My issues with Drake

[jklcpa]

I know this new forum is for ATX issues, but I thought I'd post it here for those others of you that may have switched to Drake or are thinking of doing so. I purchased Drake on a pay per return basis and put out $285. I might be glad that I purchased Drake on this basis and didn't pay for the unlimited use, and I may have to suffer along with ATX like the rest of you. Let me be very clear that I have always like ATX for its ease of input and the worksheets that detail out the calculations. I think Drake might be fine for the really simple returns, but I have to admit that I'm not very happy with the whole process for my more complex returns or any returns that have depreciation, partnerships and corporations.

Here are some of my problems with Drake's program for individuals:

- lack of detail for state tax deduction on Sch A. User may create a detail worksheet, but if state itemized deduction requires adjustment for these, manual adjustments will be necessary if the return includes items such as 4th qtr estimates pertaining to prior year paid in current year, or any local taxes included in this line

- depreciation! This is horrible. I've spent hours going over all clients files post conversion to Drake to make sure numbers are correct. No way to see the AMT report either. One block to enter business use of auto's percentage, then I had to override the expense to get to the correct deduction. I couldn't find anywhere to input any mileage, at least not that I've found yet. I think that portion might have to be as overrides for those specific lines.

- carryovers. No way to enter carryovers related to a vacation rental property that isn't in service any more. This is related to depreciation and investment interest.

- Errors related to names: every 1099R that was converted had the address in in the name continuation box and would need to be changed. It won't accept names with any punctuation like commas, apostrophes, or dashes.

For businesses -

- many of the expenses that converted over are appearing on incorrect lines or are missing. Because of this, taxable income is incorrect, errors on every return with tie in to the balance sheets and M-1, M-2. The program does some creative things in balancing M-1.

- I can't say enough times that depreciation is a disaster. It is possible to delete the assets and simply fill in the 4562 as if by hand. I may consider this since I have a very nice depreciation program from the Tompson Reuter group, because I never completely liked ATX either and continued on with dual systems for those that were already set up where I needed more reports for my accounting clients.

So I've literally spent many hours making sure that the conversions are correct, fixing several partnerships for things like a disposition of an assets for which sec 179 was taken because this program has the figures flowing to some places but not to others, fixing partners' bases. I feel like I'm doing 2 tax seasons at once to fix all that is missing from the 2011 conversions just to be able to roll them forward to 2012.

There are probably a lot of things I've not mentioned, but my head is really burned out. It does do a couple of things better on the Delaware state returns than ATX, but with ATX there is the ability to correct these things on the worksheets. If Drake does have problems in reporting items, it is totally inflexible and almost impossible to change it. There is a very specific error in the way it is handling a credit with no way to fix it or override it so that the proper amount is applied and that the carryover is correct.

At this point I might be keeping Drake in reserve as a backup in the event of something seriously going wrong with my ATX program's ability to function on my machine. I've gone back and forth about this ever since Friday night when I started checking the conversions.

[Jack from Ohio]

All the more reason for me to ride the storm out.... What if you had 2,900 clients.... Imagine the headache.

[Maribeth]

I too have believed that the depreciation in Drake was too “loose”, too easy to make a mistake and just not sophisticated enough. With the input sheets and not-really-a-depreciation program, Drake would not be suitable for my practice.

I have been buying Fixed Asset Manager for 3 or 4 years now. It has always had its issues – rounding being the biggest problem. But the depreciation codes, lives, methods, etc., were all built in and all I had to do was categorize the asset correctly and the depreciation would be calculated correctly.

This year FAM has been rebuilt and is linked with ATX. Make a change in FAM and it, in theory, will be automatically changed in ATX. I believe that so many of our problems this year have been caused by the link and its not working property. ATX crashes because FAM cannot be found or FAM is using the same client.

I have almost decided to uninstall FAM and use the ATX depreciation module for all of our accounting clients. This will get us through tax season but it will not get us through the year. ATX has got to fix FAM and its interface with ATX2012.

Maribeth

[jklcpa]

All the more reason for me to ride the storm out.... What if you had 2,900 clients.... Imagine the headache.

Jack, I don't have to imagine it, once upon a time I lived it too. For many years I worked for a firm with just another CPA and myself, 2 juniors and a secretary. We did close to 500 personal returns and another 500 business entities plus quite a lot of pension accounting. We worked overtime from Jan through mid-Oct, had a small break in Nov, and in Dec worked on a lot of year-end planning for the cash basis calendar year corporations. When I first started there were no computers. Everything was prepared manually with a pencil, eraser and a copy machine. Financials were drafted and typed by the secretary. We did go through a tax program conversion there, and I'll admit that it was rough too.

^ This is just one of the reasons why I work by myself now, so that I don't completely ruin my health any more than I already have.

[Randall]

I appreciate your comments on Drake. I also see from the subject headings here regarding TRX (I don't read those posts) that it appears they too have had a lot problems. I have a lot less volume than Jack from Ohio, but I tend to think like him and I'm just trying to be patient with ATX.

[TheBigBooper]

I switched this year from ATX to Drake, buying Drake at a seminar in July. I had only switched to ATX fully from Lacerte after the 2009 season, keeping Lacerte around for a dozen high end and expensive returns thru out the years, on a PPR after 2009.

Based upon what the OP says, I will have to switch another 12 clients with heavy duty depreciation from Drake back to Lacerte

I think Drake, by and large, is a superior product over ATX in terms of speed of operation and less clunkiness. Of course Lacerte is vastly more capable then either of these two. I have two clients who work in 15 or more states each year, try that on ATX!

[jklcpa]

I thought I'd update this thread to say that I found the AMT depreciation, and it is on the same report with the regular depreciation. I hadn't scrolled to the right side before today. I haven't prepared any yet with the depreciation, so had I done so and printed those, I would have seen that it is there after all. I actually like that the AMT is on the same report. It makes more sense since it is all on one screen for the input no matter what program I'm using.

User error on my part all the way!