ParoReviews of paro.ai

A lot of premisses not delivered, significant delays, and super over priced . They take money form you, you wait for six month, and than when it is time to deliver results, they say they are not the best fit for you. What was the point? Then you get a final invoice for 8k even they never ever delivered promised reports. Or you get a call with four of them, but only one talks and others just listening. Then you get a bill for $175/hrs. multiplied by four since they all were on the call even you never requested the call. This is a scam.

I reached out to this company to assist our non profit. This first contact showed a lack of knowledge or perhaps a tendency to force larger projects than needed onto small organizations. I explained that we have our accounting data for 2 prior years in spreadsheets and ee want produce basic annual financial reports based on it. Then for the current year we would make use of the accounting software to store the data and generate reports; which may or may not include a clean up of past years data in the software given future reports will filter it out. Well I was told flat out that they cannot help me, and it is an all or nothing. Being a software engineer and information systems professional, I know that this is the wrong answer yet the most costly.

They actually do not offer one-time services but advertise as if they do. They push that their employees need to meet certain quotas and criticize client budgets. I’m not going to pay someone to meet their quota, I’m going to pay for my business needs to be met. It’s all just weird. I don’t think your quotas are any of my business.

Paro aggressively tried to recruit me to be a “freelance auditor” when I did not have a CPA license. I was upfront and forthcoming about my lack of a license, because in my jurisdiction it is illegal and unethical to advertise yourself as a CPA without one. They still tried to recruit me. How did they anticipate doing supervision or Quality Review work on an unlicensed freelancer? Do they provide any support or audit tools to the people they hire? For audit work specifically, are they aware that only a licensed CPA can sign an audit opinion letter? Do they care? I am just one schlub trying to play by the rules. If Paro is aggressively trying to recruit people who cannot legally do the work they’re hiring for, that gives me pause about their entire business model. EDIT: They are still trying to recruit me now, and based on their responses I do not think they know or care about the legal and ethical requirements of CPAs. It honestly scares me that this company exists in the form that it does.

I went through their application process, but I cancelled the day of the actual interview. I wanted to gain some insight for those real top 2% finance professionals who have seen these Adwords ads all over Google as of late. My review will focus on the process up to that point, and my general perception of the company based on my interactions. I'm a local CPA in a mid sized city, just opened my practice last year. So far so good. There is one other CPA in my area, good guy, but we are the only 2 in a 7+ mile radius. I have very little competition in this market and am lucky that I can pick and choose my clients. The other CPA is not accepting new clients. I like to keep tabs on search to see who if anyone is entering our market. This company Paro.IO kept coming up in Google search results for my area. I am number 1 organically for CPA near me in my area, also number one in organic search for [area + my firm name], so our phone rings every day and we don’t pay a cent for that. So, I kept seeing ads for Paro come up when searching CPA near me, or some other term in which we rank first organically. These are the expensive AdWords text ads right at the top that cost something like $30+ per click. No other local firms use this type of advertising. For local businesses like ours, direct mail, billboards, local networking, etc. are still king. I wasn’t quite sure initially what this company was. Their name sounds very intentionally Silicon Valley-esque, but they basically seem to be a middleman Adwords arbitrage type business, lots of these in our industry, none have ever proven to be profitable or successful after they burn through their initial capital (InDinero and TaxFyle come to mind). Although they are pushing themselves as some type of ‘freelance’ platform, they want you to go through an extensive process, test projects, interviews…pretty much the process you’d go through for a $200k+ salaried job. Again, this is very low paid freelance type stuff with no guarantee of work. I would have went further into the process had it been less time consuming, but not worth the effort really to get a gauge on this company. This might be a good idea if you are unemployed and desperate, or looking for some side hustle income to supplement a full-time job, but the hoops they want applicants to jump through are unrealistic and will certainly not attract “the top 2% of finance professionals” (their words). Really just looks a lot like Upwork, but instead of taking a 20% cut forever, I was informed they take closer to a 50%+ cut of revenue. No thanks. In conclusion, if you are a local CPA, Tax Attorney, or EA office, this company is no threat whatsoever. Essentially just another unlicensed accounting company trying to cast a wide net across the entire country by paying for very very very expensive advertising. Our clients can walk into our office whenever they want. We charge our clients more, pay our bookkeepers are preparers more, double actually from what I’ve heard Paro pays, and we’re actually licensed to provide these services. But again, if you are currently unemployed, or just want some side hustle cash, it might be good, especially if you’re just out of college. But if you have more than 2 years work experience, this is probably beneath what you’d be willing to accept pay wise and hoops wise. As for “Top 2% of finance people” they are advertising? Not by a long shot, don’t know many “top 2% finance” professionals who get paid $20/hour.

I had a great initial call with Brett from Paro about helping me with bookkeeping. He scheduled a follow up where he would have candidates lined up. Radio silence from him and the company. I do not recommend.

I hired Paro in January 2020 to do my Books. I sent them my Quickbooks files so we could come up with an estimate. We agreed on $4000 to Clean up my Books and $2350 Monthly.e After Several months of difficulties getting any kind of progress done, I realized that the Paro contractor was subcontracting her work to a team in India that had no idea what they were doing. The Contractor admitted that she was wrong and that she should have been involved more and Learned more about our Business. Her team she hired did everything wrong that we had to hire other people to fix their errors.

Over-promise and under-deliver. I was sold a comprehensive accounting package and received 50% of what I asked for. While the accounting services and skillsets were top-notch, I spent much of my time chasing the Paro employee to complete the tasks as outlined in the scope of work. Only after I voiced my concerns to Paro did I fully understand they're just a middle-man focused solely on collecting invoices, with no regard for client satisfaction or fulfilling their end of the contract.