What happens to a QuickBooks account when someone dies

“If a person contacts Intuit and requests that he or she should be designated as the Administrator of an account that permits Administrators for any reason (including, but not limited to, due to the death or departure of the registered Administrator, a change in your ownership, etc.), but has not been designated by the current Administrator as a replacement Administrator, Intuit reserves the right to determine, in its sole discretion, and without notice to you, whether that person should be designated as the Administrator.”¹

While the current primary admin can still sign in, that person can hand the role to another Admin user in-app, through Settings, Manage users, then Actions, Make primary admin and Change primary admin; the change takes effect on confirmation.²

Where no one can sign in as the primary admin, the successor files a Request to be the primary admin or contact through Intuit's Business Change Request form, using their own Intuit account, and uploads proof.³

Where a person asks to be designated Administrator for any reason, including the death of the registered Administrator, and was not named as a replacement by the current Administrator, Intuit decides in its sole discretion whether to designate them.¹

Intuit reviews a Business Change Request and sends updates to the email address the requester gave, with the status also shown in the portal; Intuit states it says why a request is not approved, for example a missing or unreadable document.³

Intuit reserves the right to suspend or terminate the account, or to require a court order, where it cannot determine the rightful Administrator.¹

Intuit decides an Administrator request after reviewing documentation, which may include government-issued photo identification, proof of payment of the subscription, an affidavit, a signed permission letter, and documents showing the successorship of the business.¹

Submitting the request emails any other owners or authorized parties from no_response@intuit.com; they have 14 business days to verify their identity and upload documents, or the system automatically declines the request and a new one is needed.³

Where the company is not a business and the requester does not manage the company file, Intuit treats the file admin as the owner.³

The Business Change Request form sits behind an Intuit sign-in that the requester creates with their own email; Intuit's article says to create an Intuit account first if the requester does not have one.³

A QuickBooks Online subscription recurs until it is actively cancelled, through the Intuit Account Manager under Products & billing, or through the Apple App Store or Google Play when it was bought there.⁴

If the card on file is declined, Intuit gives 14 days to update billing before the account is suspended, and cancels the subscription automatically after three failed attempts to charge the payment method.^{5, 4}

After a QuickBooks Online subscription is cancelled the data stays read-only for one year, or 90 days after a trial, and can be exported to Excel or a desktop version of QuickBooks in that window; after it, resubscribing is required to reach the data.⁵

A customer with multiple QuickBooks Online subscriptions who keeps at least one under the same login keeps read-only access indefinitely.^{5, 4}