cnccpas

As for depreciation, I will have to agree that it is quite rustic in form, and difficult to generate reports. I would like to see assets separated by schedule/activity rather than grouped all into one basket for the tax payer. Retrieving the reports outside of the return from the "home" screen is also rather odd. It's not perfect, but it will most likely see improvement with user suggestions. Drake is more likely to make improvements from the suggestion basket than you would ever see come from the CCH complaint and moan box. In the end though, depreciation works and it works well even with conversions. If you want next year's depreciation for write-up purposes for example, you can easily use the federal next year depreciation statement within the tax return.

and i'll just add as far as networking, this program will work in almost any environment you put it in, I 've ran it on Windows 7 & 8, Windows XP, Windows 2003 as well as Citrix Metaframe. The reason why it works is simple, it's not designed to restrict you to licenses and copy protection or use microsoft developer libraries. Therefore, it just works. Simple. They should change the name of the software to Simply Drake, or Drake Simple. At one of the seminars I attended, there was a lady in her 50th tax season and had left ATX for Drake, she was happy with support and was adapting to the software, if she can so can you.

We have left ATX after the obvious reasons in 2012 mid-season and are completing our extensions in Drake 2012. We have also used prior year Drake software for older returns since they give you access to the software. We have 4-5 people using it at the same time, 800+ returns on the list and I can simply say that after using the program for a week or two, not only does it make more sense but it performs at an entirely new level. The company recognizes that firms cannot afford to spend 10-20 grand each tax season to make software run and still supports Windows 98 clients. What this means to our firm running a 2003 Terminal server with dual quad xeons and 8 gb of ram? Instantaneous results. I can open the program and be the return in under 2 seconds. This program is designed by tax practitioners, not college grad programmers filled with .net and xhtml who waste hundreds of meg of ram to do a simple tax return. A fairly complex individual return loaded in Drake takes 8 mb of system ram, not 1.2 gb like in ATX. While Drake is not eye-candied as we were spoiled with ATX, I can do a return in Drake in under 3 minutes that would take 15-20 in ATX. You just have to get acclimated to the structure of the program. It is hardcore streamlined and designed to do what it's suppose to do, complete a tax return. The only thing from ATX we will miss the the payroll compliance portion, mostly because of the state forms. Also, conversion is lightening fast. I converted 800 returns fully and were usable from ATX 2011 to Drake 2012 in under 12 minutes. Any questions I've ever had, i can resolve with Drake on the phone in just a few minutes. Looking forward to a full tax season next year with Drake.

hehee yeah, or start sending client's sales pitches that intuit will do their taxes for less than your tax preparer. much like quickbooks does to payroll customers. What a way to treat "pro-advisors", recommend their product and have them under-cut you in every point of your business.

AMEN to that.. lol preaching to the choir now lol. Just to make them happy and install ATX in "their world". I have a dual quad xeon 2.66ghz 8-146GB SAS 15k RAID with 32 GB of ram wasting away to host data for lonely little workstations. If i dare transmit an efile from a workstation it never updates the status from "created" to "transmitted", even though the history shows it and will eventually update it once accepted. Program sucks.. pure plain and simple. To think that the entire branch of CCH still have jobs is absurd at this point. The CEO needs to be immediately pink slipped. Not to mention that leaving the program open , opening and closing returns hangs about 100 mb of memory until the program grows to like 1.5 GB and then crashes. SMOOTH MOVE.

lol umm yeah.. intuit.. enough said with that one. Pro Series, for the professional tax preparer who does unlimited 1040s but "limited" business returns. Since when did tax professionals do just a few business returns? lol

This is awesome! lol I install the program as it was "designed" to be in a server data hosting and workstation laboring environment and it sucks even more. Our equipment my A$$. Plus what idiot thought it was a good idea to make us have to "attach pdf" to an efile? It takes over a minute just to open the freaking print menu and then a few more minutes to create the e-file. Simply unacceptable and for those "a re-write was necessary" crowds, are you serious? Happy with what you have? A program that eats 1.2 GB of system memory to open up a freaking return? IT IS A TAX RETURN!!!!!! Not tracking meteors here.

Would have been nice for them to be a little more upfront about changing something that many have used in the past. How exactly did you get in touch with technical support anyway? I have been on hold for over 2 hours to never hear anything. Not to mention email support tickets over 3 weeks now with no response. They had something that worked very well and changed it for something that obviously was not as good. Support it as you wish but you cannot justify the performance decrease and excessive hardware requirements to do what in the end is a completed tax return. You can do the same thing in a fraction of the time and hardware required in any prior version. If the program was designed properly, then terminal services would not even be an issue. That is only an excuse for poorly written software.

but you are talking about loading the loader exe from individual workstations in a client-server environment. I'm talking about running ATX in a true-multiuser environment as in a terminal server/remote desktop server. As in one server, users log into the server via remote desktop connection mstsc.exe and all work directly from the server. This way, you no longer are bound by the processor limitations of your workstations and utilize the true power of your dedicated server. This is why prior versions of ATX i can open the program for the first time, open any return i want in under 25 secs. There is no need to trasnmit data between the workstation and server which decreases performance and increases network traffic. The data will never leave the server and the workstation access no files from the server. It is virtually the same thing as every user sitting at the server working at the same time. The program is not allowing multiple instances of the atx.loader.exe file. That is the problem. You won't get multiple instances of the loader in memory if each individual workstation is running the program.

no, he is talking about two or more users using the application from the same station I believe. The exe loader now can only be in use in memory on one workstation at a time, unlike the initial release of the 2012 program and all prior versions. 6 workstations accessing a central "server" hosting the data is fine, but very slow compared to how is "could" be if they had taken anytime to develop this product.

It's their installation program not correctly making changes to your local registry. This is funny actually because to install it on a workstation, I had to disable anti-virus, make sure i had opened and closed ATX on the "server", not be in the program anywhere and then run the netsetup from the UNC name, not a mapped network drive. //server/atx2012/ect.... using the mapped drive seemed to cause me more trouble than anything. It installed ATX like it was what you said in fact, a single user local copy.

No, sorry, ATX 2012 is the culprit. It is a poorly designed, thrown-together piece of crap that wouldn't run on a Cray efficiently. Look at any previous release of ATX, even the "Payroll Compliance Software 2012" which uses the old ATX database or look at any other rival product. You cannot justify that sort of performance increase and yet have NOTHING better to show for it. Total lack of professional due care.

They should be paying us for every hour lost by their ignorance and lack of care programming. Not to mention begging us to still give them a dime next year. I'm actually surprised that a joint suit hasn't begun talks among their customer base whose businesses have been derailed by their lack of competence.

Welcome to the club. For 11 years we have used ATX on a terminal server, though they don't claim to support it, but it always worked until they switched to the crappy Raven database this year. The first initial install of the program up to the 12.7 version works multi-user in terminal server. However I could not install the 12.8 or 12.9 patch on my server without rendering the program useless. On another test server, once 12.8 goes on, it seems to change a registry key that makes the program look for other running instances. Once that happens even after uninstalling and deleting every file installed still I get that same message even at the initial install. So in a nutshell they have shut the door on use multi-users who use terminal services. A stupid careless move that will cost them many customers. To e-file I have to export the 4562 held returns over to a function machine with 12.8 running just to e-file. Even in their ideal installation environment, the program sucks and is unstable. Next year's release should be absolutely at no charge to the many thousands of customers who they have basically destroyed their business this year. If they are not going to allow multi-user environments another company will have our business next year, we will not waste resources on using their software like it's 1995. Total lack of any due care during development. Did you notice the tech's blog at ATX? He mentions it taking 2 hours for QA to approve and release the update? What type of testing is that? I could barely open the program and look at 10 returns in that short length of time.

oh i just love how you have to have 12.8 to e-file the 4562. that means somebody messed up even more than we could ever have had imagined. now if i could just get the #@@# thing to run 12.8 i would be limping along still.

Great post starting this conversation. exactly! the raven database was not designed to be used how its being used. i don't know what new group of fresh out of college software coders who wanted to use this were thinking, better yet, a product that still even with the patches there is NO WAY its being tested. I can only get 12.8 running on a clean fresh install on a server that's only had quickbooks installed. I cannot install 12.8 on any server that has had prior versions of ATX or have had any other software running for a length of time. I get .net failures in the app log even in 12.7. 12.8 i can't even open the flipping program anymore. I fear tech support is a waste because how could they help me when they don't even have the competence to test the software.

something changed for me with 12.8 it doesn't even open the program now and just crashes. THANKS FOR THAT UPDATE!!!!

i just loaded 12.7 update and the program crashes more. it crashes when typing in the client search field. i crashes if you click too quickly or are impatient. i will say that for a previously saved return, it finally opened the return up in 30 secs this time on my server. getting better BUT, it still is sluggish and feels totally unstable and you are just waiting for it to hour glass and crash. the program hangs when closing too in the background and eventually crashes. if you click mark all or unmark all, give a minute or two even though you think its not busy anymore lol. i'm thinking after april 15th profx it is.

After seeing the reference to ProSystem fx, i followed up on it and from what i seen from the live demo, this is the division of CCH with the brains. Can't wait for the local demo to arrive so i can test it out. Even on the consultant's laptop in citrix meeting, the program was flying through the forms and system. They also have a remarkable program simply called Scan, with Autoflow, now just to find out how much the puppy in the window cost. It was very impressive, all data was in one location with the program and had been so for all past years loaded. The research integration looks top notch, any an every single blank or check box fully detailed in the help system too, even the worksheets. Thanks for the suggestion!

The only key gripe about the old ATX engine was on state returns for clients who have multiple LLCs. ATX would not allow more than on LLC in the forms list. And the composite return never worked correctly. So you would have to print out a copy of each LLC and hope nothing changed. I'm sure we've all found that classic error message saying "You may include only one signature form in a return". lol Oh the good old days now I suppose. Haven't checked if the new cash for clunker program allows multiple 725 forms for state or not. So, in other news... Has anyone been able to actually "edit" the client letters? I know most people have trouble with the new "attach" feature but when I attempt to edit these letters, I only get the hyperlink/call to the component of the letter and not the actual language. At least they have a check box for Me/I We/us. Seen another person with the program update on the network please save and close ATX. That came from an update gone bad, lol. The only way around it is to exit ATX from every users, close any leftover ATX services (such as the rollover service) and download the update manually from the support site. Selecting the file that is for Update without using program. The other file uses the ATX update utility and will put you back in the exact same spot. Ok, aside from the crashes, hourglasses, and any other performance issue... my biggest fear and complaint is the location and structure of the data. I want to know, and ATX should document it for us, what each folder in their directory is and what it does. I want to be able to copy the entire program as it is functioning and be able to restore it back and be fully functional. I could do this with every other prior version. Prior to 2012, the key directories that had all the gold was the YEARS and DATA folder. These two folders contained the tax forms and all client data. Copying these two folders and simply installing the downloaded installer you recently had used you could get ATX into full operation in 20 minutes or less depending on clients. That is a BIG security factor. All i can tell now at this point is there are more crucial folders such as Assets (forms), Formset (Client list & data), Company, Preparer and FAM Data directories. It now looks as if the e-file acknowledgements are also stored in a separate folder now so good luck to all. Sure, ATX says just use the backup option. Well, did that on a test install with a return, deleted the return, went to restore it from backup and poof... nothing.. like i never had backed it up. So i don't trust your program or your "backup". Give me a list of the data structure and what i need to rebuild the data if in emergency. Sure, i'm backing up all of the ATX and CCH Small Firms folders anyway just in case and i have "pieced" things back together to get the data WHERE i want it (OFF THE C: DRIVE DUUUHHHH) and I know quite a bit about the structure you are using now. But put it in writing for me. That's not too much to ask. Oh wow, a return just opened and know time to do some work lol.

I believe the beta testing criteria was the following: 1. Can the program open 1 out of 10 attempts without crashing? 2. Can the program somehow transform prior year data into new program? 3. Can a return be opened within a reasonable business day? 4. Can the program successfully add or subtract at least 2 lines anywhere correctly? If 1-4 = YES then PASS and DEPLOY, we need money fast, daddy wants a new Telsa to save on gas.

yes, the cloud above their head. i cannot see how this was ever installed on a PC before being released. it's simply way too out in plain sight it has problems. More like sending a car to the lot with flat tires, no doors, hood, and radiator duct taped to the roof connected to the motor with a garden hose.

I believe the sound of overstating comes from the lack of ATX providing support for me after a week ago, and the fact that this product under any environment is 10-20 times slower than the previous year, crashes and fills your event log with nice .net errors. I honestly could not advise a person to purchase this software now. We have used ATX since 2001 and have never much needed support, and when we do, it's nowhere to be found. Pro Series was fine, until they would clean your clock for multiple states, but that was back in 2000. ATX offered everything and unlimited users for a affordable price. Pro Series performed in 2000 much like ATX 2012 does now. I do not know if they have fixed it or not, but coming from Intuit I highly doubt it. If you are new to ATX, and 2012 is your first year, download the Payroll Compliance Program as they call it now, that is the old ATX engine that purrs like a vette compared to the new one, if you want an example of what we are complaining about.

So you're opening times are good using the "new" technology you seek? I like how it takes 30 seconds to a minute just to open up preferences. Must be some high security features going on in the background there. The 2012 program though, is using old technology that Microsoft has been trying to kill off even before Access 97. UNC mapping is a terrible security vulnerability and any security software including the operating system discourages it. When you run a program like this... servernameshareATX2012.exe cringe, especially when it should be operating like this .. D:myspecifiedlocationATX2012Atx2012.exe" Going from 20 seconds to opening a return (have a little over 1,000 returns on the list) to 3-5 minutes cannot be justified by any means. I can scroll down the return list faster than i can type 3 characters in the search filter, and I don't crash either. I will agree though, I'm sure the Access 97 forms was terrible to update each year and a nightmare to maintain. Yes, the new document engine powered by RavenDB does make beautiful higher resolution tax forms clear to the eye. This new version makes the development team look more like a group of monkeys trying to "play" with a football. The scariest thing about this new engine, is it's persistent need to be toying around with your All Usersapplication data folder or for other users their "hidden" Program Data folder off their C:. YES, even though you installed this program on your D:, E:, F:, wherever you want to put it, your data is still on C: along with ALL the gigs of forms. Why even bother asking where to install the tiny 700mb program files anyway? Do you know where your data "really" is?

I'll add that to the secret testing lab to try. Scarey though, same master company CCH. But i will give it a demo. Thanks