Oh dear, where to start.

I joined Mazuma after they acquired my previous accountant, TI Accountancy, with whom I had worked for more than 10 years. Initially, things continued relatively smoothly, but after my two main contacts from TI left and everything was fully handed over to the Mazuma team, the experience deteriorated significantly.

One of the biggest changes was losing the ability to communicate directly with a dedicated accountant by email. Documents could still be submitted via the dedicated MazApp email address, which was generally fine and at least allowed me to track what I had sent.

The bigger challenge was communication itself. Any queries or follow-ups had to be raised through their ticketing system rather than normal email conversations. This meant there was no straightforward email trail to track ongoing discussions or easily follow up on responses. In many cases, tickets were either ignored entirely or answered weeks later.

At the beginning, I genuinely tried to make the system work and provided constructive feedback. I suggested that ticket conversations should also generate email copies so clients could properly track discussions and follow up using ticket numbers. I raised this several times and even attended a feedback call, yet nobody followed up or implemented anything.

Another major issue was bookkeeping frequency. With TI Accountancy, my QuickBooks was updated weekly, which was important for managing cash flow and tracking payments. After moving to Mazuma, I was effectively forced onto monthly updates. When I questioned this, I was asked: “Why do you need your books updated once a week?” I even offered to pay extra for weekly updates, but was simply told it was not possible.

On top of that, there were repeated bookkeeping errors month after month — things like salaries not being added or paid invoices not being marked as paid in QuickBooks. I ended up spending a huge amount of time chasing updates and corrections, and even relatively simple fixes could take days.

I am now in my final week with Mazuma across my three companies and honestly look forward to closing this chapter. Unfortunately, even leaving has not been straightforward, as my new accountant has struggled for weeks to get hold of them to arrange a proper handover.

Looking back, I genuinely question the purpose of acquiring another accounting firm only to provide a worse service to its long-standing clients. With everyone effectively on 30 days’ notice, if clients keep leaving — as I am — the investment quickly becomes meaningless.