@IRonMaN This is gonna exceed 5 lines. So exit now.
This is NOT really to address @geezer 's comment: "also funny how defensive some can be about this software as if it were their puppy."
I declared "NOT" because his comment isn't worth even a few seconds of my time, during or after the tax season. ESPECIALLY AFTER the tax season, when I read the comment about the guy by one of my respected contributors here, @abctax55 :
Humor is a great stress reliever (ask Jeff), but trying to jolly your way through not doing any research on your own, then picking on folks that bother to attempt to point you in the right direction ain't gonna fly here.
Neither is this post for reporting my Post-4/18 accomplishments, which included...
* Dog-and-pony dances with a few clients (some of whom, some of you might call "troublemakers" but like one of my other respected contributors, @PATAX once said, don't bite the hand that feeds you, so I never use that term...)
* Some deferred dental work...
* 3 days in Vegas without (but then, perhaps with - without knowing it - ) running into @BobKamman...,
* The second booster shot which, unlike the prior ones, knocked me out for two days...
I think this is a right place to bring up a point I wanted to make during the tax season, because it has the right materials for my intro.
I originally made the comment, which led @geezer to believe Lacerte was "my puppy", only because of a word he used:
FUBAR.
I think most of you would agree with me that this was a difficult tax season. Late issuance of 1099's by many, and late approval of forms by the IRS and state agencies didn't help. Here in California, the late passing of the "PTE Tax", which affected many entities, and the VERY LATE changes (mid Feb!!!) of some key issues thereon, and the associated form changes and approval, could only be classified as IN****INGSANE. My (insincere) apology to Lacerte users in other states, as I imagine, due to the sheer number of CA Lacerte users, many needed software enhancements were likely delayed to cater just to the Golden State's PTE Tax related forms and changes.
But, FUBAR???
I came out to diffuse @geezer 's "JOLLY comment" because, to me, the term is demoralizing to the Lacerte community and particularly to Lacerte employees. They work very hard and I have no doubt most of them were (and are) making an honest living and doing their best.
This tax season, I called Lacerte support almost twenty times. Only once was I disappointed. My officemate (who uses another top brand software) told me that in one of the calls he made to his software support, during some idle time, he chatted with the rep, who told him she was new at XXY, and had been a nurse who decided to leave the hostile environment due to Covid. Believe me, it is hard to find good help across the board these days. Yes, most of the "support experts" follow certain scripts. Good ones would know how to side step or bypass, newbies may have to "start with the formation of the universe" and follow the scripts to the Tee, but that is pretty much the nature of "technical support" for end users these days.
Here, I've heard a variety of complaints. Some boiled down to crashes specific for certain computer platforms. I use a local IT guy for a cloud server, which has it fair share of Lacerte conflicts. In three or four of the calls, my IT guy had to be on a conference call with Lacerte. I figured that was just the nature of the info superhighway these days,
Some complaints are along the line of what's in a rather recent post: Even though @George4Tacks already explained that the state interest rates were NOT provided by Intuit, but by a third party site that ceased to operate, a complaint was still lodged: For what we pay for Lacerte, this is absolutely shameful. I have been with Lacerte since 1989 and the program has always had state interest rates... These types of complaints actually don't bother me. I dismissed them the same way I read the subject of, and just skipped, the 4/14 post asking for help on how to do a 1031 exchange on Intuit. This is an open forum. Free to post. Free to ignore.
But then, there were moments when I was almost convinced bots were engaged by Intuit competitors to write the complaints.
NO, Lacerte is NOT my puppy. It's a tool for my trade, and like any computer software, I expect it to serve X% of my business needs. X used to be higher. X is lower in the past two years, but I also comprehend (1) the programming challenges - name all the forms and changes specifically due to Covid; (2) the operational challenges - as faced by many other businesses, including my clients'; and (3) for the most part, the Intuit problems are industry-wide.
Now, I DO feel the pain for the firm that has lost work for X days, with N employees doing nothing. I hope the firm can get to the bottom of the problem. Paraphrasing my Intuit Hero, The Bob, if 12 users reported the same issue, it's an Intuit problem. If less...(too much Bourbon to remember further.) I have yet to ask him how he came up with the number 12.
Some concluded it was corporate greed. Some believed all the issues should have been ironed out by Mid-February. Some reminisced the Lacerte program of 1984. Some used this forum to vent the injustice did to him or her in the last divorce. I just wanted to say this:
Calm down, get to the bottom of the problem and make do, and if you vow to change to another software, do your homework and best wishes from me.
I come here for kudos and IRonMaN's jokes.
