Submit Your Suggestions for Vista

Hated Aatrix last year and still hate it this year. With all the bad and negative reviews from customers, why is this still required to use for e-file and why is it STILL being looked at as an issue? Listen to your customers. They are the reason you are still in business. If you don't, you may see more and more who start looking for other options. I know we are...

W-2s should definitely have the option of being created in Vista or Atrix. We have an outside CPA firm that produces our quarterly payroll reports and W-2'S. They can produce the W-2'S without Atrix. I produce the 1094C & 1095C. If you do not understand the reporting rules, then the audit function in Atrix would be beneficial for the preparer.

We are still using negative earnings (auto earnings), so we will have to make a major change to use Aatrix for W2's. I would like to have the option to continue printing W2's & creating the files to upload them directly to SSA Business online. I vote for Vista to continue the W2 reporting and have Aatrix as optional. I am currently using Aatrix only for Quarterly 941 Efiling and FUTA.

I haven't seen one truly positive comment on here. Almost every comment shows a preference for returning to the previous way of doing W-2s - namely using Vista. There are no preferences for mandating the use of Aatrix. Is Viewpoint going to listen to their customers, or will they continue down this road and alienate most users?

Our payroll was still using negative earnings which weren't supported by Aatrix. We weren't notified of the change until late in the year. Aatrix doesn't always work, always needs to be update which many times creates errors and we are unable to get to the current forms. We haven't gotten Aatrix to work on more than one computer, even if we did you aren't able to see what information is on someone else's computer. We aren't able to get to historical data for W2's now in Viewpoint. If I would have known this, I would have downloaded what was needed from previous years. I suggest that Aatrix is an option for those that want to use it. Until Aatrix can work out all the kinks and have more support staff, we shouldn't be forced to use it.

The process of using Aatrix was not any more difficult than processing through the W2 program in Viewpoint, but not having access to the files right in Viewpoint and having all the additional costs were our biggest issues with the 2021 processing. We are a multistate employer, so it was nice having Aatrix E-file to all of our states, but that is the only portion of Aatrix that we found to be beneficial. Our preference for 2022 W2's would be to process/print/save all files through the Viewpoint W2 program but have the option to utilize Aatrix for E-filing purposes.

As per the suggestion I posted earlier this year, we would prefer to use only Vista for Year End. Aatrix did not any value to the year end process. It made it more difficult, it took longer, it cost us more, etc. etc. etc.

DOES ANYONE KNOW THE PLAN THAT VISTA HAS FOR YEAR END 2022? We have not gotten any notifications or instructions on how it is going to be handled.

then there is the issue of ordering forms.

Aatrix was very hard to figure out. The old process in Vista would take maybe an hour to do. I spent at least 10 hours trying to figure this out on different days and calling support for help, to which none really helped. I just had to figure it out by trial and error; which isn't something I really cared to do with such important information not knowing what was going to happen. Knowledge Base didn't really help a whole lot either trying to navigate through something we had no idea about. I found some steps on Knowledge Base, but it wasn't complete and left out the important steps to be able to figure it out easily.

I did have a problem with one vendor too. I have a parent company that runs as 4 different companies under that same tax ID #. Aatrix wouldn't let me be able to file with the same tax ID number, so I had to manipulate one of the tax ID's as social security number so I could at least file. One of the other companies had only $10k worth of money to file and I couldn't manipulate the tax ID numbers since I had already used all of the ways. I WASN'T ABLE TO FILE FOR THAT COMPANY. TECHNICALLY, THE IRS COULD COME AFTER MY COMPANY AND ASK WHY I DIDN'T FILE FOR THAT COMPANY. NEEDLESS TO SAY, I COULD GET FIRED FOR IT IF WE GET AUDITED ALL BECAUSE OF THIS SHITTY SOFTWARE YOU DECIDED TO USE!!!!! I also called about this and talked to a programmer and he said they couldn't fix that problem. That's really great feedback from your programmer!

Fully agree with others. Get rid of Aatrix. Also, communicate better with clients on the year end changes BEFORE end of September as most of us are getting our forms, and preparing to file year end, especially the 1095 process which is cumbersome in itself.

I use Aatrix to file quarterly taxes, I do appreciate that I can file/pay using one format rather than going to multiple different websites. However, there are several nuances,

1. Aatrix does not support WA L&I, so I still have to log on to report WC for WA state.

2. LA UI report requires employers to provide an SOC code, Aatrix pulls the data from the Occup Category in HR, these fields do not align with the LA code so I have to copy and paste the correct code for 300+ employees.

3. Every time there is an Aatrix update I have to submit an IT ticket and wait for a member of our IT team to run the Updater. Aatrix needs to change the way their updating process works so that it is an automatic update through VP or another form o

4. Most importantly of all, Aatrix pulls data by pay date, Viewpoint Tax/UI reports pull data that aligns with Period End dates, so when I'm trying to reconcile quarterly reports, to the Aatrix forms, the balances are always off, because if an employee has a manual check on Sept 30, but the period end date that it is issued in is October, that manual check shows up in the Q3 rather than Q4. This requires me to print a VP report and the Aatrix report to compare every single individuals quarterly totals to find the discrepancy. I have 1000 employees and we do a lot of manual checks so this is extremely impractical. Aatrix data should always match Viewpoint data but it doesn't, this needs to be corrected immediately!!

Finally, we need to have the ability to print W2's. Viewpoint really screwed up when you took that access away from your users, there was no practical reason to do so other than laziness in yearly W2 compliances. BRING BACK THE ABILITY TO PRINT W2 FORMS!!!

One last thing, I think it's great that you are taking suggestions, I hope you will be sharing these suggestions to Aatrix as well, there is a lot of work that needs to happen on both sides.

Thanks

I agree. Aatrix is terrible and slow. It was difficult to use and their help was useless and unanswered questions. Very frustrating and stressful. Please remove Aatrix and bring back the Vista/Viewpoint W-2 electronic filing

Please keep the filing ability within Vista/Self Filing. We had to pay an exorbitant amount more than previous years with Aatrix they were unable to integrate with our existing paperless system that we also pay for, so we still had to mail all our own forms. The process was way longer and froze up several times. we also had to go manually change things that vista calculated but did not transfer to aatrix. It was way more headache that it was worth.

I agree with all the difficulties within the comments. One of my issues was the transition of information into Aatrix. Sole Proprietor and company names were switched although it was in Vista correctly. The constant updates daily or even 2x daily, which stopped all work until IT updated our company servers. I would say that it took me 4x the work to get things filed. I don't trust the state filings either. This year, I'm opting out of using Aatrix and go with another program to efile for my 1099s. The W-2 reporting is fine but the 1099s were a disaster. I think Vista should bring back the ability to download a file to upload to the IRS system and other state efiling systems.

Please keep the filing ability within Vista. We don't need to be mandated to use another third party software.

Please restore the ability for each Company to create and manage their own end of year filings. The support and communication of the rushed and mandatory migration last year was a disaster.

The launch of Aatrix as an "only" option was not good. I couldn't get a clear answer on should I buy forms so I did buy them. Then figured out later that we didn't need them. We paid for Aatrix to mail all of our 1099 and W2 and it was a fair price based on the time and postage it would have taken our staff to fold and stuff during our busy season. I thought it was worth the money but the launch was terrible. Many unanswered questions that I had to persistently call Viewpoint and Aatrix and I got passed around quite a bit.

Using Aatrix for our 2021 W2's and 1099's was AWFUL!

Many of our issues have already been mentioned or I've posted other comments:

Here are a couple that I don't readily see listed that we encountered last year:

-Remote workers that log into a master server DO NOT have easy access to Aatrix (if at all) because all the processes (forgive me I am not IT) have to be stored on Corp server. This means while processing remote my computer is pushing huge amounts of data back and forth between my computer, the Corp server, and Aatrix. It honestly does not work - I am looking to have to relocate anytime I need to run Aatrix. It took almost an HOUR to run a process with ONE employee remote.

-THE CONSTANT UPDATES from Aatrix that stop ALL work on ALL forms until IT processes the updates. (you can fight with our IT if you argue with this-we don't have administrative rights to our computers) Not all of us work the same schedule and having to locate an IT tech on off hours is absurd.

-E-filing with the states is NOT clear on what is actually being submitted. We filled out forms MANUALLY on Aatrix that were not actually filed, so we had a few penalties because we filed late. Also tracking down a W2 file that Aatrix filed but the state didn't receive was a nightmare with very little help from Aatrix to clear it up with the state.

-W2's files are ONLY stored on the person that processed the files LOCAL DRIVE and are NOT accessible to a 2nd person responsible for filing the W2's (division of duties).

-Forcing us to use a THIRD party to process some of the most CONFIDENTIAL DATA company can have is ABSURD and I don't know how it is even legal (my 2 cents).

!!Bring back our previous years W2's in VISTA (not all of us are using the Portal yet).

And bring back processing current years W2's in VISTA!!

Please restore the ability to create the e-files for the various federal and state tax returns. Having the ability to submit the file ourselves through the tax websites allows us to see in real time the status of the filing and any associated payments due. Most of the time when I file a return through Aatrix the actual amount due is different than what Aatrix shows. I then do twice the work to file and pay the return. My other complaint is how slow Aatrix operates. It took over 2 hours for my federal W-2 file to submit, that was after the hours I had spent preparing the data. There is no progress bar during the submission process, I had to sit back and hope that something was happening.

We were Aatrix users before we moved to Vista so our company was comfortable with AATRIX and was happy to see the integration. Unfortunately, when the move was made, Viewpoint got away from one of its selling points for Vista - flexibility. The 2021 tax year was difficult, not only because AATRIX didn't work (though that was part of it), it was losing the flexibility to print W-2s either en mass for our employees or to pull a set of W-2s due to a court order. We lost the capabilities that we had with Vista. And that would be okay if AATRIX was the same or better but it is not. Keep what was good in Vista and add AATRIX don't make it one or the other.