What's New in Lacerte 2017

Available for download on November 9, 2017.

Making Lacerte 2017 better with our largest investment ever

Quality and performance make the biggest difference for you. So we’re making bigger investments in those areas in Tax Year 2017 and beyond. Instead of a lot of new “bells and whistles,” you’ll get more of what you already love about Lacerte. That means more of the functionality you’ve asked for, plus faster navigation, more forms, improved customer service and a more streamlined update experience.

And that’s just the beginning. Your feedback’s making it all possible. You’re why the best keeps getting better.

Let’s have a great year together!

My Account changes you'll love

You asked for a better way to manage your account and products, and now you can look forward to an enhanced My Account experience. Over the past year, the dashboard, training portal and online renewal experience have been redesigned. Now, you have new and improved account management, billing payments, Remote Entry Processing (REP, i.e. pay-per-return) and other functions.

The new streamlined experience will help you easily find the tasks you need most. These are a few of the highlights:

• Manage users: Firm administrators can now manage their contacts, plus, control roles and permissions from a single location.
• REP: Payments, statements and transaction history are consolidated into a single page as a one-stop shop for all of your REP needs.
• Payment Methods: Now, you can easily manage all of the credit cards and bank accounts you use for payments.

Enjoy these new enhancements that are designed to make your work easier. Look for the updates when you log in to your account.

Learn more

Free Lacerte training

Now, you can earn CPE credits with free, live training.

Attend live and prerecorded webinars, or visit your online personalized training portal for bite-size training modules with content that’s recommended just for you.

More than 30,000 people signed up for webinars this past summer, and more sessions are planned through February. Sign up and see what you’ve been missing: free training that helps you stay a step ahead.  

Security enhancements in Lacerte for Tax Year 2017

There are two new security enhancements in this release:

• Optional authentication before e-file transmission: The recent IRS Security Summit discussions encouraged accountants to use an additional authentication step as the last step before completing e-file transmission. Lacerte supports authentication prior to e-file transmission, through password protection of client data. New with Lacerte 2017, client data can be optionally password-protected, which requires the preparer to provide the password before e-file transmission. Each client can be assigned a different password. Learn more
• Tax Year 2017 state requirements for transferring driver’s license numbers and state tax IDs on W-2s: For Tax Year 2017, state requirements for transferring data such as driver's license numbers and state tax withholding IDs on W2s year-over-year have been updated. Great news - most states will now allow you to transfer this data year-over-year; however, some states require an additional verification step in order to do so. Only Alabama, Iowa, and New York will not allow the transfer of this data from 2016 into 2017 tax returns. Learn more
  
• Enhanced Password Protection for Client Files: You now have the option of assigning separate passwords to each client file, or one password to multiple client files. Learn more
  

Streamlined process for product updates

One of the most frequent requests has been for us to change our product update process. Based on your feedback, we’ve made several changes:

• New published schedule for product and content/forms: During tax season, product updates are scheduled to occur twice per month, and content updates are scheduled for every Tuesday and Thursday. Release dates during tax season will be published to help your IT team plan to make the upgrades seamlessly without disrupting your busy workday. See the 2017 release dates >
• Minimal unplanned releases: Due to the biweekly planned release schedule and new rigorous testing models, unplanned releases will occur only when they’re absolutely critical.
• Releases during non-peak hours: Most releases are currently planned to occur outside of critical business hours to keep your workflow uninterrupted.
• How to schedule downloads: You can use the Update Scheduler to ensure that you have the most up-to-date Lacerte product installed on your computer. Use the Update Scheduler to schedule specific dates and times to automatically download updates. When it’s enabled, it runs in the background of your computer. After updates have been downloaded, you’ll be prompted to install them the next time you open Lacerte. Learn more >
• Update notification tutorial: Follow simple steps to configure permissions for the team members you want to receive notifications and initiate updates. This will help your staff schedule updates to occur at the best times for each team member’s workflow and role. Learn more >
• Preview of release content: See the details about what’s included in each release ahead of time so you can decide whether the release can wait. We’ll let you know how to preview update content in a future communication.
• Setup guidance for network and hosted environments: Get guidance in an article with proven best practices for effectively setting up your software in network and hosted environments. Get guidance for a network environment or a Citrix/terminal environment.

Stronger quality, performance and stability

You asked us to focus on making the product you know and love even better. Based on that request, we’re doing the following:

• Recent critical workflow improvements: Many areas have been improved to provide a more stable and reliable product for this tax season. For example, print functionality will handle different scenarios more efficiently, email functionality is now more robust on 64-bit machines, and tax import now works for additional use cases. You can also look forward to eSignature support for signing up with DocuSign with the same email address, and seamless document storage for Document Management System (DMS).
• Advanced quality control process: We now use automated testing routines to quickly test thousands of scenarios to uncover hidden problems that manual testing can miss.
• Timed benchmark testing: We now use automated performance testing for hundreds of workflows to help ensure that each product change results in the same or faster speed.
• Earlier and more rigorous real-user beta testing: The process now includes twice as many testers before each release to help ensure the best user experience across different workflows.
• Upgrades to the databases, tax platform and underlying code: We’ve begun a multiyear journey to help strengthen security, streamline workflows, facilitate integrations and make it easier to launch new innovations.

Customer service (CARE) improvements

Based on your feedback, we’re doubling down on making your experience better by testing new call routing and staffing models to help provide faster answers and better accuracy.

Beginning the week of January 15, 2018, we start our extended support hours for tax season including Saturday and select Sunday support. Hours of operation and support options are designed to fit your needs throughout season. Learn more

Complex return enhancements

This release fine-tunes the speed and streamlines the workflow for complex returns. Many other enhancements are coming in Tax Year 2017 and beyond. Here are a couple of tips for working with complex returns:

• Guidance on printing two files in a single batch
  When you’re printing multiple copies of returns, you have the option to print them as separate files or as a single combined file, based on your preference. Learn more >
• Speed up data entry on complex returns by turning off auto calculations
  When you’re working on complex returns, avoid being stuck in perpetual calculations, latency and receiving “out of memory” and “calculation error” messages. Learn more

Change for 38 States: Only Final Forms Can Be Printed in Lacerte

To comply with State Agencies, we’ve changed the print options for draft forms in Lacerte 2017. Specifically, the print option is turned off for draft/non-final forms, so only final and approved forms are printable. Now, 38 states require that all tax software providers in the industry, both professional and consumer, limit preparers from being able to file printed versions of non-final forms. Lacerte makes it easy to tell whether a form is final with on screen watermarks. In addition, each non-final form is listed in both Critical Diagnostics and Forms Needed within the General Information section. Learn more

View the status and expected final release dates of all forms for Federal and State agencies at any time, consult the Lacerte Form Status Tool. Learn more

New forms and e-filing types expected in later releases

We have a number of new e-filing types and 93 new forms available for Lacerte in the coming tax year. New forms include:

• Form 8288-A, Statement of Withholding on Dispositions by Foreign Persons of U.S. Real Property Interests
• Form 8805, Foreign Partner’s Information Statement of Section 1446 Withholding Tax
• Many more state forms

Input Sheet interface reverting to Tax Year 2015

Based on your feedback, we’re reverting the Input Sheet interface back to how it was in Tax Year 2015. This release will include the Tax Year 2015 interface for 1040 returns and we’ll have the remained completed by January 31, 2018. 

Address AutoFill

The third-most requested feature is on the way. As soon as you enter the ZIP code in the address field, the application will automatically fill in the city and state information. This saves you time by eliminating manual entry. Should you forget, we’ll give you a reminder in a pop-up window the first time you manually enter a city or state.

Smart Search replaces Ask Lacerte

You asked for a better help and search experience. This release gives it to you by replacing Ask Lacerte with a redesigned experience called Smart Search:

• Completely in-product so you won’t have to navigate out to view results
• Universal searching within articles and the Lacerte community with one query
• Simple and natural user interface that mimics leading search engines
• Smart learning means the most requested searches and peer ratings will make future search results more relevant

We’ll add additional functionality to Smart Search over time based on your feedback. Look for a pop-up tutorial the first time you open your Lacerte 2017 software.

Document Management System (DMS) improvements

We made a number of improvements related to how you reset forgotten passwords, annotate documents in DMS, handle file permissions, and export and print into DMS for new clients.

Learn more

Bookmark PDF template changes are canceled

Based on your feedback that our current bookmarking functionality is sufficient for your workflow needs, we decided not to launch this feature at this time. Instead, we focused our efforts on enhancing your search experience within the product.

eSignature Plus Payments expanded forms

You’ll be able to use eSignature to instantly send signature requests, receive client signatures electronically the IRS-approved way, and collect client payment at the same time.

eSignature Plus Payments is now fully integrated into the Lacerte workflow. For Tax Year 2017, use eSignature requests for additional forms beyond the 8879, including engagement letters and more.

Learn more