Smart Clerk Reviews

Bought this on a whim, and it was perfect timing! My deadline after I extended my US tax return was fast approaching and I'm so glad I had this. I hate the complexity of quickbooks but love the simplicity of this. Interface is intuitive, I was able to dive in and it really helped me make my P&L statements. Probably saved me HOURS of work. I loved the ability to easily drill into expenses by filtering accounts, and vendor name. Would love to have more granular control to specify custom dates etc. So far so good!

It doesn't offer nearly the level of complexity that something like Quickbooks does, and that's what I love about it. It was as simple as uploading our statements and everything was readily available. Within minutes of creating my account I had useful information about our business financials to look at. And it's super easy to customize the categories so that you can track your expenses in a way that makes sense for you rather than trying to fit everything in pre-defined options.

I'm not looking for complicated financial reporting, but something that I can quickly get into, find the information I need for decision making, and get back to business. This is exactly what Smart Clerk lets me do and it will only take a few minutes of work each month.

The Good:
- Accurate OCR / Importing of PDFs despite different formats for different account types / sources.
- Excellent UI/UX
- Easy to use
- Friendly, responsive support - despite being in the middle of an app sumo campaign (which has to be quite taxing from a support perspective).

The Less Good:
- Not much better use of AI than we had with LessAccounting. It asks when we categorize something if we want similar transactions categorized the same way, but it only takes the AI assumed company name into account, not the original transaction name. If we could tell it we want original transactions with X text within as category 1 and then Y text as category 2, that would be superb, but no such option. It's frustrating that I can see data that *would* improve the AI automation, but I can't prompt it to use it.
- OCR / Parsing PDFs is a bit slow. 5-10 minutes for a month of transactions, that said - its accuracy is excellent.
- Can't import historical data from other accounting software due to lack of CSV support - would have to import each prior month and re-categorize the last 8 months of data again (since we already did it in our previous software).

Overall: solid product, and has room for improvement, but I'm confident the team behind it will make the changes/steps necessary for said improvement.

It's worth investmenting if your are a solopreneur, small business, or an accountant.

Read my full review here:

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Pros:

Time Efficiency:
Significantly cuts down the time required for preparing financial documents, making it especially valuable for small businesses.

User-Friendly Design:
Features an intuitive drag-and-drop interface that requires no training, enabling quick setup and adoption.

High Accuracy:
Ensures reliable data extraction with minimal need for manual adjustments.

Secure Data Handling:
Uses advanced encryption protocols to safeguard information and comply with global security standards.

Cost-Effective:
Saves money compared to hiring bookkeepers or using costly software.

Cons:

Minor Glitches:
Occasional issues with real-time updates or complex reconciliations.

Limited Integrations:
Works with Excel/CSV but lacks direct connections to many accounting platforms.

Basic Support Options:
Some users want instant help like chatbots instead of just ticket/email support.

Upload Limits:
Certain plans restrict how many statements you can process, with extra fees for large historical data.

As a CPA we often have to go back to basics for some clients and build their books from bank statements especially if they are a late filer or their bank will not link directly. I was impressed with how easy it was to upload a whole years worth of bank statements for a client in just one upload, and how quickly it populated a Profit and loss report for all 12 months. The 1st go I just uploaded from TD Bank and the statements had copies of all the cleared checks on the last few pages of each statement. The wish list would be if it could have read the vendor name from the cancelled check. The unfortunate reality is it duplicated every check even though it correctly recorded the amount and check number. My next attempt will be to upload the statements without the cancelled chack pages and see if it avoids the duplicates. I will let you know.