If you are preparing your business's tax returns this year using software - such as Intuit's TurboTax or Block Financial's Kiplinger TaxCut - following just one piece of advice can save you plenty of time, frustration, and even money. Very simply: Check with the software's manufacturer for tax form revisions and program updates, both as you begin to work on your returns and immediately prior to filing them.

Tax software programs ship well before the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) finalizes the tax forms for the current tax year. If you file your returns using preliminary versions of the forms found on the software you purchased, and the final forms released by the IRS are different, the IRS will reject your returns. But, by visiting the Web site of the software's manufacturer, you'll be able to obtain the latest versions of the forms before you prepare your returns and then you can double-check that they're the final versions right before you file.

Contacting the manufacturer also ensures that you're caught up with the most recent program updates. If there is a bug in the software you bought, and the manufacturer has discovered it, you'll be able to obtain a workaround before you file your returns. This is an issue that has troubled both TurboTax and TaxCut this year, but Intuit and Block Financial have quickly posted fixes on their Web sites. The problems in these two software programs have ranged from incorrect depreciation calculations to printing errors - critical enough to warrant immediate attention when your taxes and the federal government are involved.

You can obtain explanations about program updates from both Intuit and Block Financial by visiting their Web sites. (For TurboTax, click here; for TaxCut, go to http://www.taxcut.com.) Once there, if you're running your tax software, you can automatically download enhancements and fixes. Or, if you would rather receive the updates on a disk, both sites provide toll free numbers and the companies will send CD-ROMs to you.