From what I can tell, your latest problem had little to do with preparing tax returns but involved the eSignature feature that had been tacked on to a QuickBooks feature that had been tacked on to Lacerte.

https://proconnect.intuit.com/community/lacerte-discussions/discussion/complaints-about-email-invoic...

I don't know if subscribers have to pay extra for those, but if they're not free, then don't buy them.  If they're free, don't use them.  As you posted, you found a better way of doing it anyway.