I went to Pro Series for 2013, after a decade with ATX. Not only were all fixed-asset types mangled in conversion from ATX but virtually all 2012 amounts were overrides that required re-input in order to restore functionality and cross-referencing. Took two people three weeks to get true rollovers into 2013! Just as bad, Pro Series offers fewer forms and, worse, many fewer state efiles. Navigation is a real pain; forms riddled with worksheets, and un-highlighted position tabs.
Michaelmars must have enjoyed a hotline to tech help, courtesy his five-year investment? Each of my calls to tech support loses two minutes to recordings you can't pre-select past. Only now, post-Tax Season, am I reaching a person within five minutes -- not 10+. Honestly, I had to budget half an hour for each tech call, had to make at least one such per week -- and I used to do IT for a firm's tax department.
If I could trust CCH to not repeat 2012, I'd be back yesterday. I'll shop pricing and features the rest of this month, at least.
I echo TaxCPANY. I went Proseries for 2013 tax year, after 10+ years on ATX. There were a few bells and whistles I liked. But just like with Sage 50 and QuickBooks, there's things you're going to love about one program over the other and things you're going to hate.
I must give ATX kudos. I do non-profit returns. I did 990 extensions on 5/15 successfully in ProSeries. I was so busy and waited till 6pm on 8/15 to start e-filing my 2nd extensions for 990 returns only to find ProSeries doesn't do 2nd extensions. I was in big trouble and ATX bailed me out. I had ATX 2013 installed (unlicensed demo) and was able to roll over 2012 data and create my 2nd extensions. The e-filings went through and got approved quickly. Needless to say I slept peacefully that night. Now, I'm trying to do state returns from non-profits in ProSeries only to find there are no state returns at all. ProSeries sent me some CD with forms - I guess a bunch of PDF fill-in forms. ATX had a boat load of tax forms built in and with linking capability. Not so with ProSeries. So yes, I'm now using my ATX 2013 demo to create my state forms.
I'm seriously considering switching back to ATX. It's just I operate on a cloud server with connections through RDP. ATX says that's not an ideally secure environment.
renewal for 2014
in General Chat
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I echo TaxCPANY. I went Proseries for 2013 tax year, after 10+ years on ATX. There were a few bells and whistles I liked. But just like with Sage 50 and QuickBooks, there's things you're going to love about one program over the other and things you're going to hate.
I must give ATX kudos. I do non-profit returns. I did 990 extensions on 5/15 successfully in ProSeries. I was so busy and waited till 6pm on 8/15 to start e-filing my 2nd extensions for 990 returns only to find ProSeries doesn't do 2nd extensions. I was in big trouble and ATX bailed me out. I had ATX 2013 installed (unlicensed demo) and was able to roll over 2012 data and create my 2nd extensions. The e-filings went through and got approved quickly. Needless to say I slept peacefully that night. Now, I'm trying to do state returns from non-profits in ProSeries only to find there are no state returns at all. ProSeries sent me some CD with forms - I guess a bunch of PDF fill-in forms. ATX had a boat load of tax forms built in and with linking capability. Not so with ProSeries. So yes, I'm now using my ATX 2013 demo to create my state forms.
I'm seriously considering switching back to ATX. It's just I operate on a cloud server with connections through RDP. ATX says that's not an ideally secure environment.
Still, I miss ATX.