Intouch Accounting Avis 607

What happend intouch? You were great for many years and the last year has just seen an abysmal decline in service levels. Such a pity to see a great compny go down the tubes

Let down again by push button accountants. Promises not kept.
Let down after leaving them.

I've been with InTouch Accounting for over 5 years and there has definitely been a decline in their services over the last 6 months or so. My previous accountant Frances B was very switched on making sure I got regular reminders for anything due to HMRC and promptly responded to any of my email queries and made my business feel valued as a client. Since it's been taken over by Brooksons I no longer receive those reminders, my accountant rarely responds to my email queries or requests, they've processed my payslips incorrectly and my last Vat submission was late so I am likely to receive a penalty. It's such a shame as I viewed InTouch Accounting was one of the top Accounting services in the UK, now it's on a steep decline.

Sad to say this, but time for my business to use another Accounting provider ...

I have been using this service since January 2023. In the beginning it was quite good, my accountant (Hannah) was available and knowledgable. Since the middle of last year the service has got worse on a declining basis. I have had 2 new accountants, the latest of which does not reply to my emails and rarely can I reach them by phone. The new system is full of glitches and staff don't seem to know how it works properly. I would not recommend this Company - better to have a smaller and more personal accounting firm.

This company have been dealing with my account since November 23. In July 2024, I asked my accountant to register my company for VAT as I was nearing the threshold. I asked for the company registration date for VAT to be the 6th August 2024. He agreed and a few weeks later, I received a letter from the HMRC ado using me I had been registered for VAT from November 23. That was not what I asked for and now I was due to pay VAT from November 2023 even though I had not been invoicing VAT to my customers until after the 6th August 2024.

My accountant suggested I go back to all my customers and tell them they now needed to pay VAT retrospectively. Yes, and I will be out of business within a month having lost all my clients and received a number of complaints.

I advised I was not doing that. I then got told well I could pay the VAT due. That’s not happening either as why should my company be paying VAT from November 2023-August 2024 because the accountants have messed up. The bill would be around £20K

The next suggestion was to just invoice VAT from August and leave the VAT registration date as November and hope the HMRC never do a VAT inspection. Yeah right, that’s illegal!

I have all this in writing from the accountant. Needless to say, I am now asking a solicitor to claim the outstanding VAT due from November 23- August 24 from this company as they have left me in a huge financial problem.

In addition, I was given the incorrect advice over what VAT scheme to go on and my accountant never responded to any emails.

This company promises the earth to onboard you and then can’t be bothered to deal with your accounts.

Avoid like a plague. The service has really gone downhill. Was with these guys since 2019 but had enough of paying for a service I was not receiving

Since having In Touch as our accountants have been totally blown away by their assistance and keeping me right. Nothing you need help with is too much trouble. Very efficient . Need to mention Stephen Dando who is our go to accountant and he is a superstar . Moving to In Touch for our company has been a great move. Would thoroughly recommend

Waste of money. The guy selling their services was good, but the accountant was just sending automated emails.

I’ve been a a customer for 5 years and have seen a significant decline since the Brookson takeover. Migrating to a new platform and having an accountancy team who haven’t replied to any of my messages since 7th July is the last straw for me. My filing with companies house is late, I’ve got a penalty point from HMRC and nobody is responding when I ask for a call to resolve it.

Intouch went badly downhill after the Brookson acquisition: staff turnover, slow communication, etc. What killed it for me was the forced migration to the Brookson One platform. My migrated data contained material errors, and the new platform (at the point of migration) did not support issuing dividends, unlike the old platform.

Just use FreeAgent and do your submissions yourself. I was able to migrate mid-year from Intouch to FreeAgent and submit my first VAT and PAYE return with no help from an accountant. I just started the year over.

Very quick, helpful and responsive service! Took time to answer my
questions.

After nearly three years with Intouch, I’m extremely disappointed with how things have deteriorated this year. Communication has become a major issue—I’ve had to send multiple chasers, and despite that, I’m still waiting for a reply. It’s now August, and some issues have been unresolved since February. Six months later, I’m still in the dark and dealing with the fallout from their inaction.

One of the most pressing issues is the recalculation of an employee’s salary. This wasn’t completed by pay day, leading to my employee being paid incorrectly—a mistake that has caused significant stress. Even now, the recalculation still hasn’t been done, and we’re well past the deadline.

Adding to the frustration, our annual tax return was filed late, resulting in a penalty from HMRC. With all these serious problems, the lack of response and accountability from the firm is simply unacceptable.

The most ironic part? As soon as I started looking for another accountant, they were the first to contact me—suddenly eager to help and surprised that I wanted to leave. Where was this responsiveness when I actually needed it?

If you’re looking for an accounting firm that values your time and business, avoid Intouch. Their neglect, poor communication, and failure to resolve critical issues have caused significant harm to my business. I would not recommend them to anyone.

I've just found out that Intouch have shortened my company's financial year end by a day without my permission or knowledge, just so that they could extend the filing deadline by 3 months. They always leave my accounts to the last minute despite having all the information for 9 months prior to the deadline. This is not acceptable and anyone who's with them should check that they haven't done it to you too.

The final straw was the migration over to their new portal as many previous reviews have mentioned. The data was all wrong and no-one responded to my emails or calls. I decided to move over to my new accountants Clarity Tax who had unpick all the mess that Intouch had done but its probably the best move I have made.

Like a lot of other negative reviews over the past few months; i have been a customer with Intouch for over ten years and have decided to leave.
I have lost confidence over the past year in the company being able to manage my accounts; multiple chasers on simple queries go unresolved, small errors in accounts, last minute filings, all of which i feel is a direct result of the takeover by Brookson.
The migration to a new portal was the deciding factor to leave - which is unusable; and does not provide very basic information.
I have empathy for the staff, who try to do their best, however the Management need to step in quickly, otherwise Intouch will be no-more...

After three days of informing them i am leaving; not one person has been in contact to discuss my issues...

UPDATE 21st AUGUST
I received an e mail from the Customer Service team, wishing to retain my business, advising me that improvements have been put into place - i am awaiting a response on what improvements have been made in such a short period of time.
I am also seeking confirmation that my year end accounts will be created at the earliest opportunity for my review.

UPDATE 3rd SEPTEMBER
No response from the Customer Service team.
No response on when my year end accounts and VAT will be available to review, despite asking weeks ago.

This is a summary from a real time account of my interactions with Intouch/Brookson between July 6th to August 5th 2024.

Prior to that, I have been an Intouch/Brookson customer for over 5 years. As of next month, I will no longer be a customer of Intouch/Brookson.

Summary of issues:

1. Complete lack of contact & appalling customer service until I eventually escalated to Director level. Half of the time they do not answer the phones for the ‘existing client’ line & they have not been responding to emails despite pending submission deadlines.

2. Their entire senior management team was apparently on holiday (as explained to me by one of their staff when I requested escalation) the week following the migration. Awesome timing & a real sense of ownership… well done Intouch.

3. The majority of my accounting data was missing from the new portal & took several weeks to fix whilst my VAT return deadline was looming. I was also getting alerts saying I was overdue uploads for my year end. This was entirely due to their issues.

4. The majority of my data which was present was incorrect or incomplete.

5. Their transaction section under ‘Bank’ was duplicating entries & calculating them against the total when sorted by date. This is apparently a bug they weren’t aware of.

6. Intouch provided incorrect information on multiple occasions in relation to my data & the reason it was incorrect. If I had accepted these explanations my accounts would have been left in a complete mess & my VAT return would not have been submitted on time.

7. Buggy portal which was displaying the underlying cell formulas instead of the data.

8. An odd restriction where under certain sections I'm told that the system can only hold/display 300 entries, meaning you cannot see all of your data.

9. My VAT return was blindly calculated with most of my data missing despite me reporting it repeatedly for 3 weeks. The return was revised with an inconsistent breakdown document, only to have the first incorrect VAT return submitted to HMRC without me knowing & no notification sent advising payment.

10. Following the incorrect filing of my VAT return, they managed to attach another client's document to my portal which included their name & address. When I reported it they had to raise it with their GDPR team. This took several days to remove & replace with my actual document.

11. Awful automated invoicing system based on bank statement uploads. This cannot use your own invoice number system which creates problems for contractors aligning two systems.

11. STILL NO MFA ON THEIR PORTAL! Considering that Brookson were the victim of a massive ransomware attack in 2021, they don’t appear to have learned anything about security & protecting their clients data. How can a company, especially financial, not have this essential security feature in 2024? It’s standard.

12. An expectation to use 'Open Banking' on a site which has no MFA is literally ridiculous.

I will be leaving Intouch & Brookson as soon as I receive the refund I’ve been promised for past month’s work they didn’t do. Also when they fix the remainder of my messed up accounting data. Following that, they’ll be receiving a request for my auth codes.

In summary, this organisation in its current state or under its current management team cannot be trusted to manage my accounts. They can’t even get the basics right like answering calls/emails, correctly calculating VAT, securing their portal properly & not passing your data to someone else.

For the record, I do not blame the staff for this. It seems like they're extremely stretched. Accountability sits with management IMO for poor decisions & planning around the migration.

If you have just joined I would seriously reconsider your options unless this company commits to some serious changes.

UPDATE: To close on a positive note... Wendy Pilkington has been absolutely amazing throughout my time with InTouch, even during my transition to another company. Wendy has always gotten back to me & resolved queries where other staff members have failed. She's proactive, helpful & passionate about her work. The rest of the company should be taking a leaf from her book.

The transition from the old intouch to Brookson is diabolical. I do not want to be sold something. I just want an accountancy service.

Some migrated line items were tagged as migration (good), another large one was not (what is it? - which I eventually found out - even the guy on support could not figure it out until I figured it out, then I was informed what I had stated - que!).

The bank balance was fine (easy as they just import it from the bank), the money available was completely wrong.

No way to enter dividends. Slow responses to questions.

Last minute accounts submissions - dreadful as there has always been something incorrect.

Entering expenses is beyond a joke - it does not work properly.

Mileage - make sure you pick the right one or you will be in for a shock.

I am now actively searching for a new provider. After probably 10 years of service - the new Portal and responsiveness is the last straw. And apprently no customer at Brookson had the need to enter dividends and the new Portal has been used for years without any problem whatsoever. At least, that is what I was told. Feels like I was being gaslit. Well. On yer bike.

I have been an Intouch customer for about 6 years, and have seen a steady decline in customer service, to the point where emails are not answered, and calls made just ring out.

The poorly managed transition to the terrible new connect system - incorrect numbers, no support, awful user experience - is now the last straw and I will be looking to transition.

Although having ready some of the other reviews here, I am worried that will be far from a straight forward process.

Please avoid

I've been a loyal customer for around eight years and recently their service has been abysmal. My "personal accountant" (J. Bussey) hasn't responded to emails for the past two weeks, despite my flagging them as urgent. He doesn't answer my calls, and their switchboard just rings, or I get someone with no knowledge of my company with a bad attitude. I've also CC'ed their 'enquiries' email address for existing customers and have received no reply there, either.

I've asked to a raise a complaint and just get ignored. In the past months I've received hurried one sentence replies to my questions. Most recently, I discovered IntouchAccounting failed to enter my address correctly when acting on my behalf in the self-assessment portal. They omitted the first line of the address and got the postcode wrong which shows no care or attention and is frankly negligent. I've never given them an incorrect address. I hurriedly had to pay a large tax bill last week with very little notice (if only I'd received the dozens of letters they probably sent). Had I known earlier, I wouldn't have had to pay hundreds of pounds of interest they added, too, at 7.75% interest for the past 6 months. This company is supposed to make your finances easier but they've just caused me a hugely stressful problem.

Finally, their new portal is terrible. They've recently migrated to some clunky web portal. It's ugly and a UX disaster. On top of that, the numbers seem wrong which adds to my overwhelming anxiety that I'll be fined, or worse. I'll be switching away from Intouch as soon as I can and would strongly encourage anyone to think twice before using this terrible company. If they had any decency they'd reimburse me for their negligence and profusely apologise, but I expect I'll just continue to be ignored. Vote with your feet and stay away.

Like a lot of reviews on this site I have been a loyal customer for many years and worked out I had spent more than £10k with Intouch. My problems started before the Brookson takeover and then have only got worse. I've been through about 8 accountants, most of which left in the last 2 years. Now I never get a reply to emails and always have to ring. I'm promised that stuff will get done and then when the deadline comes it does not happen. I should not be chasing them so I don't get fined!!
They have known I'm going into hospital for a big op for 3 months and were very nice to start, but only did the most basic tasks on the list I gave them. Now it is really close to my op and I'm going to have to do all the hard tasks myself. This is not what my family or I need at this difficult time, which is stressful enough.
I don't blame the individual accountants, who are always helpful and seem to have the best intentions. It is the management who have not noticed their staff are overwhelmed and cannot cope.
I have rung them again today (Tuesday), chasing work they promised to complete by Friday. I sent emails on Thursday, Friday and Monday with no reply. Let's see if my accountant will even reply. I'll update this review whatever happens.

Been working with InTouch for many years across multiple companies and several accountants. Stephen Dando stands out in particular. Highly recommended!