This will be a challenging observation from the east coast for an experienced observer. Early in the evening, it's apparent motion will be slow but it will be quite faint mag 14 Mag 14 is difficult in an 8 inch and easy in a 16inch scope analogous to observing Jupiter.
At dawn it will mag 9, easier in smaller scopes but moving very fast so that it moves through a typical wide angle telescope field (1 deg) every 2 minutes. You need to get ahead of it and wait for it whether you have goto or not. I won't cover advanced equipment that can track objects like this, those owners obviously don't need any advice.
At dawn with a basic GOTO scope, by the time you enter current coords and slew, the asteroid will be out of field. You'll need to slew ahead of the object and wait for it to come into field. Use the same approach if you don't have goto, find a star near the path and wait for the asteroid to pass through the field.
Planetarium programs are not producing accurate finder charts because most of these planetarium programs use a geocentric (centre of the Earth) reference point.
The object will be as close as 3.5 Earth radii. When a close object is overhead the geocentric view and the local view coincide but when the object is near the horizon, you are approaching being 6400km off the line of sight that a planetarium program uses. In the extreme, that can lead to a 15 degree error in plotted position if calculated correctly.
Parallax also leads to a difference in apparent position of about 1 degree between Brisbane and Sydney at 18:00UT so it is important that you don't use any finder chart but one accurately generated for your area. The accuracy of the chart depends on the field of view of the scope you will be using. A chart produced for a lat/long 100km from you will be about 0.1 degree out at 18:00UT. Insignificant if using a wide field refractor, more significant if using a large SCT.
No matter where you live, use the NASA horizons tool to generate coordinates for your general location and plot manually onto a star atlas.
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi#top
The geocentric (centre of the Earth) reference point is a perfectly valid approach for the vast majority of objects and reduces the number of calculations which in turn makes the program run faster.
The object will be as close as 3.5 Earth radii at its closest. When a close object is overhead to the observer, it is on a line between the center of the Earth and the object so the geocentric view and the local view coincide but when the object is away from the zenith, you are off the line of sight that a planetarium program uses. In the extreme, that can lead to an error in plotted position if calculated correctly. In the extreme case of DA 14 near the horizon when at closest approach of 22500km could lead to a 15 degree parallax error.
On the east coast, the asteroid disappears in twilight when it is about 44000km from Earth. At that time it is at an altitude of 60 deg here in Canberra which could lead to a parallax error of 4 degrees. In Perth, the object is observable at closest approach at a similar altitude and therefore could be off by around 8 degrees.
I use the latest version of starry night. It has DA 14 in the object list but the elements are a mile off. It miscalculated the position at 4am on the 16th by a whopping 35 degrees compared to the Horizons ephemeris. That's not parallax, it's something wrong with the elements used.
On the east coast, it's at its brightest (Mv=9) at astronomical twilight just after 18:00UT. At that time, it will be moving 0.5 degrees per minute. Most of this motion is in DEC. The RA apparent motion starts the night at 0.05 deg/min and only increases to about 0.06 at dawn. But DEC starts the night with almost zero drift and ramps up to about 0.5 deg/min at dawn.
None of this will be news to the many experienced observers on this forum but the many beginners should be aware this won't be an easy object to track. Don't blindly trust planetarium programs.
Joe Cali