There has been a request for Lacerte silent install if possible + updates if possible
Software for Complex Tax Returns | Intuit Lacerte
So far we are not aware of any demand from the community for this, please add your votes/comments if this would assist your team!
We have a handful of clients running Lacerte and would definitely welcome some automation there.
One thing of note, in every case for our clients they tend to need the last 10 years or so of versions installed on their machines so they can reference old client data.
Also would love to see this! Could assist with testing or needing access to anything
Just to bump this, I would absolutely love to test this as well if it gets setup. Have quite a few clients with Lacerte.
We’ve got some clients with Lacerte as well
We have at least 5-10 customers that use Lacerte.
Lacerte is a tricky one. Unfortunately, in most cases the update is done on an RDS or file share. Then the users need to access the file share and run the installer from the share.
This would be extremely helpful if it was possible as manually installing across large clients can be difficult.
We are a large multi-office Lacerte user (230 folks, 5 offices) and one of our senior engineers fought this out. Been working so far, but it can be a LONG install time.
#Store the workstation host name to determine which Lacerte server to get the installer from
$Hostname = $env:COMPUTERNAME
#Set the uninstall reg path for the targeted tax year
$UninstallPath = “HKLM:\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\2021 Lacerte Tax”
#Set the Lacerte silent install arguments
$args = @"
/TargetDir="C:\Lacerte\21tax" /AutoInstall /AutoExit /q /norestart
"@
#Check the hostname for a match to a specific office and whether the uninstall path exists
IF(($Hostname -like “OFFICEINITIALS*”) -and (!(Test-Path $UninstallPath))) {
Start-Process -Wait “\officelacerteserver\lacerte\21tax\Setup21\TaxSetup.exe” -ArgumentList $args
}
ELSEIF through as many offices as you need.
@Chris_White how are you connecting to the server via SYSTEM context? If I had to guess, you’re running this script as a user?
Chris,
Thank you for the script. We are running an on-premises Remote Desktop. I set up a task and it can run unattended as long a the user has access to the lacerte folder where taxsetup.exe is for the specific year and the user as local admin privileges. We have two remote desktops and I set up a script to terminate any processes of Lacerte of the same year so there is no “program in use issue”.
What does not seem to work however is installing an update to the same version.
Lacerte has a Lacerte update scheduler that allows updates to be downloaded. The problem is, even when I download the updates with the lacerte update scheduler, then run the taxsetup silently again, the updates do not get installed.
I know this because I soon as I open Lacerte, I get a notification that there are updates available. It performs a file copy, closes the Lacerte program, then installs the updates, then reopens the program.
I was wondering if your tech found a way around this. From what I have come up with the Lacerte Update scheduler cannot be run silently, only interactively. I am ok with spinning up a VM that auto logins with a user at a designated time to download the updates, but the taxsetup still installs the previous version and the program update only triggers when I open the Lacerte software, log into it with my web account and then it copies the downloaded files and triggers it. I am not sure if Lacerte updater downloads the files to a temp folder first before placing them under \officelacerteserver\lacerte\21tax\ to use your example.
Lacerte 2024 comes with a different way to update and Lacerte update scheduler will be deprecated.
All my interactions with Lacerte support over the years have been fruitless. They seem to place all their efforts on spamming you with going to the cloud when you go to run updates vs actually providing a way to do silent updates. They claim the /AutoInstall /AutoExit /q /norestart are purely windows installer switches and they avail themselves of them. When I run taxsetup.exe /? those switches are not even mentioned.
Any additional information you can provide would be welcome.