BonsaiReviews of hellobonsai.com

I have been a Bonsai customer for some time and already pay for an annual subscription on my account. I recently discovered that I had also been charged for a separate account that I had apparently created while testing Bonsai. The account was never used, and I was completely unaware that it had become a paid subscription. I never received any emails notifying me about these payments. I only became aware of the charges when my accountant flagged them as unrecognised payments. I contacted Bonsai and explained the situation a number of times. They did refund four months of charges, which I appreciate. However, it appears that the unused subscription had been charging me since November last year (10 months now), and Bonsai has refused to refund the remaining charges. What I find particularly frustrating is that I was already paying for an active annual Bonsai subscription, while this second account was never used. Had I known about the second subscription, I would have cancelled it immediately. I understand that companies have refund policies, but I expected more flexibility and customer care in this situation, particularly given that this was an unused account and I was already an existing paying customer. I hope Bonsai will reconsider and resolve the issue fairly.

I've been with Bonsai for years but in the recent months it's just one problem after another and they are being extremely sneaky. They launched Bonsai payments while I've always used Stripe which lead them to prompt for account details to be updated (big notice on my dashboard). When I did this, they cut my Stripe connection without notice and it cannot be restored without connecting a new account. Since then they have sneakily charged a bonsai fee on top of the stripe fees for every invoice paid. It's not a small fee either. And all this despite increasing my monthly cost for Bonsai very recently too. It feels like theft and was not communicated clearly at all. Support is completely unhelpful, often ignoring questions and replying with what they want to say instead of answering what you ask. And to top it off, every update makes the platform more clunky and less adaptable. I have clients whom I negotiate to pay by bank transfer to cut fees but when I invoice if I remove card payment options from one invoice it gets removed from all so the client gets sent all options. Apparently they can't fix that. I don't have more time to waste on this CRM review they aren't worth it but essentially... beware, they do not not value a long time customer and they don't care. They will take more money while providing less value and they won't even clearly let you know.

Appalling customer service. Not able to receive secure PIN to my email. Agent telling me how to suck eggs "check your spam folder" etc etc. I work in IT I know what I'm doing. Never had this problem before but I have had dealings with Bonsai previously and their attitude is smarmy and condescending. I have since terminated the app. There are better online accountancy apps out there.

Terrible invoicing tool. Super unflexible and so many features missing you would expect from a basic invoicing tool. For example you can't even bulk download invoices. You literally need 3-4 clicks per invoice to download. Unfortunately used it way too long before I took the work to switch. Absolutely Terrible.

Asked for a refund but I never installed the service. Worked with Bonsai to get refund and the took over my screen and ultimately wanted me to log in to my bank account while the had access to my screen. PURE SCAM

I'm genuinely disappointed with Bonsai. Once again, I’m trying to download my previous invoices from the 2024 tax year and the process is painfully slow and broken. I have raised this issue with them many times and it still remains unsolved. After going through three or more steps (Each time a new window opening) that should allow me to access my invoices, every window just sits endlessly on “loading” for over 10 minutes each time and some never populate. This is a basic task required for tax returns, and it’s unacceptable that a platform at this price point makes it so difficult. For software that markets itself as professional and seamless, the user experience feels clunky and outdated. Other, far more affordable tools handle this effortlessly. I honestly don’t understand how Bonsai still has such a large client base given how unreliable this feature is. If you rely on easy access to your financial documents, think twice before choosing Bonsai.

Bonsai makes it impossible to get resolution on issues on the client side or on the paying user side. I own a small marketing agency and have experienced nothing but headaches since starting with Bonsai 6 months ago. On top of 7-10 business day delays to get client payments, invoices mysteriously get "charged back" and disappear from Pending status. Right now I have almost $20K in invoices that are floating in the ether. The finance team at my client can't figure out anything wrong on their end, meanwhile Bonsai won't answer messages or support emails. This does not happen with Bill.com or Quickbooks. I tried to go with a startup (I work with startups every day and love supporting category disruptors), but If you're a small business owner that cares about client experience and getting paid in a timely fashion, Hello Bonsai is not it. Stay away.

This tool is absolute trash. A glorified time tracker at 2X the price. Not only does it lack basic feautures, but they'll charge you a 3% fee on invoices. My client was confused into thinking he had to provide payment via Bonsai's platform and as a result, I was charged $140 for the privilege. Avoid at all cost. Their customer support is also completely useless.