JohnH

I remember that. The only reason I passed your Algebra class was because you provided all those extra supplies. (and the high quality of instruction that went along with them)

Three comments on the phone problem. 1) Don't give any client your cell phone number. If anyone captures it when you call them, be sure to enter their name in your contacts so you can always send them to voice mail if they call you later. 1) Turn off the ringer on the office phone and let everything go to voice mail, unless you're in the mood for interruptions. 2) Do everything possible to encourage them to switch to email. I know, some won't. But in my experience even the older clients are more likely to use email if you take the initiative (except for the very elderly). Seniors embrace email even more than young people these days, because the younger people are more oriented toward texting. I will usually find some reason to send a client an email after they drop their info off. Maybe I need to confirm a birthdate or to ask some other innocuous question. That puts my email address in their contacts, and all they have to do is click "reply" to send any questions they may have at any time. That usually gets them forever off the phone. Personally, I respond to voice mails the end of the current day or sometime the next day. But I will respond to an email within minutes, even if only to say I read their question and will need to get back to them later. All my clients know this. Once clients understand that phone messages may take a while but emails get a rapid reply, they will make a rational decision about how to communicate with you. People don't always need quick answers - they just need to know you're aware of their question and maybe giving it some thought. That saves your valuable time to give quick responses to questions which actually do command priority. Following the above, who cares when they contact you? It can be Christmas day, Sunday, middle of the night - makes no difference. I have night owls who send me emails at 2 am. Next time I turn on the computer the message is patiently sitting there. The client gets it off their mind and I can respond at my leisure. But what is really impressive to the client is when they send an email question that requires a simple answer at 8 or 9pm on a Saturday or Sunday while I'm sitting watching TV. If I have time to shoot a quick response from my phone I'll do it. Clients almost always convey their appreciation for the quick response, and not a one of them has ever expected me to be as timely the next time they sent a question. When it comes to communication, we live in a world that is vastly different than it was even 3-5 years ago. I view technology as a friend which can relieve a lot of stress - it just needs to be managed.

--> He e-mails me and says "if I were Dr. 'a Jewish name' (and I'm Jewish) I would be getter better treatment." <--- I think he told you all you need to know about his moral compass right there. I'd have decided to drop him as well.

Wonder why I've encountered lots people in my life who said they were "disgruntled", but have never met someone who described themselves as "gruntled".

So what's your point? Are you suggesting that sequestration is something OTHER THAN a 2% reduction in spending? Anybody who credits this administration with doing a good job of anything meaningful is living in a dream world. (Their skill lies in deceiving and dividing - that's where they are excelling) For example: “We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that ‘APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.’ So it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be,” Mr. Brown, in the internal email, said his superiors told him." Here's the link to the entire article (for those administration apologists who aren't afraid to face the truth): http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/5/email-tells-feds-make-sequester-painful-promised/

I noticed it being very slow to respond when I visited about an hour or so ago. But now it seems to be working just fine here - normal speed.

Or, in those words attributed to Harry Truman when someone in the crowd yelled out "Give 'em Hell, Harry!", he is reported to have replied, "I don't give them Hell. I just tell the truth about them and they think it's Hell."

I can understand - sometimes people are offended by the truth. Doesn't change the fact that it's truth.

Sounds like a potentially desirable outcome on a national level to me. Provided we cut out BOTH major parties, send everybody home, and start over again. But right now I'll settle for a 2% cut for starters. Oh, and now more good news. Looks like the Sequester Jesters are just kidding - we have plenty in reserve after all. Our newly-appointed joke of a Sec of State just announced they found $250 million for aid to Egypt. Plus, there's plenty more where that came from - he promised we "can and will provide more". I'm sure those furloughed government workers and air traffic controllers will be thrilled by this development.

If I follow the logic of these bureaucrats, I'd cover the 2% drop by suspending my burglar alarm service. No way I'd consider cutting out a couple of Starbucks visits each week - that just isn't possible.

Something is really puzzzling me about sequestration. 1) As of Jan 1, 2013, every person in the US who earns a paycheck was forced by our government to make do with 2% less in disposable income. They have adapted and continued their lives with little negative impact. 2) As of March 1, 2013 our government must take some of its own medicine by reducing spending by roughly the same amount - 2%. Suddenly we're hearing the system will implode - air traffic control shutdowns, 3-hour TSA lines, and illegal aliens being feed from jail. We can find a way to do it fairly painlesslly. But Washington? Nope, can't be done. This bureaucratic circus speaks volumes about the economic efficiencies inherent in the private economy vs. the incompetence and inefficiencies of the way government mis-handles money in general. I think this is the lesson that Washington fears we may learn, so there's a desperate need to make it as painful as possible. Anybody else get the feeling we're being played for suckers?

You're right - this would have gone a long way toward satisfying their ATX customers. But there would have been the inevitable backlash from those who paid the full price for ProSystem FX, so maybe they calculated it wouldn't have been worth the extra grief. What's the price ratio - about six to one? Whether the long-term consequences would have been better remains to be seen. Make me think of the time I was flying on a deep-discount airfare and got into a conversation with the guy sitting beside me. We were both headed to the same destination to conduct similar business. I'd paid $150 for my seat and he had paid about $900. He got visibly upset (not at me but at the airline). But once we left the plane he was on to more important stuff. Had we been sitting side-by-side on the return flight, he may have been more inclined to give the airline some real grief over it. On the other hand, if the plane had arrived late and we both missed our meetings, the airline would have been much more sympathetic to his complaints than to mine. Not saying that they would have actually done anything helpful for either of us, but they would have issued a much more sincere-sounding apology to him than to me.

From the standpoint of damage control, I think this may be the smartest move they've made yet. If there had been a rush for the exits at 2/27-2/28 (and we really don't know if there was or was not one), this would give their customer service people the only response that might head off the stampede.

Charge by the hour. Some 80-transaction schedule D's might take an hour to input and proof, while a 2-transaction schedule D that's missing key basis info can eat up multiple hours.

OK. I think we're ready for the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TkuZ5oI9uY

Funny! Too bad there isn't a translation. He must be a pretty important official - even the security guards didn't want to get involved. The best part was after the major part of his rant, his wife walks over and smashes a cup. He destroys thousands of dollars in equipment and then she has to smash a 10 cent cup. And the kid calmly taking the remainder of the broken chair & gently stacking it was a close second.

Yes Eric, they did make the switch in record time. Each side began blaming the other before the sequester was even discussed publicly.

Margaret, you make a great point with that post. This forum is more important to most of us than any software vendor's product. Thanks to Eric, it is most unique in that we aren't hostage to the whims of any vendor. Nobody can take down a post just because they don't like what's being said about their product. The glue that holds this forum together is the camraderie and the independence. I believe this year has proven the value of the independence more than ever. The predictions for ATX's future are all over the place, but truthfully none of us knows what the future holds for the software. Who knows? - next year ATX might be humming along and there could be huge problems with other vendors' products. Most of us had ATX in common until this year (with a few exceptions), and that likely will be less so next year. But we still need an independent forum. I haven't said much about this up to this point because I've tried to get out of the way while people worked out their immediate problems & got some work out the door. Since I'm no longer an ATX customer I can't be of any help in that area. But once things settle down, we should have a conversation about how to retain the broad appeal, keep people involved, and even bring others in. Maybe a slight change to the name of the forum or some other ideas will surface. (Assuming Eric is willing to continue doing the magnificent job he is doing). But thanks for bringing it up - we need to be thinking long term even while people are wrestling with the immediate problems.

And that, my friends, is exactly how they're going to try and convince us that sequestration is such a terrible thing.

Well Rita, he's creative. At least he didn't say he just dropped by to ask "How's it coming on my return?"

Once a high-level VP in a company for which I was selling told me they needed accurate sales projections from their sale reps. They would use this info to plan their production schedule for the upcoming YEAR. I replied that the sales rep in me said "Great, my projections will help inspire me to sell more so I can meet my quota!" Then I told him "But the business person in me says any factory manager who actually SCHEDULES production based on the wishful thinking of his sales department needs to be fired before things get out of hand." We didn't get along very well after that conversation, but it wasn't a problem for me because he lost his job not long afterward.

My experience with Drake has been identical to Joel's on all respects. The transition has been simple, and speed is fantastic. The concerns about switching from forms-based data entry are vastly overblown. Once I made the decision to switch, I also made a commitment to develop proficiency with Drake. It took a few days at most, and now for the most part I'm just refining & tweaking it to gain some marginal benefits in speed.

A couple of quick thoughts. You said the 401K withdrawal was added to capital, but then you mentioned loan repayments coming from the ongoing activities. Seems like the simplest way to handle this would have been to just classify the money as loans from the Shareholder to the corp, unless you're trying to increase basis in order to deduct losses on the personal return. I think this is the point that the young CPA is making, and I believe I agree with him. Money being repaid to the shareholder isn't income to him, it's a loan repayment or return of capital, as the case may be. But the business activities which generated the money available to repay the shareholder must come from profits. (The cash for repayment has to come from somewhere - unless additinal money is borrowed from outside sources, it has to come from profits). Since it's an S-corp, the profits will show up on his personal return via the K-1. (If the amounts are very large, this alsointroduces a "no salary/low salary" red flag scenario in an S-corp) On the other hand, if the business isn't generating profits, there will be no money available to repay the sharholder and this is all irrelevant. The only thing I can think of which might affect the net profit matter would be lingering depreciation on assets already paid for in a prior year. There might also be some unusual effects if the business reports on an accrual basis AND if there are huge differences year-over-year. But in many cases, once a business gets in trouble its actual bookkeeping results begin to more closely resemble a cash-basis taxpayer anyhow. There's no definitive rule that I'm aware of with NCESC in this situation. But if they draw a bead on him, this could be problematic. They have quite a bit of clout and you don't have many ways to fight them if they decide against your client, unless he's ready to pay big bucks for representation. Keep in mind that NC is under a cloud right now with respect to excess unemployment borrowings. Who knows when they might decide a crackdown may help reduce the debt. I'd be very careful in giving him advice on this issue.

Schedule C deduction. It fits the definition of "ordinary and necessary", and that's the threshhold he has to meet. It's not different than property tax paid on a business vehicle - the portion attibutable to business expense goes on schedule C and the rest on schedule A. He will have to prove the tithing requirement if he's ever audite, but it appears he's covered. If I were preparing the return, I might ask him for a copy of the written requirement for my files.

Lion: Perfect approach. That's how I've always done it as well - be proactive about extensions and you'll save yourself a lot of Apr 15 aggravation. I have been thinking Mar 10 for the cutoff date, bit you have me thinking about making it earlier as well.