SeattleCPA

I have a small niche-y practice that's me, another CPA during tax season, a CPA candidate and then an admin. We do lots and lots of small S corp and partnership returns and the reason we used ATX was that the spreadsheet made it really easy to do these small entity returns. BTW, we also looked at UltraTax and that's just an excellent product... it's very expensive for a shop like mine (basically $400 or so per month per person)... but the real problem is that it did not provide a good clean way to quickly move cash basis financial statements from QuickBooksk to the tax software. Way, way too clunky. Final explanatory comment: We don't actually do a lot of returns... probably not more than many of you solos. But many of the returns we do are pretty cumbersome and that's why even before the meltdown we were looking for some better-fitting option than ATX.

I'm a little late to this discussion, but here's the blog post I did for Intuit about why i switched from ATX to Lacerte: https://blog.accountants.intuit.com/?p=23325 My three big takeaways discussed were (1) after the ATX experience this tax season, people in my office were happy to switch, (2) the Lacerte training time (free training!) was quicker than ATX customer service hold times, and (3) if I count any of the indirect costs of using ATX, Lacerte wasn't any more expensive. BTW, we switched mid-tax-season as noted at the myatx forum (I see many familiar names here)... and I also need to say here that when I got my Lacerte invoice (and looked at the big number it shows) my only reaction, my only reaction, was to think, "Gee I am happy to have good tax software."

A question from a new forum member... How well does ATX perform on your network (if you're doing this)... We've tried to follow the installation directions, etc., but while on the machine ATX resides on, it's acceptably fast to start and open, on the admin assistant's machine (which goes over the little peer to peer network), it's 90 to 120 seconds to get the database optimized and then to reach the signon dialog box... and then maybe another 90-120 seconds to start the program and get to the return manager... and then maybe another 60-90 seconds to open a tax return. So 4-5 minutes to gets started on that first return of the day... Is this par for the course? Steve Fast Easy Incorporation Kits

I didn't see this listed in your thread but another reason the two values could differ is that if you're talking about the balance sheet in Schedule L on the 1120S and then the taxable income number on the face of the 1120S, remember that the Schedule L values are the "book" numbers. Your M-1 should reconcile the book income to the taxable income of course... but the first time I encountered this (and I don't encounter it very often) the book versus tax thing caught me offguard...