Hi everyone,

We really appreciate everybody's feedback to the non-profit idea (read discussion here). We heard you loud and clear: keep Bivio running as it is. We're on it!

We have identified a very talented candidate to help us maintain and enhance the software. Discussions are ongoing. More news will follow.

Many of you suggested we raise prices to allow us to hire a full-time programmer. Our last price increase was seven years ago. In hindsight, not raising prices more frequently was a mistake as it limited our capacity for keeping up with technical advances. From a fiscal perspective, you've had the benefit of seven years without price increases.

Today, we took your advice and raised prices on all of our services. Please visit our Prices page. We realize the amount of this price increase is going to be a surprise for many of you. If we had increased prices modestly over seven years, we would have arrived at the same prices.

You said that you want Bivio to stay as it is or be even better. With this increase, we will be able to do that.

Thank you for being loyal customers.

Cheers,
Rob

Hi Anna,

> What our club really wanted was electronic filing with the IRS. I looked at your price list and none of the options include this.
>
> Is this included, if not, why?

It has to be programmed first. This is why we are raising prices. We need to hire a full-time programmer who will have this as one of their tasks. It will not be ready for the 2022 tax year. However, there's a good chance we'll have it ready for 2023.

Cheers,
Rob

The problem with retail software that "could" produce a partnership return is that none of them prepare an investment club return correctly. Commercial software (both retail and professional) is designed to prepare returns where the partnership percentages are constant throughout the year. They then apply those percentages to the club totals for the relevant items (dividends, capital gains, expenses, etc.) to generate the K-1s. Most investment clubs have changing percent ownership throughout the year. The way you would have to prepare the return using software which isn't customized for investment clubs would be to calculate what each K-1 entry should be outside of the software and then enter the amounts as overrides to the amounts calculated by the software. This is time consuming and prone to errors.

Probably the least expensive software out there for filing a partnership return (federal only) is TaxAct at $125.

Ira Smilovitz

On Thu, Aug 18, 2022 at 8:00 PM Peter Dunkelberger via bivio.com <user*26984900001@bivio.com> wrote:

I would think there might be commercially available software at a reasonable price.

Peter Dunkelberger

On Thu, Aug 18, 2022 at 6:21 PM Robert Nagler <nagler@bivio.biz> wrote:

Hi Anna,

> What our club really wanted was electronic filing with the IRS. I looked at your price list and none of the options include this.
>
> Is this included, if not, why?

It has to be programmed first. This is why we are raising prices. We need to hire a full-time programmer who will have this as one of their tasks. It will not be ready for the 2022 tax year. However, there's a good chance we'll have it ready for 2023.

Cheers,
Rob

Hi Len,

> Is there any plan to add Two-Factor Authentication?

This is always a consideration. If we have enough demand, we will make it a priority.

Cheers,

Rob

Very interesting. I would have thought that a 1065 prep software would allow for varying partnership allocations during the year. But I have never really thought it through.

But if Bivio does the accounting for the year, and then generates the return, all you are looking for is a vehicle to do the electronic filing once the return is prepared. Isn't that different from software that prepares the return?

Peter Dunkelberger

On Thu, Aug 18, 2022 at 8:28 PM ira smilovitz via bivio.com <user*2883400001@bivio.com> wrote:

The problem with retail software that "could" produce a partnership return is that none of them prepare an investment club return correctly. Commercial software (both retail and professional) is designed to prepare returns where the partnership percentages are constant throughout the year. They then apply those percentages to the club totals for the relevant items (dividends, capital gains, expenses, etc.) to generate the K-1s. Most investment clubs have changing percent ownership throughout the year. The way you would have to prepare the return using software which isn't customized for investment clubs would be to calculate what each K-1 entry should be outside of the software and then enter the amounts as overrides to the amounts calculated by the software. This is time consuming and prone to errors.

Probably the least expensive software out there for filing a partnership return (federal only) is TaxAct at $125.

Ira Smilovitz

On Thu, Aug 18, 2022 at 8:00 PM Peter Dunkelberger via bivio.com <user*26984900001@bivio.com> wrote:

I would think there might be commercially available software at a reasonable price.

Peter Dunkelberger

On Thu, Aug 18, 2022 at 6:21 PM Robert Nagler <nagler@bivio.biz> wrote:

Hi Anna,

> What our club really wanted was electronic filing with the IRS. I looked at your price list and none of the options include this.
>
> Is this included, if not, why?

It has to be programmed first. This is why we are raising prices. We need to hire a full-time programmer who will have this as one of their tasks. It will not be ready for the 2022 tax year. However, there's a good chance we'll have it ready for 2023.

Cheers,
Rob