LGS Acquires all Assets of Hill County Software and Support, Inc.

PRESS RELEASE

Contact Information:
Local Government Solutions, L.P.
William E. Hazeldean
ehazeldean@us-lgs.com

LGS Acquires all Assets of Hill County Software and Support, Inc.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

{Houston, TX, November 14, 2016} – Representatives of Local Government Solutions (LGS) and Hill County Software and Support, Inc. (HCSS) announced today that they have reached a definitive agreement in which LGS will acquire all of the assets of HCSS effective December 1, 2016. Ed Hazeldean will remain the President of LGS while Elisabeth Gardner, President of HCSS will become the Director, Justice Court Solutions within LGS reporting to Sandy Randall, VP of Operations. Jim Stateczny, HCSS Chairman will resign his position as Chairman of the Board of HCSS but is being retained in a consultancy role to manage the accounting segment of the LGS-HCSS business for an extended period during the transition. Will Stateczny, HCSS, Vice President of R&D will assume a new position as Director of R&D at LGS-HCSS, a new division of LGS and will report to Mr. Hazeldean. The LGS-HCSS division will be located in the former HCSS Office complex in Boerne, Texas.

In a brief statement following the announcement, LGS President, Ed Hazeldean commented saying, “There are few times when two competing companies come together with so many complementary attributes. Early on in our discussions it was clear there was a unique synergy among our companies which could only result in enhancing both companies customer value.” Since its beginning in 1982 HCSS has focused on providing quality software products and support for the local government market. “HCSS and LGS have a very complementary suite of software and services all centrally focused around their customer needs and requirements”, stated Jim Stateczny, Chairman of the Board of HCSS. “Out of all of the software companies serving local government market, LGS is the only company I would consider entrusting our customers to”.

LGS is one of seven affiliated companies of Information Capital Enterprises, Inc. whose business focus is on building, delivering, and supporting business critical software and services for local government entities. Information Capital companies serve at least one segment of all 254 counties in Texas and has in recent years expanded it business to other U.S. States.

Don’t Upgrade to Windows 10 Yet

With the new release of the Windows 10 operating system, some of you may be anxious to install the new system on your computers. We ask that you please hold off on that for now because HCSS does not fully support Windows 10 or the Edge browser. We do currently and will continue to support current versions of Windows and Internet Explorer.

The HCSS solutions integrate software products from multiple vendors. When Microsoft releases a new version of Windows, we work with those vendors to use versions of their software tested on the new version, and then we also test our application on the new version. While we try to do much of this testing using Microsoft’s so-called early release candidates, there is almost always a few weeks of testing that must occur after the official Microsoft release.

In the case of Windows 10, Microsoft is also introducing a new browser, named Edge. Since HCSS solutions are browser based, and have always specified Internet Explorer, we anticipate additional time until we can support Edge. However, Microsoft continues to support Internet Explorer, which HCSS will continue to specify and support until we are certain of reliable results using Edge.

Affordable Care Act

UPDATE:
HCSS has passed the testing and is now certified by the IRS for our customers to electronically file Affordable Care Act information through our programs.

Attention HCSS Accounting Customers:

On June 25, 2015, in a 6-3 vote, the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Affordable Care Act. The HCSS development staff will now start the development of all required procedures and reporting, and the implementation of our new Affordable Care Act Interface into our Payroll System. Since the first of the year the staff of HCSS has been working closely with the IRS to insure that we develop this interface properly. Now that the US Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the Affordable Care Act, and following the instructions we received from the IRS, the following development and implementation path will be followed:

(1) We are to wait for the associated publication to be completed and published by the IRS. This publication will define all that we need to do within our software to be in complete compliance. At this time, the IRS is anticipating that the official version of the publication will take place during the month of July.

(2) As the development process progresses, we will keep our accounting users informed as to the current status of the project. During this period of time, we will be gradually phasing in the new logic into our software.

(3) Our strategy is to have the interface totally completed in time for our annual user’s conference, which will be held in Kerrville, Texas, the week before Thanksgiving. At that time we will have an in depth workshop on the Affordable Care Act, with great emphasis on its use within our software. At this point, all of our accounting customers will be ready for the first round of Affordable Care Act reporting, which will take place in January of 2016.

At this time, we anticipate no difficulties or problems with this project, and believe that the first workable version of the new interface will be in place by the end of September.

I am aware that the Texas Association of Counties has created their own ACA interface, which they are making available to all Texas counties. However, since not all of our customers use TAC to provide their health insurance, and since the interface we are developing will take care of all ACA requirements, we will not be developing an interface linking our payroll system to the interface they have developed. In addition, all of the associated data that TAC has requested from counties wanting to use their interface, is not required with our interface, since that data already exists within our payroll system database.

Your patience and cooperation, as we work our way through this project, will be greatly appreciated.

Jim Stateczny

2011 Payroll Tax Changes and HCSS

The following changes have been included in the December 31st, 2010 update:

  • Printing of 1099’s with the 2010 format
  • Printing of W2’s with the 2010 format
  • 2011 social security tax law change processing

Once you’ve installed the update, keep the following in mind:

  • Do the W2 extract before you enter the new social security tax rate.  If you’ve already entered the new tax rate and must rerun the W2 extract, set the percentage back to 6.2%, run the extract, and set the percentage back to 4.2% after you’ve finished
  • On the social  security deduction record, which is deduction record number one, set the employee’s percentage to 4.2%, and  leave the employer’s percentage at 6.2%.
  • The processing of W2’s and 1099’s is the same as last year.  You must have the current update loaded before you do the actual printing of the 1099’s and W2’s.  It’s OK if  you ran the extract prior to the loading of the current update.
  • This is the link for Notice 1036, from the federal government, laying out the new tax rates. Please use this link for reference when you’re entering the new Tax Table 7
  • Remember that when you enter the new Tax Table 7, start from the bottom and work your way up.  The table in our software contains more entry lines than the table in Notice 1036 uses, and the unused lines must be at the top of our table, filled with zeros.