The NC forms issue is causing me to really question how strong this software is in the industry and what their commitment is to tax preparers.  I agree the NCDOR website has indicated for quite a while that NC forms had been approved for Lacerte.  However, the software company seemed to be waiting for NC to open rather than making draft forms available to us so we could at least work up NC returns.

I called Lacerte a week ago Friday asking them to defer my "deferred" payment due today.  I recognize that Lacerte is not responsible for the late changes made by the NC legislature, however, without draft forms, every return I had started was half done.  I can deliver nothing so i can bill nothing.  It bothers me because I feel like Lacerte is dragging their feet on this at our expense.  They don't control NC but we are their customers and I feel like they could care less about how this effects the livelihood of NC preparers.  They could do something on their end to help us get better prepared to deliver returns more quickly when "final" forms become available.

NCDOR made a point of saying that if they were not open for efile, then we could still efile if vendor forms had been approved.  The NC forms would queue up for processing once the state opened.  My peers use other products and all of their clients are queued up with NC before mine and my peers are billing.  I think this is a dark stain on Lacerte's customer service and it would be nice if someone there addressed it.  They also refused to defer the deferred payment.  Nice!

I see alot of issues going on in the software and I recognize there are last mintute federal forms to code and NC seems like a small issue.  During the pandemic, it felt like the whole country was in it together.  This NC situation is nothing to Lacerte but Ultratax has forms.  I bet CCH and Drake had NC forms in draft much earlier than last Friday.  It seems that NC is not a small issue to other software developers.

I'm anxious and extremely disappointed in the software company that I returned to after using a competitor. The marketing implies that customers are important.