Medlin Software, Dennis

Forgot to add, seeing more cases of incorrect SSN on W2 this year, as states stop allowing the full SSN on the pay stub.

A common misunderstanding, both employEE and employER, is believing when the money was earned matters. One or both may be thinking the W-2 should include wages "earned" during the year instead of the proper wages "paid" during the year.

Multi purpose printers can do many things, none of them excellent. Jack-of-all-trades, master of none. While I have one for fax, copy, and color, my main printer is a b/w laser printer. I like the high page per minute count...

Not a user or developer of ATX. WIth that said, I bet the default setting is taken from the printer's software. It would be poor programming to change your default setting, but is proper to show you the setting and allow it to be changed for the current job. There are also bad printer drivers, which show an incorrect setting, do not respect a program's request to change a setting, and so on.

If you cannot get the printer's defaults (using Windows) set to not mirror, and there is no physical setting for mirror on the printer, then delete the printer (from Windows), then reinstall it. For the reinstall, use the manufacturer's web site, not a CD you got with the printer.

If that does not work, see if the manufacturer offers a generic driver to try. Sometimes the less "features" in the printer software, the better the printer software actually works.

State forms are a tough nut to crack. CA forms are stable from year to year. We also prepare NYS45, which is the opposite of stable. Many states have a fill in the figures online setup.

We could buy a state form add on to incorporate, but our price would have to go up a large amount. Most of the vendors want a large license fee, and some sort of per customer fee. I also LOATHE having to depend on some other vendor for what would become something I would have to support. Forms don't work, call me, then I would have to call someone else and hope they fix the problem quickly.

So, as of this writing, we have not added other state forms. I thought about creating a separate state add on, priced by the number of forms and the frequency of changes, but I suspect most of our customers would rather prepare those forms manually versus paying more than the program price for state specific forms. I literally could have ended up with a program (state forms) that only a couple of people used.

KC, Your statement "This is true for almost every program" is not true. I would not even say it is a majority of programs, and could easily be a small minority. The major cause of leaks is more likely to be Windows itself.

Properly coded programs close every file they directly open. If the program is using any shared resources (implicit loading), like a system DLL, Windows manages the shared resource, unloading it when the "count" of uses of the shared file is zero. Some programs do have resource "leaks", but they usually will not cause a major issue unless you start, stop, and restart the offending program a very large number of times without running much else.

There are programs (MS office and open office come to mind) which have a preloader. Such a preloader opens when the computer starts, and preloads certain files, usually dll files. The reason is to make it "appear" the application loads faster, when the reality is it shifted some of the load time to computer startup. Sometimes software does not have a preloader, but after first open, does not clear all resources, on purpose, usually via an option in the program's setup.

One tip, counter intuative, is to turn off disk caching. Developers are well aware file writing is the slowest part of a computer, and optimize when and how to write files. Using caching means Windows controls the file write timing (which opens a real can of worms safety wise). Caching was a valid tool back in DOS 5 (when it was introduced) and we were dealing with 640k of memory and data on floppies, but is not needed, and can be dangerous, on a modern computer.

Anther tip, check the task scheduler to see what things are automatically happening and when. You may have something set to run right in the middle of your heavy use times.

<rant>

I have no connection with ATX, nor do I use it. ATX saying UAC and admin access does not bother me in the least. Why? UAC and access levels are a way for MS to protect MS (reduce calls to MS). It does nothing to protect the person sitting at the keyboard from doing something stupid.

We are talking about someone with permission to handle personal information and tax returns of others. if the same person cannot be trusted to not do something stupid on the computer, there is a bigger issue than using UAC and access levels...

UAC does exactly zero to prevent stupid actions. The UAC box allows the UAC warning to be bypassed. If were real protection, it would not have just a button to bypass the warning.

Access levels, if needed, say you do not trust the person at the keyboard, so why let them at it in the first place?

<rant>

The video settings, card, and memory (shared or not), will affect the perceived speed when using your computer. As I am not an ATX user, I am not sure how they update the display, but moving to a new field probably involves calculations, error checking, updating other fields, and saving data to your drive. The drive is the next slowest item, magnified if the software is network or multi user capable, and magnified again if you are actually using network or multi user capabilities.

In other words, Ram may increase load and unload speed, and in some case, operation speed, but the video and drive capabilities have more affect on operation speed.

Medlin does not import data from any other program. We have no control over what the other program sends, so each bit of information would have to be manually audited and corrected, which works out to be slower than typing whatever is needed.

In Medlin, when printing a DE88, it is a fill in the blank deal. We do not fill or prefill any of the values. The DE9 and DE9C are liability forms only, and are filled using the paycheck data, and via input boxes to confirm the CA UI rate for the business, and if needed, to confirm exemption from CA ETT.

Hidden ATX files "smells funny". A hidden program file (exe, dll, etc) should still open. Hidden should not cause a problem there. A hidden file "may" cause a problem if it is something which might be changed.

Tom, I see both sides, both as user (programming tools I depend on) and as vendor (software I create).

Nothing can stay the same, much is out of my control, and I acknowledge and embrace that I can't make software which will please all. No one can do those things for me either...

BTW, my Medlin is working fine.

Nice to hear I did not do somethign to mess it up for you!

Can of worms for me. I admit, I chuckled at the message. I also cringed.

I cringe when someone contacts me for help and assumes I do not want to, assumes they could not have made a mistake, or worse yet, gets irate when the honest answer is not one they want to hear. I have to say "no" to some requests (for various reasons) and the number of times I get told "but I am the customer (or potential customer), you have to do what I ask" is stunning. For today's example, getting "ripped" by a caller who wanted me to license them our software, because they were tired of paying a payroll service. I said "no" because they had no payroll experience or training, and were simply not qualified to do their own payroll. (Payroll software does not make a payroll processor any more than tax software makes one a tax preparer.)

I suppose I am simply saying while the message is funny, it can be written with the participants reversed, and still not be true in the vast majority of the cases.

Barosser, I am curious. Were the "hidden" files system (Windows) files, software (ATX) files, or your (data) files?

The hidden attrib might be an issue on opening of data files, or if the software needed to update some of the software files. With current versions of Windows, only MS is supposed to alter system files.

This came up for me for the first time, last week. One of our customers had "somehow" set their data files to hidden. We do not set files to hidden, nor were expecting it to be hidden.

The "somehow" could have been direct fiddling with the file properties, some sort of computer or folder level fiddling, or any number of other possibilities. Since we will never really know how it happened, the net result is another line of code to undo what someone incorrectly did on their own... or some other program/process did to files it had no business messing with.

The problems can occur if permissions, ownership, and other security settings are unexpected to the software.

Still a current issue (to me). When I get a potential new customer who thinks obtaining software will enable them to become a payroll processor, I (try to) politely turn them down. No software teaches anyone to become a payroll processor, or tax preparer. All need the underlying knowledge/experience to know when something is simply not right. The software developer is not signing the forms...

My first computer was a Panasonic "portable" which weighed 20+ lbs. Fancy one at that as it had two floppy (720k) drives and a 10meg hard drive. It was a gift from a family member who was a county planner.

I had a feeling I would end up in some sort of computer related work when I first went to visit my mom at her workplace. She was then a keypuncher for Southern Pacific, and took her cards into a huge room with a "computer" in it. It was in 1966 IIRC.

I am answering many "how do I calculate 2013 paychecks" questions. The sad part is there is no official method for 2013 federal withholding published by the treasury department / IRS. Some might say since there is no calculations available, there is no withholding. One government employee was quoted by the APA as saying something similar to it would not be inconsistent to use 2012 calculations.

Since the T Dept has authority to issue calculations (as it did before the agreement was made last year) and has not, it could be the T Dept was asked to not do or say anything official. It is tough to think otherwise as their job, in this case, "IS" to issue instructions to make sure enough is withheld...

"Well - this is a single PC installation (not server)."

Something to keep in mind is every recent version of Windows is really a network / multi user operating system. Whether or not you use your computer as a stand alone does not matter, software vendors have to consider every installation as potentially networked and/or multi user.

Logmein. Have not tried printing, but I believe it is included.

Agree on the penalty/interest. Some might say it is smart money (commodity) management by your clients to not be in a rush to pay you when there is no penalty. Money has a cost, and you are loaning it to them free.

While I do not have any receivables in my current line of work, way back when, I did. My cost to carry receivables had to be more than my cost of money (getting a loan), plus a profit on my time to handle the receivables, plus a factor to account for noncollectable items.

As long as I could borrow for less than what I was charging, and I accounted for a certain amount of noncollectable, I was making a profit both on my work and my loan.

I had 720k floppies for Win 3.1, not the fancy 1.44's. Sometimes I wish we had to learn to use our computers... There is a distinct trade off between hiding the operation from the user and the power of knowing what is happening. I suppose a fair comparison is becoming a preparer versus paying for some preparation software!

Win 8 does not take more "computer" to run than Win 7. Some units on the shelf with Win 8 are the exact same thing which was available a few months ago with Win 7.

Win 8 works fine without touchscreen. (While touch can be useful, those inputting numbers and letters will likely be forever in need of keyboard entry, which MS is well aware of.)

There is a way to simulate a fairly familiar desktop with Win 8, instead of the "tiles".

Unless an application was doing something it probably should not have been doing, anything which worked with Win 7 (and probably Vista and XP) will work with Win 8. I still use dbase III (circa 1986) on a daily basis - which works fine with every flavor of Win so far.

Despite thoughts (and some good reasoning) of doing so, MS is not likely to introduce a desktop OS which breaks existing applications. Application developers should not use OS dependent code (easy to do). While it would be nice sometimes to use some code, trick, or function available in one particular OS, supporting different versions for different OS releases is expensive and makes little sense.

Jack is correct and gives sage advice. No reason to add more unknowns right before anyone's busy time. On the other hand, I would add "new" is a relative term. MS has been making their "new" items available for public trial months before release, which is always after they have tested it fairly well in a closed beta test. A "new" OS has been used plenty before official release, and does not worry me.

What do I use most? Vista for daily work as there is nothing I need from a new computer, and it takes time (read costs money) to "move" into a newer computer. Have others with XP, 7, and 8 for non work use, and for testing. I actually just threw away my set of Win 3.1 install floppies last Friday...

Speaking in my case only...

A foster child is not a family member (not a dependent student).

The payment is not income to me, since I do not claim the child(ren) as dependents. (Hard to meet the means test since the county provides a stipend, and the biggie, medical coverage.)

I could see some instances where the payment could be considered income to the child, but even if it was, being an independent student, any stipend (if construed as income for the child) is not likely to "hurt" for financial aid.

It a proper HA, it is not part of payroll reporting, such as on a 941. It is certainly an expense, but probably best kept separate from PR to avoid any issues of it getting mixed in with PR reporting.

(IMO Ideally HA is kept completely out of PR. Paid through AP, separate statement at the end of year - not added to Box 14 of W-2, all filed nicely with the annual authorization from the church showing the amount.)

So much more I want to write, but without more from the OP, there is no point speculating.

Is there a valid contactor license in place? If not, the person should be reported for contracting without, and the client should promise not to make the same mistake twice.

Does the client want to fight, with the understanding they may very well lose?

Does the client realize they may end up paying both the EE and ER taxes as it sounds as if the worker is less than flush? Penalties could be added as well.

Has the client considered the relatively fixed costs of change to EE, versus the open ended costs of trying to prove IC (and may lose and have to pay the EE and ER costs anyway)?

Added: My earlier post of the VA code definition of a contractor has no provision for a contractor being paid by the hour...