How instructor approval works, and how to request it

Instructor approval is the instructor side of the platform. It is free for instructors, and it is granted by a person who reads your request. This page explains who qualifies, what the form asks for, what happens after you press Submit request, and which parts of the product you can use while your request is still being reviewed.

Where

Account overview, then Request instructor approval

Cost

Free for instructors, no purchase, no PO, no card on file

Turnaround

Usually within one business day

You need

A free account, your institution, and the course you teach

Who instructor approval is for

Instructor approval is for the person who teaches or is evaluating a course that could use one of our QuickBooks Online titles. The course type list covers community college, university or four-year college, high school, vocational or technical school, and other. You do not need a school mailbox, a department page, or a purchase order to apply, the two verification aids on the form are both optional, deliberately, because many adjuncts have neither a school inbox nor a directory entry.

You do need a free account first, because the request form is tied to the account it will promote. If you are reading this signed out, the Create free account button on the teachers page takes you through signup and lands you on the request form afterwards.

What you get when you are approved

Approval promotes your account to a teacher account. Everything below turns on at once, for every active title, at no cost.

• Evaluation copy ebooks for all active titles, listed on the Instructor resources screen with a Download eBook button beside each one.
• Full reader access to those titles, every chapter, not the sample range a free account sees.
• The Instructor's Manual inside the reader, opened from the Manual control in the reader toolbar. It is a complete answer key, so it appears only for teacher accounts that hold a live grant for that title.
• Instructor resource files, chapter PowerPoint decks, a course orientation deck, the Instructor's Manual, and the QuickBooks classroom files your students work from. What is on the shelf differs by title: the 2025 books also carry LMS-formatted exam bundles and grading bookmarks, each with its own import walkthrough, and those are still being prepared for the 2026 edition. The Instructor resources screen lists exactly what exists for the titles you hold.
• Real groups, create a class, invite students by email, share the group code your group is given automatically, and choose which chapters your class sees.
• The grading surfaces, the smart grader queue, per-check overrides, releasing held grades, downloading a student's submitted workbook, and reading written chapter-review answers.
• Seats, if you or your school have bought them, on the Seats screen.
• A sample group, seeded for you automatically on approval if you do not already have one, with realistic sample students in it.

Fill in the request form

Open the request form. You can also reach it from the blue banner on your account overview, which reads "Are you an instructor?", or (if you are already exploring the demo) from the Request access link inside the locked Real classroom card in the create-classroom wizard.

1. 1

   Enter your institution

   The Institution / School name field takes the name your students would recognise. Required.

2. 2

   Name the course

   Course name is the course you teach or are evaluating for, such as Accounting with QuickBooks Online. Required.

3. 3

   Pick the course type

   Choose from Community College, University / 4-Year College, High School, Vocational / Technical School, or Other. Required.

4. 4

   Give an expected enrollment

   A whole number from 1 to 10,000. An estimate is fine. It tells us the scale you are planning for, not a commitment. Required.

5. 5

   Add context if it helps

   How did you hear about us? and Additional context are both optional. The context box holds up to 1,000 characters and is a good place for questions about the edition or the semester you are planning.

6. 6

   Submit

   Press Submit request. You land back on your account overview with a confirmation message.

Speed up your approval

Below the main fields there is a panel called Speed up your approval with two optional aids. Neither one is a gate. Adding either usually turns a wait into a same-day approval, because it gives the reviewer something to check without writing to you first.

• School email address. Type the address and press Send code. A six-digit code goes to that inbox. Enter it and press Confirm, and the panel replaces the hint with "Confirmed, thanks, this speeds things up." Any address works; a school one helps most.
• A link that shows you teach there. A faculty directory page, a department staff list, a course catalog entry, or your LinkedIn profile. A page with your name on it works best.

Before you confirm, editing the address clears any code you already requested, so ask for a fresh one. After you confirm, the address is locked for the rest of that session, the field greys out and the Send code button disappears. If you confirmed the wrong address, reload the form and start again.

What happens after you submit

A confirmation message appears on screen, and it tells you which of two things happened. Read it before you navigate away.

Most requests take the first path. A receipt email arrives right away confirming we have it, and a real person reviews every request, approval hands out free access to every paid title, so it is not automatic. When the decision is made you get a second email. If it is an approval, that email links straight to your sample group and to the instructor resource center.

You can check the state yourself at any time on your account overview. While the request is pending, the banner there says it is under review. Once it is approved, the banner turns green and offers a link into your sample group.

What you can do while you are pending

The wait is not a dead end. The demo group needs no approval at all. Any signed-in account can open the Teacher Dashboard and build one. The first time, a short wizard has you pick where in the semester it should start and name it; it then autofills with synthetic students and weeks of realistic activity, so you can see the roster, the progress dashboard, the analytics, and the smart grader queue as they will look with a real class.

You can also turn that demo class into a real one before you are approved. On the demo classroom, Use this for real opens a dialog that creates a real group, files an instructor approval request if you do not already have one, and lets you paste your student email addresses into a Pre-stage student invitations box. The new group is given its own group code straight away, and your Teacher Dashboard shows an amber banner reading "Verifying your teacher status" until the request clears.

Held until approval: sending or adding any further invitations, renaming the group, changing which chapters are in scope, downloading evaluation copies and instructor files, opening the Instructor's Manual, creating student accounts, assigning seats, and any change to a grade. The roster, progress, analytics and grading screens are all readable in the meantime, so you can judge the product before a reviewer gets to you.

If something is not right

If you already submitted a request and try to submit another, you will be told you have an active or pending one. There is no need to file twice, and a duplicate does not move you up the queue. If a request was reviewed and not approved, the banner on your account overview says so and asks you to get in touch; contact support and a person will look at it again.

If more than one business day has passed with no email, check the spam folder for the receipt first, then contact support with the address you signed up under.