Starting in tax year 2020, ProSeries Professional and ProSeries Basic no longer have the ability to print checks from within the program. Checks are printed from TPG's web page. This section only applies to checks for tax year 2019 and prior.
Tax Product Group (TPG) reports the check should be Ready to Print for a Pay-By-Refund client, but the status column still says Awaiting Authorization.
Why is this happening?
In ProSeries, check print authorizations for your client's tax refunds are often received automatically when you submit new electronic returns. However, in some cases, the status could fail to be retrieved due to interruptions in the transmission and require you to manually request the print authorization record (Ready to Print status).
If your client displays Awaiting Authorization and you expect a Ready to Print status (or similar), you should first make sure that the client's refund has been issued. The refund must be direct deposited with your Pay-By-Refund provider before a Ready to Print status is made available to ProSeries.
Determining if the tax refund was issued:
- Confirm the taxpayer's refund has been direct deposited using the IRS Where's My Refund? page.
- Visit the Tax Products Group website and sign in to your account. You may then use the reports available on the TPG website to determine whether your client's tax refund has been received and is Ready to Print.
Retrieving the Ready to Print status in ProSeries:
- Open ProSeries.
- Go to the TPG Bank Products HomeBase view.
- For ProSeries Basic, go to the Bank Product Clients tab.
- Highlight the taxpayer(s) that are Awaiting Authorization but should have a Ready to Print status.
- From the E-File menu, select Pay-By-Refund and choose select Tax Products Group (TPG).
- Select Update Selected Acknowledgments...
- Click OK.
If the client has been issued a check print authorization by TPG, the authorization should be retrieved by ProSeries and the status will change from Awaiting Authorization to Ready to Print.