Collective Reviews & Provider Details

The concept of the service is attractive. They also had a quick and easy process for incorporating my busines. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The onboarding / incorporation process was smooth, but pretty much everything after that became frustrating and slow. Responses to help requests or questions are advertised as having a 24 hour response period, but I have literally never gotten a response in under 48 hours. The average is closer to 4 days. Additionally, the accounting software they use (built in house) does not expose enough features to allow you to fix issues yourself. Instead, you have to submit a help request and wait 4 days to fix a mis-categorized transaction. I finally got fed up and decided to switch to another accounting firm. Turns out, there is no way to cancel your subscription yourself. You have to submit a help request and wait for someone to help you. I've been waiting almost a week now with no response and have been billed an extra month in that time. All in all, I would not recommend using their service at all. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Ease of use, customer service, saving time and money Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's expensive, but I've made it back in their knowledge of taxation Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Basic transaction aggregation

Reimbursement calculator

Quarterly tax estimates Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sloppy product development

Poor customer service

Incredibly expensive for the little value they add Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like that Collective gives its members dedicated relationship managers that become very familiar with our individual business. They also are certified accountants, which is so helpful. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It can be difficult to get responses, especially during busy tax seasons. And everything goes through the hello@collective.com email, which makes it difficult to know who will be receiving your message and makes it very difficult to organize conversations. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Converting my sole prop solo-preneur business to an LLC with S Corp election was easeful. Going through the onboarding made an otherwise confusing process feel like a relief. I also appreciated the promise of helping solo-preneurs with tax preparation and bookkeeping, which tend to be the bane of our existence. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I've been a customer since April 2023 and the quality of service has declined steadily since. I used to get my financials by mid-month and over the past few months, it's slowly creeped to getting them the last 2/3 of the month. When I write in to ask why (because there is no proactive communication to reset customer expectations), I'm told someone was out and my deeper concerns are rarely addressed. It feels like I'm a box to be checked off, not a real human customer whose needs matter.

Timelines for responses from the team can vary from 3-7 days. I often feel like I have to chase answers. I get the sense the team is overloaded and it pisses me off that Collective will push for referrals to grow when I as a customer am not heard or made to feel like my business matters.

I wanted to like Collective so badly because the idea is great, but delivery leaves a lot to be desired. Not to mention the price increase to $350/month with service declining a lot compared to 2023. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

How well-organized their systems (website, dashboard, integrations, staff) and communications are. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Tax filings are the biggest obstacle; last year there were technical issues/roadbumps and extensions had to be filed for both business and personal, which was disappointing. Then this year they farmed out the personal taxes (I'm assuming they just don't have enough tax pros on Collective's staff to handle it?). Although I give them credit for integrating the outside vendor into the Collective platform/dashboard in a way that doesn't feel nearly as awkward.

I also wish there greater ability to help local tax issues. For example, they told I really need to have someone else handle my PTE tax paperwork, which feel cumbersome and less than ideal. My local CPA told me it's actually very straightforward, yet I still have to hire him. And getting anything not all with one person from a tax perspective makes me nervous. Yet it would cost SO much more money for me to go back to my former CPA to do all my tax prep because S-Corps make the fees skyrocket. We'll see how this next year or two goes! But I gotta say I don't like the feeling that they're WANTING me to farm out my taxes (understandable since I pay the same price either way, but still an icky feeling).

These are the reasons I couldn't give them an even higher star rating, but truly I've otherwise been very happy. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The team is really responsive and it has now become less of a tool and more of a community of likeminded solo-prenuers who are both sharing their expertise and learning from each other. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I wish it were easier to know who my main contact is. There is a main alias that all submissions are submitted through and the people who answer my questions tend to vary. There's also so much information that Collective offers S-Corps which is fantastic, but it also makes me feel that there is potentially a lot I'm not doing correctly and I wish it were easier for information to be disseminated, especially for newer S-Corps. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like the fact that Collective not only has experts in every field of Accounting, Bookkeeping, Tax and Payroll, they also have Member Relationship Managers who are dedicated to your account. Most of the time, these Member Relationship Managers are not just general, jack of all trades folks, but are also CPAs or ex-IRS or both, so they are able to answer most of your questions without having to pass the ball on. Time is saved and decisions can be made more quickly as a result. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Some of the things that need improvement:

1. They need a phone app. It is a major inconvenience to not be able to check something on my iphone.

2. Answers to questions can take up to 5 days, they need a chat interface that would allow people to post questions, like a users forum. Might be faster. Email Q&A can be slow, Modern technology is way ahead of email only as a way of communication. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I do like how responsive they are when I do have questions. Customer service is make or break for me, so they exceed in that. The monthly bookkeeping is helpful for them to understand my business. On top of that, they do my s-corp & personal taxes, which is huge value for my business. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Their fees have increased over time, which makes sense, but it has been a huge ongoing expense in my business that exceeds my health insurance. I don't like how they phased out QuickBooks and limited me to their proprietary bookkeeping software. The way they display charts, and reports wasn't as easy to read and comprehensive as QBO. I also wish they did some form of tailored business advice in order to grow my business, based on my reports. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I have used them for over 3 years. However, I've run into tax filing issues the past 2 years as they decided to outsource this. Not only did they drop the ball this year, but they also waited until the last week before the filing deadline to say they're unable to help. On top of that, accounting messed up with the quarterly tax estimate and I was penalized over $3,000 due to it. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Quit removing services that worked, such as QuickBooks, to earn a bigger profit. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.