ATX Training

[Lloyd Hudson]

Just got off phone with ATX sales, They called to advise us of the training availabilty on website. we were encouraged to attend some of the training semianrs to learn the software and revel in its new features. I promptly looked at the options and discovered that they klare offering classroom instruction as well as webinars, so far so good. We have been using ATX software for about 10 years and probably do not know how to maximize all the features. then I looked at the pricing. I grant you that they are offering CPE with the classes but I became a bit agitated that they would CHARGE to learn how to use the software that has steadily increased in price every year. I asked if this was a forerunner to pay per incident support, which is my suspicion. we have always renewed early and have always appreciated the new features and more flexibilty that has ocurred every year, but paying for support is not something that I look forward to.

I never post but this got me going.

Lloyd Hudson

Financial Safeguards Group

[Pacun]

I feel the same way too. At least they should make it real inexpensive.

[kcjenkins]

I too was a bit turned off about the price of this 'training'. I think if you buy the software, and certainly if you buy one of the 'premium' packages, the training should be free or at a very minimal price. For one thing, almost everyone who takes the course will be providing help to other users over the course of the tax season.

I wonder if they will get enough paying customers to support those sessions? Or will we just skip them, because we see it as expensive enough to travel to take the session, without having to pay a hefty fee to learn to use their program? I'm interested to hear who and how many of our group intends to go to one?

[Gail in Virginia]

I too was a bit turned off about the price of this 'training'. I think if you buy the software, and certainly if you buy one of the 'premium' packages, the training should be free or at a very minimal price. For one thing, almost everyone who takes the course will be providing help to other users over the course of the tax season.

I wonder if they will get enough paying customers to support those sessions? Or will we just skip them, because we see it as expensive enough to travel to take the session, without having to pay a hefty fee to learn to use their program? I'm interested to hear who and how many of our group intends to go to one?

We are thinking about it in our office. If we go, it will probably be to the one in Charlotte. I understand the feelings about the price, but having paid as much or more for similar training when we were with TaxWise, we did not experience the sticker shock. And when we took the training from TaxWise, we learned so many better ways of doing things that I felt like the price was made up for in increased efficiency. I can't necessarily say that about this seminar, since we have not done it yet.

[kcjenkins]

You make some good points, Gail. I will give it some more thought.

[Pacun]

If this community pays for the training, I will go and I will share everything with you all. Since my background is computers, I am the perfect candidate. LOL. Any other runners up?

[joanmcq]

I was thinking of going to the Sacramento seminar until I saw the price for what seemed to be offered. Since I've used the software for 4 years now, I'd like more advanced topics than how to load the software.

[kcjenkins]

Well, I bit the bullet, and subscribed to the seminar in Tunica. I'd rather go to one of the hands-on sessions, but none of them is close enough. Tunica is about an hour and a half away, so it can be a one-day trip, no need to stay overnight. I'll report back, but since it's not until 11/15, I doubt my opinion will help much.

[joanmcq]

Yeah, the Sac one is before that. Since it also involves me taking a day off work, and I'm using up all my vacation and overtime accruals taking vacation and going to other seminars, I'd like to know if its going to be worthwhile.

[taxxcpa]

Just got off phone with ATX sales, They called to advise us of the training availabilty on website. we were encouraged to attend some of the training semianrs to learn the software and revel in its new features. I promptly looked at the options and discovered that they klare offering classroom instruction as well as webinars, so far so good. We have been using ATX software for about 10 years and probably do not know how to maximize all the features. then I looked at the pricing. I grant you that they are offering CPE with the classes but I became a bit agitated that they would CHARGE to learn how to use the software that has steadily increased in price every year. I asked if this was a forerunner to pay per incident support, which is my suspicion. we have always renewed early and have always appreciated the new features and more flexibilty that has ocurred every year, but paying for support is not something that I look forward to.

I never post but this got me going.

Lloyd Hudson

Financial Safeguards Group

I switched to Drake. They have a day-long seminar and charge participants a fee. They hold the seminars in several different locations, one of which is fairly near where I live so I will probably attend and pay the fee.

[joanmcq]

Well, this is a day long seminar for which they charge a fee. I'm just wondering whether it is worthwhile since this is a new thing for ATX.

[kcjenkins]

It may be a new thing for ATX, but it's something that CCH has been doing for years. Since TIME is the crucial item in short supply during tax season, I think that if I learn two or three time-saving tricks from it, it will pay for itself. Or even one really common step that I can speed up.

[JohnH]

I attended the Charlotte, NC training session today and I thought it was very helpful. No flashes of light or new revelations, but after a couple of years using the program it would have been unusual to have discovered some major unknown feature of the program previously unknown to me. I learned how efficient some keyboard shortcuts can be, and discovered some faster ways to navigate within the program. All in all I consider it to have been worth the investment of time & seminar cost because these tips will help me work faster, assuming I decide to renew this year.

The presenter was a TaxWise trainer who is now doing both TaxWise & ATX. She was very knowledgeable and maintained a good pace of instruction, adapting to the knowledge level & interests of the group. In addition to the time spent on shortcuts, she covered all major aspects of the Signature Form rules, customizing the program, customizing forms, templates, passwords, preferences, custom lists & spreadsheets, linking, etc. We spend quite a bit of time on Depreciation & Asset Entry features, which was very helpful (can anyone ever honestly say they know all there is to know about depreciation?). There was no time spent on such basics as how to load the program or other fundamentals - we each had an individual workstation with the program already loaded & ready to go.

She spent a reasonable amount of time on e-filing and offered to get into bank products, but no one in our group had any interest in them whatsoever although everyone knew what they were, so we moved on. She did an excellent job of demonstrating the difference between Export/Import and Backup/Restore, reviewing the info carefully to be sure everyone understood when, how, & where each should be used. A couple of very program-specific questions of a somewhat unusual nature came up and she took the time to call Caribou for answers on the spot, so even in those cases where she didn't have the info right at hand, she knew how to get the answers quickly & move on. We had 6 current users and 1 person who is evaluating the program for possible purchase, so there was also plenty of opportunity for us to share our own insights among one another in how to use the program more effectively.

So I'll echo what KC said previously - it's worthwhile to use the seminar to go back to some of the basics and maybe pick up some efficiency tips. One thing which was discussed is the idea of making this a 2-day seminar in the future - Day 1 for beginners and Day 2 for experienced/advanced users & continuing instruction for people from Day 1. That seems like a logical way to do things going forward - ATX should consider it for future training. If anyone has questions of a more specific nature about the session, I'll try to answer them.

[kcjenkins]

Thanks for the feedback. I sure hope that I do get to go to the one I paid for!

[Gail in Virginia]

Nice to hear that the seminar is worthwhile. We will be going to the one in Charlotte on Oct 25. I have only used the program for two years, and am looking forward to some shortcuts and efficiencies, as well as learning more about customizing the program. I know there are some aspects of the program that I don't use at all because it has seemed to be more trouble to figure out how to use them than it is to just work around them.

[TAXBILLY]

http://www.atxinctv.com/presentation.asp

taxbilly

[Kenneth]

I attended the Charlotte, NC training session today and I thought it was very helpful. No flashes of light or new revelations, but after a couple of years using the program it would have been unusual to have discovered some major unknown feature of the program previously unknown to me. I learned how efficient some keyboard shortcuts can be, and discovered some faster ways to navigate within the program. All in all I consider it to have been worth the investment of time & seminar cost because these tips will help me work faster, assuming I decide to renew this year.

The presenter was a TaxWise trainer who is now doing both TaxWise & ATX. She was very knowledgeable and maintained a good pace of instruction, adapting to the knowledge level & interests of the group. In addition to the time spent on shortcuts, she covered all major aspects of the Signature Form rules, customizing the program, customizing forms, templates, passwords, preferences, custom lists & spreadsheets, linking, etc. We spend quite a bit of time on Depreciation & Asset Entry features, which was very helpful (can anyone ever honestly say they know all there is to know about depreciation?). There was no time spent on such basics as how to load the program or other fundamentals - we each had an individual workstation with the program already loaded & ready to go.

She spent a reasonable amount of time on e-filing and offered to get into bank products, but no one in our group had any interest in them whatsoever although everyone knew what they were, so we moved on. She did an excellent job of demonstrating the difference between Export/Import and Backup/Restore, reviewing the info carefully to be sure everyone understood when, how, & where each should be used. A couple of very program-specific questions of a somewhat unusual nature came up and she took the time to call Caribou for answers on the spot, so even in those cases where she didn't have the info right at hand, she knew how to get the answers quickly & move on. We had 6 current users and 1 person who is evaluating the program for possible purchase, so there was also plenty of opportunity for us to share our own insights among one another in how to use the program more effectively.

So I'll echo what KC said previously - it's worthwhile to use the seminar to go back to some of the basics and maybe pick up some efficiency tips. One thing which was discussed is the idea of making this a 2-day seminar in the future - Day 1 for beginners and Day 2 for experienced/advanced users & continuing instruction for people from Day 1. That seems like a logical way to do things going forward - ATX should consider it for future training. If anyone has questions of a more specific nature about the session, I'll try to answer them.

[Kenneth]

I add to everything that JohnH had to say about the ATX seminar held in Charlotte on September 20, 2007. I also attended the same seminar.

I also found the seminar helpful to me in that I was able to share ideas with the other participants of easier ways to navigate around in our program.

I have been using ATX software for about 10 to 15 years, since the old days when Sabre Pro was the program to help you prepare good tax returns.

If any of you have questions about your software, I am available to help you.

[kcjenkins]

I hope you will stay active on the board, Kenneth. We can use more longtime users here, to balance and to guide the newbies.

[JohnH]

Ken:

Nice to see you participating here.

I'm sure you will find it helpful and will also see many opportunities to help others.

=======================================================

To everyone else:

At the seminar, I shared the URL for this Community with others who were in attendance. I also sent emails to several who exchanged business cards and again gave them the link to thes forum with an invitation to join us. ATX has repeatedly stated that they approve of this Community, so they should not mind if we pass this info along at their seminars. I'd suggest that anyone who attends the ATX seminars in the coming weeks make a special effort to tell other participants about this Community & invite them to join us. The more participation we have the better it will be.

[MJG CPA]

I attended the ATX training last week in Chicago and was extremely disappointed. In my opinion, it was a complete waste of time and money.

There were no tips and tricks to be learned. It was an extreme beginners class which taught you how to put the install CD into the drive and watch the screen while the program loaded. I'm not even sure it would be all that valuable to a beginner.

There were three new users in the group (of about 30 total) and everyone in the room, including the beginners, were bored out of their minds. Everyone was either surfing the Internet or playing computer games.

As I indicated on my evaluation sheet, there was nothing taught in the class that I didn't figure out myself the very first session I ever used the ATX software.

So, save yourself some time and money and skip this seminar. If they offer something more advanced in the future, I would be willing to look at it, but this was not worthwhile. <_<

[mdmcfarland]

Just got off phone with ATX sales, They called to advise us of the training availabilty on website. we were encouraged to attend some of the training semianrs to learn the software and revel in its new features. I promptly looked at the options and discovered that they klare offering classroom instruction as well as webinars, so far so good. We have been using ATX software for about 10 years and probably do not know how to maximize all the features. then I looked at the pricing. I grant you that they are offering CPE with the classes but I became a bit agitated that they would CHARGE to learn how to use the software that has steadily increased in price every year. I asked if this was a forerunner to pay per incident support, which is my suspicion. we have always renewed early and have always appreciated the new features and more flexibilty that has ocurred every year, but paying for support is not something that I look forward to.

I never post but this got me going.

Lloyd Hudson

Financial Safeguards Group

I feel there shouldn't be fees (or at least they should be minimal) for their webinars. I would think that they would want their customers to know how to use the program. I know more of us would take the webinars if they were either free or at least less expensive. As for the CPE credits - not everyone needs them.

This is only me second year with ATX. I live in the midwest and they don't have seminars cloase enough to me. I rely on webinars but they are awfully expensive. I thought I took a couple webinars with them last year and don't remember having a fee. An online webinar is a good place to refresh each year. I think I am okay with the tax program itself but am looking into the Document Manager this year. The only webinar I could find dealing with that costs $159.

[Laurie P]

Thanks for the feedback. I sure hope that I do get to go to the one I paid for!

KC & others,

Got a call from ATX as I had been holding off on renewing. Through the end of this month they are offering the seminar (one seat) free with the TTO I ended up renewing. The second seat I paid $119 for. Just thought I would share this information.

Laurie