I am considering switching from Lacerte to Drake. Has anyone done this or have any comments on your experience with Drake.
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Our office did a couple years ago.
Overall look is similar but things are in different places of course. Philosophy is little different, Lacerte assumed and filled more things automatically, Drake makes you look at and check all the boxes yourself. Gotta watch the entity transfers to the 1040 more carefully in Drake.
Lacerte is probably more slick, but Drake gets the job done.
Drake customer service is superior, price leaves more in my pocket. With Lacerte it seemed like for all that money we were still a small time afterthought. Drake was efiling our state business returns 4 years before Lacerte could be bothered. -
Thank you, as I test Drake, I am amazed how quickly I can jump around and enter data, much less scrolling than Lacerte, also the program calculates much faster and downloads updates much faster. I still have more testing with large returns to do.Comment
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John
Seems like it has been a long time since you visited the board. Welcome back!Comment
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Thank you DTS. the fact that THE TAX BOOK comes with Drake sort of got me back into the message board. It's good to be back.Comment
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Drake
I have never been able to afford something like Lacerte, but I have used ATX, TaxSlayer, and Drake in the last 10 years. ATX was good, but was dealing with a huge, stilted, big-company attitude even before CCH bought them. ATX had service breakdowns and was anxious to increase prices even though they weren't justified.
TaxSlayer was a great company with unparalleled customer service, but I do several states with entities, and once you get outa Georgia and South Carolina, their product doesn't deliver. TaxSlayer perhaps the cheapest of the major players.
Drake has customer service that is just as prompt and courteous, and has invested heavily in their infrastructure just like you might expect from a large company. Drake has increased its prices only once in the last 15 years. As long as things remain as they are, I will remain with Drake. You never know when any company may want to cash in on their success and sell out to a large competitor, but from everything I've seen this won't happen any time soon with the Drake family.Comment
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Small complaint
I was doing an S Corp (new client) on 3/15 trying to get it out instead of simply extending it and taking my time. Yes that was clearly my fault. Before I took the engagement I told the guy he might get extended and to go elsewhere if he wanted a guarantee of by the deadline. Still I didn't pull the trigger even when the first attempted EFILE was rejected and I had to get Drake and the EFILE HELPDESK to tell me the problem was that the IRS thought the EIN belonged to something other than an S Corp but no one would tell me what kind of entity because of concerns that I might be trying to steal the identity of the Business. I was told to paperfile with a 2553 and response would be made to the last address the company had on file for this entity and to file a change of address if mail to that address would not reach the client. Now here's my complaint. The form was bigger than my computer screen and I didn't scroll down to see the important message that I needed to enter info on all the shareholders. Of course but for the rush I'd have known that and I'd have scrolled down to the bottom of the form on general principles. But I did tick a box in setup so that now forms are printed in whatever size necessary to fit everything in one screen. I won't ever again need to scroll to see a whole form but I may need a magnifying glass. For me that's the best tradeoff. Anyway the guy processing the return called me to ask for the missing pages and I produced them and faxed them to him so no major long term problems from my mistake.Comment
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I was told Phil Drake wants to keep the company going for his children and grandchildren, so it is very unlikely he would sell out.Comment
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Interesting you would put a quote from proverbs, as Drake is run based on the owner's Religious convictions and they honor the sabbath, so there is no tech support on Sundays, even during tax season, , but thier hours the other days of the week are really excellent, till 9:00pm.Comment
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Well said and agreed!
It did last year, but they aren't including a free subscription to the Tax Book anymore.
I switched to Drake last year and was nervous, but it was one of the best moves my office could have made.
I still get surprised every time I call and get a live person that lives in the US.
We got an Easter card from Drake that had religious tones in it that most companies wouldn't dare entertain. They're a Christian company for sure and aren't shy about it; another reason I love them and didn't know about this till later.Comment
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