Hello all,

Crow River did club taxes on Saturday. I was a little
frustrated with it, and planned to write to Rob. But, since
all our opinions are helpful, I thought I'd post them here,
rather than privately. If you agree, disagree, etc., please
chime in. It will only help Rob and the crew to improve
them for us.

The interview link is at the top of the tax page so I
started there, only to have to back out to verify where the
taxes were going to be mailed. It would be helpful to embed
the where-to-file link on that interview page.

The Form 8893 election was really difficult! That's not
Bivio's problem, but the wording of the note "Partnerships
with 10 or fewer members are required to file Form 8893 with
their tax return to make this election" stopped me in my
tracks. The key here was "to make this election." I didn't
read it that way. I was stuck on "required to file."

Lucky for me, I have home phones for both Rip AND Ira! I'm
lucky to have friends in high places! <grin> As a club of 7
people, we did not choose the Consolidated Audit and
therefore did not have to file the 8893. I don't think I
will elect the Consolidated Audit next year if we DO get
over 10 members, either.

I don't know the answer here, but somehow we need better
information for this. I'm not saying it's Bivio's
responsibility to provide it, but if they know something
like this will be an issue, maybe Rip and Ira can be
informed so they can start a discussion about it before we
get this far next year.

Finally, the print-outs. In previous years, we were given a
list of the 1065 and other forms to print. The K-1s were
listed separately for each member. THIS YEAR, I nearly
passed out when they were all combined! Ours was 28 pages.

The members do not require anything but the K-1. So that's
all we run for them--first page only! And we needed 4
copies--one for the IRS, the State, our club copy and the
member. Even then, our 7 members only accounted for 14
pages of this 28 page monstrosity! I would have had to
waste 14 more pages 4 times to get the K-1s I needed. So
instead, I found myself singling out page 11 to run 4 times,
and page 13, etc.

I understand that people complained last year about having
to push the print button on their computers too many times.
Well, maybe this year they will reconsider after running 280
pages to get 10 K-1s! May I suggest that we split the
difference and group the K-1s in one file and the rest of
the documents in another??

Thanks!

Lynn Ostrem
Crow River Investment Club
www.bivio.com/crowriver

Lynn Ostrem writes:
> the where-to-file link on that interview page.

We do have a link that tells you where to file on the taxes page.

> Finally, the print-outs. In previous years, we were given a
> list of the 1065 and other forms to print. The K-1s were
> listed separately for each member. THIS YEAR, I nearly
> passed out when they were all combined! Ours was 28 pages.

This was our first year at a single document, and we'll improve it!

We designed the K1s to be printed with the instructions, figuring that
was useful to the members. We also thought the document would be
printed double-sided, since that's what we do for our AccountKeeper
customers to save paper.

We'll eliminate the instructions from the output.

I should also note that you could check the box "Allow members to
access K-1" on the the Taxes page. Part of bivio is empowering
members to have more access to the accounting. You could let them
each print their own K1. They might want two copies, for example, one
for their records and one for their accountant.

> May I suggest that we split the difference and group the K-1s in one
> file and the rest of the documents in another??

I think the big issue is the instructions. We want to avoid
complexity here. A single file is very useful to most clubs. The
problem is the K1s. Once you have the single file (without
instructions), it is a simple matter to print them by selecting the
appropriate pages.

Rob

Rob...

I have some suggestions also, along the same lines as Lynn's.

1. Please give an option to print only each partner's K-1 form in
electronic format as a pdf since I distribute the K-1's electronically
in one of my partnerships. The instructions are useful to my partners,
but if I distribute the K-1 forms electronically then I don't print them
on my dime. ;-) I would also like an option to print just the K-1's
for distribution to my paper based partnership. Of course, I can do
that by designating the appropriate pages in Adobe Reader.. so no big
deal if simplicity is your goal.

2. There's an option to allow each partner access to their own K-1, but
I don't see a link to access mine. Can you tell me where the link is?
I must be missing something.

3. While there's a link to tell us where to file, accessing the link
took me out of the interview process. Not sure if that's a function of
my browser setting or if your link can open a new page.

4. For those of us doing duplex printing, it would be handy if the
first page of a K-1 was set to always print as an odd page number. That
way the instructions would always be on the reverse. Not sure if this
is how you have it set up since I don't do duplex printing.

I have to say that generating the 1065/K-1 was effortless and you are to
be commended for putting out such a great product. I'm so glad we
switched to bivio.... taxes are so much less a headache now.

John Munn
Cross Country Investment Club, an on-line club
Capitol Investors Investment Club, Troy, NY