Bonsai Reviews: 4.4/5 — Solid Choice

I don't like to overcomplicate things, so having my client CRM, contracts, proposals, invoices, banking, tax tracking, etc is HUGE in allowing me to run my freelance business with less stress.

ACH payments take way too long to process through. I can't wait that long for my money.

Having all my admin tasks in one place is hugely beneficial to me.

Bonsai has helped me streamline my business with contracts, proposals, time tracking and invoicing all in one spot. Automated invoice reminders are also super helpful. The user interface is very clean and easy to use, and the customisation options for branding are great.

I wish Bonsai had support for Australian banks as I need to add all my expenses manually, which is very time-consuming. Also, every time I download my invoice reports it downloads all instead of a date range. The pricing is quite expensive for Australian users due to the exchange rate.

Contracts, proposals and invoices all in the same spot. It has streamlined my process and made everything easy to access. Time tracking would be helpful if there was an option to track towards a project that has already been paid (ie. to see the hourly rate of the project), in addition to billable ones.

The ability to create clients, projects within those, attaching contracts/invoices/timetracking to it. Ability to automate invoicing, reminders. Transparency with invoicing fees for clients. And track invoicing payment - auto and manually.

How the features are tired in membership models. I really needed one feature from the "pro" and now paying $$$ with a suite of features I dont use

Connecting contracts to invoices to timetracking, at a client, project and aggregate level

I love the simplicity of the interface & that I can have my invoices & contracts

Nothing so far! I really like the software

Solving the problem of using too many different softwares

The app is particularly interesting because it enables you to collaborate with others, manage your time spent on projects, and create and track assignments. The ability to send invoices with a variety of options and accept payments online via various payment services is another fantastic feature.

The premium packages can be rather expensive, therefore it would be useful if there was a way to customise the programme to meet specific needs. Another drawback for me is the lack of a mobile app. Additionally, Baonsais customer service has consistently disappointed me, which is frustrating given that it is a technology company.

when managing tasks and keeping track of billable hours. Ive been able to focus more on my actual work because of it. I and other small business owners have found the resources offered by Bonsai to be quite helpful. Bonsai is a superb business management solution that makes workflow for independent contractors, business owners, and small business owners much simpler. For individuals who value productivity and a smooth workflow, despite its somewhat higher price tag, it is a worthy investment due to the capabilities and resources it provides.

The time tracking has been great for providing detailed timesheets to clients.

The only thing I would change would be all the different add-ons.

I've used Bonsai for creating contracts, invoices, and tracking time for clients. It's a great one-stop shop.

The interface is great, simple and easy to use. Great tracking system and everything is customizable, which is appreciated. Onboarding was simple and supported past data!

Would like the contracts to have easier editable fields like docusign, for example. Would also like a way to upload contracts done outside of bonsai and still be connected to clients profile. Also would like to be able to filter out paid invoices when viewing all.

Invoicing - Benefits include tracking all invoices tied to specific customers on an ongoing basis and having them be connected to the contracts. Also super easy system to track all expenses.

Bonsai is so complete when it comes to all the project management, invoicing, and accounting. I love to use it and have an overview of my performance all at once. It's a powerful tool I recommend to everyone.

Sometimes it can be a bit hard to edit the information the way I would like to, but it remains marginal.

Bonsai is helping me get the work done faster. Communication with the client when it comes to proposals, contracts, and invoicing is so much easier. I love the fact that you can automatize some tasks. And one of the great benefits is that it looks professional all the way.

It is an all-around tool designed for freelancers! I loved all the of the great features, like billing & document creation but most importantly time tracking. Did I mention the beautiful UI!! I needed something fast and also had the option to be a desktop app. So far so good with Bonsai.

I didn't like the lack of language support. I work with clients all over the world.

Tracking the time for various clients.

Bonsai has helped me organise my work as a freelancer very well, I used to lose track of hours worked and could not find my invoices, now i is all in the same place

I don't like using the web interface, but I enjoy using it on the iphone app as well as using the integrated mac time tracker. I think there is no need for so many options.

Organising my work as a freelancer

Easy and Effective system for sending invoices and contracts.

I dislike the charges for recieving money sooner.

One stop shop for accounting, contracts and invoices.

The user experience is simply and straight forward even for a new business owner``

Nothing is least helpful. There are no downsides.

I can keep track of my client contacts,scheduling, and billing in one place,which helps me stay organized.

great for scheduling, CRM, invoicing, quotes/proposals, collecting payments and handling bookkeeping. It is my one-stop-sho for my small project management business. Highly recommended. High ease of use, easier implementation, fast and timely customer support as I use the app every day for my business needs.

They really need to improve the tasks and workflow of project such that the cliet portal becomes a dashboard for clients to see progress and the over timeline like in Notion. I really am at the end of my rope with asking for this essential update.

It is my CRM, client intake tool, time tracker, invoicing tool, scheduler too, proposal creator - all in one. I am captivated by user-friendly interface, it literally calms me while i am working to see the vegetative leaves. I dont have the time, energy or budget to get anything fancier. I tried 17Hats, but the interface was so problematic, I left.

I like its usability and functionality. Very easy to use and streamlined.

I don't dislike anything about the product at the moment.

Bonsai is helping the business with its contract management, billing and invoice management for the business. Ho

Their customer service team is responsive, helpful, patient, and kind. They always respond to queries within a day or two. It's also easy to use.

It took a couple of weeks to get my Bonsai payments coming through. New account holders should expect an initial delay while the credit card company is verifying their bank information.

It tracks all financial information for my business in one place. Invoice management is simple and straightforward for all.

Very user-friendly while still robust software for small businesses. It makes my business look more professional towards my clients. I love the fact that I can send a proposal, contract and invoice from within one platform. Automatic invoice reminders and their management are a great feature as well.

I think there is still room for improvement. If it could integrate with QuickBooks Self-Employed version it would be a massive bonus going forward. Also, being constantly logged out from the portal on my desktop or mobile app is a little bit annoying.

As a self-employed person I have a need for a business management tool that does it all for me. From managing clients, proposals, contracts and billing, all under one roof. Brilliant. Room for improvement though.

Bonsai's time tracking features, invoicing, and contracts are all set up in mostly user-friendly ways that make it easy for me -- a freelance copywriter -- to manage my hectic work schedule and invoicing. I can toggle between multiple projects at once with the platform, which is great.

There have been some glitches while using - for instance, my hours once stopped showing up past a certain date, which - had I not noticed - would have lost me money during invoicing. The good news is that I reached out to customer service and they had the glitch fixed promptly. Another downside is that there is not an easy way (that I've found) to keep track of retainer payments. Several of my clients pay me monthly and then it's helpful for me to track time spent, without having to input a dollar amount on the invoice. I've found a way to make it work, but it's not intuitive on the platform. There are a few features of Bonsai that require personal workarounds like these.

Manages my invoices; allows me to track time easily; keeps track of my hours across multiple projects; keeps track of expenses; allows clients to pay me through the portal if they choose; sends auto reminders to clients on my behalf.

easy to use, with a clean and simple interface that makes it easy for users to access the tools they need and it offers a range of templates and customization options, allowing users to tailor their proposals and contracts to their specific needs.

currently does not offer a mobile app, which may be a drawback for users who need to manage their work on the go.

provides a suite of tools and services that help me to manage their work more efficiently, from invoicing and time tracking to proposals and project management.

I like that I can have everything I need for my clients in one place. Their contract, proposal, and invoice is organized, and they can pay directly through the platform. Plus, I can track my time if I have a project that goes over the alloted number of initially-quoted hours.

Sometimes the editing is difficult for the contracts and I wish it were easier to create templates that aren't connected to a client's account.

I'm solving the problem of sending a million pdfs or Google sheets with this invoice and that proposal and this contract. It looks more organized and professional and sets the tone I want my business to have.

We like the contracts converted into an invoice and being able to accept credit card payments. The free resources were amazing as well for small business owners.

Just didn't quite meet our business needs. We need custom invoices and contracts. We do not have just one set of documents, instead they need to be filled out per project.

Bonsai has impressive templates that are useful and relevant to almost any industry. We've been able to create proposals and track time per project so that we can accurately quote new clients.

I loved the gorgeous UI/UX of the platform and everything was pretty easy to use and setup. They provide a lot of templates too.

They only reason I had started using another invoicing solution was because, at the time, I believe they only allowed Stripe and/or PayPal (I personally don't prefer using Stripe for a couple of reasons). For my business, I needed immediate payment capture so that I could budget & initiate my contracted designers for projects. And I don't like using PayPal as that looks less professional. They were soon to rollout their very own Bonsai Payments feature, which I waited a little bit for, but after a couple of months of waiting I then made the decision to switch my invoicing to Square (and haven't looked back since).

With Bonsai, I was able to send beautiful and professional invoices to my client. Presentation is everything to me, and Bonsai definitely checks the box on that.

I love this platform as I like to keep track of how long a project is taking me to complete

I don't dislike anything about this software, it's great!

To keep accurate time of project timeline as well as to manage projects

Bonsai is great at saving you time and is perfect for a newbie freelancer who might not have a great contract or isn't familiar with invoicing and proposals. Bonsai puts everything together for you and all your really need to do is pop in your logo or add some information to their ready to go contract templates. The interface is really sleek and the program is easy to use for beginners or more experienced business owners. The flexibility of their plans is great, they have a free option if you want to give it a try or don't need a lot of flashy features. The team seems quick to add new features and listen to what people want.

My major dislike with Bonsai was the fact that I couldn't customize the contract templates they provide. BUT they have changed that and you can now use a blank contract. I do think Bonsai is a bit constricting and you don't have quite as much control as something like Dubsado which let's you build complex forms and workflows. Bonsai excels at simplicity but if you need advanced features you won't find them here.

Having all your business things in one place is such a life saver and will radically change your business. Being able to send contracts, invoices, proposals, track time, and projects that can all work together and speak together on one website is amazing.

Great UI easy to use created a proposal quickly

they do not send you a receipt and keep charging you every month and then did not refund me initially and I had to fight to get my refund.

Making proposals easy

Conceptually it's very strong. It has all the features to run a creative business, unfortuantely I have a laundry list of problems.

Disappointed so far.... I'm having quite a bit of trouble, but I'm staying the course for now because conceptually this app fits my needs, but here's my problems so far: 1. Technical and Formatting Issues: • Inability to adjust certain images within the title page; automatic downscaling of images. • Images on mobile devices are cut off, stretched, or contorted. • Issues with image stretching and formatting in proposals, affecting visual quality. • Images often appear pixelated or of low quality when uploaded to the platform. 2. Customer Service and Support: • Slow response times (1-3 days) from customer service. • Partial or inadequate addressing of issues raised. • Unresponsive telephone support; calls go unanswered. 3. Billing and Pricing Transparency: • Double charged within a 30-day period. • Unclear additional charges for adding a partner and activating features. • Forced payment for account feature access. 4. Platform Functionality and Management: • Sent proposals don’t automatically move to the ‘sent’ column; manual adjustment required. • The cell phone app lacks editing capabilities and clarity on useful features. • No straightforward testing process for proposals; must send to self for testing. • Resets in white glove branding feature after account adjustments, leading to unintentional branding presence. • Inadequate preview functionality; does not fully display client’s view. 5. Delivery and Tracking: • Partial delivery of proposals to recipients. • Unreliable read receipt functionality. • No confirmation of proposal receipt or review by recipients.

Nothing yet.

I love their contracts. They are super easy to set up, flexible to edit, and quite a joy to work with. It's very nice to get a contract sent to a client in such a streamlined fashion, and not have to spend a bunch of time writing the entire contract from scratch (or copy pasting and editing from elsewhere) and then figuring out a service to use to upload and send it just for signature. Kudos to Bonsai for that part of the software.

Recently, I encountered what I would call a pretty critical bug with a contract. The support was very helpful in trying to resolve the issue for me. However, they couldn't resolve the issue. The uploaded SoW on the contract is, when you click the link, completely inaccessible to myself and the client. As a result, I do not trust the software at this point. They also have very aggressive auto reminder and auto invoicing settings, and sometimes I don't want that because invoicing and/or payments are already handled outside Bonsai. It seems like they're really trying to push you to doing everything inside of Bonsai. There have also been numerous bugs and frustrations that have taken a lot more time than I would've desired, such as: 1. My profile picture is still not correct and I can't edit it on one page. 2. It felt like a ridiculous process to change my email address (required me to submit sensitive personal life information documents). 3. It was very difficult to add a partner account for someone that had previously had a Bonsai account. Anyways, I can't recommend them at this point. The bug with the SoW not being accessible on an already signed contract is critical, and the fact that they couldn't fix it is even more concerning. If you're doing legally binding contracting software and a SoW isn't accessible then that's a serious issue.

Bonsai streamlines the creation of contracts for our company and getting those contracts signed. We occasionally use the invoicing features as well. It benefits us by speeding up the contract process and streamlining, in some cases, parts of the invoicing feature.

Nothing. I liked nothing. They have the worst customer service, and I never received my funds.

If I could leave a ZERO star, I would. This is the absolute worst company I've ever stumbled across. I am a freelance social media manager and I was attempting to make invoices for my clients through Hello Bonsai. The invoice sending was successful, and my clients were able to easily pay. At that point, Hello Bonsai decided not to release the funds to me. Instead they continued to ask extremely vague questions about my business that led to them saying I couldn't provide them with enough information to validate my business. Vague questions where it was impossible for me to provide a suitable answer. So my belief is that this was intentional to keep the funds for themselves. I even went to the trouble of having an executive, from the company that hired me, write and sign a letter stating they hired me to do their social media management. That still wasn't good enough for them to release my funds. I also provided website addresses, Instagram handles, marketing strategies from private meetings within my company, and much much more. None of it was "apparently" sufficient. Additionally, multiple people were responding to the support messages from Bonsai, and none of them were in the loop with each other on what I had already provided. So I went in circles and provided duplicate information to Bonsai at least 5 separate times. All of which was never "enough info". I cannot stress enough that no one should ever ever use this company. They are FRAUD and they intentionally make it impossible to get your funds. I'm hoping that my client gets refunded, but who knows if that will happen. I opened an online investigation of their website and services, so maybe soon they will be shut down for good. BEWARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They are not solving any issues. I ended up having to cancel my account completely and ask them to refund my client, which I'm hoping they actually do. I have very little faith in that, however. An investigation has been launched against Hello Bonsai.

Organization and that is it. I can get that with Design Files and other platforms and do not have to go through this inconvenient process of my funds being on hold.

Bonsai customer support is HORRIBLE and I honestly feel that it may even be AI generated because the responses does not resolve issues at hand or even the attempts to make customer happy are a fail. I also am disappointed with how payments are not processed in a timely manner even after showing proof of customer business to business relationship. I do not like not being able to talk to a live human to get the support that is needed. It is now October 9, 2023 and my funds have been on hold since October 5, 2023. This has caused a GRAVE inconvenience for me and my business and the issue is still not resovled even with my client attached to the emails. Update: After submitting all legal documents such as signed contract, floor plans and even the rules and covenant from the property of the projects I was hired to do, Bonsai wanted my clients facebook page to confirm my business with her even though she was attached on the emails, this is the response I recieve: Hello Sharina, Thanks for your patience here. We have re-enabled your account. Your payout is set to be released on Oct 17, per your Limited Payout schedule (7 days from date of payment). Your account was subject to a manual review process. I regret to inform you that we will not be able to provide you with our Bonsai Payments offering going forward. Your Bonsai Payments account is disabled, but you can keep using Stripe Payments or Paypal to collect payments from your customers. You will need to turn off your Bonsai Payments account first by clicking "deactivate acccount Thanks for your understanding, Dorian Bonsai Operations Dorian Bonsai Notice my client paid on October 5th and funds have been debitied from her account, it is now October 10th as of date of this review. Not only have they disable my account but they are not releasing my funds until October 17th. This is what AI Generated customer support is dong to LIVE PEOPLE! UTTERLY DISGUSTED AND THIS DORIAN IS INHUMANE!!!

They have not solved the problem but suggest they offer a refund which will delay the process of my funds being held up longer since the client states the funds have already been taken out through her bank.

- Customizable invoicing - Time tracking works well - It works really well if you don't have any employees (I have 5+ subcontractors and billing is a NIGHTMARE) - Integrates to Quickbooks Online

- No way to call them or get a hold of them - Very easy for clients to accidentally "double pay" - Subcontractor functionality does not make any sense, you can't review before your subs bill you how much they have been working - I am a credible agency but they blocked over $20k from client payments going to my bank account for ~2 weeks. Extremely frustrating and the team there doesn't seem to care at all. - Cannot be used for project management or be integrated with Monday.com.

Time tracking is nice with Bonsai because it syncs directly to the invoice to offer transparent billing to clients. Problems it's NOT solving is getting paid on time.

Front end seemed great, was so pleased to set everything up and get rolling. Then the wheels started to come off.

My first transfer of funds from my client was held by Bonsai for 7 biz days. (ok I guess...it's in their policy) Then my next TWO client transfers were held up for an additional 7 BUSINESS DAYS before being deposited to me. (I do not as of writing this have access to the $$. I have set everything up correctly in my account, set up biz banking, been verified, etc. This is fraud and equivalent to what the large banks have done. Floating in $$ and collecting interest. I tried to bring this up with customer service twice and was given a generic, unhelpful response. Each response took almost a full day. In addition, my banking card never arrived and I was never able to set up my external account with micro deposits. I finally connected it today via a diff method. All in all I've had a TERRIBLE experience and my funds are still held hostage by Bonsai. Just awful. Buyer beware.

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