Conversion from CCH Axcess to Lacerte Tax

[shellyjchessercpacom]

Hello,

We are converting from CCH Axcess to Lacerte.  We would love your opinion on the conversion process.  Please let us know if have any experience with this.

Best Regards,

Shelly

[George4Tacks]

typically conversion from cloud software does not go real smooth. Regardless, look very carefully at the conversion - especially depreciation and state information. After you have reviewed the information and have it matching up to the return as filed, go to screen 3 and scroll down to the last miscellaneous item and REMOVE the check mark from "Converted client (Proforma use only). That will give you a much cleaner start NEXT YEAR with the appropriate depreciation, PAL, state refund, etc carryovers.

[shellyjchessercpacom]

Thank you for your input.  This should help us quite a bit. 

Shelly 

[DennyBriBri2]

Can you tell me where the steps are for converting a CCH tax file to Lacerte.  The CCH file is a 2020 return and I want to covert this to a Lacerte 2020 file. 

[George4Tacks]

I do not see CCH as one that will work https://proconnect.intuit.com/lacerte/data-conversion/

Call the Sales number on that link and talk with them. Sometimes the conversion of online programs takes special handling. 

[marcEAcamerlengo]

I am also looking for steps to convert CCH Axcess back files to Lacerte. Using *.RTNBAK and *rctrl files. Unfortunately these files do not map to the CCH Pro FX conversion article, so am looking for a better article from which to work.

[George4Tacks]

Maybe you need to do this first? https://support.cch.com/kb/solution.aspx/sw34361

The convert ProSystems to Lacerte

Please report back if this helps.

[Klsouza]

Hi Shelly,

were you able to get it to work?  I’m trying to do the same thing now.

[marcEAcamerlengo]

Just a note to folks regarding our conversion experience going from CCH Axcess to Lacerte.  We spent over a dozen hours over 5 days going back and forth between Lacerte support and CCH support, with CCH support insisting that *.DAT file is all that is needed for conversion, and Lacerte Support insisting that CCH Pro FX files were the supported way to convert to Lacerte formatted tax returns.   The latest call to CCH support has been more helpful:  they explained that a special conversion team at CCH could be hired at hourly consulting rates to convert the Axcess format files to CCH Pro Fx *.ZIP formats, however these conversions could only be done after regular business hours and no delivery date guarantees would be provided or promised.  The conversion team will charge an additional premium consulting fee for any time spent on Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays.  Will hopefully report back here to the community once successfully converted our files.  One week has already gone by. Not sure how many more weeks the completed process will take.

[George4Tacks]

@marcEAcamerlengo How about this process? https://support.cch.com/kb/solution.aspx/sw34361

Then to Lacerte?

[marcEAcamerlengo]

Hi George,

Thanks for providing this article again.

https://support.cch.com/kb/solution.aspx/sw34361 

I think you posted it to an earlier thread as well. That article requires a CCH Pro FX license, unfortunately.  We don't have a Pro FX license so it wasn't helpful to us this past week.  Just today, though, we are also hearing from CCH that they may be requiring us to purchase CCH Pro FX license, so your article may indeed be useful in the end.  Still working out CCH details, but will post final solution as soon as we get to that point. 

-Marc

[marcEAcamerlengo · Accepted solution]

Still not there yet, but wanted to provide another update.  To get the files to ProFX format, CCH required a new license agreement, which has taken a week.  We got ProFX2020 installed today and believe that we have completed the ProSystem FX backup correctly.  Lacerte2021 is not accepting or recognizing the files, so we are back to the HelpDesk phone queue to get help from Lacerte.

Two weeks and counting . . . will continue to provide updates when and if progress is made.

[tschmorleitz]

Any luck, were you ever able to complete the process and land the plane? We're about to embark on this as well...

[sjrcpa]

At least you're starting early - before "tax season".

[marcEAcamerlengo]

Thanks for your follow up.  Yes, we did finish conversions, although not without hick-ups.  The non-profit 990s did not convert at all (no conversion available).  We converted 1040s, 1041s, 1120s, 1065, and a few 1120s. The original files were not in pure Pro FX format so several calls to CCH support were needed to help with that. We tried to do the conversion in batches but that seemed to confuse the Lacerte software, so lots of returns were converted multiple times. The extra returns had to be deleted. We did get through the process, but it wasn't that easy. A few returns had to be typed in manually. It was actually quicker than wrestling with conversion process.