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I seldom collect when the return is completed - I just mail them an invoice. Over the years I've had a few who didn't pay, or didn't pay in full. Not many, but enough to remember. Most of the time I came to the conclusion that not collecting the balance due was a reasonable price to pay for the relief of not having to deal with them in the future. I did have one guy who was really gutsy. He owed me money, & failed to show up for a couple of years. I assumed he had gone somewhere else. But then he dropped two year's worth of tax info in my night drop, along with a note that IRS was pressuring him to file his past due returns. I put it all in a box in mailed it back to him with a bill for the past due amount, plus an estimate for the cost to do the new work, and a mention that the work would begin when he paid the entire amount. I included a note saying the estimate was probably high, but if his final bill came out lower then we could refund to him after 6 months if IRS didn't ask any questions about the returns after filing. Never heard another word from him. As I said, the old bill plus the postage to send his stuff back to him was money well spent.

I have a terrible cough every year from the middle of January thru about the third week of February. Then I see all the actual tax "payers", and my cough goes away but I get depressed and eat a lot of comfort foods.

OK; was at a tax seminar tonight and a couple of folks from the IRS were presenters. One of them, in telling about issues with varying suggestions for making more services available online, pointted out the issue of security. He asked, "What do Sony, Target, Home Depot, and others have in common?" He then went on to say that the IRS's computers have not been successfully hacked, NOT so much because there is so much tighter security, but because there isn't that much useful information ON those systems. The room erupted in laughter.... He said, "That didn't quite come out the way I meant it." But is sure was accurate!!

I posted the materials for my class on the ACA on my website http://www.afsb.net/joancpa/newsletter.php?nid=17126 If you don't like to click links, just go to www.joancpa.com and click on Newsletters.

I like everyone here

That's what I was saying in the other topic where this came up. I think it will still open before the end of Jan for those early filers (cough) that must have the refunds they are (cough) entitled to.

Feel free to have fun with it. I went a "little" political, but I did it to both sides of the the aisle. Tom Newark, CA

My bet would be on multiple dates. Maybe as early as January 29 for really simple returns, then around mid-February for returns affected by extenders, or even late February if they have depreciation. And my bet would be that we might as well get used to it.

I would not make excuses or make up reasons but would rather find a nice way to tell her the truth. My area is very small and all the CPAs and other tax preparers know, or know of, each other, and many of these people are my peers that I've worked with or sat through many seminars with over the last 30+ years. The last thing I'd want is for that (former) client to go to another professional, or worse- someone in our mutual social circle, and say that I couldn't handle the complexity of the work or that I had inferior or inadequate software. If the person is a slow payer then I need to address that collection issue straight on. We aren't in this profession to give work away at a steep discount of 60% off unless it is of our choosing.

Even if I had one I wouldn't pass it on and neither should you. An LLC operating agreement should be tailored to the situation and the members of the LLC. Everyone always assumes that everyone is going to live happily ever after. A well drafted agreement will spell out the details of how disagreements, departures, and dissolution will be handled. Years ago one of my clients which had two brothers as exactly equal owners ended up in court with dueling attorneys and $20,000 in legal fees because nothing was spelled out as to how disagreements and departures would be handled. An Operating Agreement is a very important document which needs to be done right. It's not a meaningless piece of paper to keep the bank happy.

Makes me think of a sign I saw at every workstation many years ago when visiting a local payroll processing service (probably back in the DOS days). "ALWAYS obtain a supervisor's permission before pressing the 'Delete' key. Otherwise, the payroll record you eliminate will be your own."

Hardware: I never keep current. I like yo use several year old hardware. If I use current, my comptuer would be faster than my customers, which can cause issues. Hardware is so far ahead of what we can physically type and what the common graphics systems can display, there is little need to keep up. Sure, if you are doing something special, you can buy special gear (think flight sim with a huge frame rate), but for general usage, anything within the last 5 years is fine. I happen to be using a sub 200 laptop at present, hooked to a large monitor and USB keybard and mouse. Plenty fast enough. Not an ATX user, but I have one comment on network issues. WIndows has settings which control how "network" connctions are refreshed. We use a small network to pass backup files (instead of sneaker net). At random times, one computer will not be seen by another. Yes, ours will sleep/hibernate. One gets turned on and off during the day. Does not happen often enough for us to look into it, but it concievably be a clue as to the ATX issue. Remember, "server" and 'network" absolutely may be something on the very same computer - it does not have to be on a different computer.

I'm going with multiple dates in early 2015 if North Korea says it's ok. Too soon?

The problem with firing clients who owe you is that you may never get paid. Why should they pay up if they won't be needing you anymore? I think it's best to demand payment before more work is done. Every year we start the season vowing we will NOT efile any return before payment is received, and every year we end up doing it anyway. Sticking to that practice would eliminate most of these receivables.

Just check the "complete" box on the returns in Return Manager. This stops any changes without a warning screen. Maybe you need to rethink who you have working for you??? At the firm, we have 3K clients and as many as 8 people working with returns on a busy day during season. We would have 5-10 instances of this every season. Most of the employees here are diligent. 3 seasons ago, we started marking the return complete when the e-file was accepted. This reduced the instances of this to ZERO. Another trick is to go into preferences in the prior year and change the color of the input box to something different than the current year. That is a visual signal that only the truly careless employees would miss.

1065

I'm just one person so I don't have to worry about others. But for myself, I make pdf copies of all the returns and use the pdfs if I just want to review. I seldom have to go into a prior year program. But I thought for multiple users, there was the server versions. I guess I assumed they had the ability to assign different levels of access for staff.

IMO, I cannot believe any average person would spend that much on a new computer, let alone an upgrade. My desktop was new the summer before the 2012 so-called year from hell. I think I paid about $600 for an i5, Win 7 Pro, 16 mg ram. Both of my laptops are identical i5s with Win 7 Pro 64 bit and all three of these computers handle ATX beautifully. I had extremely few problems in 2012 or any other year. Again, IMO, most of the problems lie in systems that are networked and/or are low on Mhz processors. All of mine are running at least 2.6 MHz with turbo boost. I wouldn't trust a Geek Squad tech from Best Buy from here to the corner of my office. We have more technical knowledge on this board than all of them put together. Jack and Pacun have amazing knowledge; as do many others. I am sure the main reason for my ability to stay out of trouble is the fact that I run all of my machines as stand alones. I do feel badly for those who have to network. Will probably get rained on for this post, but Jack summed it up very well and Judy concurred. Welcome to the world of ATX and technology. We are always happy to have new tax preparers join the board that Eric so very kindly put together for us.

Also one other point on the subject. Not everyone can run out and spend $1,000 to $1,5000 to upgrade a 3 year old computer just to accommmodate ATX software!! Just as one of the Geek Squad techs at Best Buy said, "this sin't something the processor would have anything to do with and what if you did spend the money to upgrade your machine and the issue remains? You've just spend a lot of money you didn't need to and still by using their own tool, the machine is at or above par!

Have an attorney write it up

jklcpa, THANKS! Just registered. If this is similar to one the FLA group gave it is well worthwhile. Also, given it will be in January, we should be given the "latest" information. Again, Thanks for sharing.

With my developer hat on: Cloud removes some very nasty headaches. No support for installation, maintenance, updates, backing up data, etc. Factoring in support for just these issues is a HUGE part of software cost. Like it or not, modern computer users are insulated from having to know how computers function, and expect software vendors to train them if needed. This is not a bad thing, as it means more can use the wonderful tool, it is just different. (Imagine if GM had to teach me how to drive, give directions, make repairs, fill the gas tank, etc., all for free, because I bought a GM vehicle.) Much more easily to handle proper licensing as one can monitor exact access and cut it off as needed. Costs go up as one has to charge enough to cover customers being online 24/7 and moving large amounts of data. But, those costs get passed on, and if the customer is not all that active, I might make more money. (I would not want to have to run a meter and bill for access.) Unless I am sloppy and do something incorrectly, I have zero liability for lost data, so no new risk there. The bad is all on the customer. Outages. Intuit has suffered them, as has Amazon. If these two, expecially Amazon, cannot keep up 100% of the time, then how can anyone else? Intuit's online payroll was unavailable for more than 24 HOURS not too long ago... Amazon is the back end for MANY cloud services, so it is safe to say they are the best, and yet they cannot be perfect. If data is lost, the customer has likely trusted they did not need an online backup and are in bad shape. Slower data entry is almost a given, and a bad thing for even a lousy keyboarder. For safe data, each entry must be stored and added, slowing down entry. Well, unless you live in a Google fiber area and your cloud service is in the same loop... (For example, I am writing this using a remote connection to my main computer, and even at slow typing, I have to "wait" a few ms for the remote software to send the keystrokes to the main computer, update the display, and send the restults back to me and update my display. This is a very fair comparison to cloud or even network based software speed.) So for now, we remain softare installed on the customer's computer and do not require internet access at all. We continue to consider a cloud offering, but nothing on the horizon.

And, what happens to access to MY clients' data if I move to another service in future? NO THANK YOU! The only thing I'd want on the cloud or internet-based is tax and accounting research. Unless I want hard copy print of a book or manual, I see no need to install that type of software on my computer or deal with receiving updates via download or disk, but that is totally different than actual prep and data storage.

I choose NOT to send my client information to be stored on any server except the one in my office. I have total control. This also comes with total responsibility which is part of the game. However, if I allow my client information to be stored on a "cloud" company or service, I have no control over security but still have total responsibility for the security of said information. NO CLOUD for me.

From a programmer's point of view, a Catch-22. Asked often. Allow me to edit anything, but do not make me responsible for bad edits... or do not allow me to edit anything, and figure out what I really meant to do/keep. Over 30 years, I have learned the user will defeat (on purpose or accidentally) any code to warn or attempt to prevent making a bad decision. (Proves I am human and can be out smarted.) Thus, the only practcal method is to clearly make the user responsible for what happens or does not happen at their keyboard, with the reverse of allowing to fix whatever happened with correct keyboarding. Had this issue a few moments ago. Someone said we printed an incorrect DE9, as the ETT pct was 0. Printed again later with a correct ETT. Person wanted us to pay the penalty amount. The issue was user based. We do not and cannot set ETT as not all employers have to pay ETT. The user did not have ETT setup at all. On the first report, they would have had to confirm they were not subject to ETT via a Y/N message. (We do ask if we di not find ETT setup properly.) On the second, the person probably answered no, they were not exempt, so despite not setting up ETT, we insert the proper limit and rate for the user. Probably lost a customer over this as there was no way the person was willing to accept that they messed up, despite seeing the results right in front of them, including exactly how it happens. So the message is if not paper, then create PDF's, multiple sets, and keep them safely in your control in at least two separate locations. Backup, backup, backup. And after that, test the backups on a clean machine from a completely separate location. Can you reinstall your applications? Can you restore or access your data? How long does it take?

Right! Some of mine don't open anything that says "contains important tax information" on them.

Judy makes a good point. Form the most part, my "pay up or no more work" clients are folks who came to pick stuff up straight from work and didn't have a checkbook with them. Or with whom all is done by email, fax, and file share portal. And for many it ends up being mainly my fault, in not following up with a statement (paper or email), until the next season starts up. The letter I just sent is an accounting client who hasn't paid me since July... I know he's both overly busy and very forgetful, but he's promised a check "this week" a dozen times (or more) now, and enough is enough.

The "hardware is not adequate" actually means... "It is a design problem and we don't want to talk about it." I have been challenged and derided about this statement, but I can state this from a position of actual experience and knowledge.

As Catherine said, simple questions like that tend to be better at fooling automated "bots" which are are much more efficient at making a big mess than a real person.    You are right though, most people who are manually creating accounts and spamming forums are able to google most questions to find the answers.  This is where the new spam detection service comes in.  Our forum connects to the service for every single new user registration to check them against a database of reported spammers.  Every user who registers gets a score of 1-4... the higher up on the scale, the more likely they are a spammer.  Anyone with a score of 1 or 2 is allowed in (as long as they can answer the security question)   Any user who gets a score of 3 is held in a queue for me to decide if they are allowed in or not. Any user who gets a score of 4 is allowed to register, but then is automatically banned from the site.   If any spammers do get through and start spamming, I or the Mods will mark them as spammers, and that information is sent to the central database for the service.  As you can imagine, with tens or hundreds of thousands of forums constantly reporting spammers, the service becomes quite robust.

One of the lines in my "welcome to tax season" letter - for those few to whom it applies - is something like "all prior balances MUST be paid before any new work begins" - in bold face, with a statement of past charges. Either they pay up, pronto, usually with apologies -- or I never hear from them again. Either way, I win. If it is part of the standard letter, folks don't feel like they are being singled out. Good luck! Just had to tell an accounting client (a neighbor) to pay up or no more work. I did it nicely, included a copy of the engagement letter he signed, highlighting the sections applicable, and gave him a specific time limit and three payment options. If he doesn't cough up, the last thing I do is send his employee a W-2. But it's never easy. We don't get into this business because we hate people and want to make their lives difficult!

I really have to say that 2013 was my most productive year ever, monetarily and client wise. Wish the same for all of you in 2014. I am already being addressed by new clients who are all referrals. ATX and I must be doing something right.