Sure, AI can automate tasks, build playlists, and answer questions like how do magnets work? faster than any human ever could. But one thing it doesn’t do—and never will—is understand your client’s business better than you do.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t real advantages. Artificial intelligence works all day, every day, and can monitor countless moving parts at once. That’s simply not something humans can compete with. The real opportunity isn’t replacement, it’s extension.
A lot of business owners operate “from the gut.” And honestly, that makes sense. They’ve built their companies into what they are today by trusting that instinct and so have their clients. Their business is their baby. They know the names of suppliers, which season is busiest, which employees tend to call in late, and which customers require extra attention. That depth of knowledge can’t be automated.
But there’s another layer to this, especially as a business grows. You can’t scale gut-based insight forever. Eventually, there are too many suppliers, customers, locations, and variables to hold in one person’s head. It’s a good problem to have—but a problem nonetheless.
That’s where Intuit Enterprise Suite comes in, specifically through its enhanced business intelligence capabilities. Compared to other versions of QuickBooks Online, it offers significantly more robust reporting—most notably through consolidated and multi-dimensional reporting. Those terms sound more intimidating than they are, so let’s break them down.
Standard financial reporting—like a profit and loss statement—is flat. If you can recreate it easily in a spreadsheet, it’s flat. There’s tremendous value in that kind of high-level reporting; it’s often where you and a business owner connect and discuss overall performance. But it also has limits.
For example, a profit and loss statement shows total sales for a given period. You may be able to see revenue by type, but it’s harder to understand what actually made up those sales. Clients often have very specific questions that require additional digging. The same is true for expenses. You can see how much was spent on payroll or office supplies, but it’s harder to see which employees or departments drove those costs.
Yes, some of that detail can be captured through classes, locations, or additional general ledger accounts. But because the data is flat, you can only look at one dimension at a time. That means advisory insights often require manual effort—pulling information from multiple reports and sources to assemble a full picture.
Let’s imagine you have a long-time client who owns a pizza restaurant. Business has been great, so great that they now own 15 locations across six states. Be sure to congratulate them on their growing pizza empire. As that empire expands, so does the volume of financial and non-financial data: locations, hours of operation, staffing models, and more. Years ago, you could glance at receipts and say, “Big pepperoni day.” That might have been enough. But now? Empires generate paperwork.
So how do you provide quality advice across a multi-state pizza empire? How do you turn data from 15 restaurants—some standalone, some in strip malls, some open all day, others only for lunch—into meaningful, timely guidance?
This is where Intuit Enterprise Suite provides two critical tools: multi-entity reporting and multi-dimensional reporting.
Multi-entity reporting allows multiple businesses, separate EINs, locations, even bookkeepers, to be consolidated into a single group. Financials can be viewed side-by-side or rolled up into one view. More importantly, you can maintain a single chart of accounts, vendor list, and reporting structure. No more apples-to-oranges comparisons or stitching together data from disparate files.
Consolidation also enables intercompany allocations, automated links between payables and receivables, and a unified view of transactions moving between entities. You gain a true birds’-eye view—something that simply wasn’t feasible not long ago. With updated access controls, high-level reporting can be shared with the right stakeholders without oversharing sensitive details.
And those consolidated reports go beyond the profit and loss. You can analyze sales by customer, aging of receivables and payables, expenses by vendor, and more—without logging into 16 separate files to run the same report repeatedly. Of course, consolidation alone adds complexity. That’s where multi-dimensional reporting comes in. If multi-entity reporting tells you who you’re looking at, multi-dimensional reporting tells you how to look at them.
Instead of flat data, your information becomes fully connected through dimensions you define. In our pizza example, you might tag data by location (state or city), store type (standalone or concession), or operating hours (all day, lunch only, dinner only). Every transaction is associated with those dimensions.
With that structure in place, you can easily:
Compare financials for stores in a specific state
Analyze lunch-only locations within that state
Drill down further to standalone stores that are lunch-only
Or view any combination that matters most
There’s no “right” or “wrong” set of dimensions. The goal is to make the data reflect how your client actually runs their business. Intuit Enterprise Suite’s agentic AI then works continuously in the background, parsing that data to surface relevant, actionable insights. It used to be that a report was only as good as the time you put into building it. With multi-entity and multi-dimensional reporting powered by agentic AI, that’s no longer the case. The heavy lifting is done for you. You define what matters, and the system helps deliver insight at scale.
That shift is crucial. Clients don’t need accountants simply to reconcile bank accounts, they need guidance. They need someone who can interpret data and help them make informed decisions.
Imagine tracking sales trends by weather. We all assume icy days hurt foot traffic—but what about rain? Do pizza sales increase when it’s raining? With real-time, dimensional reporting, your client could experiment with weather-based pricing or promotions. Those insights only matter if they’re timely; a price change suggested a week after the rain doesn’t help anyone.
Historically, accounting has been backward-looking. We analyzed what happened last month and made recommendations after the fact. With real-time reporting and intelligent automation, you can identify trends as they emerge and help clients adjust in the moment.
The ultimate goal has always been actionable insight. As your clients’ businesses grow in size and complexity, you have a choice: continue working harder to extract insights from increasingly complex data or streamline the process and elevate the advisory role you play. The right tools make it possible to spend less time assembling information—and more time helping clients build the empire they’ve always envisioned.