"Intuit is creating an entirely new way to build and manage a small business on the Internet," said Scott Cook, Intuit executive committee chairman and founder. "For the first time, small business owners can create a beautiful presence on the Web in about ten minutes."

"But Site Builder is more than an easy-to-use web site creation tool," continued Cook. "It is also the platform for an extraordinary set of dynamic Web-based services. These services will be made possible by linking a business's web site right into the business's central data store in QuickBooks. These QuickBooks Site Solutions services will fundamentally change the way small businesses communicate with and serve customers, and communicate with suppliers and employees."

Cook said that nearly 3000 small businesses have already established a presence on the Web using Site Builder, even though QuickBooks 2000 only became available this past week. "We're really delighted with the early response to Site Builder and think this is going to be a great answer for a lot of small businesses eager to get on the Web," said Cook.

Platform for Small Business Web Success
Intuit's goal for QuickBooks Site Solutions is to help millions of small businesses succeed with their own web sites. Through these interactive sites, small businesses can improve how they attract and serve their constituents.

Intuit's Site Solutions strategy is two-fold. First, Site Builder is making it easy for small businesses to get on the Web. Second, Site Solutions services will make these sites more useful and interactive by integrating them into QuickBooks. By connecting the site to the accounting data store, the business's web site acts as an interactive communications hub for customers, suppliers and employees.

Future Site Solutions services will enable businesses to improve customer service while reducing the business workload. Customers can get around-the-clock access via the Web to their entire relationship with a business to track activity, estimates, billing, and account status. This customer self-service will enable customers to make payments and do inquiries rapidly any time of the day without interrupting the firm's employees.

Companies that sell products will also be able to take advantage of a host of e-commerce services that will improve their customers' shopping experiences and solve headaches for the small business owner. For example, QuickBooks Site Solutions will create a direct link between online selling and the inventory data within QuickBooks, tracking stock-on-hand against needed inventory, while managing the customer database and processing payments.

Small business owners using QuickBooks Site Solutions services will also be better able to manage and support their employees. Future Site Solutions services will enable small businesses to exchange proprietary, highly detailed, complex or graphic images and information with customers, suppliers and employees.

Site Builder
Featured in Intuit's new QuickBooks 2000 software, Site Builder is an easy-to-use web site creation, hosting and domain name registration technology. QuickBooks Site Builder leverages Intuit's understanding of how consumers and small business owners like to interact with technology. Intuit believes that there are four primary issues that small businesses face in establishing their own web sites: complexity, quality, site maintenance and cost issues. Intuit solves these problems with Site Builder, providing a tool that is easy to use, creates a professional looking site, makes it simple to maintain an up-to-date site with a low cost to the small business owner.

"Before Site Builder, setting up a Web presence was a complex or expensive process, and the resulting web site was all too often ugly and hard to maintain," said Cook. "Only 30 percent of small businesses have web sites today, according to Intuit research. Of those, half paid experts to do the work, at a per site cost of over $1000. The other half struggled through a welter of complexity."

Ease of Use
QuickBooks Site Builder is a wizard-based site-building tool that guides users though the process of building a web site by asking them to answer a series of five basic questions. All the user does is answer in plain English. Users have control over content and select from a series of pre-designed templates. The entire process only takes about ten minutes.

"Intuit is making it drop dead simple for a small business to set up its Web presence in about ten minutes and begin using the Web right away," said Cook. "The resulting sites are professionally designed, easy to navigate and will make the business owner proud. We know these capabilities will, at a fundamental level, improve a small business's ability to succeed."

Professional Appearance
QuickBooks Site Builder makes small businesses look like big businesses on the Web, in both name and appearance.

Small businesses want their own domain name, just like big companies-not a Web address promoting some other firm. Site Builder's unique Domain Name Finder technology helps them select an appropriate domain name. It takes the small business's name and finds the related domain names that are still available to choose from. The small business selects their domain name from the available choices, but the small business owner makes the final decision on which domain name to use.

The resulting Web sites are beautiful with professional design, graphics, and photos. Site Builder gives businesses 250 different graphic treatments to choose from. Site Builder asks the user's industry and then shows the user the graphic treatments designed for that industry. Intuit has put particular attention on the needs of the 70 percent of small businesses that are in service industries. Consultants, accountants, contractors, writers, the professions, and personal service firms don't sell products and can't use Web stores. Site Builder has specific sites designed for service firms.

Easy to Maintain/Update
QuickBooks Site Builder makes it so easy to maintain a web site that business owners can now refresh as frequently as needed to keep up with product, pricing, and service changes. In contrast, many web sites fall out-of-date because they are complex to change. Just as QuickBooks requires no knowledge of accounting, Site Builder requires no knowledge of HTML, URL, Java, FTP, GIF, etc. or complicated Web creation tools. All you need to know is English.

Unprecedented Low Cost
Many small businesses invest hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars building a web site and establishing a domain name. Intuit is providing QuickBooks 2000 users with the complete Site Builder service, including domain name and hosting, at no charge for the first six months. After six months of free use, businesses that like the service can pay $9.95 a month for continued hosting and use of the service. This low price for creating and hosting web sites with their own direct domain name is believed to be unprecedented in the industry.

New services based on QuickBooks
Separately, Intuit today announced the introduction of QuickBooks 2000. QuickBooks is the leading choice of small businesses, with nearly three million users and approximately 85 percent of sales at retail, according to PC Data. The company's small business related products and services generate approximately 40 percent of Intuit's annual revenue. Cook said Intuit would continue to develop Internet-based services to complement QuickBooks as part of the company's overall e-finance strategy.

Additional Information
Terms, conditions and pricing of e-finance services are subject to change. Certain e-finance services require application approval. Internet access is required for online services, including e-services.