Lacerte Hosting experience

[RF]

Looking for anyone willing to share your experiences regarding the official Lacerte hosting environment.  We are considering it but getting references from current users has been left up to us which feels like a red flag.  Feel free to [email removed, please use the Private message feature in the right hand corner] (if you don't want to post publicly)  

For background, we have been Lacerte users for the entirety of our firm's history (22 years) and took over the user account from our predecessor firm that had been users back into the DOS days.  (We are a team of 3 users year round with 5 users during the season and prepare ~ 900 returns annually.)

For the last two years we have utilized a cloud server through our IT vendor which has been about 90% good.  We are considering jumping on the Intuit bandwagon for hosting (like everything else) but don't want to go from the frying pan to the fryer.  Support is a big deal so moving to a huge providers begs the question about how is support and is it often needed?

[Strongsilence-CPA]

Someone asked about hosting a few months back so you might search for that.

I am a solo. Hosted combines good IT support and it is faster than my previous desktop environment.  I don't have an inhouse IT support and my workflow was getting bogged down with miscellaneous computer problems. I'm happy. (Support seems knowledgeable but two people I have contacted can't figure out how to convert from Proseries to LC. That might be a flag for you.)

[RF]

Great feedback.  Thank you.  Searching the community posts hasn't provided much which is why I threw the question out in general.

[Strongsilence-CPA]

You are welcome.

Update to my Tech Support rating:  2 folks from Hosted Tech Support did not know how to convert ProSeries to Lacerte.  The latest suggested a solution that I'm finding to be convoluted and time-consuming for me.  So my rating is one notch lower for tech support.

[sjrcpa]

Are you referring to converting ProSeries data files to Lacerte?

Or changing hosting from ProSeries to Lacerte?

If the former, I would not expect the hosting Support people to know this. If the latter, they should.

[dfa]

Our firm sounds very similar in size to yours. We tried it for about a month last year hoping that it would process/calculate quicker than our server. There was no noticeable difference. They use Rightnetworks as a remote desktop. Because we already log in to our server via remote desktop, it made navigating more difficult using two remote desktops and our local desktop, and so we ditched it. The conversion took about a day. Converting back took less time. A scary issue occurred during the end of the conversion process. Another CPA firm's clients began to proforma in to ours which defeated the whole "more secure" aspect of hosting. I never got an explanation as how it happened.

[RF]

Great info.  Thank you for taking the time to reply.  We were considering this if it could entirely replace our current cloud server but this doesn't seem life a safe assumption either.

[TaxGuyBill]

---

@dfa wrote:

A scary issue occurred during the end of the conversion process. Another CPA firm's clients began to proforma in to ours which defeated the whole "more secure" aspect of hosting. I never got an explanation as how it happened.

---

I would have contacted all of those people, and informed them that Intuit is distributing their private information to random people.

[Strongsilence-CPA]

Thank you for your comment. 

[dfa]

Only 5-10 made it through before I could cancel the transfers, and I deleted them without opening. We deal with sensitive info daily and so aren't totally rando people, but in retrospect, I agree, it would have been good to call one to find out who their CPA is to inform them of the breach.

[michele]

I wonder when they are going to push us all to the cloud. I pay plenty and got my renewal and if I move to the cloud $23300.00   With Lacerte. I have always hated the thought of moving a large client base to Thomason Reuters but it is looking better all the time. Just getting ridiculous Just found out. After 8 years with e-file cabinet they are now saying only cloud so might as well go with smart vault if I have to be in the cloud. The cloud makes it difficult when you have some seasonal staff. Their solution is to have someone in charge of deactivating support staff at the end of shift and reactivate beginning shifts. Who has time for all that .

UGH

Michele