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I fell victim to a trojan that got through, and Malwarebytes helped me to clean up my machine and get rid of some junk bloatware too. Their forum exploded in late Oct or early Nov with those kinds of posts and A LOT of posts from victims of the ransomware too. In addition to the AV and the Malwarebytes anti-malware software, I'm also running Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit and the free version of CryptoPrevent. Neither of these slow the computer down at all. They work by maintaining a list of software restriction policy path rules that won't allow malicious software to be installed. It should stop those fileless payloads that try to add or change registry keys. If anyone is interested in either of these, here are safe links to see how they work and how to download them: Malwarebytes - http://www.malwarebytes.org/downloads/ CryptoPrevent - https://www.foolishit.com/

Discovering this WK connection and the attempt to hide it, I feel less comfortable than ever .... <--- wishing I could make that bigger is this what you wanted, Judy?

Why not be transparent? It bothered me enough, so... (I can't wait for you all to see this! ) Thanks for providing that link, Brian! Clicking on it took me to the WY business entity detail that shows that this company is a domestic LLC called Advanced Tax Solutions, LLC whose registered agent is Business Filings International, Inc, its principle office in Henderson, NV. http://www.bizapedia.com/wy/ADVANCED-TAX-SOLUTIONS-LLC.html Searching for that co name, Business Filings International, Inc, and location lead me to 4 people all with connections at Wolters Kluwer: President, Karen Kobelski, employement history shows two positions with Wolters Kluwer - VP Sales, Marketing, Service and also VP Small Business Solutions: http://www.zoominfo.com/p/Karen-Kobelski/1315670934 Secretary, Deidra D Gold, another with a position listed at Wolters Kluwer - Executive Vice President and General Counsel for North America: http://www.zoominfo.com/p/Deidra-Gold/113287217 Treasurer, Norm Plaistowe - serves as Chief Financial Officer of Wolters Kluwer Corporate & Financial Services of Wolters Kluwer NV. Mr. Plaistowe served as Chief Financial Officer of Wolters Kluwer Financial Services http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=12933252&ticker=WKL:NA VP is Richard J Parker - Secretary of CCH Legal information Services, Inc and holds active roles in fifteen companies and inactive roles in six additional ones. He is also listed as Secretary of CCH, Inc, Wolters Kluwer U.S., Inc., Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc, some others, and is past president of Wolters Kluwer Pharma Solutions, Inc. http://www.corporationwiki.com/Illinois/Riverwoods/richard-j-parker/26149700.aspx COMMENTS ANYONE?

Costco has a marketplace also. I couldn't see what insurance company it is. There are links for both individual and business health insurance, individual life insurance, vision in 3 states only, and HMO group dental in CA only.

That ~ $2 per client per year seems to be based on your bottomed-out low of ~ 1400 clients. On a per client basis, that number will reduce down as you rebuild your client base.

You've received all the ways to safeguard last year: the completed checkbox, changing the color of input fields of the prior year, and using pdfs to refer to instead of opening last year's computer file. I kind of agree with Jack about the integrity or quality of personnel. In all the years I spent as a supervisor and training personnel, the ones that relied on looking at prior year input were those that did not know what they were doing, and a few were actually mimicking the prior year input instead of working through the current year documents and inputting whatever data it was. I hope that makes sense.

The completed box has been around for longer than just a couple of years. I have the ATX programs back to 2009 on my current machine and that box is there in the return manager, and I am sure it was there in earlier years too because I used that a lot to sort and show only those returns that are incomplete.

That's what I was saying in the other topic where this came up. I think it will still open before the end of Jan for those early filers (cough) that must have the refunds they are (cough) entitled to.

I accidentally click on names too!

I would not make excuses or make up reasons but would rather find a nice way to tell her the truth. My area is very small and all the CPAs and other tax preparers know, or know of, each other, and many of these people are my peers that I've worked with or sat through many seminars with over the last 30+ years. The last thing I'd want is for that (former) client to go to another professional, or worse- someone in our mutual social circle, and say that I couldn't handle the complexity of the work or that I had inferior or inadequate software. If the person is a slow payer then I need to address that collection issue straight on. We aren't in this profession to give work away at a steep discount of 60% off unless it is of our choosing.

Did you get it installed initially after removing that corrupted file, and now you can't update? Or, are you still working on the initial installation?

It's in the "Other Vendors" section with the other non-ATX providers.

And, what happens to access to MY clients' data if I move to another service in future? NO THANK YOU! The only thing I'd want on the cloud or internet-based is tax and accounting research. Unless I want hard copy print of a book or manual, I see no need to install that type of software on my computer or deal with receiving updates via download or disk, but that is totally different than actual prep and data storage.

Safe link to Library of Congress for the text of the bill: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c113:3:./temp/~c113pWwBY6:e2637:

No, not that I can see. They are supposed to work like a 529 plan. From one of the Congressman's sites that voted for it: WASHINGTON, D.C. – On Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Glenn ‘GT’ Thompson voted to support “The Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) Act” (H.R. 647/S.313), which passed the House with bipartisan support by a vote of 404-17. “The Achieving a Better Life Experience Act eases the enormous financial burden placed upon individuals with disabilities and their families by making it easier for them to plan and save for the future. As a cosponsor of the ABLE Act, I am proud of this bipartisan effort to empower individuals to live with greater dignity and independence. It is my hope the Senate will act swiftly to pass this important legislation,” said Thompson. Under current law, individuals with disabilities face significant barriers to finding and holding employment and living independently because their access to certain safety-net programs can be lost once they establish a minimum level of savings and income. The ABLE Act aims to provide families of a severely disabled child with some peace of mind by allowing them to save for their child’s long-term disability expenses in the same way that families of able bodied children can currently save for college through popular 529 investment plans. The ABLE Act empowers disabled individuals and their families to save their own money in a 529A (or ABLE) account to maintain health and independence with a goal of allowing those individuals to transition away from government assistance and benefits. ABLE Accounts would be a savings vehicle for disability-related expenses that will supplement, but not supplant, benefits provided through private insurances, the Medicaid program, the supplemental security income program, the beneficiary’s employment, and other sources. 529A accounts would be administered on a voluntary basis by the States in a similar manner as 529 college savings accounts. The ABLE Act has 381 House sponsors and 74 Senate sponsors.

Yes, a pool. I think it will be something like in prior years where the season opened around the 3rd week of Jan for basic returns, but those with sec 179 and other extenders weren't available for e-filing until late Feb or sometime in March, but paper filing those earlier was an option.

I agree, I wouldn't worry about it not being included yet.

Save the returns in pdf format, and then you could allow those preparers access to the pdf to view the completed return that would protect the actual input from inadvertent changes.

Right! Some of mine don't open anything that says "contains important tax information" on them.

Hi PurpleTaxLady, and welcome to the group. I think Jack is correct about it being a design flaw in the program that CCHSFS can't or won't fix, and there are other problems at CCHSFS also, one being lack of adequately trained technical support staff. I think his statements from another topic summarize this very well:

For those of you that receive notifications and updates by following the forum without coming directly to the site, Eric has graciously set up 2 new areas for us. One is specifically for the ACA discussions and the other is for ProSeries users to discuss that software without going to its official forum. If you would like to receive the postings and updates for either of those new subforums, you'll have to log on and choose to follow those in addition to following the general chat area. Of course, we'd love to see you logging on and participating too.

For the few invoices you are talking about, you could set up an excel workbook with links to one master sheet containing the date field and month service relates to. Changing the date and month fields on that master sheet would take the few moments to make the change and the data would auto-populate throughout the workbook. Print the entire workbook once a month and you are done. I prepare the quarterly CAM bills for one client having a commercial rental with a small number of tenants, and this is how I do it. I have the master sheet that does all the math, and it flows beautifully to each tenant's bill. Of course, I don't have to worry about tracking the receivable though.

The only problem I have with Catherine's "pay up or no more work" is that it gives those once-a-year clients the idea that they can carry that balance out for an entire year until they need our services again. I don't want to extend that level of credit or have to worry about balances dues out that long. Credit card companies do that very well, and I am not in the business of extending credit. Most of my clients pay when the return is picked up, but I do have a statement formatted on my old invoices that gives them 30 days interest free. Beyond 30 days is when I start charging interest. Two years ago I started using the bill function within my tax software to generate the invoice, and that 30-day statement is gone, but I would still honor it. There are some business clients that have more extensive work that I spread the payments over several months to lighten the impact, but those terms are clearly spelled out in the engagement letters in advance of starting my work.

Passed on Tuesday and awaiting the President's signature - http://journalofaccountancy.com/news/2014/dec/tax-favored-savings-accounts-for-disability-expenses-201411491.html New law creates tax-favored savings accounts for disabled taxpayers By Alistair M. Nevius, J.D. December 17, 2014 As part of the larger tax extender legislation passed on Tuesday, Congress approved the Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) Act of 2014 (H.R. 647), which will allow disabled individuals to save money to pay for their disability expenses in tax-favored accounts, called ABLE accounts. The House of Representatives passed the measure on Dec. 3, by a vote of 404–17, and it now goes to President Barack Obama for his signature. The purpose of the bill is “[t]o encourage and assist individuals and families in saving private funds for the purpose of supporting individuals with disabilities to maintain health, independence, and quality of life” and “[t]o provide secure funding for disability-related expenses on behalf of designated beneficiaries with disabilities that will supplement, but not supplant, benefits provided through private insurance,” Medicaid, and other sources (H.R. 647, §101). The bill adds a new Sec. 529A to the Code, under which a qualified ABLE program will be exempt from taxation (except for unrelated business income tax). A qualified ABLE program is a program run by a state that allows a person to make contributions for a tax year, for the benefit of an eligible individual, to an ABLE account established for the purpose of meeting the qualified disability expenses of the designated beneficiary of the account. A state’s ABLE program must limit designated beneficiaries to one account and must allow accounts to be opened only for residents of that state or a contracting state. Eligible individuals must file a disability certification with the IRS or meet certain criteria for blindness or disability under the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. §1382). Contributions must be made in cash, and the program must limit annual contributions to the amount of the annual gift tax exclusion in effect for that tax year. The ABLE program must provide separate accounting for each designated beneficiary, and designated beneficiaries and contributors must not be able to direct the investment of contributions or earnings in the account. Distributions from the account will not be included in the designated beneficiary’s gross income as long as they do not exceed the beneficiary’s qualified disability expenses. If they do exceed the beneficiary’s qualified disability expenses, the amount otherwise includible in gross income will be reduced by an amount bearing the same ratio to that amount as the expenses bear to the distributions. Funds in ABLE accounts will also be disregarded for purposes of various federal means-tested programs. Once signed by the president, the bill will take effect for tax years beginning after Dec. 31, 2014. — Alistair M. Nevius ( [email protected] ) is the JofA’s editor-in-chief, tax.

You might also consider including a suggestion that she accumulate all the necessary data and meet only one so that both of your time will be more wisely spent and not wasted on inefficiency. A pet peeve of mine is having to work on something piecemeal because it is very inefficient, wastes time and leads to possible mistakes when the preparer has to stop and start a job.