CollectiveReviews of collective.com

Shobi was great with communicating and explaining all my accounting and Collective needs! Collective has been great to work with thus far!

I love the service at Collective as well as the quick responses to my questions. I feel very taken care of and I feel like my finances are always well taken care of.

I needed urgent help to acquire a document from the IRS, I had been trying for the last 3 weeks with no response from the IRS. Contacted Collective and Mo was able to help me right away. The issue was resolved and the form was acquired the same day! Excellent customer support!

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.

I have been very happy with my Mercury account over the years, so much so that I recommended it to my entire network, many of whom have since come back to say they had terrible experiences (No responses from reps, poor bookkeeping, etc.). So I guess I should not have been shocked when I recently experienced a VERY concerning issue with my tax preparation by Collective. In 2025, they began providing individual tax filing, which felt like an easy sell, seeing that they already had been handling my business taxes and keeping it all in one place made sense. The process in Feb 2026 was simple, so I was shocked when my state reached out in August 2026 with an adjustment. When I reached out to my Collective account rep, she was helpful at first, but then went on to tell me I now owe $11,000 in taxes because they forgot to ask about my wife's income. They noted that her W-2 was not uploaded and therefore it was my fault, even though I had provided previous years' returns and tons of other documents that would allow any human to reason that we had always been a two-income household. No responsibility was taken on their part for not following up or asking about the document. The entire reason I use Collective is that they promote taking the stress out of small business ownership however, I would say an unexpected $11k tax bill is the opposite. I plan on discontinuing my Collective services at the end of this cycle.

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.

Collective has been a supportive and excellent solution for my business. It's SO AFFORDABLE and they are flexible and understanding. I had two very unfortunate experiences with accountants/bookkeeping before Collective, and they were understanding and patient with my hesitations and anxieties. The service is great, and I cannot recommend them enough.

Great guidance and user friendliness.