Billing Invoice

[aknse]

I am sure quite a few of you use the billing invoice.

In prior years if you typed in the preparer date (it would not change) and then linked it to te date on the invoice then the invoice date would not change. This is important if you are billing a client and want to send a reminder, then you have the original date that the invoice was prepared not 'todays date'.

However, this year ATX has decided to spell out the month. Looks nice but you cannot link the field. You cannot type in a date. You have to unprotect the form, type in the date, then protect the form. You have to do this for every invoice you prepare. This is as per "Support" that I got after 35 minutes on hold.

Talk about making things easier for us.

[kcjenkins]

Thanks for the heads-up on that one. I had not noticed it, probably would not have until later in the season.

[HV Ken]

They also took away the "Total" on the Forms Statement tab, which we always used to help in our return pricing. This has impacted my productivity as I now have to flop back and forth between that page and the Invoice tab as I make charge adjustments. For one return it is a minor nuisance - for hundreds of returns it becomes significant.

When I contacted support, I was told this was a deliberate design decision made by the development team. I wish when they are going to change the functionality they would somehow let the user community know so we can chime in about proposed changes and perhaps get some of their ideas for improvement to be stopped!

[MN2V]

Can we start a campaign to get the TOTAL back on the forms statement??? I really miss it.

[HV Ken]

I submitted a bug report, and the response I received is that of their thousands of users, I am the ONLY ONE that has complained about its removal. There is strength in numbers, so help the cause!

[Jack from Ohio]

I use pdf factory and save a pdf of the return immediately after I recieve acknowledgement from IRS. It is the copy I keep for my files, and a perfect reference if "anything" gets changed on the return.

I put all the worksheets, including the invoice in it. Then I can print any page and it will be exactly as submitted to the IRS.

[HV Ken]

That's a great idea Jack, and I like that practice. Thanks for sharing!

[TAXMAN]

I submitted a bug report, and the response I received is that of their thousands of users, I am the ONLY ONE that has complained about its removal. There is strength in numbers, so help the cause!

I too complained about this missing price on forms page but it didn't seem to help. Seems according to person I spoke to said it was redundant and was(total) was linked to too many fields.

[HV Ken]

I too complained about this missing price on forms page but it didn't seem to help. Seems according to person I spoke to said it was redundant and was(total) was linked to too many fields.

Here is the response I received:

Dear Ken,

Thank you for contacting us with your suggestion.

I'm sorry that you are unhappy with the changes on the Billing Invoice. We put in many production hours on the Invoice this summer to add the most popular customer-requested features. We tried to make choices that would please the majority of our customers, realizing that any change will always leave someone unhappy. The removal of the total at the top of the Forms Statement was at the request of other users of the form.

We actually had multiple conflicting requests for this field. Some wanted it to go completely; some wanted it be a sub-total, showing only the forms that were listed on the Forms Statement page (these were users that preferred the option of displaying the forms on the Invoice, with the overflow going to the Forms Statement); and some wanted the total to be the sum of all of the forms, statements, and worksheets...whether they were displayed on the Forms Statement page or on the Invoice page.

Yours is the first request to bring back this field. Based upon your suggestion, we will look at this again in the off-season, to see if it's possible to offer an option to turn this feature on or off by the customer...and possibly to also offer the choice to make it a total or a sub-total. Unfortunately, our efforts right now are concentrated on getting forms developed and delivered as quickly as we can, so this feature will have to be considered for a 2010 tax year enhancement.

Again, please accept my apologies for the change.

I hope that you have a prosperous tax season, and thank you for using ATX.

Sincerely,

David Lewis, EA

Tax Manager, ATX

CCH Small Firm Services,

a Wolters Kluwer business

[kcjenkins]

Well, that's an informative and reasonable response, it seems to me. I believe them, because they did make a bunch of additions to our options, like being able to add the Tax Year, phone numbers, etc. I like the idea of making it a selectable option.