Heard review

What it is and who it's for

Heard is not general accounting software you'd put in front of a bookkeeper. It is a bundled bookkeeping-plus-tax service aimed squarely at one customer: the solo US therapist or small private mental-health practice. A human team categorizes transactions, reconciles accounts monthly, and handles quarterly estimates and year-end filing inside a purpose-built dashboard. The pitch is to take finance off a clinician's plate entirely, not to give them more knobs to turn.

Strengths

The vertical focus is the real differentiator. The platform understands insurance reimbursements, sliding-scale income, and the messy personal-vs-business spending solo practitioners actually deal with, so onboarding feels less like forcing a generic chart of accounts onto a clinical practice. Bundling bookkeeping with both quarterly and annual filing into one flat fee removes the usual sticker shock of a separate CPA invoice each spring, and a dedicated human team sits behind the automation rather than leaving you alone with a categorization bot.

Weaknesses and pricing

Support is the recurring complaint: it runs entirely through a messaging portal with no phone line, and users report responses missing the promised 24-48 hour window, which is painful near deadlines. The service is also explicitly not built for complexity, so multiple income streams, unusual structures, or joint filers who already use a personal accountant find it redundant. On price, plans run roughly $129/mo (Lite), $169/mo (Essential), and $255/mo (Premium) billed annually; watch the Lite tier, which pushes annual filing into a separate ~$750 charge, so its headline price understates real cost. Essential is the honest comparison point and beats a $300+/mo bookkeeper or $500+/mo CPA for a simple practice.

Regional note and verdict

This is a hard US-only product: it files with the IRS, integrates with US banks and Gusto payroll, and assumes the US tax calendar end to end, with no published international data-residency commitments because the audience is US clinicians. For a reader outside the US there is no usable equivalent here. For a US solo therapist with a simple tax picture it earns its fee and the niche tooling beats generic platforms; for complex returns, multiple businesses, an existing accountant, live-support needs, or any operation outside the US, look elsewhere.