CSA license expiration 2017 - frequently asked questions

Internal Employees

Important reminder!

Licenses for Payroll CS, Trial Balance CS, and Write-Up CS (but not Engagement CS) permanently expired on March 1, 2017.

For details, see CSA license expiration 2017 – frequently asked questions.

Some processes documented in the Help & How-To Center are no longer applicable, due to the discontinuation of these CSA modules.

What happened on March 1, 2017?

Your Creative Solutions Accounting (CSA) licenses (excluding Engagement CS) permanently expired on March 1, 2017 and cannot be renewed under any circumstances. The normal 60-day grace period for expired CSA licenses still applies in this case, but we have extended that grace period to end on December 31, 2017 (excluding Engagement CS). After the end of the extended grace period, you will have limited access to some features in the application and therefore limited access to your client data. For detailed information about expired licenses, see CS Professional Suite Accounting Products: Information about expired licenses (PDF).

Note for Engagement CS users: Your Engagement CS licenses did not permanently expire on March 1, 2017 and you can renew your Engagement CS licenses as usual. Engagement CS now includes trial balance and financial reporter functionality, and integration with UltraTax CS is still available. See the Statement on the future of Engagement CS topic for additional information.

Can I access my historical data?

That depends on the type of licenses your firm has. Perpetual licenses allow CSA to continue to work as usual, but without product updates or access to Support. Annually Renewable licenses have some limitations after they expire. See Information about Creative Solutions Accounting expired licenses for more details.

Virtual Office CS and Software as a Service users: On December 31, 2017 we will remove Financial Analysis CS and the online version of Client Bookkeeping Solution (CBS ASP) from the Virtual Office CS and Software as a Service environments. You can keep a local backup of data from these applications as follows.

Engagement CS users can continue to access Engagement CS (which includes trial balance and financial reporter) via the CSA icon.
Virtual Office CS users can install a local version of these applications and store backup data there. See Backing up data from Virtual Office applications for instructions.
Software as a Service users cannot install a local version of the application. Instead, you can export data from the application to a format such as Microsoft Excel spreadsheets or Adobe PDF that can be accessed outside of the application.

Note: Your CBS client licenses never expire. However, with an expired Accountant's Assistant and/or Payroll Compliance module license that has passed the grace period, you (the accountant) cannot retrieve the CBS client's exported data.

In some instances, however, you can revert your client's ASP license back to desktop. Review Switching a CBS ASP client to a local installation of Client Bookkeeping Solution (CBS) for more information.

Can I still get support for CSA on or after June 1, 2017?

No. All support (email, phone, and chat) for CSA products (excluding Engagement CS) concludes on the sunset date of June 1, 2017.

What about our payroll clients?

Important! We will not update CSA to include 2017 tax rates or payroll forms, so, for 2017 and beyond, you will need to process payroll in Accounting CS or another software application.

We released a year-end CSA update so that you can access the 2016 year-end forms (1099s, W-2, and state-specific forms).
We will not release any payroll compliance updates for CSA after December 31, 2016.
Regardless of a perpetual or annual license, you will not be able to change the payroll period of any CSA client after December 31, 2017.

Can I try Accounting CS by transitioning a few of my clients?

Yes! Our CSA to Accounting CS Transition Team will be able to help you get started with a trial version of Accounting CS.

An Accounting CS trial license allows you to:

Add or convert data for up to 5 clients.
Process data for the current period.
Print sample checks, reports, and financial statements.

See also: Licensing information

How do I transition my client data to a different software provider?

Your new software provider will be the best resource to help you transition your client data.

Internal notes

Changes in Engagement CS support queue

Beginning Friday, 6/1/2018, we will no longer offer an open call in queue for Engagement CS.

The phone prompts remain the same, but if a customer needs Engagement CS support, service reception will gather their firm and contact information and enter a pink for a support rep call back.

Verifying license type

To verify the type license go to Flash > CSI Products > License Column:

Unlimited = Perpetual

AnnRen = Annual Renewable

Changing CSA licenses from annual to perpetual (FYI for Support, see the VERY important note below)

Changing license types should NOT be communicated to customers as an available option. Direct inquiries about changing license types to the Customer Service department.

Grace period extension

Why did the grace period get extended? This has been a challenging year for all firms, due to new IRS security measures and regulations. This grace period is intended to assist transitioning firms by providing additional time to complete their final conversions and perform data retention tasks.

Support is still ending on June 1, 2017.

Everything will operate normally for all firms, regardless of license type, until December 31, 2017. This includes doing CBS imports into CSA.

To see what you can and can't do after December 31, 2017, see Information about Creative Solutions Accounting expired licenses.

If VO users want to get their data, point them to CSA: Terminal Server detected. A Server-Based computing license is required and have them follow in sections:

Install Creative Solutions Accounting locally
Download your clients from Virtual Office