ATX improvements

[michaelmars]

as usual i called to get the list of product improvements over last year. Sales told me that there were no major improvements then i get an email extending the discount and it mentions that K-1's from business returns will now flow to the shareholder. To me that is major major major enhancement. Calling sales again, i again could not get anyone to list enhancements for me but i am expecting a supervisor to call me back. I'll let you know what i find out.

"We’ve improved our tax program, adding automatic transfer of Schedule K-1 data from business returns to the corresponding returns of partners, shareholders and beneficiaries along "

I am off for the holiday, Happy turkey everyone"

[Mel in Hawaii]

Not to knock ATX, but I bet that feature if it works at all will have some serious performance hits to it. I can just see the people with their 'what if' duplicated returns having some really wierd results. But if they have thought of all the gotcha's then it would be a really nice feature.

[mcb39]

One instance comes to mind immediately where that feature would be worthless (or worse). I have a Partnership that I prepare the Partnership return for; but do NOT prepare the personal returns of the partners; due to a conflict of interests. One of the Partners is my boss at my part-time dental job. I absolutely do not think it would be good for either one of us to have me know his personal affairs. This is a sideline business that he has with his brothers and has nothing to do with Dental. Nor, do I prepare either of his brothers' personal returns.

[Mel in Hawaii]

Well if you don't prepare the personal return, then what would you be worried about being transferred? I doubt it will automatically make lots of individual returns without you asking. More than likely just pulling off the SSN when you enter that in the new return and checking if there is a K1 in the database somewhere.

The list of gotcha's that I have been thinking through since I read this is quite large just in a one person shop, for a multi-user shop whoa.. To properly account for each one the recalc routine is going to have to have a lot of database lookups so each recalc is going to be slower.

[RoyDaleOne]

This feature has been around in other software for over at least ten years or more.

Did everyone get the letter from Rick Kursik, VP Sales?

That letter, has me thinking I need to cancel my renewal and go else where.

I read it to say, yes ATX is going to go bye, bye.

[bstaxes]

I did not get the letter but I have not renewed. I am thinking about renewing it before the end of this month. Would really like to know if anyone else got the same read.

[kcjenkins]

I have not gotten anything from that person. Of course, I've already renewed, which could be the reason I did not get it. Could you copy the letter, so that we could read it for ourselves?

[RoyDaleOne]

Okay, I think I have it. I could do a pdf file if anyone needs it.

UltraTax.doc

[Margaret CPA in OH]

I received that as well but read it as marketing to switch to Ultratax. The VP Sales was with Thompson not CCH. Do you think he would really know the scoop on a competitor?

I am maintaining some optimism based on not a whole lot but a sales person from the "old" ATX said the mini-organizer might make a reappearance next year. It was under discussion. It seems that changes like that wouldn't be under discussion if the entire program was going to be eliminated.

[joanmcq]

Yeah, why would a letter from UltraTax cause me concern? If it was from CCH, maybe.

[David1980]

The only thing on the letter that would be of interest is the fact IntelliTax users were not given ATX as an option, but everyone should know that by now. ATX is closer to IntelliTax than TaxWise, so it would have made more sense for a smoother transition of those customers unless there's some reason they don't want to expand their ATX base.

It is kind of expensive maintaining two products that do the same thing in the eyes of corporate bigwigs. Get everyone on TaxWise and you basically cut your dev team in 1/2 and can reduce support or hire (or outsource) to cheaper labor as they do not need to know as much.

As far as product enhancements, if it is true that they're pushing everyone to TaxWise the sales is probably more in tune with what the improvements are on TaxWise. It would be interesting to call and ask what the improvements to TaxWise are and see if they're more knowledgeable on that.

On the K-1 carry over, in the programs that had it you often had to go in and manually fix things. For example an item on the K-1 that could go to multiple locations depending upon the nature of that item is not likely to get where it needs to go correctly without a manual adjustment and it's easy to overlook that when the program is "doing it for you" automatically.

[RoyDaleOne]

My big mistake, I was thinking that Ultra-tax and CCH was owned by the same company.

My apologies.