CPAs Assess Their Tax Prep Software
Busy season is over for tax practitioners, but as they tote up the year just past, many are considering a software switch.

by Rick Telberg
At Large

After one of the most successful tax seasons on record, you'd think it might be difficult for the makers of tax preparation software to convince practitioners to switch packages.

But there's still enough dissatisfaction among users and more than enough pressure from technological innovation to make it well worth their whiles (and wiles) to try.

While only five percent of more than 1,000 readers answering an At Large survey said they were anything less than satisfied with their tax software this year, about 29 percent said they could be persuaded to consider changing vendors.

This isn't the place to name names and place blame, so we'll let the guilty go free, as they say on "Dragnet," to protect the innocent. But it's easy to tote up the vendor-related deficiencies that give professionals the most headaches:

Here are the concerns most frequently cited by readers (in order)
1. Support
2. Documentation
3. Speed
4. Reliability
5. Ease of input
6. Installation problems
7. Network and compatibility issues, and, last but not least,
8. Bad calculations

A Minneapolis practitioner had been loyal to a certain program since 1994. But with 2004 tax season, he said, "It's been nothing but trouble" since he installed a new network in his small firm. Classify him: "not satisfied at all" with his current product, and "definitely considering" a change.

Then there's the senior manager who complained that one of the top selling programs on the market wasn't handling multi-state returns very well. This looks like another prospect for competitive vendors.

There was also the practitioner who switched to a new vendor and found problems in "everything from installation to preparing returns?" It's hard to think of anything which that definition doesn't cover.

But then, there's also the practitioner who admitted he switched this year to a less expensive package after his old vendor pushed through a price increase. "But the old adage is certainly true here," he said. "You get what you pay for."

Busy season may be over for tax practitioners, but it's only just begun for the tax prep software vendors.