I never write negative reviews about others but SmartBooks’ promise of being “the accounting team you can count on” was never followed throughI am honestly sad to have to write this but I am hoping to save other businesses time, money and energy that we wasted with SmartBooks for over a yearFrom the first sales call, we were given an image of them being the best decision to help our small and local business get more organized and save time and moneyFor many years I did my own bookkeeping but I was hoping to put my time into other areas of the business and have a professional take overI was very skeptical about having just anyone take over our bookeepingI wanted someone who could do it accurately and be reliableI was told SmartBooks would assign me a team including an accountant so we would never have any lag-time with our booksI was shocked at the monthly price but was told it would be worth it since they are a company “you can count on”The amount made it seem like a valuable investment, but that was proven incredibly wrongThe transition to them should have been my first sign that it wasn’t the right choice as well as the added fees on the first billThey made it way more complicated than it had to beI was on the phone and e-mail for many hours every week trying to help them figure out the transitionHonestly, I was hand-holding and assisting them throughout the transitionThere were things they seemed confused how to handle, as if they had never done this before with a company! Mind you, we are a small business and they sold me on the fact that they know how to handle all size businessesAnother sign should have been the constant change in our teamWe chose SmartBooks to have a reliable team, yet during our year and half with them, we had over bookkeepersI am not sure if people were fired or ended up quitting, but I had to start over with new people, which made the process even more time-consumingI felt as if I was training new employees with the amount of time and energy being spent every weekOnce they started to take over the books, they didn’t have a clear system for me to get the documents over to themWe had to end up buying a certain scanner and I then spent time scanning over bills and receipts to themIt was actually starting to seem like way more work than doing my bookkeeping myselfThen came the constant errorsUnfortunately, I don’t just mean little mistakesWe have a remodeling company and our cost of goods sold was a messThere were wrong customers applied and I had to keep fixing themThen there were 1099’s written out to the wrong subcontractorsOther checks were entered under wrong vendor names and applied to the wrong chart of accountsEvery month they had to send over our balance sheet and reports and they seemed to rush the reconciliationIn June 2016, they actually left many items unreconciled so they sat in our chart of accountsThey obviously rushed through and didn’t care that the balance was offBasically, I was finding myself spending way too much time double checking everything they were doing and fixing constant errorsThey never asked me questions if they didn’t know somethingInstead, they would enter it just to get it doneAs a business owner, I feel it is my responsibility to share this experience with others who may be considering SmartBooksI understand SmartBooks works with "bigger" companies, with owners whom rarely check their books nor care if items are in the wrong locationHowever, for the businesses that are involved and care about their reports, it is quite concerningI have a long record of e-mails telling SmartBooks about the consistent errors and asking for things to be correctedIt obviously got to a point where I couldn't keep wasting so much time and energy on it that I had to cancelAll they did was offer me a $credit when I requested compensation back for my time and corrections that I paid them to handleI didn’t want to waste more time, energy and money to take this to court but I hope others can make an educated decision based on my negative experience
I never write negative reviews about others but SmartBooks’ promise of being “the accounting team you can count on” was never followed throughI am honestly sad to have to write this but I am hoping to save other businesses time, money and energy that we wasted with SmartBooks for over a yearFrom the first sales call, we were given an image of them being the best decision to help our small and local business get more organized and save time and moneyFor many years I did my own bookkeeping but I was hoping to put my time into other areas of the business and have a professional take overI was very skeptical about having just anyone take over our bookeepingI wanted someone who could do it accurately and be reliableI was told SmartBooks would assign me a team including an accountant so we would never have any lag-time with our booksI was shocked at the monthly price but was told it would be worth it since they are a company “you can count on”The amount made it seem like a valuable investment, but that was proven incredibly wrongThe transition to them should have been my first sign that it wasn’t the right choice as well as the added fees on the first billThey made it way more complicated than it had to beI was on the phone and e-mail for many hours every week trying to help them figure out the transitionHonestly, I was hand-holding and assisting them throughout the transitionThere were things they seemed confused how to handle, as if they had never done this before with a company! Mind you, we are a small business and they sold me on the fact that they know how to handle all size businessesAnother sign should have been the constant change in our teamWe chose SmartBooks to have a reliable team, yet during our year and half with them, we had over bookkeepersI am not sure if people were fired or ended up quitting, but I had to start over with new people, which made the process even more time-consumingI felt as if I was training new employees with the amount of time and energy being spent every weekOnce they started to take over the books, they didn’t have a clear system for me to get the documents over to themWe had to end up buying a certain scanner and I then spent time scanning over bills and receipts to themIt was actually starting to seem like way more work than doing my bookkeeping myselfThen came the constant errorsUnfortunately, I don’t just mean little mistakesWe have a remodeling company and our cost of goods sold was a messThere were wrong customers applied and I had to keep fixing themThen there were 1099’s written out to the wrong subcontractorsOther checks were entered under wrong vendor names and applied to the wrong chart of accountsEvery month they had to send over our balance sheet and reports and they seemed to rush the reconciliationIn June 2016, they actually left many items unreconciled so they sat in our chart of accountsThey obviously rushed through and didn’t care that the balance was offBasically, I was finding myself spending way too much time double checking everything they were doing and fixing constant errorsThey never asked me questions if they didn’t know somethingInstead, they would enter it just to get it doneAs a business owner, I feel it is my responsibility to share this experience with others who may be considering SmartBooksI understand SmartBooks works with "bigger" companies, with owners whom rarely check their books nor care if items are in the wrong locationHowever, for the businesses that are involved and care about their reports, it is quite concerningI have a long record of e-mails telling SmartBooks about the consistent errors and asking for things to be correctedIt obviously got to a point where I couldn't keep wasting so much time and energy on it that I had to cancelAll they did was offer me a $credit when I requested compensation back for my time and corrections that I paid them to handleI didn’t want to waste more time, energy and money to take this to court but I hope others can make an educated decision based on my negative experience