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Grifftax for Mac (tax year 1999)

By Terry Fong, Cyberwalker Media Syndicate

It is unusual to see Macintosh-only software these days. It is even more unusual to find one in the arena of personal finance or accounting software, or even personal income tax software, the niche that Grifftax falls into.

A Canadian company, Grifftax has been in the Canadian tax software business since 1983. As partial proof of its Canadian origins, the program can be set to have dialogues or forms printed out in either English or French. Changing the dialogue language has an immediate effect, while form language has an effect only when starting a new return.

Like many Macintosh products, the program was simple to install, you just select one of several icons to drag and drop onto the destination disk volume. The resulting directory can be moved later with no apparent ill effect. 

As with many current products, the program can be updated directly from the Web. Updating did not occur without a hitch, however. After the update, some returns would not display properly when opened, requiring the program to be restarted.

The program uses a multi-tabbed dialogue box to determine what data should be filled in. It adds forms as needed. Then the program captures data, in one of two modes: "Show Me" and "Follow Me." In "Show Me" mode, you are directed to fill in data in a particular sequence. In what is probably a first in a Mac program, however, you are prevented from using the mouse to directly access a field. This restriction is lifted in "Follow Me" mode.

Forms can be accessed in a variety of ways. The mouse and keyboard can be used to go to the next page. The menu item "Pages" can be used to go directly to any page, which can be a problem, as there is little apparent order to the numerous pages presented. A "Page Catalog" is offered, showing every single page offered up by the program, whether active or not.

An interesting innovation is the addition of two buttons to the scroll bar that allow you to click to any source page: one for pages with source numbers, the other is used when a number on the current page is the source. This can be useful for navigating back and forth between linked pages.

If the "CasualText" feature is turned on, it allows you to put text anywhere where white space would be. This is nice for making notes, but because there is no visible differentiation between casual text and regular text, this feature can cause confusion until you have become expert with the program's operation.

Documentation and on-line help are problematic. All documentation comes on the CD. The documentation is reasonably voluminous and adequately covers usage. But there are no paper manuals and, more importantly, no easy way to search the documentation. In addition to the help manual, many Canadian and Quebec guides are included in PDF format, in both English and French. Help balloons have been added to every relevant part of the program, in an attempt, perhaps to make up for the lack of paper documentation. Help dialogue is modal: no other screen can be accessed while it is up, which is rather inconvenient. Nor can it be moved -- it always displays in the middle of the screen.

The program has been certified for NETFILE, Canada Customs and Revenue Agency's effort for filing via the World Wide Web.

The interface of this tax preparation software has a steep learning curve. No tax advice or financial planning tools are offered. It does offer 25 returns, compared with 18 offered by QuickTax, but unless you need the additional seven returns -- or have an older version of the Mac OS -- QuickTax may be a better value. It is certainly a less expensive product. 

Reviewer's rating: 3 / 5

Comments: The interface of Grifftax for the Macintosh can be a challenge and help documentation is inconvenient to access. QuickTax may be a better value. 

Minimum systems requirements: Mac OS 6.0.8 or higher; 4 MB of free RAM; 20 MB of hard disk space.
Price: Individual edition: $45 Canadian for a version that will file 25 returns; $20 Canadian for 25 additional returns.