Good afternoon. My name is Saeed, and I will be your conference facilitator. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Intuit's First Quarter Fiscal 2015 Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer period.
With that, I will now turn the call over to Matt Rhodes, Intuit's Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. Rhodes, you may begin.
Thank you, sir. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Intuit's 1st quarter fiscal 2015 conference call. I'm here with Brad Smith, our President and CEO and Neil Williams, our CFO. Before we start, I'd like to remind everyone that our remarks will include forward looking statements. There are a number of factors that could cause Intuit's results to differ materially from our expectations.
You can learn more about these risks in the press release we issued earlier this afternoon, our Form 10 ks for fiscal 2014 and our other SEC filings. All of those documents are available on the Investor Relations page of Intuit's website at intuit.com. We assume no obligation to update any forward looking statement. Some of the numbers in this report are presented on a non GAAP basis. We reconcile the comparable GAAP and non GAAP numbers in today's press release.
Unless otherwise noted, all growth rates refer to the current period versus the comparable prior year period and the business metrics and associated growth rates refer to worldwide business metrics. A copy of our prepared remarks and supplemental financial information will be available on our website after this call ends. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Brad Smith.
All right. Thanks, Matt. And thanks to all of you for joining us. We're out of the gate strong in fiscal 15. We grew revenue 8% in the Q1 and exceeded our QuickBooks Online subscriber and our company financial targets.
It's a great start, but it's still early in the year and there's a lot of game left to be played. Let me provide a brief overview of what's driving these results, beginning with our small business performance. We're continuing to accelerate growth in our online ecosystem. QuickBooks Online is generating new customer acquisition with over 75% of QuickBooks Online customers being new to the Intuit franchise. We're also actively marketing QuickBooks Online to desktop customers who are cloud ready.
The QuickBooks Online ecosystem is building momentum. We grew total QuickBooks Online subscribers by 43 9,000 paying subscribers worldwide. 9,000 paying subscribers worldwide. Outside the U. S, QuickBooks Online subscribers were up more than 170% to 103,000 further accelerating from last quarter.
And the improvements we're seeing in the leading indicators are quite promising, with new user attach rates of 12% for payments and 31% for payroll, up from 6% 20% respectively a year ago. We remain squarely focused on driving customer growth and increasing market penetration. QuickBooks Online has a very low penetration when you reflect our total addressable market of more than 160,000,000 small businesses globally. Although we're still early in terms of taking QuickBooks Online Global, we're excited about the huge market opportunity. Adding just one additional point of penetration would more than double our QuickBooks Online subscriber base.
The capstone to the quarter for our small business team was our first of its kind QuickBooks Connect event that was held in October. We hosted more than 3,500 attendees, including accounting professionals, small business owners, entrepreneurs and developers. The attendees found inspiration from the main stage while learning practical advice on how to start and grow their businesses from renowned experts and breakout sessions. At the event, we introduced more than 100 product enhancements and featured a lineup of dynamic speakers that wowed the audience. I'm glad some of you on the call were able to attend and I encourage everyone to consider checking out QuickBooks Connect next fall.
With that context around our small business performance, let me now shift to tax. Fiscal 2015 is the 2nd year of a multiyear journey to achieve our product vision of taxes are done. We're excited about the progress we're making in preparation for the upcoming tax season, but there's still much to do over the next several years. We'll continue our focus on improving conversion with a more simple and responsive experience that leverages data to get customers through their tax return with ease and confidence. We'll also focus on delivering a unified help and answer experience, driving TurboTax customers to clear explanations on everything tax related, including the Affordable Care Act.
We're looking forward to getting our new lineup of solutions out to market in the next few weeks. In the Professional Tax business, we're seeing strong new customer growth early in the season and our shift to the cloud continues to pick up steam. We intend to build on our leadership position and capitalize on this once in a generation shift to the cloud for accountants. So in a nutshell, we're off to a great start in fiscal 2015. I'm energized by our results as we continue to accelerate customer growth in our online ecosystems.
These results reinforce our confidence in the near and the long term financial outlooks that we have provided. And on that note, I'll turn it over to Neil to walk you through the financial details. Thanks, Brad. Let's start with overall company results.
For the Q1 of fiscal 2015, we reported revenue of $672,000,000 up 8%, non GAAP operating loss of $36,000,000 GAAP operating loss of $114,000,000 non GAAP loss per share of $0.10 and a GAAP loss per share of $0.29 As Brad just said, we're off to a strong start, a little ahead of our expectations for the Q1. Turning to the business segments. Total small business group revenue grew 5% for the Q1. Small business online ecosystem revenue grew 30% and customer acquisition in our online ecosystem continues to drive growth. QuickBooks Online subscribers grew 43%, accelerating from the previous quarter.
Total online active payments customers grew 3%. Online payments charge volume grew 22%, driven by strong growth in payments customers connected to QuickBooks Online. Online payroll customers grew 24% and full service payroll customers nearly doubled. Rounding out the online ecosystem, demand for us customers grew 27% for the quarter. Switching to the desktop side, total desktop ecosystem revenue declined 2% and QuickBooks desktop units declined 23%.
This is in line with our expectations we continue to emphasize QuickBooks Online. QuickBooks total paying customers grew 22% in the Q1. As we move through the year, we will continue to experiment with our QuickBooks product lineup and our pricing to maximize long term customer and revenue growth across small business. Within the consumer group, consumer tax revenue was up 36% versus the Q1 last year. As you know, our consumer tax business is highly seasonal and our Q1 is a light one.
We will continue to invest in the product experience and to prioritize growth in share and customers above market expansion. The quarter is also seasonally light for our pro tax group with revenue growth of 46%. We continue to take a disciplined approach to capital $1,600,000,000 in cash and investments on our balance sheet, our first priority is investing for customer growth. We also look for inorganic opportunities. And in the Q1, we made 2 acquisitions totaling $10,000,000 What's the best use of cash?
We'll return cash to shareholders via share repurchases. We repurchased $114,000,000 of shares in the Q1 and we have about $1,800,000,000 remaining on our authorization. We intend to be in the market consistently during the year. Our Board approved a $0.25 dividend per share for our fiscal Q2 payable on January 20th. This represents a 32% increase versus last year and reflects our large and growing cash position as well as more recurring and predictable revenue We provided our guidance for the Q2 and reiterated our guidance for full fiscal 2015 in our press release.
As a reminder, we'll provide tax unit updates in February concurrent with our 2nd quarter earnings release and in late April after the tax season. Back to you Brad.
All right. Thank you, Neil. It's obviously early in our fiscal year, but we are off to a strong start. QuickBooks Online is accelerating our transition to the cloud, which is driving value for our customers as well as for Intuit and our shareholders. As I mentioned, I am really pleased with the strong turnout at our inaugural QuickBooks Connect event last month, which helped build awareness of our growing online where it was last year.
375 accountants became QuickBooks Online certified at the event itself. And collectively, the conference attendees touch more than 1,000,000 small businesses. We're planning to build on the power of these connections throughout the year. We're also gearing up for tax season and we're looking forward to getting our new offerings in the market in the coming weeks. So we're heading into our busiest time of the year and we are excited about the momentum that we're continuing to build.
As always, I want to thank our employees for their hard work and their ongoing focus. And with that, Saiid, let's open it up to hear what's on everyone's mind.
Thank you.
Our first question comes from Walter Pritchard from Citi. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi, thanks. Just one question on small business and one question on tax.
Could you help us understand on the tax side? We've had a variety of sort of seasonal anomalies over the last several years in terms of more of a front end loaded or back end loaded tax season. Could you help us understand kind of how you're thinking about the shape of the tax season as it compares to some of the prior years we've seen here?
Okay, Walter. So right off the bat, one of the things that's happened in the last several years has been a delayed tax season because Congress has acted late to pass certain laws and then the IRS hasn't been able to open up season on time. While that still remains a potential reality and there have been letters written by the IRS Commissioner to Congress, we're still banking on the fact that the season is going to open up around January 20. But of course, we have contingencies in place in the event it does get pushed out for any reason. Beyond that, I think the natural seasonality is what it has been and that's an increasing procrastination with more people waiting to later in the season to follow.
We've tried to reflect that in our forecast, but ultimately we'll have to wait and see how customer behaves in terms of their tax filing behavior.
And then, I guess, Neil for you on small business expenses, we just back into that based on your operating income in small business. And it looked like you grew your expenses in small business about 8% year over year, which is actually less than you grew it in the second half of last year. And it felt like at the Analyst Meeting, you were talking about accelerating some of your investments in small business and you noted you had Connect during the quarter. I guess it seems like you're spending less than we expected in that area. Could you give us some color on that?
And do you expect that that spending ramps as we move through the year?
Yes, Walter, I guess I would say 2 things about that. 1st and foremost, our small business team has gone through an extensive resource reallocation during the summer. And some of our plans around recommitting to the online products around our bold initiative that really drove a more extensive resource reallocation. Secondly, I would caution you that the Q1 is just the first one out of the gate and some of the expenses may show up later in the year, particularly as we roll out additional products offerings and have marketing and things around those events. So I wouldn't read too much in the Q1 run rate or necessarily assume that's indicative of the full year.
And then just last one for you, Neil, on I calculate your billings were up sort of high teens. And I'm wondering I know most of your businesses is billed on a monthly basis. And I'm wondering if we should be looking at sort of revs plus change in deferred as any sort of metric for your business? What are your thoughts there?
Yes. It's a good question, Walter. And if you look at the Q1, you don't see a huge buildup right there because our desktop product really didn't go on to the 1st part of October. And so, what you see in the 1st 2 months of our Q1 is really the desktop sales still under the upfront revenue recognition before the switch to ratable. So it's probably worth maybe a point or 2 maybe in the Q1.
We'd probably be in the total company, probably be in the low teens without the effects of ratable. It will be much more prominent in 2nd, Q3.
One other thing I'd point out quickly Walter, this is Matt. The desktop payroll business generates some deferred revenue as well and we saw some pretty good growth there this quarter. So that's showing up in the deferred balance overall for the company too.
Great. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Brad Kehl from UBS. Your line is open.
Please go
ahead. Thanks. Good afternoon. Brad, you mentioned outside the U. S.
You saw accelerating momentum. And I know it's early days, but maybe if you could just walk through what you're seeing there and help us understand the prioritization of what is a pretty big opportunity for you when you look outside the U. S?
Yes, Brent, happy to do that. So as we discussed, we have 4 priority markets outside the U. S. Those are Canada and the U. K, Australia and India.
And we have now put a Tiger team on the ground in France and we're in the early days of discovering there and getting the product more localized and making sure the compliance fits the local market needs. In terms of prioritization, we're treating each country as a market of 1. So we don't have one prioritized over the other because we're testing different concepts. And right now, we're seeing acceleration in all four of those markets. We're seeing increasing gross new subs on a weekly basis.
We're learning and getting more accountants aware of the product and signed up for a pro advisor program. We're becoming much more effective at direct selling through the website. And we're also getting very good reviews from the customers and the accountants on how the product stacks up versus competition. We had mentioned in the last call, we had done an independent study in Australia where we actually outperformed the leading online competitor there 2:one in terms of ease of use. We just replicated that study in the UK and got the same results.
So across the board, we're continuing to see strong performance in these countries and now we're in the process of looking at that 5th country being France. And beyond that, I would just say that the teams continue to learn every week, they're running rapid experiments and things are looking good.
Okay. Neil, I realize you still have a long way to go on the authorization on the buyback. At the beginning of the year, you took an accelerated approach to this. Is this something we should continue to factor in the model? Just steady ongoing adoption of that back or just be lucky to get your thoughts on that?
Thank you.
We had a little over $500,000,000 in buybacks embedded in the guidance we gave you on the share count back in August. And so we'll see how that plays out. We executed in Q1 against that plan. But we'll see how it plays out. It depends on what other uses we have for our cash and other opportunities we have in the marketplace.
So I feel comfortable with the reduction in share count we've guided for 2015. We'll see if there are opportunities to go beyond that.
Great. Thanks.
Thanks, Brent.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Sterling Auty from JPMorgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thanks. Hi, guys. Two questions here on QuickBooks Online. You mentioned in the prepared remarks that you're already marketing the solution to the desktop users that are ready.
Can you just talk us through a little bit more color how you're reaching out and marketing to them? And remind us, I think you talked about 70% of them are probably able to make the switch. So how should we think about you increasing that marketing as you can reach out to when 100% are ready to make the switch?
Hey, Sterling, it's Brad. First of all, we're continuing to reach out to our desktop customers through both their accountant, who is the most trusted advisor, because we find that 1 out of 2 decisions are actually directed by the accountant. So we've been working with them with the new QuickBooks Online for accountants. We have a very compelling ProAdvisor program that gives them incentives to help them get their clients over to the cloud. Of course, the other thing we've been doing is we've been directly marketing to our own customer base and we do that through both direct response as well as in the product.
And we're getting really good receptivity. In terms of the actual number of customers who can migrate now, our goal is to have as many as 70 by the end of this fiscal year. Right now, it's more in the neighborhood of about a third, a third of the customers can move over. And what we're doing to close that gap is basically closing out some feature functionality things that they're used to having in desktop like advanced inventory, job costing, sales form customization. And then the other thing we're doing is we're just making the migration process seamless for them, not only for accounting, but also for payroll and payments.
So when you put it together, we're working with the accountant to get them comfortable and encourage them to recommend. We're directly marketing to the customer base through direct response and in the product. And then we're also closing out those remaining feature gaps so that more of those customers can make that move.
And then the follow-up is, when we look at the subscriber additions throughout the fiscal year, how should we think about the seasonality, meaning which of the quarters are naturally going to see probably stronger subscriber growth versus others?
Yes. So what we're seeing still is there is a natural time frame in the 1st of the calendar year where many small businesses will consider making a switch or many accountants figure that's a good time to get their clients to start something new. But when you start thinking about small businesses overall, a lot of that behavior was shaped from the fact that we were desktop software and we used to send a new version out on Black Friday and then ultimately people would start to make the switch in the calendar year. So there isn't as much seasonality in the cloud as there was in desktop, but there is still this sort of first of the year phenomenon. So you will see more customers start to consider that switch in that January timeframe, but you're going to start to see a little more evening out over 4 quarters versus what we used to experience in the desktop.
Great. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Kash Rangan from Merrill Lynch. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. My goal is to ensure that I'm not asking a Splunk question on the Intuit call. So
Hey, Kash, we'll take any question you want to ask.
I'll ask a question on the Autodesk on your call. I'm kidding. With respect to QBO, obviously nice start in the quarter. Can you give us a sense, Brad, Neil, of the new QBO subscribers that you brought on board? What attach rate did you experience for payments and payroll?
And how do you compare that trend in recent quarters? And I'm also curious to get your perspective on as a result of getting this Q1 out of the way, how much more incrementally confident are you in the $1,000,000 sub goal and the associated attach metrics for payroll and payments? Thank you.
All right, Kash. Happy to do that. This is Brad. So 1st and foremost, we're really excited with the momentum in QuickBooks Online in terms of subscriber growth. We had anticipated the neighborhood of 700 and 15,000 for the quarter.
As you know, we provided that guidance. We closed the quarter in the neighborhood of 739,000. So we're ahead on subscriber growth. Perhaps what's equally, if not more exciting is the attach rates for new users. In terms of the actual payments attach rate, it was 6 excuse me, it was 12% for new users.
That's up from 6% a year ago. And for payroll attach rate, it's 31% for new users and that's up from 20% a year ago. So not only are the subscriber base growing faster than we had forecasted, but the attach rates are much healthier than they were 12 months ago. In terms of confidence, you might imagine that gives us continuing and increasing confidence in the guidance that we provided both for this year as well as over the next 3 years. We also readily admit we're 1 quarter into this journey.
So there's still a lot of game and a lot of time left on the clock. But if we keep this momentum up, we're feeling very good.
Great. And if I could, you don't have to answer, but there's answer for this. What are the things that you are watching and we should be watching that will give you confidence to alter your longer term outlook? I think you have a goalpost of about 2,000,000 QBO subs. What are the things that you're looking for qualitatively, quantitatively that could help you revisit that that number?
That's it for me. Thank you.
Kash, this is Neil. Probably the best thing we can do is just continue to post good increases quarter after quarter. And we've talked about a guidance of 800,000 subscribers by the end of Q2, which would put us right on track for the guidance we've given for this full year. So one of the great things about monitoring this quarter by quarter is we'll be able to see and you'll be able to see as well if we're trending to the guidance and to the outlook that we gave for 2015 as well as for 17. So we really can't point anything beyond that.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Sharon Furlough from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you. I wanted to double back a little bit on the comment that around a third of the base is now potentially primed to move over to QuickBooks Online and you'd like to see that go to 70% by the end of this year. As you think of those customers in the desktop base that have the potential to move to QuickBooks Online, what are sort of the things preventing that from happening right now? Is it just the change management around moving to a new solution?
Is it price? How do you sort of think about those blockers and what you can do to kind of get people past them?
Yes, Jennifer, it's Brad. I mean, first of all, I the most important thing is we don't need to get that customer base to move over if they're not comfortable. We're getting 75% of our customers new to the franchise. And that's really what we're about is trying to increase the penetration into the total addressable market. The migration of these customers is really based upon their comfort level, their accountant's comfort level and us having the product ready to the point where they can move over and not lose any important functionality.
So what's really today slowing that migration is the fact that we still have some areas like inventory, job costing, some sales forms customization that some of these customers want to have. And so we need to make sure we have that built out and in a place where they're going to feel comfortable moving over. And the second thing is just making the migration process seamless. We have a 3 clicks, 3 minutes conversion of your data from small business accounting. But at the same time, we have to make that just as easy to move your payments and your payroll data.
And so we've been working on that and it's a combination of the features as well as having that migration process mapped out. For us, the big juice is the accountant. And the accountant is increasingly excited about QuickBooks Online for their clients. And now that we rolled out the new version of QuickBooks Online for The Accountants, which we unveiled at QuickBooks Connect, we are seeing a much more excited and enthusiastic accountant base wanting to get their clients over to the cloud. So it's those things that are going to really help these customers migrate.
Keep in mind that we're agnostic. Whether they stay in QuickBooks Desktop or they move to QuickBooks Online, it's all goodness for us and we're ultimately trying to just increase the penetration into the total addressable market.
And then just one last one for me. I think, Neil, in your prepared remarks, you mentioned that in fiscal 2015, there would be some experimentation with the QuickBooks lineup and with pricing to try and maximize adoption. Can you just provide a little bit more color there whether that's relevant to new users, existing users, both? How should we think about what potentially could play out?
Sure, Jennifer. Some of this you've already seen. We raised the price of desktop when the new release came out this year to sort of rebalance the price value equation. And as Brad said, make us agnostic as to which product the customer chooses. We introduced QuickBooks Online Self Employed, which is a simpler, less expensive version of add to the lineup.
And so and we're testing the way we present those choices to customers in the lineup. And one of the beautiful things about online is you can do a lot of AB testing to determine what resonates with the customers most. And I expect we're going to continue to experiment with that with our promotional strategy and things like that throughout the year to determine what's the right equilibrium for customers. And we certainly don't want the price value equation to be a barrier for someone to convert to QuickBooks Online. So those are a couple of things that are out in the market already and I think we'll continue to experiment with things like that as the year goes on.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Greg Dunham from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Hi.
You have Frank Robinson on for Greg Dunham. The QuickBook desktop unit sales declined 23% much more expectations for that going forward?
Yes, Frank, it's Brad. First of all, the desktop decline for the outright sales, the people who purchased it and this has a 3 year license within the zip code of what we expected. We expected a decline of 20% to 25%. What you also have to look at on the fact sheet is the number of people signing up for QuickBooks Desktop subscriptions. And when you add in that growth of people who've moved off of an outright sale to subscriptions and then you also add in the desktop sales, the total base on QuickBooks Desktop is only down about 2%.
So net net, it's where we expected it to be 20% to 25% sort of what we anticipated on the outright sales. We saw the migration moving to subscriptions and or to the cloud version of the product. So we're right where we thought we would be in terms of the desktop
question comes from Brad Zelnick from Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thank you. This is Eun Kim for Brad. Again, very strong QBO subscriber number, Brad. Another strong quarter of attach rate improvement for new QBO subs, which to me indicates that the quality of new subs was pretty strong. Will would we ever see a case or are you willing to accelerate subscriber adds that maybe of lower quality and may not result in attach improvement?
And along the line, is the attach rate improvement somewhat driven by desktop QuickBooks transition who may have a higher attach rates than the new QBO to the franchise? Thanks.
Okay. And can you I'm sorry, could you just repeat the second part of your question? I missed that.
Yeah, sure. So I am assuming that the transition from desktop to the QBO franchise. Just wondering how is that improvement? How are you actually addressing that attach rate when people are transitioning from desktop to online?
Got it. Okay. Thank you, Yves. So first of all, the quality of the new subs to QuickBooks Online is a very healthy and we're excited about the lifetime value of those customers. We talked about the attach rates earlier for new users.
And we are opening up the funnel increasingly in two ways. One is as we began to move globally, we're reaching into countries where we don't yet have payroll and payments. And so I think what you're going to see is an early stage where we may just have a small business accounting customer and then we'll work with partners to close the payroll and payments gaps. And then over time, we'll round that ecosystem K. So that's one of the things you'll see in terms of what you categorize as maybe a lower quality customer for Attach.
We actually don't view it as a lower quality. We simply view it as an earlier stage customer or an earlier market for us where we're still building out the ecosystem. The other way that you'll see the attach rates potentially getting impacted is as we go after QuickBooks Self Employed. These are customers who today don't believe they're big enough to need a small business accounting product, but they do need to separate their personal from their business expense and then come tax time be able to send that data to TurboTax or to an accountant to be able to file C. And so they may not have payroll needs because they're a sole proprietor and they probably do need payments, but they may not have the same lifetime value.
So those are the 2 things that you'll see ultimately impact the how big the funnel is and what the attach rates will be over time. Desktop to online, you're absolutely correct. We expect those attach rates from desktop customers moving over. They tend to be more established. Those should be healthier attach rates on things like payroll and payments.
So we're excited as more customers get comfortable moving to the cloud that that's only a tailwind for us.
Okay, great. And then just the same attach rate kind of question. What was the improvement if any for the existing QBO installed base?
Well, we track that in terms of total penetration into the base. And payroll is now at about 19% penetration and it was from a base of 16% penetration a year ago. So that's 300 basis points, which is healthy against the total base. And payments is now about 5% and that's up from about 3% penetration a year ago. So once again almost double.
So the total base is benefiting here as well.
Okay, great. Thank you so much.
You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you.
Our first our next question comes from Jim MacDonald from First Analysis. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good afternoon, guys. You talked about the QuickBooks Desktop price. Any other price built into your assumptions for this year?
Jim, in small business or across the company or?
I know you probably won't
talk about tax, but too much. So mostly small business. Well,
yes, obviously our pricing strategy is what we call pricing for value. So on the lower end of the market, we often start with free or we introduce new products, things like QuickBooks Self Employed, which are a little more affordably priced. And then on the higher end of the market, we'll look for opportunities to take price increase. And you've seen us do some of that with QuickBooks Enterprise, including moving to subscription versions of QuickBooks Enterprise. In payroll, we introduced a new pricing philosophy, which basically the pay by employees, the number of employees you actually have a charge for each employee add and that gives us a little pricing leverage as well.
But by and large, there hasn't been a fundamental change in our pricing strategy. It's price for value, stay really competitive on the low end, make sure that we're disruptive, but taking value on the high end. Great. And as a follow-up, I think you said
in your remarks that your full service payroll doubled or nearly doubled. Maybe you could talk a little more about that?
Yes, it did. As you know, that is an exciting product for us that we introduced a couple of years ago. It's still early days. The subscriber base continues to build up. We're roughly now about 25,000 active customers in full service payroll.
We just introduced the ability now to also sell it to QuickBooks Online customers. There's seamless integration between QuickBooks Online, which we think is really going to be an accelerant for this business. It's priced about a third cheaper than the payroll outsourcers and yet provides the same value and benefit in terms of protecting you against any errors. And so this is an exciting product for us and we think there's nothing but upside in this full service payroll product. Great.
Thanks a lot.
All right. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Scott Schneeberger from Oppenheimer. Your line is open.
Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good afternoon. And Neil
Scott, we lost you buddy.
Sir, if you have your phone on mute, can you mute your phone please? Our next question comes from Ross MacMillan from RBC Capital Market.
Thanks a lot. And apologies for my voice. I've got a cold. So hopefully you can hear me. I had a question just it's going back to attach.
I think what you're saying is that your QBO, that cohort of new customers actually now not only has a higher attach across payroll and payments relative to last year, but I think higher than the aggregate base across the entire QuickBooks installed base including desktop users. So I guess just if that's true, which I think is true, what is your expectation for how that evolves? Do you think that there's going to be a shift back so that the QBO customers in aggregate will have maybe a lower attach than that cohort in the future. Just maybe help me understand how you expect that to evolve? That would be helpful.
Thanks.
Yes, Ross. So first of all, your hypothesis is true. Not only are the cohorts attaching at a higher rate than prior Quick Books Online, they're also attaching at a higher rate than desktop. And this has been the thesis we've had all along. It's much easier to sell additional services in the cloud than it is in a desktop product.
It's just a seamless part of the experience. It's built into the workflow. And we've often said that we felt that we were not anywhere near the total about payroll today, in the small business base of QuickBooks Desktop customers, of the $4,000,000 roughly 2.5 1,000,000 of them actually have employees and pay a payroll service. And today, we only have about 1,000,000 of them as customers. So we never reached our full potential in desktop.
When it transfers to the cloud, it makes it a lot easier for us to introduce them to additional services. Same thing goes on with payments. 1 out of 2 small businesses are accepting credit and debit cards today. We had single digit penetration as we move to the cloud. We think it's a real as well as improve in terms of the cohorts.
That's very helpful. Just a quick follow-up on aggregate QuickBooks customer growth. I know you said 22%, but it's a bit of a funky number because it includes perpetual units in period and subscribers, which is obviously a growing pool of users. My adjustment suggests something around 5% growth, I annualize the perpetual units. And I think that's more in keeping with the 6% you saw last year.
So I guess my question is, what are your views on total QuickBooks customer growth? Are we likely to see that total pool of customers continue to grow? And do you think it could actually even accelerate from the 6%? Thanks.
Yes. So Ross, I'll tell you, I think first of all, as you did the math, you're in the zip code of what we're seeing too. So when you make all the adjustments, that's pretty much in the zip code of where we are. And we do think that will continue to grow over time as we introduce QuickBooks Online to a whole new base of customers and 3 out of 4 of them are new to the Intuit franchise that's going to deepen our penetration into our existing markets. And as we introduce QuickBooks Online in new countries that introduces new opportunities for us to grow the customer base.
But right now in terms of the aggregate number that you talked about, that's the way we're viewing it and we think there's only upside potential there.
Great. And maybe one very quick short last one on tax. Just curious, do you have any view as to whether the additional forms surrounding ACA this year could have an influence on the timing of when parts of the filer base might actually file thinking that it could create even more delays for a portion of the filer base. What are your thoughts around that? Thanks.
Yes. Ross, I this is one we're going to have to wait and see how the consumer behavior plays out. I mean, obviously, we feel very good as we're heading into season with what our team has been able to achieve and what we've tested over the summer. For the majority of our customers, the only thing they'll have to do is check a box to be compliant with ACA. And then for those who actually have the Form 8,962, we've turned that into a simple interview like question just like we do in TurboTax.
And we think we're going to make that pretty simple as well. Now whether or not someone sits at home and waits to file because they're trying to process the health care implications is something no one knows. We're just going to have to wait and see. But we haven't seen any behavior so far that tells us that that's a guarantee.
Great. Thanks again and congrats on the numbers.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. And our next question comes from Scott Schneeberger from Oppenheimer. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Hey, guys. I hope you can hear me this time. I'm going to ask 2 questions upfront just in so I don't get an influx of dropped in a bad spot. First one, Neil, I know retention is very important to QuickBooks Online over the long term.
If you could just elaborate on that and how things are going near term, just any comments on retention rate? And then the second question is just progress on your Chek acquisition from earlier this year and you gave
a little color on the one
of the 2 acquisitions you made in the quarter. Maybe discuss the other one please. Thanks.
Okay. Do you want
to talk about QBO retention? I'll take Chuck.
Yes. You're right, Scott. Retention is probably one of the biggest levers we have to improve the lifetime value of QuickBooks Online long term. That's one of the things we're critically focused on. We were really pleased with our retention numbers for Q1.
And we're looking hard to see what we can do to increase and improve that as we move throughout the year. There are a number of things from the quality of the release when it goes out to our care experience, to the agents and we've talked about it back in August that we've moved a lot of our care resources back onshore. We think that's a critical part to ensuring that customers who are using QBO get the benefits and the experience that they expect when they subscribe and keeping them in the franchise. And as you well know, it's much easier to drive engagement and to be connected to those customers when they're using it online. So we like where retention started out in Q1.
We think there's opportunities to improve that and we certainly want to keep it high.
Yes. And Scott, it's Brad. I'll take the Chegg acquisition. I was just in Israel visiting the team last week. Very excited about the opportunities here.
We've sequenced and prioritized the work that they're taking on in the 1st year. Anytime you bring 2 companies together, there's new ways of working together you want to work through. So their number one priority right now is getting the check bill pay capability built into Mint, renamed as Mint Bills. And they're also working with our Quicken base to do the same thing. And we have a team working in concert with QuickBooks Online to begin to look at ways to facilitate payments between consumers and the small businesses who use QuickBooks Online.
So those are their top three priorities in that order. In terms of the teams coming together and how the employees are feeling, they're very excited. They were energized to be a part of this process and they see big opportunity ahead of them. And so we're pretty bullish right now on the check opportunity. You mentioned KatyK?
That was the other acquisition.
Yes. Go ahead. You can do that.
The other acquisition, Scott, was a company called KDK in India. And this is a company that does professional tax software in India. But the interesting thing about them to us is they have relationships with over 20,000 accountants in India, which as you know is a key means for us to get deeper penetration with QuickBooks Online. So we're delighted with that. The team that came over from KDK is very engaged, very excited to be part of Intuit.
And we're really just getting started, but we're delighted with the ability to reach more accountants with QBO and therefore small business customers through the accounting relationship.
Great. Thanks very much guys.
All right. Thank you. And our next question comes from Michael Millman from Millman Research. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Maybe following up on your discussion about during the summer working with some of your tax clients regarding ACA whether you get or can describe fear or no concern about doing it on the parts of at least those you spoke with. And in the last 2 years, could you tell us the percent and sure I guess repeat the percentage of your new tax users that came from assisted, trying to get some notion of how important that is and whether that could be delayed because of ACA?
Okay, Mike. First of all, in terms of the tests over the summer, what we found was a great sense of relief. What is clearly something that sounds complicated on the surface and many of our competitors are trying to make that more complicated and scary. When they get in and find just how user friendly the tools are like the Affordable Care Act calculator, our TurboTax exemption check process where you can go in for free and see whether or not you qualify for an exemption to the penalty. There's this tremendous sense of release of relief.
And ultimately, as you know, about 100,000,000 people visit turbotax.com every year. So we've got a large audience coming in and I think we're able to break through that fear, uncertainty and doubt with very simple tools and ways to help people understand this isn't as scary as some people would like you to believe. The second piece of it is sorry, you want to you got go ahead. You were asking about the share we took from assisted, Michael.
Yes, go ahead. Yes.
So this is Matt. When we look at the category overall within software, we took a couple
of points of share. And as you
can see, the software category grew about 5% last year, a little better and assisted was roughly flat. So we think we took share across the board and we'll continue to. One of the things we want to focus on is driving an experience online for our customers that gives them the confidence to do it themselves at about a quarter of
the cost of going to assistance. That will continue to be our focus.
Okay. So is it fair to say that you don't see those unassisted staying where they are because of some uncertainty?
Yes. Now Michael, we don't believe that's the case. We've shared before that when you look at when Massachusetts introduced a similar concept years ago, there was no behavior change in terms of people wanting to stay entrenched or even switch methods. We continue to see a shift towards do it yourself software there and we believe that's going to continue to be the case here with the federal program of the Affordable Care Act.
Great. Thank you.
Gentlemen, I'm showing no further questions at this time. Would you like to close with any additional remarks?
Yes, Saiid, I would. I just want to thank everybody for the questions today. We're off to a strong start. We're clearly building momentum and we're looking forward to our peak season, which is coming up in the next couple of months. We want to wish everybody a safe and happy holiday season and hopefully we'll get the chance to speak with you soon.
And with that, we'll sign off. So thanks a lot.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This concludes today's