rfassett

I have oft made the statement that I spend more of my time counseling than I do taxes and accounting combined. And most of the counseling has nothing to do with numbers. I laugh when my clients laugh, cry when they cry, hurt when they hurt and rejoice when they rejoice. I pray with them and I pray for them. Our clients trust us like they trust no one else. It makes sense they would confide in us. Listen at a party, folks will tell anybody that will listen about their latest medical crisis, but we are their only confidant when it comes to numbers. That is the deepest trust - and it leads to ALL other areas of their lives.

Typical Internet blah, blah, blah. I never trust an article, on the Internet or otherwise, where the writer does not own up to his writing. The only purpose of the article, which is dated (anything more than a day or two old this year is dated), is to throw some more fuel on the fire. ATX's issues have been well documented and efforts have been made and continue to be made to right the ship. Reflect back on the product that was on the street 30 days ago and you will have to agree with me.

Me too! Make sure your program and forms are up to date.

No ideas, but I posted the same question yesterday morning and it seems not many are having the issue. I have six federal corporate and 5 state corporate with the same issue. I extended them Friday and will try to resolve it after April 15th. I am thinking I will have to rebuild the returns because something in them is causing the transmission to fail.

You made me go peak. I have 458 of 531 e-filed and accepted. And at last count, I have 140 returns in house to do and another 35 waiting on me to wrap up the year end and get them ready for the return. No lack of work here. Well since I extended the ones that were giving me trouble, sometime between April 15th and September 15th, maybe I will recreate them and try again. Thanks for the reply, it is always nice to know that my issues are not unique.

Utilities companies will give statements also.

I get this message: "An error has occurred and is preventing this e-file from being transmitted". This is happening on six of my corporate federal returns and another three state returns. The federal return for the three state returns at issue, transmitted fine. When I look in the e-file manager, the status for these returns remain "created". I attempted deleting and recreating the efile but got the same message when trying to transmit. Any thoughts? Oh, and I have e-filed 40 federal and 75 state corporate returns with out issue. And i did not find anything in the knowledge library.

I e-filed 47 - with all of them set to "0" - and all but two were accepted. The two were the entitiy issue and it was early enough that I just printed and mailed them. I mailed another six where the return is completed but I could not get the e-file for the return to create. I tried creating the 7004 e-file for one of them and it failed too. So I just did the six by hand and mailed them. Joan, please refrain from using the word "nap". Thank you!

9465?

Oh, and that is besides recreating the 45 corporate returns I have already finished so I can add the efile info and the pdf's that were not available when the return was prepped. I think I am going to grow old this season. Geez!

I'm doing about 45. I just may be here all night.

But you have to set up the activity first,i.e., add the second property to Schedule.E.

It sounds like this problem has been on-going for years. If there is no year-end inventory, you might school your clients to be prepared to create one if the return should be audited because the auditor certainly will ask for it. For your current year issue, adjust to zero and move on. What else can you do? You are correct, there is no such thing as a negative inventory. Very few of my QuickBooks clients use QuickBooks correctly. For those, I insist on a backup and print the annual G/L to a pdf and pull out of that what I need to prepare the return. Of course, I document what I do so I can prove the numbers. But the balance sheet on the return has no semblance to what is in their QuickBooks. Had a new client just yesterday that just brought in her printed income statement (for a Schedule C). I sent her home to get the back up.

I felt that way this morning. Had the workpapers for four partnerships and three partners (not all partners are in all of the partnerships and none with common percentage of ownership) spread out on my desk (and any flat surface within a reasonable distance) trying to make sense of it all and trying to make sure each piece is where it belonged and trying to not miss anything. And everytime I get in that situation I am reminded of a conversation I had with an employee a few years back when the employee was faced with a pile of tax workpapers and asked how he would ever get through all of that. In one of my more profound moments I said, "one paper at a time". That philosophy has a way of calming that sea of papers.

No known exception for student loans. Granted, most are not discharged in bankruptcy (making them have a different character than other unsecured debt), but once they are cancelled, for whatever reason, they are treated like anyother cancelled debt.

I did this morning and it seems to be working faster.

Perfect analogy. My tech guy can service my server and the operating system in the same manner as my mechanic can service my vehicle. It is just a matter of finding the right tech guy. Not every mechanic or home maintenance person is good in the same manner that every tech guy isn't good.

Pssahh! If it ain't broke - don't fix it. I had my very highly qualified IT guy "once over" my entire system and he saw no need for alarm. And just to make him accountable, he monitors it remotely 24/7. All of us walk on the edge - that is just a fact of life. I am glad you found what works for you. By the way, the vehicle I drive is 10 years old also. And the house I live in is 115 years old.

Me too with the iPad and being very selective as to what programs are open on my desktop. Apparently, at least in my case, outlook and ATX are both memory hogs so I leave outlook closed so I can have my file cabinet opened on my second monitor. I know I have to upgrade hardware in the offseason, but I love my XP but it only has 2GB of RAM with no room for expansion.

Jack - I am running a domain server - running Server 2003 with XP on the workstations with the workstations running with 2GB of RAM. ATX, FAM, Paperless Plus, Client Writeup and various other programs are running fine. I would be lying if I said I have had no issues, but nothing that I have not been able to handle. The returns take a while to build from the rollover - I am OK with that, I find other things to do during that time. I print to pdf to Paperless Plus without issue if I tend to my workstation and then print the hard copy from Paperless Plus. The program does not break any records for the time it takes to open, but the time it takes is not punitive. The only issue I seem to be having is with the RAM and on about the third return with fixed assets the print will start but fail. Taking your advice, I am rebooting my workstation four or five times per day depending on how large the returns are. The other thing I have noticed is that if I try to out run the program, e.g., work ahead of where the program is, the program will get conflicted and crash. So I don't do that. I let the program set the speed. For what it is worth, my system is all hard wired with no wi-fi capability.

I believe it was JohnH that pointed out not long ago that sales people are notorious for puffing up numbers. My first degree and my first career were in sales so I know for what he speaks. When you say the Drake salesperson indicated tons of ATX users have switched, you have to consider the source. Have there been a bunch? Probably. Are the indicated numbers overstated? Probably.

On a network here running Server 2003 with workstations running XP with 2GB RAM and have had very, very few issues - nothing that I could not figure out, fix or work around or ATX addressed in a subsequent update. And I have never been accused of being a geek. So go figure. I don't believe any of the conspiracy theories - just too hard to pull off. Perhaps too early of a release. Or perhaps the beta testing that they did do did not contain a representative sample. I am a forward looking person though. We can sit around and beat up CCH and ATX all day long, but that is not productive for me. Mistakes were made, learn from them and move on. Off to tax returns I go. Hi ho, hi ho, its off to work I go, I go,hi ho, hi ho, hi ho..............

Just curious if you received Lori's permission to repost her post. I sense corporate espionage going on here.

I was told at one time that the two products, both under the SFS umbrella, were designed to serve two separate markets. Tax Wise is designed to serve the higher volume early filing office whereas ATX was designed for the lower volume more complex later filing office. I suspect that philosophy is still in play.

Mine does - working on an 1120S right now. Is your distribution attemping to bring the AAA balance to the negative? If so, there is a box in the options of the return (the tab right after the page 5 tab) that you have to check to allow the AAA to go negative.