Drake Knowledgebase – Powerful Resource

At Drake, we pride ourselves on providing world-class customer service.  To do this, we have to provide our customer service representatives with in-depth training and a variety of tools and troubleshooting resources.  One of those resources has become very valuable over the years, and you may not know it, but you have direct access to it.  It’s our homegrown Knowledgebase (KB) – a library of over 2,700 articles (and growing) that you can access too with two clicks from the toolbar in the Drake Program– Help > Knowledgebase.

The Knowledgebase is where we catalog and store answers to common questions, as well as troubleshooting steps for more involved technical issues.  It uses basic search engine logic, so you’ll find it very easy to use.   Here are some of the features available:

Latest / Most Popular
View the latest additions or most popular articles by clicking either ‘Latest Articles’ or ‘Popular Articles’ on the main KB screen.  Both are great places to start your search, especially if you aren’t sure how to translate your particular issue into Search Terms.

Search
Use the ‘Search’ option to look for articles relating to certain keywords.  For example, search on ‘firewall’, and you will find articles such as: 10786: Configuring a firewall for Drake Software and 10787: How to identify a firewall. Or, type ‘1099-Q’, and you will find article 11714: 1099-Q, Payments from Qualified Education Programs, which explains how to enter this information in Drake.  We recommend you use simple, basic search terms to get optimal results.

Browse
All articles are cataloged by category, allowing you to browse through the database using the ‘Browse’ tool.  With ‘Browse’, you can navigate through the database using a tree-view menu that is organized by categories.   Click through folders to search for content you are interested in, and when you select a topic, the relevant articles are displayed.  If I’m interested in articles on Pricing Setup, I can browse to Drake Software > Setup > Pricing Setup, and it will show me all articles related to Pricing Setup.

Help
Click on the Help tab, and you’ll find helpful tips for searching the KB.  For example, the default search looks for the start of words, so “tax” would find “tax”, “taxes”, “taxable” and “taxation”, but “taxable” would only find “taxable” from that same list.

Use it!
That’s all there is to it!  A few straight-forward search options give you access to a wealth of valuable information – information that we actively maintain and keep current throughout the season.  The next time you get stumped, give the KB a try.  From the toolbar in Drake, click Help > Knowledgebase.