Lacerte Tax Planner

[BillRamsay]

Does anyone know if the SDK provides access to data in Tax Planner?  My guess is that Tax Planner is actually a completely separate data set and the integration between Tax Prep and Tax Planner is merely a transfer of data from Tax Prep to Tax Planner, but hoping it is more sophisticated than that.

[DatabaseRobert]

I do not see any dBase files in the 18TaxPln directory structure; this is what the ODBC connection is set up to read.
  There are a couple of different 'data' sub-folders, but none seem to hold anything like a client's information as it gets constructed in Lacerte (detail file here, Notes here, billing info here, efile here).

When you save a plan, it goes into the 'plans' sub-folder.  (And one thing I find interesting in the file save dialog box: you are able to exceed the 8.3 FileName.Ext format, that is required by Lacerte tax program.)
  That saved file appears to be another binary file, as the client tax detail are saved in the tax program.

Since the ODBC is looking in the *detail* folder (main 'setup' tab of Ctrl+O(ptions) in the Lacerte program), and not in your ##TaxPln\Plans\ subfolder at all...  my guess would be that no, there is no connectivity possible with the SDK.

By comparison: CFS Tax Tools uses plain-text files, so we can (now) reach out and grab everything in Lacerte and put it directly into wherever we darn well please in creating new CFS clients, names & streets & SSN & raw tax numbers and all.
  (I'm a 'data guy', not a 'tax guy', so I do not actually USE the CFS tax tools.  But from a saved file [template], I can build an "output as text" from Lacerte to get there.)

Robert

[BillRamsay]

Robert can you contact me- Bill Ramsay Financial Symmetry Inc 919-851-8200 x 204