rob

Opinions please.

We are phasing out our SBS 2003.

With years of old QB's, years back of ATX, Proseries 2013 what would be a better choice?

SBS 2008 or Server 2012.

I was thinking originally Server 2012 but didn't realize it has pretty much the Windows 8 look.

And I am worried many programs will not run on Server 2012.

Thanks.

[email protected]

Thanks.

Looking for an accounting system with source code. Any suggestions? Thanks.

You are prolonging the inevitable. If you peruse the threads, you will find that staying with the old version is counterproductive. Any changes in 12.18 may change returns you have already created.

You can lead a horse to water.....

Totally agree. No good can come out of in staying in 12.13. This time of year speed can't be as much an issue as it was pre - April 15. It is what it is. BTW, I never really noticed much of a problem with 12.18. It was as bad as the previous updates but not worse - including 12.13.

We have an HP-6MP that still chugs along at a lightning-fast 6 ppm... but it's the only printer that still supports the APL character set.

We have HP - 4 Plus's and HP - 5's networked, one for each user but available to any other workstation. Re-charge cartridges are 59.00 / 69.00 (at 12ppm by the way). Very high volume, very low maintenance. (Source of re-charge also fixes them, very cheap labor - and all cartridges are guaranteed.)

I will take a shot and say that you are using a computer(s) with WIN XP? Long ago it was determined that ATX2012 was NOT friendly with XP.

I updated to 12.18 on my domain server with 10 workstations, and my home standalone computer. I have none of those issues.

With ATX, blanket statements don't hold true.

We have domain server with 10 workstations. XP on 2 year old workstation (we had choose XP over 7 for workstation at time of ordering) is MUCH faster than our newer Windows 7 machines with equivalent hardware. XP has 4 GB installed (sees of course 3GB or so) and 8 GB on Windows 7 machines. All I7 processors.

Switched network cables, etc to make sure it wasn't network related with the speed difference.

I am too.

Is your network a domain network or peer to peer?

Domain.

Couple years ago we were on a peer to peer.

If different operating systems conflicting during use is an issue, I could most certainly see it happening on a peer to peer network.

I hate to burst your bubble, but if you refer to the first post in this thread containing information from ATX about the Raven DB, you will see the following:

"We have been in contact with the RavenDB vendor and explained that ATX2012 opens the database local to the computer AND that we do not support the use of the software from multiple OS user accounts at the same time or in a Terminal Server/RDP or Remote Desktop scenario."

We have witnessed this very thing live on our network. You believe whatever tech person you wish, but this is reality. This MUST be changed for networks to use the program properly.

It's not believing, it's working on our network.

And I've seen other hardware setups similar to ours mentioned in these forums, with XP and 7 workstations. Working.

Support said that above statement was badly worded and they DO support workstations running XP and 7 at the same time. They were trying to stress multiple sessions (remote desktop and TServices) would not work because workstation has a snapshot of data base on local station and two instances would not work.

Interesting Rob! I am looking to do a simple network once I get the new laptop I just ordered for my assistant. It's nice to know at least one or two users didn't have issues with a network. Both of my computers will be win7, so any o/s issues won't come up at least.

I just talked to support again today to clarify some of the points brought up in this and ATX's own forum. There should be no problem running a mix of XP and 7 machines (as we do but others had said it won't work.)

Their update for today will deal with backup / restore mostly. There are a couple more scheduled for 2012 version but most of their focus is on 2013. Support was testing network enhancements for next year, said it will be quite fast on networks. Changing the way workstations and server communicate - this won't effect 2012 sorry to say. Anyway, I will believe when I see it. Support was pleased with it (and I asked if he had anything to do with 2012 version, he laughed and said not guilty.)

Your assessment is correct.

At my work area, I have two computers. One is XP the other WIN 7 PRO with SSD. If I open ATX on the XP machine, no one else can access the database from the workstations after they logon. At first, I thought it was ATX dislike for XP. Now I know it is the RAVEN DB inability to work simultaneously with different OS.

Likewise, if a WIN 7 machine opens the program first, none of the XP machines can access ATX.

We have server and 8 work stations. Two are Windows 7 and the rest are XP. We never had a problem accessing database at same time. Usually we 5 or 6 logged in at a time doing returns. The system was slow if we had more than one person rolling over returns, and of course overall it was much slower than prior ATX versions, but it worked.

Electronic filing was the only part of program we needed to designate one user to do (which makes sense, and prior versions of ATX were the same.)

Only limitation was I couldn't remote desktop into server if I had it running already on server. We don't use terminal services so that never applied to us.

We have used this for years. Local company. Very easy to use.

http://instantsoftwaresolutions.com/

Ask for Dave.

My practice tax prep consists of about 70% inidvidual, 20% corporate and the other 10% consist of partnerhips, fiduciary and non-profits. Unfortunately as it were, my practice covers the state border so I have about 30% of my clients from across the border and 70% on my home state side. I received a proposal from Ultra Tax this morning to cover all of this with the software installed on my server and the number was in the $8,500 range and that is with a promotional 30% discount. As an aside, I believe UT is offering TW customers three years at somewhere around what the TW customers were paying TW. Doesn't quite seem fair. Anyway, my next year renewal price would be north of $10,000.

Lion, if you would be so kind, if you are under no obligation like I am with Pro Series, could you PM me and tell me if ProSystems fees are in line with UT. Lacerte quoted me a price of $6,000 this morning on the phone, but I am uncertain what that includes, since my conversation went further in depth with the rep about Pro Series and I did not have much time to quiz him about Lacerte.

Our ATX past and this year's quote is under 2,000 with multi-user, all states, unlimited efiles, etc (obviously with it's flaws - 2012 version). Server with workstations was our installation.

UT and Lacerte are one year quotes? They are that much more or am I missing something? I requested a Drake demo to look at and want to check out other products but certainly not much more than we are currently paying with CCH.

Thanks for any suggestions.

I use ATX in a domain server environment and only had minor problems.

We have a domain server too.

Server is SBS 2003, XP and Windows 7 Pro workstations. With 4gb and 8gb memory. Also have a test stand-alone running XP.

Very slow, freeze ups, impossible backup / restore, reset 2011 path over and over, kick out of efile, kill ATXLoader2012 process.

Problems were almost the same for server vs stand-alone.

Before server, we used to run a peer to peer network. I cannot imagine how that would be suggested over domain - even with all of this year's problems. (And when we had peer to peer, we were running the "good" ATX (pre 2012). It was so slow and more apt to lose mapped drive connections.

Early in season on the server it was almost 7-10 minutes12.13 reduced that 2.5 minutes and about the same times to load clients. Had to reboot software after opening and closing 2-5 clients

Workstations were 2 to 3 times that

I ran ATX off server for a while (rolling over clients). It seemed to choke the system for other users. (ATX told me they recommended users work off workstations so I quit using server as the "rollover machine".) My times were about the same as above.

I don't think XP vs 7 operating system made much difference. 2012 is just slow.

We bought workstations loaded with XP when first of Windows 7 machines were coming out (thus most of our systems are not that old). A couple of our XP machines are as fast as our new Windows 7 workstations btw (speed is relative of course)

We upgraded when it came out (12.13) and noticed an immediate increase in speed. Go from 35 MPH to 50 MPH seems fast at first, but not in 65 MPH speed zone when everyone else is passing you.

Problems with program crashing still persist. Many crashes creating efiles.

And as we added more clients to database, the program slowed down. It is nowhere up to par compared to 2011 ATX.

On my XP 2 GB machine, 7 minutes to open ATX from click to login. (I am not a primary user / inputer). I just support our network. On our Win 7 machines, about 1/2 that from click to open. Not very good 12.13 or not...

BTW, on the ATX company board it got great reviews. Why didn't you upgrade a month ago?

We want a program that will manage all our tax / payroll clients from the time they come in the door to the time we try to find them all to include for extensions (which is why we are looking).

We have variations of same (but they don't do all that we want).

We'd like a client management program that will work in a network environment, be easy to use, maybe support bar coding, rich with custom reporting.

Would appreciate any suggestions.

Thanks.

We have over ten years of old ATX programs / data. How is conversion for any of the alternatives?

We have way too many returns to manually try to do.

We have 12.13 on all workstations. Six are XP with 2 or 4 (though XP only sees 3) GB and two Windows 7 machines with 8 GB.

Actually the XP machines seem to be a bit snappier.

I'm surprised you didn't try 12.13 sooner. It was much faster than any of the previous versions. (Well documented in posts on ATX site - albeit for most people, not all.)

And if you cannot download, contact them and they will give you either a ftp link or an alternate way of downloading - I saw reference to that a couple times while browsing the groups.

Epson Gt2500 Networked. We scan from all workstations and PDF to client folder. Very dependable. Not cheap but you get what you pay for.

We still have issues with efile crashes and occasional slow opening of returns.

If you are not manually exporting all your client files, your data is not secure.

Backing up files created by ATX2012 only backs up files that are corrupted and not dependable.

SFA had this reply below from ATX and I agree with. I backup all of ATX (including what ATX uses as data files). Not exported or imported but the actual files. I'm sure those aren't corrupted or else we wouldn't be able to open to work on. So if something happens, I could reinstall ATX and copy back in the data in it's entirety.

Then our routine backups of our server should include these files within the ATX program directory:

1. Backup Folder

2. Efiles

3. EFIN Enrollment

4. Network Share Folder (which includes "Formset")

He said that if we have these files, they can recreate our returns.

By backing up our whole server every night to 2nd HD and to external drive obviously gets these files;

So no problem. And I feel better not knowing I have to depend on ATX's internal program backup / restore.

Am I missing something? We have Acronis back up our entire system overnight to a External Drive and to a 2nd hard drive. Everything!

I've dealt with cloud backup - so slow. So long to restore. Carbonite comes to mind.

So if database gets corrupted, can't I just copy back in from yesterday's backup? Worked for ever prior year version of ATX. We had a backup and database folder in old versions.

I'm asking in case I am misunderstanding something about 2012 version.

Updated to 12.10 on server, rebooted.

Uninstalled all workstations and ran netsetup.

All are working fine. Seems to be a little faster (hopefully optimistic maybe.)