TRX Alliance Program

[JohnSpadaEA]

Yesterday I received an email and telephone call from an outfit called TRX Alliance. They claim to be a group for tax professionals that came together to save money on software. Their web site clearly shows that they are big into bank products. They are offering the full Orrtax program with unlimited efile for $299. To good to be true? Then again I know almost nothing about Orrtax. I told them I wasn’t a big RAL shop and was told that was ok.

Does anyone have any experience with this group? They are sending me a demo, while I am in the demo testing mode I will take a look.

[George Boutwell]

They must be legitimate

Must be a good company, because they have a website. Of course, the website does not have any names or locations, but it does tell you that they can put an ATM in your office and get you "DOULBE RAL REBATES."

The website is registered to an LLC in Murfreesboro, which as we all know was the capital of Tennessee during the Monroe Administration. Some guy named Terrell Hughes seems to be connected with it, which is a name fit for a NASCAR driver (or NFL defensive end).

I doubt that they have their own software, but you can tell us whose they are including in their "bank products" package.

[JohnSpadaEA]

will do

I will let you know. I was hoping to save some time if someone here had experience with them in the past. The web site seems like they are looking for RAL mills. They resell Orrtax and must run their own efile system. You know it may be similar to the couple of companies that resell Taxworks under their own label and use their own efile system.

If someone sends me a demo I will spend a little time looking at it, that's how I found Drake six years ago.

[erchess]

Here's what I am doing

I have been with Worldwide Web Tax the first two years I have been in business. They are another Orrtax reseller with their own e-filing system. This software is very limited. It cannot handle a social security lump sum to my satisfaction. You have to tick a box and then get the relevant worksheets from somewhere and work them by hand, finally entering the figure you end up with in the computer. To me that's just appallingly unprofessional. Furthermore the version I use lacks state estate tax forms and the 706,709, and 5550. WWW Tax does offer, and TRX Express does not offer, a much pricier but more complete version of Orrtax that suffers from the defect (in my view) of having you enter most data on spreadsheets rather than on tax forms. I will have to say that the customer service at WWW Tax has been outstanding.

So there were two things about WWWTax I liked, their price and their customer service. Then I found out that TRX has the same software at a lower price so I got their Demo and worked with their customer service, which seems great. And while I wanted more functionality, my budget would have been strained by even $1000 for a software package because I am still a very small shop. I'm also not one to go for half measures. If I applied to car buying the approach I take to buying software I would buy a Hyundai or Kia if I could not afford say a Rolls Royce, and ignore the possibility that Ford or Chevy might have cars that would be much better than what I was buying, and cost not that much more.

So what I am doing for next season is switching to TRX for the bulk of my returns. Then, since I do want to be able to perform things that Orrtax apparently won't do, I am getting Ultratax in the Pay Per Return plan. I'm also getting a research package but I am not sure whether I will get the slightly more expensive one that fits in with Ultratax and comes from Thomson (an affiliated company) or the slightly less expensive one from Kleinrock. I have decided that BNB research is not what I want because their complete package is too expensive and I need all the primary sources (court cases, IRS output, etc) as a security blanket.

[JohnSpadaEA]

Orrtax

What have you found that Orrtax won't process? I have the demo disk and have only used it for an hour, from a first look it seems to be on par with any of the other low to mid price programs. It runs a lot slower than Drake, but then again so does Pro Series. TRX tech support took a lot of time with me answering my questions and doing an online session reviewing the software. I asked about the RALS and they said they, of course have customers that process a lot of them and some that do none. I would assume that's were they make money. I don't see them getting rich charging $299 for the software.

If your like me and reviewing software this off season it would be worth your time to take a look.

[Jan S]

TRX Alliance review

I recently received a postcard from TRX Alliance. I will review the demo soon.

John Spada, what was your experience with them? Did you use them for this tax season? I do about 100 returns from my home and spent $685 with ATX this year because I had to purchase a few business returns. I don't do RALs.

If anyone else uses their software, I would appreciated hearing your comments also.

[Lion]

Looked

I looked at them last summer/fall. Seemed OK for simple returns. I needed to be able to handle kiddie tax and multiple states and...that they were not strong on. They seemed to be designed for a practice that does a lot of simple returns, especially with RALs. I do a few complex returns and entities and needed great diagnostics. I put them about with TaxWorks with Drake a cut above primarily for support and ProSeries Pro a world above and the top tier like Thompson's UltraTax and Lacerte and ProSeries fx at the top of the mountain.

[cathyan103]

I'm using TRX Pro this year, switch from ATX. It's not a bad little program, and there are some things where you have to calculate manually, but for a small practice (150), mostly sole prop small business, a few rentals, stocks, it's OK. It sure doesn't have the bells and whistles of some other programs, but I'll probably stick with them. I don't do any bank products, and am waiting to see how my info rolls over next year. You can do either interview-type fill-in, or forms. I choose the forms, so can see everything the way it should be put in. I'd definitely recommend it for a small individual based practice.