Lee B

Ken, After givings your post some thought. I am a little bit encouraged by your post. However most people when confronted by upset customers are going to be contrite and say things that will reassure you that everything is going to get fixed. So far, I haven't seen or heard anything else that reassures me. So I am going go ahead with a thorough demo and review of Drake. Frankly, I don't really want to change, but crossing my fingers and hoping that a miracle will occur isn't the way to prepare for next tax season.

On the ATX board, some posters are reporting backup issues since updating to 12.15. 1. One poster reported that upon closing the program, it backed up every return, which took over a hour before it closed. 2. Another poster upon closing the program left it running overnight, it was still hung up in backup, when he came in this morning. You may want to turn off auto backup to avoid this potential problem.

One of the posters on the ATX board said this morning that he was able to negotiate Max for $795 a year for three years, basically one year free. He hasn't decided what to do. He did say that he paid $1,245 last year. My renewal quote last year for Max was $1,249 before discount.

ATX is not going to apologize. They are not going to offer big discounts. Their position is that it was a solid decision to rewrite the program using the Raven Database and that the problems that some users had was due to firewalls, antivirus programs etc, etc. So everyone will have to decide whether "more of the same" is good enough.

ATX did not designate 12.15 as an automatic download, so you have to go to the download center and retrieve it manually.

According to the first poster on the ATX board, who installed the 12.15 update this morning, "Crash" This poster finally is able to open returns on his workstations, but cannot open any returns on his server. Several posters with standalones are reporting to be OK, with no improvements noted.

Just updated to 12.13. Stayed at 12.11 for a long time because it was working well for me. On my 2 G XP standalone, the program takes about 90 seconds to open the first time each day. During the day, when I close the program and reenter, the program opens in about 30 seconds. Client time to open varies from 15 seconds to 60 seconds depending on how complex the return is. After using 12.13 more today, the forms loading in the Print Manager is significantly faster and the lag moving between entry fields is less.

I am attending one of Drake's seminars next month, plus downloading their software etc. I need some feedback on Drake's capabilities to handle payroll forms and efile payroll forms Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Lee Barckert

It's there and I've been using it since April 15th with no problems.

I was just on the ATX site and had no problems. I downloaded 12.13 in about 2 minutes, but did not install it, since I am still running on 12.11 with no problems. (XP 2 G standalone )

For some unknown reason a marketing video has been designated update 12.14 ???

Per Kimmie's post today, their plan is 12.15 update on April 29th, then labels and organizer. More of the same next year.

T R has a long history of buying Software, killing it, just for the customer list. For a number of years I used a good program called Accountware for business entity tax returns. I was also using a good payroll program called Protym for payroll processing. They were both purchased by Creative Solutions and killed. They give you an option to convert to their programs with a discount.

Interesting dilema. I'm curious as to what will be the best way to resolve this mess.

I've demoed Xero and taken 3 of their Webinars. I think it's a very good program. It's a question of whether it fits your practice. First, no payroll. Second, it's designed to replace businesses who use Quickbooks. You export the Quickbooks files to Exel, make the required changes, then import the modified Exel files into Xero. It has probably the best bank reconciliation module that I have ever seen. The only way that you can setup a new general ledger with your own standard chart of accounts is to create an Exel file and then import it into Xero. It has an extensive list of Software Partners, that integrate with Xero. I plan on taking another in depth look at it this summer, since they are making some enhancements.

kc, Thanks for saying what I've been thinking about saying.

Actually, we need more information. If the home was refinanced and cash was taken out, then to that extent there could be taxable income. Read Pub 4681

I downloaded Drake's Writeup about 4 months ago. However, my practice is heavy on writeup and payroll, so my needs are different. Several years ago, I made the decision to my move my writeup and payroll to the cloud, if I could find a solution that was both efficient and cost effective. One of my top priorities was to use a database that could be shared with my clients. So I've demoed a lot of accounting & payroll software the last two years. I ended up going with Accounting Relief and Payroll Relief from Accountants World. AR & PR are programs that have people that like it and people that hate it. It's not cost effective unless you're doing a fair amount of writeup and payroll. I've been using these programs for 15 months now and on balance on a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate writeup a 7 and payroll a 5. These are programs that a demo won't tell you enough. You really need to work with them to see whether they fit your needs.

With the exception of the Print Manager loading slower than I like, I like the overall printing process much better than last year.

Some posters on the ATX board are reporting program crashes while printing the third return after updating to 12.12. Sounds like a printing related memory leak.

Thanks Jack, I just checked and somewhere around 15 to 20 % of my backups are bad, mostly from the first several weeks of using the program.

I saw this announcement too, but I don't quite understand it. Can someone explain it in plain english.

There is supposed to be a small 12.12 update in the next few days, which going to bring back the K-1 import, plus fix a timing out problem with large efiles and take care a couple of minor print manager issues. Now they have added miscellaneous stability and performance improvements.

I've demoed their free Client Write Up. There's a reason it's free. While Drake's Client Write Up works, I found it to be clunky, slow and inefficient. Ok, if you're doing a limited amount of write up work.

I am on an XP standalone. Tuesday evening I updated to 12.11, even though I was running pretty smoothly on 12.10. After the update, it took forever to open the program the first time. After that everything was 40 to 60 % slower, except the forms loading in the Print Manager which was more twice as slow (Over 2 minutes). I hadn't updated to the suggested file exclusions since I was running OK speedwise. So I updated to the suggested file exclusions in both Microsoft Security Essentials and Windows Firewall and my slowness mostly went away. I'm back to the speed I had under 12.10.