Time Spent and Estimated Time

[GodFather]

Hello PST Community....I believe a new feature in the program this year is the time spent on preparing returns.  I notice that the time indicated is not necessarily accurate and just wondering how it's calculated.  Not a big deal but looking for any insights.  

 

[Just-Lisa-Now-]

Im seeing crazy estimations and inaccurate working times....not sure if this was worth the programming time.

The sample file I use, I deleted it a couple days ago and retransferred back into 2025, should be pretty close to zero time spent, but Im seeing 90 hours...which I cant imagine is accurate, even if it wasnt a freshly transferred file..   

[IRonMaN]

I’m increasing my fees thanks to that feature.  I never realized it before that returns that I thought only took me 30 minutes to prepare actually took 4 hours.  I am extremely thankful that Intuit took the time to add this programming rather than adding the 5227.

[ljr]

I left it on homebase for the fun of it - will compare some as I go along

[Just-Lisa-Now-]

I've got one, that shows estimated time over 12 hours, but I completed it in 25 mins....it was a person with 2 W2s and 2 kids, WTF are you doing for 12 hours?

They must be tallying up the time shown at the end of the instructions to learn each form from back when we filed by paper.

[Taxprohere]

Had an appropriate return to test this estimated vs actual time, since my 15 minutes for W2, student loan and bank interest, along with MA rent, commuter and charity deductions...including the 10 minutes of chatting, from sit down to out the door for the live client.

I know if I kept the client data file open it would accumulate time as I tend to do other things especially with 'drop off' type of clients.  Which is why this feature will be ignored now.

[George4Tacks]

See page 121 of the instructions for 1040.

[Accountant-Man]

I used the PS timer to compare to my actual time, which I calculated on my billing software.

PS is always less.