Estate Solutions business offers software and related technical support, consulting and training services for residential, commercial and corporate property managers. In addition to its domestic operations, this business has operations in five international locations.
Intuit Distribution Management Solutions: The Company’s Intuit Distribution Management Solutions business offers software and related technical support, consulting and training services for distributors in the wholesale durable goods industry.
Canada: In Canada, the Company offers versions of QuickBooks that the Company has ‘localized,’ that is, customized to serve the needs of customers in that specific international location. These include QuickBooks software offerings, payroll offerings and service plans. The Company also offers QuickTax and TaxWiz consumer tax return preparation software; ProFile Financial Application Suite professional tax preparation products and ProFile Advisor memberships for accountants; and localized versions of Quicken in Canada.
The United Kingdom and Other Locations: In the United Kingdom, the Company offers localized versions of QuickBooks and QuickBooks Payroll, including products and services sold in partnership with banks. The Company licenses localized versions of QuickBooks and Quicken products in Germany, Australia and New Zealand through local distributors and agents. In addition, the Company offers QuickBooks and Quicken in South Africa through a distributor and in partnership with banks.
Marketing, Sales and Distribution
Markets: The Company’s primary target markets are small businesses, consumers and accountants.
Sales and Distribution Channels:
Direct Sales Channel: The Company sells majority of its products and services directly to its customers through its web sites and call centers.
Retail Distribution Channel: The Company market its QuickBooks, TurboTax and Quicken desktop software at retail in the United States by selling directly and through distributors to office supply superstores, warehouse clubs, consumer electronics retailers, general mass merchandisers, e-commerce companies and catalogers. In Canada and other international markets, the Company also relies on distributors and other third parties, who sell products into the retail channel.
OEM Channel: Through its relationships with selected personal computer ‘original equipment manufacturers,’ or OEMs, the Company sells software to customers purchasing new OEM systems and the Company sells products offered by OEMs to their customers after the point of sale.
Manufacturing and Distribution
Desktop Software and Supplies: The Company has a manufacturing agreement with ModusLink Corp. under which ModusLink provides substantially all outsourced manufacturing related to the Company’s retail launches of QuickBooks, TurboTax and Quicken, as well as for day-to-day retail order fulfillment after product launches. The Company has centralized the manufacturing for its retail products in one of its facilities which is co-located with its primary retail fulfillment vendor, Ingram Micro Logistics (IML), a division of Ingram Micro, Inc. The Company also outsources the product manufacturing and distribution for majority of its direct sales orders to Arvato Services, Inc., a division of Bertelsmann AG. The Company has an agreement with IML under which IML handles all logistics, fulfillment and similar functions for its retail sales.
Competition
The Company's competitors for its QuickBooks segment include Microsoft Corporation; The Sage Group PLC; Deluxe Corporation; and Microsoft’s partnership with Deluxe Kinko’s, Office Depot, and Staples.
The Company's competitors for its Payroll and Payments segment include ADP; Paychex; Ceridian; and Microsoft’s partnership with ADP.
The Company's competitors for its Consumer Tax segment include H&R Block and 2nd Story Software, Inc.
The Company's competitors for its Professional Tax segment include CCH Incorporated, and Thomson Corporation.
The Company's competitors for its Other Businesses segment include Microsoft Corporation.
History
Intuit, Inc. was founded in 1983.
