When will the 1099 update for tax year 2020 be available?
1099 updates are independent of Sage 500 product updates. The official release date is by the end of the calendar year. However, we normally release the second or third week of December as we make a serious attempt to get it out as early as possible. The tax year 2020 will bring a new 1099 form, the 1099 NEC (Non-Employee Compensation). With it, will bring some new changes.
As many of you know starting with Tax Year 2016, Sage 500 ERP shifted from completely managing 1099 forms and history to using an outside vendor named Aatrix for much of the yearly 1099 processing. Sage 500 ERP now sums up 1099 data and sends that data to Aatrix. From there, Aatrix can print forms, mail forms, send electronic 1099s via e-mail, etc. If you are on a support plan, some of that is included, with additional options at additional cost.
Keep in mind that regardless of your installation's product update status, the last 1099 update (not necessarily last year's) must be installed prior to the 2020 1099 update. Tax year 2019 did not require a 1099 update, so that means the last update was likely tax year 2018.
There are two installs, one for the Aatrix system (once installed, Aatrix updates itself via the internet), and the other part is a Sage part that adjusts to IRS driven data changes.
The main change for this year, from a user experience, is that this year they will have to run a Sage 500 database update piece prior to installing Sage 500 client change (due to 1099 table constraint changes) .
Please note that any users using Sage 500 v2016 and prior that were able to continue using Aatrix will not have a Sage alternative this year. Sage 500 v2017 and later will be supported.
Sage 500 support occasionally receives calls from our customers who inadvertently processed 1099 data for the current year (typically at the beginning of the year) and because that were unable to process vendor payments for that year when vendor is set as 1099 vendor. This condition required a SQL script to reverse this inadvertent submission. Our upcoming 1099 update will include a button to the 2016+ 1099 application to allow for an unsubmit of an existing submission. This is only necessary when removing a submission that will not be resubmitted. The existing app will replace an existing submission (after warning and allowing to quit before doing so) so the button should only be used when a submission was created in error and flagged as valid. Doing this will remove the mistaken submission so history reports will not report on it. Keep in mind that removing a submission that should not be removed is not reversible.