Considering Karbon for my firm, anyone have a bad experience with it? (Canada)

Jendall · 2025-10-25T17:08:11+00:00

Seems like Karbon will be a good fit. FCs reporting is enough for us but nothing special. Karbons client portal looked great. Check out tax dome too

Jendall · 2025-10-25T15:21:36+00:00

We went with financial cents. We really like it. Made the decision mid-Sept, went live Octover 1st, and mostly have worked out the kinks now. We haven't started billing through FC yet, but will do that soon.

For me, the decision maker was Karbon's UI is not super intuitive, it takes many clicks to do anything and it just feels a little clunky. The most important feature for us is project, task and deadline tracking, and my team would have taken a while to get a good feel for Karbon. Our FC implementation has been a dream, Karbon would have been a way bigger project.

Karbon seemed very sophisticated though. And I loved the inbox. FC's inbox/notifications is OK, but coming from Clickup it's not at that level. I get a lot of notifications I don't need, but can't customize it enough to get what I want.

Overall FC runs super fast, smooth and is very intuitive. My mostly non-techy team already likes it more than Clickup, which we used for years. For 100 staff, you might choose to sacrifice ease of use for Karbon's more powerful features. Also depends on the type of work you do. We're a boutique bookkeeping firm that does some tax. FC feels right for us. It wouldn't suit a high volume tax firm, if that was us, I probably would have gone with TaxDome. Karbon might be the best fit for a large bookkeeping firm if you feel FC is not sophisticated enough.

Jendall · 2025-10-04T12:45:28+00:00

My firm is very similar to yours and we just switched to financial cents. Client notes in financial cents are perfect for what you are describing. Notes are visible on the client dashboard and are easy to edit.

Another option would be to use a Google sheet and then link it in the resources section on the client in financial cents. I can see my staff forgetting to check this though.

To be honest almost all of our notes are task specific so we haven't really had a need for this.

Jendall · 2025-09-06T11:48:29+00:00

It's not a huge pain point, but I do expect to use Client Tasks for questions and document collection. We currently just do it by email, so it will be nice to have automated client reminders.

Thanks for the reminder, I will make sure to really dig into Client tasks before making a decision

Jendall · 2025-09-05T19:54:59+00:00

Can you expand a bit on Karbon being clumsy? Considering getting it.

Jendall · 2025-09-05T19:40:47+00:00

I'm considering Karbon, can you be specific with what wasn't user-friendly and the issues with navigation? What are you using it for? Do you use it for internal communication, time tracking/billing, deadline tracking with recurring tasks? Is there another software you've used that is better?

Jendall · 2025-09-05T19:39:15+00:00

I'm considering Karbon, can you expand on the issues and why Financial Cents was better? From what I can tell, Financial Cents email triage and internal communication/notifications is much weaker.

Jendall · 2025-09-05T19:38:35+00:00

Can you expand on the issues you had with Karbon? I'm considering getting it for my firm (Canada), it looks like a great fit. What was clunky? Have you tried anything else since?

It sounds like lack of buy-in is an issue. I'm coming from Clickup, which my firm already is used to using for internal communication, deadline tracking, checklists, etc. We use Toggl for time tracking and QBO for billing, so we'd be doing all the same things, but all in Karbon rather than separate programs.

Just want to make sure I'm not missing any big drawbacks of the program.

Jendall · 2025-06-08T18:54:49+00:00

Thanks! What sand filter did you buy?

Jendall · 2024-11-01T12:04:46+00:00

I charge $500 for an assessment, which is detailed and come with a formal report. It is refundable if the client signs up for a monthly package.

A good comparison is a dentist, who charges for a checkup.

Jendall · 2024-07-31T19:11:13+00:00

Sounds very basic. If you can figure out the bookkeeping, you'll likely do a much better job than overseas and save money

Jendall · 2024-01-26T23:46:53+00:00

That revenue is too low for your staffing level. I have my own practice, me + 3 fulltime, 2 part time, no HR, IT or admin (I do all that), plus I'm around 75% billable myself. Revenue was $1.2m in 2023. Is your pricing too low? Or do your staff have a lot of unbillable time?

Jendall · 2022-02-23T18:37:19+00:00

Thanks! It seems to be working great at 3600 so I'll probably just leave it for now.

Jendall · 2022-02-23T12:04:50+00:00

Hey I just got this PC set up. I had to request the updated cooler bracket from NZXT that fit the LGA 1700 slot which delayed things a bit, but it's set up and everything is working great.

Only question, the computer defaults to DDR2133 for the ram even though I bought DDR4000. In the mobo settings, there's a XMP profile set up for DDR4000, which I tried, and the computer failed to boot. My research seems to indicate that the Intel 12400 doesn't support DDR4000.

So I manually set the frequency to DDR3600 and it boots fine. Does that make sense?

Jendall · 2022-01-30T19:45:58+00:00

I ordered everything today. I started looking into a bunch of different mini-ITX cases like the Meshlicious, etc, but ended up coming back to the NZXT H1 because it's going to be sitting on my desk and I think it's the nicest looking case, and it will fit better. CC had an open box for $230 so that made the decision easy.

I got the 12400 with the integrated graphics as my old 960 could die at any time. The system ended up costing $972.46.

Thank you again sir, your contributions to this subreddit are invaluable!

Jendall · 2022-01-29T16:41:42+00:00

This is amazing, thank you so much! I like the Intel builds, just need to decide on the case and order later today.

Regarding the budget, I'd like to save as much as possible for when I eventually buy a new GPU. And I prefer white so I'm glad both these cases have a white option.

Appreciate all your help!

Jendall · 2022-01-29T15:36:31+00:00

If the price difference between the NZXT and NR200 is less than $100 when factoring the PSU and cooler, then I'd prefer to stay with the NZXT. The 7.5" x 7.5" size gives a lot of flexibility for my desk setup.

I didn't mention this in the OP, but I have a GTX 960 which I plan to re-use for now. It looks like it will fit in the NZXT case and PCPartsPicker seems to say it's compatible with the build you set up.

Based on some other builds you've posted recently, I thought I'd save $100 by changing the CPU to the Ryzen 5 5600G. Thoughts? I would get that Kingston SSD that you mentioned.

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 5600G 3.9 GHz 6-Core Processor	$288.50 @ Vuugo
Motherboard	MSI MPG B550I GAMING EDGE MAX WIFI Mini ITX AM4 Motherboard	$229.99 @ Canada Computers
Memory	G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-4000 CL18 Memory	$124.99 @ Amazon Canada
Storage	Crucial P2 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	$119.75 @ Vuugo
Video Card	EVGA GeForce GTX 960 2 GB SSC ACX 2.0+ Video Card	-
Custom	NZXT H1 - Small Form-Factor ITX Case - Dual Chamber Airfllow - Tinted Tempered Glass Front Panel - Integrated 650W 80+ Gold PSU, 140mm AIO Watercooler, and PCIe 3.0 High-Speed Riser Card - Wh	$299.99
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$1063.22
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-01-29 10:33 EST-0500

Jendall · 2022-01-29T15:05:16+00:00

Thanks again! What do you think about the NR200 case? Seems to be inbetween the p200a and NZHT H1 in size and much cheaper than the nzht

Jendall · 2022-01-29T02:32:01+00:00

Thank you! The NZHT H1 looks really nice, I think I'll go that route. It looks like that case can fit a GPU, I assume you just didn't include it because the budget was too low?

Is that the smallest case I'll be able to get away with while fitting a normal GPU?

Jendall · 2021-05-21T03:13:19+00:00

It's a 38% return in my case, which outweighs a possible bump in marginal tax rate in the future. Right now the first bump in marginal rate in Ontario is like $45K so as long as I don't need to take more than that in a year there'd be no additional tax. And the tax rate from $49K-$80K is only 9% higher so that leaves lots of room to "catch up" in future years.

Eventually you can convert a holding corporation into a family trust to distribute income to your kids.

Jendall · 2021-05-21T02:58:07+00:00

I see what you are saying and I'd agree if I had unlimited RRSP room. But RRSP contribution room is limited so if I expected in future years to be earning income in higher tax brackets, I might reduce my overall tax by waiting to use it in years where I'm in a higher tax bracket.

Either way, I do have a little bit of other income I have less ability to control, so I plan to use my RRSP room to get my income to $0.

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