If I could give zero stars, I would. This company mishandled my bookkeeping starting in 2023 and repeatedly failed to provide documents I had already paid for, until I threatened legal action. I was then dropped as a client simply for asking what certain charges were for and why I was being billed twice for some services. Recently, I discovered that something they charged me to file with the IRS was never filed, confirmed directly by the IRS. I contacted them once last week and once today after not receiving a call back to request either proof of filing or a refund for the service I paid for and did not receive. Instead of providing documentation, their response was dismissive, hostile, and threatened harassment for making a two phone calls -- which I've attached for transparency. They claim the IRS "lost it," despite the IRS clearly stating the filing was never received and no proof was ever provided to me. Because of this, I may now need to amend prior tax years, pay additional taxes, and pay a new CPA to fix what should have been handled correctly the first time. Thankfully, my new CPA has been professional, transparent, and legitimate -- everything I expected from this company but did not receive. I would strongly caution anyone considering this firm: lack of accountability, poor documentation practices, and unprofessional communication are not things you want when it comes to your finances. read more

The Book Balancer - Tax Services Near Me - Phoenix, Arizona

I contemplated writing this review for fear of retaliation from Jennifer at The Book Balancer. She has proven to not have me, as her client in the best interest, so I felt it important to share information with either potential clients of hers, or those current clients who may end their services with her. I had been a client of hers for over 18 years. That is an incredibly long time. During that time, she handled our personal and business bookkeeping and taxes. We never had a contract and I put forth trust in her services. In the last few years, my bills had increased drastically and any questions or concerns relating to my business were charged. In 2024 She charged me double than the previous years. When asked about it, she told me that she was "eliminating clients like me". Having an exit plan was important, especially given that she had so much of my information for so long. As amicably as I tried to leave, she still was difficult. She still has not responded to me or my new company to release information for other entities that I had her keep books for, for months. Despite several attempts, for these and my personal files, they went ignored. Jennifer Clennan was rude, disrespectful, and down right nasty to me by attacking me personally numerous times via email. Her lack of professionalism is baffling. A person's personality isn't the main thing that keeps me working with someone, as I understand that we are bound by the professional services that one hires another to do. With The Book Balancer, Jennifer crossed many lines, and even when succeeding in "eliminating me as a client" is still not showing professional courtesy and integrity. Once I read other reviews for The Book Balancer, I felt justified in my decision to leave a review and let others know how this "company" treats people. Her staff has indicated that it is "trying" working for her and there is nothing they can do. The lack of ethics and integrity is really disheartening. I wonder if she will respond to this review, as she likes to attack and have the upper hand( in her mind). If you are considering The Book Balancer, run. If you are a current client, get all your data on electronic files. It is her duty to return all files to you, and they will say they did, but really they don't know what they have to give. I will expect that there are errors that will be found in her filings, and am prepared for the worst. Stay away from the headache, and ripple effect of this company's work. I wish I had read the reviews to plan my exit strategy better. She likes to be brown nosed btw, don't challenge her or ask questions about your business that make her work any extra. That is a sure way to truly see the unprofessionalism in Jennifer Clennan. Her tagline of Integrity First should be scratched off. I wonder if she even uses it anymore, it certainly is false. read more

Booked my appointment a week ago. I told them it would be a stretch to get there at the time They had set up. I showed up late as stated and was told we don't have you down. Then they tell me I need to reschedule because the appointment I need is for at least two hours. They had me down for training but I was meeting to see about getting help with my bookkeeping. I did eventually wanted to have 1on 1 trainings to do my own Quickbooks. They didn't even book the right appointment. What an absolute waste of my time. Very frustrating. read more

The Book Balancer charged our business account for Quickbooks services that we had used in the past but were no longer using. I called multiple times to try to get answers as to why they charged us and every time they just "took a message" and said someone would get back to me but they never did. I continued to call and eventually the lady that answered told me that they would not refund our money and gave no explanation as to what the charges were for and why they wouldn't refund it. Don't use this company! read more

I received a letter from this company stating that they had been hired by one of our customers. I was asked to complete a W-9 for transactions over $600. I called to speak with someone and Kristin answered the phone. She was rude, didn't want to answer my question as to why I would need to complete the form, and LITERALLY told me that she was busy and didn't want to talk to me. Read reviews before hiring companies to do your finances!!! read more

I have been using The Book Balancer for the last 2 years now to do my corporate taxes for my business Tru Cab. They have been excellent to work with and made the process so simple I really don't even remember much about my experience with them last year! I can say this since we filed an extension and just had them wrap up our taxes before the Sept. 15th deadline. They have a great location in a nice building. I'm always greeted by a friendly smile every time I'm there. I was able to email them all of our quickbooks data so my only trip in was to sign the paperwork and pick up my copies. They also give you a nicely bound copy to keep for your records and everything is nicely organized with copies of necessary paperwork for each of my 2 other business partners. I primarily worked with Jennifer over there the last 2 years and I will say she went above and beyond to handle a confusion that occurred this year. I don't have much experience working with anyone else since this is the only company I've used to file taxes but their prices seem more than reasonable and I haven't heard anything from the IRS saying we owe a lot or there were errors so their work must be good! I'm working on starting up another LLC so maybe next year I'll have them file for 3 businesses. Thanks for everything Book Balancer! read more

My experience was that this business is completely INCOMPETENT and UNETHICAL. The Book Balancer was hired to complete monthly profit & loss reports as well as TPT reporting. There were many egregious mistakes that I was able to identify myself, so was concerned that Jennifer approved reports without questioning some of the work done by her staff; surely if I could find them, she should be able to see them. Jennifer had her staff correct their mistakes and then billed me for the time it took to make the corrections. I had 5 different contacts in the short 3 months I was there. I started dealing with the new office manager and was hopeful that things would settle down. She sent me an email saying the credit for the erroneous work would be applied and that they had internal issues they were working on. Some of the information she shared, gave me even more reason to be concerned. I lost confidence in Jennifer and her staff which constantly turned over so decided to go back to my CPA. It was then that they refused to give me the credit and threatened to send me to collections if I didn't pay what I was told would be credited. As a small business owner myself, I thought I should speak directly to Jennifer because it seemed absurd to me that the "receptionist" was telling me that they wouldn't honor what I had in writing from them. He said that Jennifer would speak to me but she would charge me $100/hr. I paid the balance on my account and decided I would collect on the back end by taking her to small claims court as I also had to pay my CPA to redo the three months of work that the Book Balancer completed. He found that bank reconciled payments were not applied, credit card charges for a full month were not recorded, he had to correct sales tax entries for 3 months and had to adjust payroll figures. I understand that companies/their staff make mistakes and go through growing pains. I was willing to work with them, but there was a total lack of accountability and customer service which was also evident when I tried to take her to small claims court; she refused to sign for the certified letter and subsequently told her staff to tell the process server she would not sign for the documents (they had to have her signature not anyone on the staff). If you don't want to waste a lot of time and money, you should find another bookkeeper. It would have been easy for her to do the right thing. The whole experience was surreal...I find it hard to believe this woman is still in business. You should also check out her BBB reviews where you will see other folks experienced the same issues...this is not an isolated situation. read more

"Honesty & Integrity First & Foremost" is NOT what I have experienced with Jen at The Book Balancer. I experienced unethical billing practices from The Book Balancer. JMC had her filing TPT's and other small clerical work. At the time I did not know how to file our company's TPT's. She charged JMC several and multiple times for one hour of work when many of the TPT filings required zero tax liability. I learned after the fact that the form required at most 10-15 minutes of work but she billed for a full hour several times over totaling several hundreds of dollars in unethical billing practices. Moral of the story, know how to do your paperwork before sourcing it out. Jen you had an opportunity to answer my certified letter and documents and the BBB complaint. Shame on you...Jen at The Book Balancer! Ramona G. read more

Perhaps the most unprofessional organization I've ever done business with in my life. As a doctor of Chiropractic I went to Jennifer to do my personal income taxes upon referral by a neighbor. I had a bad past experience with H&R Block and was looking for someone to get our taxes back on track. She assured me she was the right person for the job. Well after the IRS rejected our taxes based on her faulty submission she assured me it was just scare tactics and not to worry. I took her word and let her resubmit and again they rejected them and I ended up paying a huge sum of money and also had to deal with stress of the IRS breathing down my neck. I corresponded with Jennifer by text message multiple times and at one point she just quit replying to me and refused to take my calls. I finally went in to the office to get all my tax documents back and speak with her and she refused to see me. She told her receptionist to inform me she would be in meetings all day even though she was clearly not busy and just avoiding me. This was several years ago and I've since found a great CPA but I'll never forget how I was treated by Jennifer Clennan. Do yourself a favor a avoid this person for taxes! read more

I have been using the Book Balancer Services for over a year now. I had zero knowledge in QuickBook and taxes in general, they were very patience and accommodating. Highly recommended!! read more

I am happy to review of this unethical business. DO NOT let them handle your business bookkeeping if you care about accurate and ethical advice and tax returns. Not only do they make mistakes regularly and routinely, they bill for things they haven't done. They just billed a business credit card without authorization (fraudulent)... unbelievable to say the least. Jennifer has her staff try to collect on bills (via harassment) that are inaccurate. When we ask to speak to her she won't talk/isn't available, and doesn't respond to email questions. What a sham of a business. It has cost thousands of dollars and many months for a 'real' accountant to straighten out her mess. The Book Balancer website has been 'black' for months... why are they hiding? WARNING: If you value your business... don't use Jennifer's business. I give Shelly House 5 stars for being honest about Jennifer and her organization in her review of 2 years ago... thanks Shelly! I find the response from the owner to be BS, as they do, indeed, use credit card info that they have on file to charge without authorization... it just happened to us (June 2017). They do, in fact, lie about completing things... they charge for items that were not done. The employee turnover is ridiculous... there are new employees every month... don't know if they are just leaving or getting fired... they are ALL INCOMPETENT. I have gone in to pick up a tax return and the new girl at the front counter went through a file behind the desk and handed me papers full of our company data... and she had no clue who I was. This information should never have been stored in an open file by the front desk and this person had no reason to see it, much less hand it to someone coming through the door (she didn't even know what a tax return looked like). The lack of communication from Jennifer is appalling. To those of you who have not yet encountered horrible experiences with her/Book Balancer, count your blessings and hope that your luck holds. Hopefully she won't screw up your returns and cost you thousands of $. I think you get my drift... BEWARE! One positive point is that Jennifer has a nice giggle personality... but that just distracts you from getting honest and accurate information... don't be fooled! Terri Noll read more

The Book Balancer is extremely unethically with personal tax returns. They steal your money, are unsure of what they are doing, and way over charge. I had just moved into the Arizona area and had received a flyer on my apartment door and thought, let me use a local business. WRONG. It took almost two months for my taxes to be filed, and 9 months later, I still have not received my tax returns. Jennifer was great in helping me when I went to her with my concerns, however, she charged me $254 to fix these mistakes. When I sent an email about being an unsatisfied customer, one of her employees responded to me by accident, instead of forwarding it on to whom ever she was trying to forward it to, bad mouthing me!!! read more