TaxCycle's Approach to Pension Income Splitting

Today I'm very pleased to share this video showing how TaxCycle handles the optimization of Pension Income Splitting.

TaxCycle keeps your client's tax returns optimized as you work... so you always get the very best return for your clients.  Watch to see how it works:

Optimized pension splitting will be available to all our clients next week. Check here for a free trial http://www.taxcycle.com/TryNow.aspx and tell me what you think!

Carrying Forward predictive typing files in ProFile

For my old friends/ProFile users, I am posting an answer to a question that I have fielded many times over the last 10 years, which is:

How can I carry forward my ProFile predictive typing files from year to year?

The answer, for posterity, is here:

1. Make sure ProFile is closed.
2. Find the typing files... usually C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming\GreenPoint\ProFile\
3. If 2012T1.TYPING already exists, delete it.
4. Select the 2011T1.TYPING file
5. Right click and select "copy" from the context menu.
6. Paste the file back into this folder... it will now be called 2011T1 - COPY.TYPING
7. Press F2 and rename the copied file 2012T1.TYPING
8. Restart ProFile.

Presto... your 2011 predictive typing will work in 2012.

This tip is offered without warranty but should work for any of the ProFile modules.

ProFile is a registered trademark of Intuit Canada Ltd.

Little Known Tip for entering dates in TaxCycle and ProFile

The credit for this tip goes to Bert Mulder.

Back in November 1998 I was speaking to a group of ProFile users about the new features coming in the 1999 version of ProFile. As I was describing how the “signing date” field on the info form conveniently posts to page 4 of the T1 jacket, Bert Mulder put up his hand and offered this question:

Do the QuickBooks date editing keys work in ProFile? 

I answered “no” and then asked what date editing commands would be helpful. After a brief discussion with the group, we decided that “=” (equals) should enter today’s date, the plus key should enter tomorow's date, and the minus key should enter yesterday's date. Repeated presses of plus or minus would then increment or decrement the date appropriately. It was such a great idea. And, it only required a few lines of code so I made the change during coffee break and showed the group when they returned.

I was reminded of this story today when the TaxCycle team discussed short cuts for entering dates on the T1013. Of course, the same keystrokes work in TaxCycle… with one small addition. We noticed that in QuickBooks 2012 pressing “t” enters todays date, so TaxCycle follows that convention as well.

A great feature, and one many long time ProFile users don't know!

ProFile and QuickBooks are registered trademarks of Intuit Canada Ltd.

What's in the Barcode on my Tax Return?

I'm not sure whether I'm paranoid or just curious, but when I see a barcode, I want to know the information it contains.

When that barcode appears above a signature line, and a declaration that the information given is correct and complete, I really want to know!

In TaxCycle, you can hover over any barcode to see the information it contains, like this example from the T1 Condensed form.

From the fly over, you can see that the barcode contains a SIN (870000007), birthdate (19590424), province or residence (Ontario - twice), spouses SIN (870000015), spouses name (Will), taxpayer's name (Mary Anne One), an address and a postal code. The rest of the information is line numbers followed by values, and separated by dashes. For instance, 1019000 (underlined in red) means line 101 contains a value of $9000. Most of the fields are dollars only, except for fields that appear with dots to the right (look on page 4 of the jacket to see what I mean) - these values are shown including cents. For instance, line 479 has a dot beside it on page 4. Thus 479163260 means that line 479 has a value of $1632.60.

For those interested in history, this is very close to the format originally used by EFILE when we first piloted it back in 1990.

We originally built this to help with testing, but decided to leave it in the shipping version of TaxCycle. Some of our customers might be paranoid too. (or just curious! **)

(** If you are really curious, you can hold down ctrl+shift while clicking on a barcode to copy the information to your clipboard. You can then paste it into another program and make a more detailed exploration.)

Taking User Feedback Seriously

Last week I received this feedback from an old friend with whom I used to work and a TaxCycle user:

“Delete slips (and delete forms) – these functions should have a confirmation.  An errant mouse click could lead to significant loss of data.”

I started to write a reply including information about our “undo” feature, and how any row, slip or form you delete can be instantly recovered by pressing Ctrl+Z. I added a note about the “prepare index” which shows the deleted forms that you can recover with a right click.

I wrote another paragraph about how we have taken great pains to avoid dialogs in TaxCycle, inspired by this note from the Microsoft Windows Design Guidelines: 

Dialog boxes can break the user's flow by demanding attention. Sometimes that break in flow is justified, such as when the user must perform an action that is outside the current context. In other cases, a better approach is to present the UI in context, either directly with in-place UI (such as a task pane), or on demand using progressive disclosure. (UX geeks can read the full article here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa511268.aspx#rightui)

Dialog boxes are an interruption, and we don’t want interruptions!

Before hitting the SEND button, I sat back for a moment to consider why we might want to add a dialog, even after we've worked so hard to avoid them. Here are the two things I came up with: 

1. Users of older software are more comfortable with a confirmation before deleting a form.
2. Showing a dialog provides an opportunity to educate our new users that forms can be recovered later if necessary.

Wait.... this might be a good thing! We can give those who want confirmation a dialog. We can give new users a chance to learn about undo and undelete. And we can add a checkbox so experienced TaxCycle users can turn off the confirmation we get the uninterrupted workflow they want.

So now the next version of TaxCycle adds this:

And I deleted the email and wrote this instead:

Old Friend –

I’m working away on some of your suggestions today and thought you might be interested in this screenshot.

Presenting this dialog when deleting a form is helpful because it introduces the ‘undelete’ feature, and it also prevents that jarring impact of an immediate deleting for those that prefer a confirmation first.

Thanks for the feedback.

Best,

~ Cameron