Somewhere after everyone stops talking about healthcare, there is a tax season coming in which the major purpose is still preparing tax returns. And in the rapidly approaching season, there is a great deal of emphasis by publishers of tax software on improved performance and an unusual number of problems that afflicted tax software during the last season is only part of the reason why.Publishers are tuning their systems for better performance on the Internet. Others are shaping their applications to handle different kinds of firms. That latter category includes Thomson Reuters' UltraTax software.
"One thing we have done is try to better accommodate some of the unique needs of larger firms that use our software," says Jordan Kleinsmith, enterprise product manager for the Professional division of Thomson Reuters' Tax & Accounting Business. That includes restructuring the setup to provide for easier management for firms with multiple locations.
Kleinsmith says UltraTax had been capable of such management but "It wasn't as user friendly as we might have liked." The new configuration provides "a little bit more control if they want to be consistent across different locations, for example with the same letter or filing instructions, or they can now in a more easier fashion deviate from standards." The system also provides a new tracking tier, one for reviewers, also more suited to larger organizations.
Another enhancement designed for larger firms comes in the updating process. Previously when the updates were ready for download, offices needed to have all users exit the software.
"That did not accommodate firms that need to be in the system at all hours," Kleinsmith says. "They were going to take two weeks before they could get everybody out of the system to apply updates." Now, users can continue working with downloads occurring in the background. When they close out of the software and reopen, the system will sync with the download.
Intuit also has larger firms in mind. In fact, its Intuit Practice Management which links to Lacerte, was part of the increasing number of features the software company is offering full-service firms.
One of the most significant changes for Lacerte Tax Software is the addition of firm-level passwords. The past practice has been to provide firms with passwords for individual returns. That can be a daunting tax form firms with many return.
"What we found they would save that copy and archive to document manager. When they wanted to review that, they had to know that particular password," says Lacerte product manager Mary Kroenung. "If they have 1,000 clients, they are not going to remember 1000 client passwords," The firm-level password will give authorized personnel the ability to open any of the returns.
In a year with an unusual number of tax software performance issues, Intuit had the misfortune to be one of them. It faced the embarrassment during the last tax season of having the state of Minnesota warn its taxpayers not to use the any of the company's tax software to prepare returns. Problems included the software's not calculating some taxes correctly and an array of problems afflicted ProSeries, Lacerte and Intuit Online, some of them common across the three products, some not.
"We have created a better process and we are working and building a better relationship with every single agency to make sure that everything works correctly," Kroenung says, although the company found the impact of the problems was very small.
She noted that in Minnesota the company has made sure it has been "very timely in our communication to any of our Lacerte customers," but said that "we looked at the impact, it was fairly small."
Intuit has also worked across the board to improve the speed with which its forms were approved. It changed forms technology to use the "native agency with PDF with very few changes to the forms," says product manager Julie Kozloski. That means Intuit is not rebuilding the state agency forms, which makes it easier to receive approval at the state level.
Like Thomson, Intuit has worked on the process of downloading forms. With the 2013 software, can initiate downloads from within the tax program, says Kozloski. Users go to the download page and select the forms they want and these download in the background.
ProSeries users also now have the ability to email password-protected tax returns, which Kozloski says was one of the most requested features. Practitioners can create templates for clients. "We can put a password hint in the email templates. The taxpayer should know how to assemble the password, " she says. Using this feature requires an email client be installed in Windows. For those utilizing Yahoo of Gmail, they must link through an email client
Web Work
With Intuit Online, the company has been improving performance. "You have to dispel the myth that the desktop system is fast than a web," says product manager Jorge Olavarrieta. In some cases, he says, the online application loads faster than does the desktop version with screen loading taking about a second and a half. "A lot of our investment has been about speed and performance," he says.
As part of Intuit Tax Online Plus, the company is offering 100 returns of any type for $1,495 and 300 returns at $3,585. That is a change from prior years when purchasers had to buy individual or business forms. Now, preparers can mix the returns together for the bundled pricing.
Newer to the Internet game, Drake is rolling out Drake Hosted, which makes the desktop suite accessible via the cloud. The company is utilizing Citrix to provide a hybrid cloud platform.
The system is available for the upcoming season, according to VP James Stork. Through it, Drake hosts its tax, write-up, payroll and document management applications for $50 per month for a 12-month contract for the first workstation and $40 monthly for the same period for each additional work station. There are higher rates for one-month and six-month subscriptions. For an additional $25 per workstation, the company will also host elements of the Microsoft Office Suite – Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Publisher.
The other big change, Stork says, is the addition of esignature functionality. " It captures signatures electronically with the signature pad so the return can be digitally signed," Stork says.
CCH is fine-tuning its CCH Axcess Tax, an online product was introduced to the market last year, but which has undergoing testing for several years.
The company has been working on improving the navigation to the system, says Mark Ryburn, a CCH product line manager. That includes adding new views. "We still have the familiar tree view with the forms down on the left," notes Ryburn. The system also forms government forms and topical views. "People work in dramatically different ways," he says. For those utilizing the forms view, the system highlights the form . The company also made Tax Notebook, its online tax organizer, available for Axcess
Also aimed at improving access to features is greater use of the tool bar. "One thing that people have said is that they really like having things accessible from the toolbar," says Ryburn. This year, CCH has added an icon that can be used to show all elections being made for the current tax year.
For both Axcess and the widely used CCH ProSystem Tax, the company has made a "ton of improvements around tax equalization," Ryburn says. The system has become more streamlined in dealing with tax issues for Americans working overseas. The system can now be configured "'the way partners want it configured," Ryburn says.
Ryburn says there has also been work to make it easier to detect and fix problems. "We've added a bunch of new diagnostics," he notes. These are offered at different levels to support reviewers, preparers and signers.
