CollectiveReviews of collective.com

After three years as a Collective customer, I would strongly warn anyone considering their service to look elsewhere. Every year, there has been a problem. I have yet to have a smooth, on-time tax experience with clear communication. This year, their delays and months of back-and-forth have left me late on my taxes and still trying to get answers so I can resolve what I owe. Last year, my taxes were miscalculated, and I later discovered a levy on my bank account that I had to pay to resolve. Collective had not alerted me to it. Getting help requires constant chasing. I schedule a call roughly two weeks out, only to be told they need to speak with the tax team. Then the back-and-forth continues, sometimes for months, without clear answers or resolution. In my experience, they are not proactive at all. For example, I’m pregnant and already have a child, yet they haven’t proactively asked about my changing circumstances or explained which tax options might apply to me. This is exactly the kind of guidance I’m paying for. Instead, I’m expected to know which questions to ask and then chase them for answers. I’m switching to another platform. After three years of recurring issues, poor responsiveness, and unnecessary stress, I have lost all confidence in Collective. Based on my experience, I strongly advise others not to put their trust in them with something as important as their taxes.

Feedback based on 18 months: - Lack of guidance and support to specific questions and situations. - The chart of accounts is rigid and cannot be tailored to other types of businesses than just servicea/consulting. - Very slow response time, and the messaging system UI/UX to communicate with the support is horrendous. - You have no say after important changes in their policies (data privacy, outsourcing to third parties, data protection, etc.). Overall, it's not worth the money.

There is no help from anyone there. You'll go days before you get a response. You also have to do the majority of the work. You're paying over 3K for a glorified excel spreadsheet.

I first heard about Collective from all the ads they were running on Instagram where they build themselves as a finance and accounting platform for S corp owners. I had recently decided I needed a new accountant, and so I spoke with a Collective sales rep where I explained the fact that I already had a payroll provider and a tax preparer, but I needed Collective to do my accounting. They assured me that this would be no problem. I paid for the platform around 2 months ago and began onboarding. The first major issue that appeared during onboarding is that I had thrown away my S corp confirmation letter from the IRS (oops, bad call on my part), which Collective says they require. After weeks of back-and-forth with an onboarding representative and hours on the phone with the IRS, trying to get a new confirmation letter they finally allowed me onto the platform by instead submitting a signed letter saying that I guaranteed that I had gotten the S corp confirmation letter and promising not to use Collective to file taxes until I had received a replacement letter. This experience was extremely frustrating because, at the outset, I had told Collective that I was not expecting them to prepare my taxes for me, and I've never had an accountant demand to see a letter like this before doing my books. I am now over three weeks after being allowed onto the platform, and my onboarding is still not complete. I've received messages from multiple different people who don't seem to be reading each other's messages. I also go days without a response from their onboarding team and just recently received a message saying that unless I run payroll through Collective, they're unable to serve me as a client. Again, neither the sales rep nor any of their advertising or onboarding materials let me know that this was a requirement before I paid. And I'll be honest, it just feels nonsensical to me. Why would I need to run payroll through Collective for them to manage my books? What's extremely clear is that Collective is not prepared to serve S corp owners outside of a very narrow set of requirements and circumstances. I'm now left with no accounting services in the middle of a very busy period for my business, and having wasted nearly 6 weeks of my time trying to work with Collective. I can see why Collective would be an attractive option for a new S corp owner who is unsure how to run a business like this. However, I would caution any owner that there is real risk in trying to work with an organization like Collective with poor customer support and essentially no ability to customize the services you receive to your individual business.

This is not a good company. If you have easy book and just sign taxes and move on, great. If you have any questions or things that need to be solved, not their problem. They will not reach back out to you. I have sent idk how many messages needed to set up an appointment for a call and nothing. They refuse to actually answer ANY tax questions or get back to me on my questions, it’s been two week and they even had the nerve to charge me again. You can do better with QuickBooks and help with TurboTax for a hell of a lot less than you waste with these clowns.

I've been with collective for years. Unfortunately it's the type of service that has huge lock-in: once they are running your books for your business, it's a huge task to transfer to a new firm. If it were easy, I would have transferred years ago. In the past year it's finally gotten so bad that I decided to invest the dozens of hours and hundreds/thousands of dollars to switch away from Collective - they're that bad. They have huge incentives (like $1,000) for referrals for new customers, so you'll hear a lot of people advertising for them, but as somebody who's been on the inside - let me tell you, you'll be better off elsewhere. I've documented dozens of instances each year I've been with them where they've dropped the ball. They've given me wrong information about taxes that, if I didn't catch it, would have cost me thousands of dollars. They routinely mis-classify transactions (literally every single month) even though I've sent clear instructions on what the correct categorization is. They are extremely slow on tax filings and returns. I've given them over a month to return a few minor corrections to my tax returns, and they haven't done it. It's September 12th and the due date is the 15th - and still no action. I've sent dozens of messages and they still don't have it together to make a few simple corrections and get the tax return filed on time without stress. Instead I'm here on my weekend hounding them to do a very simple and basic part of their job, and I still have no confidence it will get done correctly or get done on time. They've added a lot of stress to my life not just this tax return season but every time I put my trust in them to do something correctly, knowing that if I don't double check it, there will probably be mistakes. I'm almost tempted to give them two stars - they do usually function at a basically correct level and their fees are reasonable, but the horrendous recent experience puts them so far in the negative that it averages out to one.

I am officially at the point where I feel obligated to warn other business owners AGAINST using Collective. Now, to be fair, I always liked my local accountant. Had a good relationship with them. BUT they dropped the ball on some important stuff (literally forgetting to get my S Corp election filed 2 years in a row). That was the problem Collective sold me on. So I paid thousands of dollars to handle this stuff. And now I'm dealing with ALMOST $40,000 (NOT a typo) in proposed Arkansas tax assessments because, among other things, an Arkansas withholding account was apparently created for my ALASKA business. Read that again. I am in Alaska. I did not need or ask for an Arkansas withholding account. It should never have existed. This isn't them cleaning up my books and finding back taxes I didn't know I owed. The AR Department of Finance and Administration is now sending proposed assessments for 2024 and 2025 based on an erroneous account and threatening legal action including suing to have my business closed. And before anyone says, “Well, you should have been paying attention”: I WAS. About a month ago, Collective told me they had opened AND CLOSED the Arkansas account and that the issue was resolved. Then I received a stack of letters from Arkansas... and ANOTHER stack of letters. So... I called myself. And according to the DFA rep I spoke with, Collective had never followed through on fixing AND something else that FLOORED me: they weren't sure the person who had called them spoke enough English to understand the instructions they had been given. Let that sink in. That is what AR-DFA told me ON THE PHONE. It was noted in my tax file! To be clear: these are proposed assessments, not a final determination that I owe $40,000. Arkansas says the tax amounts were estimated because returns weren't filed, and I'm working through the appeal/correction process now with little to no help or communication from Collective. But here's what makes me furious: I DID PAY ATTENTION. I caught the problem, was assured it was fixed. And thank GOD I didn't just take their word for it when the letters kept coming. I called AR myself. Which is where my frustration with their offshore-heavy labor model comes in. I don't care what country someone is from. I DO care whether they're qualified to handle the work they're doing, whether they understand instructions from U.S. government agencies, and whether someone at the company is actually accountable. If a state tax agency gives your employee instructions and they don't understand them, that's a Collective problem. If a diff employee then tells the customer (ME!) the issue has been fixed when it hasn't, THAT'S ALSO a Collective problem. And if the customer eventually gets hit with almost $40,000 in proposed tax assessments? Guess whose problem it is? MINE. If you're using Collective, I strongly recommend checking every state payroll and tax account associated with your business. I'll also be documenting what happens with Collective from here in my newsletter.

Do not use Collective. I started with them in 2025 and to date, their bank statements have failed to pull for my bank requiring manual uploads and 2-3 month delays in set up for proper categorization. This year, I decided to cancel them and use a local provider for high quality service and more integrated strategy. When going to download my books, I noticed Collective failed to render any services for all of 2026 (up to cancelation). They categorized nothing and worked on none of my reports. They charged me a fee to cancel and failed to respond to multiple tickets to request a refund for services not rendered. Their agent failed to follow up and since have deleted my account rendering me limited in communication means considering they run messages through the portal once signed in. I've left external support tickets since and have failed to be contacted by anyone to make it right. Do not use Collective... the price seems like it's a good deal but the experience will fail you. Terrible business ethics.