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Best practices in switcing to Drake


Naveen Mohan from New York

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I am wondering if I need to buy both Drake and ATX Max for next year while I am transitioning from ATX to Drake or can I get by with just Drake software alone.

I have purchased Drake 2018 and in the mean time I am using the evaluation version to reproduce all my 2017 ATX prepared return in Drake.

I guess I am just afraid of the fear of unknown because I have used ATX since 2002 and I am afraid of last minute issues because I am not yet as familiar with Drake as I am with ATX.

Will I be alright with Drake alone?

Thanks for your help.

Naveen Mohan

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I can't answer for you specifically.  After the 2012 ATX problem, I got the Drake 2012 season free and went to one of their seminars.  I purchased both ATX and Drake for 2013.  My intention was to use both and compare the two.  I got busy and lazy and ignored Drake.  I again purchased both ATX and Drake for 2014.  I wanted to give Drake an honest try.  Again, I got busy and lazy and ignored Drake.  ATX seemed to be working for me and I decided to stay with ATX and not pay for two programs (silly me).  Drake users will tell you to go all in with Drake.  All I can say is if you want to give it the honest try, go all in with Drake.  Learn the program and make the comparison properly.

 

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I am a 20 year ATX user who switched to Drake for this last tax season.

I purchased Drake 2017 and did not purchase ATX 2017.

Looking back, I can't think of a single reason why I should have purchased ATX 2017.

The conversion went well  without too many hiccups.

You can check some of my posts in this forum earlier this year

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I can only tell you that, for me, I wouldn't have needed to run both simultaneously.  My switch occurred in Feb of 2013 when I wasn't willing to risk waiting out for ATX to correct all of the problems in its 2012 program.  I went to a Drake sales presentation that was mostly an overview of the input process, and I also checked the 2011 returns that Drake converted. Those 2 things gave me a pretty good introduction to what I needed to know, and I jumped into tax season from there.

Drake also has some short training videos that qualify for CPE, and also has video presentations on input of specific items in its help section that new users may find helpful.

YMMV.

 

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Like Judy, I also switched mid-stream in February 2013 during the 2012-season debacle.  Yes, the first few returns saw me frustrated and calling support for pretty minor items.  However, running two simultaneous programs would have made it take longer for me to become facile with Drake.  

Hold your nose and jump in!  The water's really nice down here, and your friends from the community are here to help you.  Plus the Drake lifesaver (tech support by phone) is superb and in easy reach.

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23 hours ago, Mike D said:

with any conversion

Depreciation is *always* the place to check first.  Most of my conversions went through fine, but a couple had mangled dates.  No numbers were wrong, a couple didn't map right and so were in the wrong spot.  All very fixable, but it did mean careful compare-and-contrast.

The other thing to check is capital loss carry-overs.  I don't recall any issues, but I did check them all.  

Finally, I don't recall, at all, if year-to-year comparison went through or not.  If not, it's pretty simple in Drake (COMP page, good job for an assistant) and it compares three years not two, so I like that much better.

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Make sure you check ALL your carry-overs (including state).  I had a couple of clients with charitable donation carry forwards that did not convert and NY LTC insurance carry forwards that I had to manually input.  

Make sure you take the time to learn how to write macros.  They are a huge time saver for repeated entries.  If you search on macros in the software discussion page in the Drake forum you will find many useful macros.  

 

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  • 2 months later...

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