2010 Tax Software Survey: UltraTax CS

Tax season:
9am–10pm Monday–Friday; 9am–6pm on Saturdays, 10am–6pm on Sundays in March and April, and 9am–12am approaching deadline

Non-tax season:
9am–8pm Monday–Friday; select Saturday and Sunday support available approaching extension deadlines

Yes. Introduced in 2001. More than 300,000 portals deployed by 3,600+ firms.

$175/month for 1,000 base portals, plus $500 one-time setup fee.

FileCabinet CS, GoFileRoom, Fixed Assets CS, Practice CS, Planner CS, NetClient CS, Accounting CS, Accounting CS Payroll, Write-Up CS, Payroll CS, Engagement CS, Trial Balance CS, Virtual Office CS, Checkpoint.

The following features and enhancements were added in the UltraTax CS 2009 version, in addition to its support of Windows 7 and Office 2007:

• A variety of homepage enhancements, including an additional tab designed to report your firm’s statistics with respect to its clientele, preparer and staff assignments, and computer hardware.
• UltraTax CS administrators are freed from the responsibility of downloading and applying patches, a background downloader was introduced which handles the task silently and without intervention.
• When printing tax returns to NetClient CS portals, UltraTax CS can reach directly into FileCabinet CS to identify associated tax source documents, then print them along with the tax return to the same client portal – all in a single step.  Assuming the tax source documents have been previously scanned into FileCabinet CS, the entire 1040 portal process can be accomplished by clicking the Print button from within UltraTax CS.
• UltraTax CS launched a wide variety of data entry enhancements, including navigation enhancements with text links among input screens, a return to prior screens visitation sequence, and form navigation buttons for all Federal and State products. UltraTax CS also implemented an input screen UnDo capability, a review capability within subschdules by enabling tickmarks on individual subitems, a status bar display of each field’s prior year value, and the capability to datashare fiscal year K-1 values from 2008 UltraTax CS into 2009.
• New products were released within UltraTax CS: 1120 Consolidated for Wisconsin, Vermont, and Idaho. 1120 and 1065 Puerto Rico Municipalities returns, and also Puerto Rico PPT (Property Tax) returns for 1120 and 1065.
• UltraTax CS is now seamlessly integrated with GoFileRoom RS from Thomson Reuters as well as with FileCabinet CS.

The following is a short list of some of the confirmed planned enhancements for UltraTax CS for 2010:

• A Client Complexity factor, automatically comparing the tax complexities of their clients.  (i.e. Client ABC has a high complexity factor because it contains and O&G)
• A more robust tool for monitoring the status of the electronically filed clients, optionally including an automatic e-mail from Eagan to the client when his electronic returns have been accepted.
• We’re enhancing the ability to run UltraTax CS efficiently across dual monitors, including the auto-sizing of the folders block when the either the input screen is tiled with either the diagnostics or the tax form.
• Integration with Accounting CS.