In this conversational walkthrough, Linda and the host walk viewers through the QuickBooks Online Accountant ProAdvisor program during week three of the series. They begin by exploring the ProAdvisor points system, showing how points are earned (e.g., advanced certification, client activity) and how they translate into tier status—from Gold to Elite—and the associated benefits such as faster phone support and marketing discounts. The duo then navigates the ProAdvisor training portal, highlighting downloadable resources, marketing tools, client‑training options, and tier‑based discounts. They explain the structure of the Advanced certification exam, covering the seven sections, three‑attempt limit, 80% passing threshold, and how the exam adapts after failed attempts. A substantial portion is devoted to practical test‑taking strategies: taking screenshots before advancing, reading questions aloud, using sample files, and breaking study sessions into short, daily chunks. They also share personal study habits, such as committing an hour each morning with a partner. Finally, they note that onboarding will be addressed in a future video, acknowledging its complexity. The session ends with encouragement for a successful exam week.
Chapters
Good afternoon, Linda. How are you doing on week 3?
I am glad it's Friday.
Amen. Nice. Hey, weekend's coming up, so it's a good time for people to take on the next step as part of the growing in the ProAdvisor world, right?
Yeah, we're starting out as a newbie, which is fun, actually kind of fun. So let's go— I want to be a newbie again. I know, it would be cool.
Only if I could have all the same knowledge still.
Oh, well, you don't. Sorry.
I know, I know.
Okay, so we're on step 3, connecting to your QuickBooks Online and all your services. So just as an online accountant is built for pros, QuickBooks Online is designed for small businesses, self-payers, trainings. This is the good part. This is the stuff we talked about last time, the free stuff that, that's embedded in here. I've learned so much. I don't know about you. I've learned so much about how the program works. And even there's even stuff about accounting and tricky transactions. You get into the higher level trainings. What do you think?
Absolutely. So actually, when I was doing my QuickBooks Online Advanced recertification just recently, they had an example of how to handle sales tax transactions where if you forget to charge somebody sales tax and you have to ring back up again for just the sales tax. They showed how to do it, and I had never seen that before. I was— it was cool. So there's some great knowledge. There's a lot of great knowledge in these things.
Yeah, we always learn, right? Yeah.
So, uh, why don't we show them actually where that advanced training is at?
Okay, so logged into our accounting company called Newbie, and, um, it is under If we go over to ProAdvisor, right, that's where all the training is, benefits training. So I'll take you to that page. And here we are. And we already have 600 points.
Yes. Nice.
So we're at gold.
That's pretty good. Exactly. So the point system, to kind of explain it, that's something a little bit newer within Intuit, but they wanted to make it possible for people to grow into their, their ProAdvisor shoes, if you will. And there's different ways to earn different points, which I believe we can show, right?
We can go into here to show how to earn them.
So this shows you the methodology of how you can earn different points. One of the best ones being when you become advanced certified, you get 200 points, right? And that's for everybody, that each person that's advanced, you get 200 points each.
Right. Since I'm, I'm the newbie and I hired you, you're already advanced certified, so I Boom! I got 200 points.
Matter of fact, we were just talking about if you hit the history button, that now will populate a screen as you can see, and you get to find out where your points are coming from. This is great. It even shows you the changes that occur. So like for our company Parkway, we've had fluctuation up and down as we released some clients and then we brought some new ones on.
No, my company same thing. So yeah, and it is pretty cool. And I actually didn't even know this button was here. So you showed me something today.
I get you 300 points.
I have to put myself on here as my real person. Okay, so we're, um, all right, we're back here to the points, and then let's go to the portal. So we're going to go into the training portal.
But there's actually— isn't down lower one of the other value adds? We also have the ability to provide our clients training through this as well.
Correct. So, right, there's a lot of stuff in here. You get your downloads if you have the desktop, you get your marketing tools, which— this is things that are free that you can go and grab into, right? Um, some of this is like Constant Contact, you get 20% off Squarespace only because we're here. If we move our way up here, the more you get certified, the more stuff you get. Um, the marketing hub I've been in, it's pretty cool. Um, chat and phone support, which is wonderful. And the training, of course, we're so— we're into that level of training. And, um, the software is in here too. So we were going to go to the training page.
Pull that up. One of the things I love I love the fact that they did do this tiered effect where the deeper you get into it, right, the more percentage off you receive.
Right.
Also, even the phone support. So as you go higher and higher, you become an elite level, which really is not that tough to get to. I mean, we have this at 600, right? So you need 1,000 more points. It's not that much more. And we would be at the top elite level. And that gets you like faster direct contact, so less wait time. And that's something you can help your clients with when they have questions and such too. So that's really neat.
And I use it as a selling point when I sell my services. I throw the word Elite in there. I'm an Elite ProAdvisor. And not only that, I get that Elite support with Intuit, which I can't say enough about. They're phenomenal. I've not, I've not had a bad experience at all. Okay, so we're gonna go into the training portal now. And this is where we're going to— what we just talked about, all the training that we've done and all the different— it just breaks it down by the modules and you can go through it self-paced. You can take it in little bits and pieces, which I recommend not doing the whole thing at once.
You know, the credits too for people that need it. Mm-hmm. They did a really good job. Do you mind clicking into one of these and we can kind of show what it looks like as a course. They really put a lot of time and energy to improve these. ProAdvisor, you clicked on training. Training then gets you to where you've got your different options of training, not only just QuickBooks Online but other courses. And then you jump into it, into it, and you now have your different steps.
So yeah, well, this is going to bring you through all the self-paced lessons, right?
Exactly.
Yeah, it's a whole different section. So you can come in and continue your lesson.
What will end up happening also through all this is When you're going through those sections, you'll have like the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 little dots there. Number 4 will probably have like a quick review that they'll have you complete.
A little quick.
And it's important to pay attention to those. Keep, keep those in mind. Those are helping you to better understand what's going to come up in the future on the exam. They're not exactly the same, but the talking points are definitely Noteworthy.
Right. And also the— and on this test too, like, as you go through these, yes, sort of when you get to the test point, but also that's what I mean about taking these in small chunks. If you can come through and take sections of it because you have the ability to— it's just a big test. This first round is big, right? They want you— they're giving the whole broad overview of the online program. So yeah, I would take it in smaller segments. Don't try to take it in one day. I mean, and that would be my tendency.
So my business partner Mike and I, what we did a long, long time ago when we first got started, we actually committed about an hour every day first thing in the morning, and we got together and we worked through the whole bit of information on each of our different tests that we did. And it just helped to kind of get it knocked out very quickly over time.
Yeah, that's smart. That's a smarter way of doing it. I'm sure this is gonna boot me out, but we can try.
Let's see if we can show what the test looks like, right?
Yeah, that's where we're headed.
It's gonna work, it's gonna work.
Oh, okay. So this is the exam.
So you've got all the different sections, 7 different sections. It's going to come in, it's going to tell you, hey, here's the rules of the exam. Probably says do not cheat somewhere in there.
3 attempts.
3 attempts that you have to pass with 80%. If you do not pass with an 80%, you will be taking that whole section again. So a little tip that we recommend when you're going through and you're taking this course, go answer the question, choose the dot that you want, but before you click next, take a screenshot, save it. It's great to know, like, if you have any kind of hiccup, heaven forbid your internet dropped out or something, you at least will have no— you'll know what you selected before that you could get it a little bit easier. And it also helps that if you do— at the end, if you don't pass a section, it will give you little tips like, you should restudy this, you should restudy that, and you can utilize that to then refocus on it. But be forewarned, when you go back through, questions will be different, but it's still important to have a good knowledge of it.
But they're different. But also, if you go back to the question that you know went with the section and you know you missed it, look at it, remember your answer because you've got your answer in the picture, And then you're like, okay, so that wasn't the answer. And then you might want to go back and revisit that section in the training too.
First time people took the test, you had actually— I had— it was 4 chances and you had A, B, C, and D. And literally, if you got whatever ones you got correct, whatever ones you got correct, it didn't ask again. And you could go A, A, A, A, A, A, B, B, B, B, B, B, C, C, C, C, C, D, D, D, D, D. And it was possible to fail. So they've done a great job to actually like beef this thing up.
Well, 99 times, if you didn't get it right, yeah.
You shouldn't be a ProAdvisor. Thank you.
When I first saw the 99, I'm like, are you kidding? Oh, this is a cake. You didn't have that worry. But now 3 times, you kind of can be a little worried if you don't pass the first or second time.
You're gonna be sitting there going, oh my God, I gotta go take this test and stuff. So obviously we can't go through a whole bunch of the tests. We're not going to show that kind of stuff. But it is important when you're going through this, we're trying to give you some tips and tricks of how to successfully pass this. This is going to show you like which 5 of the following statements are true, right? There are 6 options. Be sure to pay attention to the language they use. That means they want you to click 5. There are many of those where it'll say which, which 2 of these are the best. If you don't pay attention to that, you would possibly get it wrong.
Right. And you just have to be really careful because that's, that's the trickiness of the test, right? Making sure you get exactly— read the directions. Don't just pick one like, oh, I know that answer. And if it had 5, you make sure you have 5, you're gonna get it wrong. Exactly.
And really pay attention to the order of the words that they use. It's tricky on purpose. You know, it's a— if it tells you go to the gear icon, then select account settings, and then go to your sales tab, but you actually have to go to advanced, or like they may change a word on it. to where it's not the right label for what you're doing. Company settings versus advanced versus sales, that type of stuff. That is something that they're testing on also.
Right. So it could say company settings, but it used to say account settings or vice versa. I mean, you need to really be careful when you're going through it. Sometimes it helps to have somebody read the question to you. I know myself, I've— when I got it wrong, I'm like, I read it and read it. And sometimes your brain just keeps reading the words wrong. You may not get the exact amount. Read it out loud. Is another, another great tip, because if you read it out loud, you think you're seeing— if you're a fast reader and you just pick up pieces, and then if you read it out loud, like, oh, that's why I got that wrong. Because sometimes I'll look at an answer, I go, I know I got that right, but really didn't. And I've had a second instance. I'll have the sample file open on a different computer and try to walk through the steps so that way, if it's asking for you have to do this, this, this, or this, I'll open up the sample file and go through the steps.
So, yep, exactly. So I know that we also are supposed to, during this section, talk about onboarding, but we know that onboarding is a pretty big topic and both Linda and I have our own kind of unique perspectives of how to go about it. So I think we should wait till the next— we should do a different video just specific to that.
What do you think? I agree. It's just a big topic. I mean, we just did— I just did a whole webinar with LeanLaw on onboarding. So that's a really big topic. And everybody takes the approach differently. And most of us are kind of still working on it. Even if we've got our method in place, we kind of sit back and say, I know I could tweak this a little bit more. Anything we do to make it more automated, it's— yeah, we're always trying to make it less work, right, when we have a new customer.
So we'll call that one 3.5 when we make it.
I like it. That's a good idea.
On that note, anything else worth—
I don't think so. I think that's a— that was a great topic, great tips. I can tell you that one time I took the advanced test and I clicked— it was a research— and I clicked submit and I was done and I hit submit and my screen hung and I had to go back to those screenshots, call my ProAdvisor people, and they took all the screenshots. I had passed. I had the picture of that success and I passed. But they needed that because it didn't show up on my page. So take pictures of every single step when you're through the test. Agreed.
On that note, here's wishing you guys a very successful week and test.
