At the end of 2022, five companies with apps in the QuickBooks App Store were asked to participate in a nine-month pilot initiative for application developers. The Developer Growth Program—launched by the Developers & Partners group at Inuit®—is designed to help developers maximize their marketing impact, connect with more customers, and increase their app revenue by giving the participating developers access to an exclusive network of accountants, UX experts, and more.
Genius Sheets is one of the five participating companies and they have an AI-powered application that lets users generate financial reports and create meaningful insights from their QuickBooks® data in seconds, using only text prompts. We had a chance to speak with Trevor Lee, Co-Founder and CEO of Genius Sheets, and he told us that the benefits of the pilot program were felt in the company’s very first thirty-minute session with Intuit.
Here’s a look at Genius Sheets and their ongoing experience with the Developer Growth Program.
Genius Sheets: “Talk to Your Data”
Founded in 2020, Genius Sheets is a financial reporting tool that allows users to connect their QuickBooks Online data directly through a chat interface in either a Web app, Excel, or Google Sheets. By leveraging AI, Genius Sheets enables customers to use natural language to describe what they need. This is done while providing customers with a real-time data connection between QuickBooks and their Excel or Google sheets, in addition to providing them with the ability to consolidate and customize their reporting.
“Using text as the interface, our users have found that it can significantly cut down on the time they spend creating reports and analysis,” Lee says. “Plus, once the data is in Google Sheets or Excel, users can create live links directly back to the underlying QuickBooks data.”
But Genius Sheets does even more.
“This system helps customers automate the consolidation of multiple companies, close their monthly financial reporting faster, and create analysis that’s highly customized for each client,” Lee explains. “In the future, more work will be done by using plain text to operate commands and create analysis, and we’re thrilled to be shepherding QuickBooks users into this new future.”
Genius Sheets user Courtney is thrilled with his experience. He gave the app five stars in the QuickBooks App Store, writing, “Genius Sheets is incredible. Updating models in google sheets or excel to provide strategic advice is literally 1/3 of what I do, and this product has cut the time I spend doing this way down! Amazing ROI for any accountant.”
And reviewer Seth David of Nerd Enterprises writes, “Genius Sheets is…well…Genius. It lets me stay in my ‘home turf’ aka a good old fashioned spreadsheet while making it super easy to run my variance analysis for my CFO services clients.”
Genius Sheets: The Developer Growth Program is “Hugely Beneficial”
As a relatively new application, Genius Sheets has nevertheless made a name for itself as a user-friendly and innovative financial reporting solution. But it hasn’t been easy. The company’s biggest challenge, according to Lee, is marketing. “We have been marketing ourselves on social media and word of mouth thus far, plus a lot of customers have found us directly from our app listing in the QuickBooks App Store.”
Lee feels they were fortunate that the Intuit team found them on social media and that they invited Genius Sheets to participate in the new Developer Growth Program. Though only a few months into the nine-month program, Lee has had many worthwhile, action-oriented interactions with the different Intuit teams and accountants within the program.
“Within the first thirty-minute session, they [the UI/UX team] were helping us redesign some portions of our app to make it easier for users to immediately get started,” Lee says. “The Intuit team drew out a mock-up of the layout on a napkin and then uploaded the screenshots during the call.”
Lee also noted that they benefitted from valuable sessions with accounting experts Hector Garcia (CPA.CITP, Quick Bookkeeping & Accounting LLC) and Mario Nowogrodzki (CPA.CITP, Mendelson Consulting). The opportunity for Genius Sheets to work directly with accounting experts like Garcia and Nowogrodzki has helped their team gain deeper insights into what accountants look for in an app.
“It’s a really special relationship that accountants have with their clients, and they are rightfully protective over it and have been pitched thousands of new apps over the years, so they have seen a lot of things,” says Lee. “What’s great about that is accountants know exactly what they want, how they want it, and where they want it. And they won’t hesitate to tell you.”
“Accountants make fantastic partners for app developers because once they believe you’re solving a major pain point for them, and for their clients, they will go out of their way to give feedback about everything they like and, more importantly, what they want to see going forward.”
Genius Sheets: New Customers “Taking the Leap”
Prior to joining the Developer Growth Program pilot, Lee says there were a few accounting firms interested in Genius Sheets, but they hesitated to try the new software. One reason for the hesitation was that the accountants didn’t want to change their existing processes. According to Lee, another reason was that they “prefer to watch new entrants in the space to make sure they were going to stay around.” Once Genius Sheets joined the Developer Growth Program, however, the accounting firms changed their minds.
“When we asked them what was it that caused them to reach back out, they said they saw the news of the Intuit Developer Growth Program,” Lee says. “Having spent some time observing us, and with the knowledge that we would have deeper ties directly to Intuit, they felt more comfortable taking the leap and trying out our product.”
In addition to this exciting development, Lee says Genius Sheets experienced a massive surge in sign-ups—including international sign-ups—in mid-December 2022. Turns out, the spike in interest was due to their app going viral on TikTok. With the help of an Intuit Solution Architect on the team, Robert Mings, they were able to ensure the app and connections operated at 100%.
“Rob was extremely helpful working with us to make sure everything stayed up and running and that users were able to sign up promptly,” Lee says.
For Lee, another benefit of being a part of the pilot initiative is “the relationship with Intuit from a branding perspective.” This ties in nicely with Intuit’s goal to help app developers expand their reach and succeed with the 4.5 million small businesses around the world that run on the QuickBooks platform.
We’re excited to check in with Lee and his team after they’ve completed the Developer Growth Program to learn more about the growth and success of Genius Sheets!
To inquire about program details and how to participate, visit our developer forums. We’re always looking for innovative apps that can help the QuickBooks community. Our step-by-step guide makes it easy to list your app on the QuickBooks App Store.
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