To install the updated print layout files and tax table files, after you have decompressed the PATCH9.ZIP file, copy ADPRTAX1.DAT, ADPRTAX2.DAT and all the company 00 PL data files contained therein to your AFILES directory (usually ADV\SYS), allowing it to overwrite the existing files. Then go into RTS-Advantage, go to System Administrator program 11, Modify Reports, and copy the new 1099 and W2 report formats from the 00 company to your company-specific PL files. It is not necessary--but strongly recommended--that you delete the old formats after copying the new ones to avoid inadvertently using the old forms.

Patch 9 also includes updated tax tables for 2005 for Arizona, California, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Vermont, FWT and FICA. We also added tax tables for New York City and the City of Yonkers.

To activate the new tax tables follow these steps:

Go to Payroll program 3 and jot down the table codes assigned to each of the affected deductions. For example, if you have 3 different state withholding deductions, take note of the table assigned to each, such as table 4, SWT Married, table 5, SWT Single, table 6, SWT Head of Household.

Go to program 2 and delete those tables.

Go to Payroll program 58 and transfer the new tables into to the old numbers, being certain to choose the correct table. In our example, you'd want to be careful that the new SWT Married table is transferred to table 4; the new SWT Single table is transferred to table 5 and so on.

* The Windows Printer option may be used but we cannot predict your results. When RTS-Advantage uses your printer's Windows driver we lose much of our control over the exact placement of text on the page. Since every printer is a little bit different you may find that the information prints perfectly on the forms, or that the formatting is way off. Everything depends on a combination of the font used, the point sized used, the form offsets and the quirks of your particular printer. All of these options can be controlled in the Windows Printing Utility (except the last, of course), but if you have a printer that can be accessed the 'old' way through the regular printing capability, you may find it more convenient to do things the old reliable way.

For instance, our in-house testing determined that our HP laser printers printed W2s perfectly without having to make a single adjustment, but every other printer we tried needed at least some minor changes to either the Windows Print Utility settings or moving fields around in System Administrator program 11.

* We provide two W2 report formats for laser printers--one for those set to 66 lines per page, one for printers set to 60 lines per page. Although both will work reasonably well, we recommend the 60 line format because it usually lines up the best with W2 forms. Your hardware tech can assist you in switching your laser printer between 60 line and 66 line modes.

* All of our forms are tested with the preprinted forms available from Forms-R-Us, our forms supplier partner. If you would like to order from them call (866) 816-3676.

* Inkjet printers are wonderful and inexpensive, but many of them are incapable of printing W2 forms. Many inkjet printers have very large bottom margins, so deep that they can't print to some of the lowest fields on the laser W2 forms. We recommend that you use a laser or dot matrix printer for printing your W2s.

* Double-wide dot-matrix W2 forms got a major redesign this year, and now the left-hand forms are extremely tight on space. In order to conform with this new standard, we had to eliminate Address Lines 3 and 4 of the employer's address from the format. If you only use the first two lines, then no problem. Otherwise you need to either edit your company address information (in System Administrator program 6, Info option) or monkey around with the format to jam the extra lines onto it (we don't know where you'll find the room though). The extra two address lines are still available on the format--you can move them back into the printable area with System Administrator program 11.

* Always be sure to make a permanent backup of your Payroll data files at the end of the year. Otherwise there's no way to rerun W2s and other forms once you start processing for the next year. We like to make an annual copy of Pyaroll files that can be accessed as needed. To do this make a copy of your Payroll company data files at the end of the year substituting the year for the regular company number. For instance, our company number is "RT". At the end of each year we make a copy of the Payroll RT files, substituting the year for our company number. For instance, this year we will go to our AUSER directory and issue the DOS copy command:

COPY ADPRRT??.DAT ADPR04??.DAT

This makes a complete copy of the Payroll as of the end of 2004 which we can access in RTS-Advantage simply by switching to company 04. It's simple and a great way to save a lot of historical information without having to maintain it in your live data.

You might also want to restrict access to the backup company through the Security setup in System Administrator program 4 to help avoid accidentally processing in the wrong company.