UFile 2010 Forum

My initial rating was Bronze as I hadn't tested enough of UFile's functionality to confidently rate it higher. In limited use, there was nothing to suggest that it couldn't be rated higher, and I committed to revisiting the rating later.

During more use, I encountered a few annoyances. One was quite minor, but stands out because the only way that I could deal with it (which required the deletion of a T4 form), was to open the file from a Windows computer. (Update: See Tips and Tricks for how to delete a form in CrossOver.) Still, UFile was doing most that I expected quite satisfactorily, so perhaps a Silver rating was warranted.

I haven't noticed any inconsistencies between amounts calculated, but when I selected the Results tab, UFile 2010 (under CrossOver 10.0.1 for Mac on OS X 10.6.7), reported warnings and concluded that my return couldn't be NETFILED. Open the same data file with UFile on a Windows XP computer, and there's no such problem.

Probably the problem stems from some way in which UFile works with dates and/or the different typical starting dates used by Mac and WIndows systems. On either computer, UFile shows the right date and time for when the return was calculated, yet under CrossOver for Mac, the warning implies that the starting date for NETFILING (which was two months ago), is in the future. Maybe it's a 1900/1904 issue, or maybe not.

I have access to a Windows computer to NETFILE; not everyone would. An argument could still be made for rating UFile 2010 Silver, since a tax return could be printed for filing, but I feel that the loss of the attractive NETFILE feature justifies maintaining a Bronze rating.

I'd welcome other input.

I'd vote for silver.

I have run ufile under Parallels for several years now, and was very glad to discover it worked so well under CO. I haven't experienced your problems, but consider them to be manageable in the context of having immediate access to the app (no launching parallels), much lower system overhead and ability to do 95% of things easily. I haven't tried net filing from CO, so can't speak to that, but tax results under CO and under Windows have been identical for me. Probably prudent, given that this is your tax return, to generate the final return under Windows if you can.

Allan, thanks for your interest. I apologize for taking so long to respond to your post. I'm now running a CO beta, and will see if UFile 2010 runs better for me using that and/or the latest stable version (which is to be used for rating an app). The CRA has asked for details of a deduction that I claimed, so after my tax return was filed early, it's again time to use UFile .
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You'd vote for Silver: I encourage you to submit a rating if you haven't. I lack your perspective as someone with prior experience using UFile on a Mac, so have you considered becoming an advocate?

There are enormous benefits to being able to do UFile data entry on Macs, and I considered a Silver rating, but at some point, the optimizations that UFile performs and/or the decisions that a user makes, depend on accurate calculations. Although I've only done it the last two years and value the ability to Netfile, I wouldn't withhold a Silver rating for that alone; I just couldn't give a Silver rating while getting seriously flawed results.

Not only were UFile's calculations under CO Mac off for my family's two tax returns (as compared to UFile running under WinXP), but it indicated that I should pay about $3,000 more in 2011 installments. That's Bronze, not Silver performance for me. I'm really impressed with what CO can do, but the task that I took on wasn't to rate CO, but to evaluate how UFile 2010 runs under CO.

Although UFile updates downloaded fine for me, and the installation seems to go OK, I find that the version doesn't actually change for me, and that might explain the questionable calculations that I'm seeing. I'd ask all users to read and respond to a separate post on that.