Founder/Former CEO Ian Crosby's post about the Bench closure:
I can’t imagine the frustration you’re going through if you’re a Bench user.
Paying for a service and not getting what you expect, especially when it comes to your taxes is no joke.
Instead of having to start from scratch, our team at Kick is moved quickly to build these resources to help prior Bench customers:
1. Free Bench migration
2. Free 2024 Bookkeeping review calls
3. Free Daily Live Q&As (coming soon)
We’re moving fast and sharing additional resources and updates in real time here:
Other resources on the way include a Tax Extension Guide and Accountant Directory to make sure folks get a soft landing is this difficult time.
If you're running into issues, my email me at conrad@kick.co and I’ll do the best I can to route you to the right place.
> We know this news is abrupt and may cause disruption, so we’re committed to helping Bench customers navigate through the transition.
No, you're not. The minimum for commitment is a longer notice.
I havent been at Bench for over 6 years but it’s always been a business on the verge of failure. The main issue was just the schizophrenic strategy that was being employed. On one hand you have a software company with useful tools and services to automate bookeeping. On the other you had a division of bookeepers that would do a lot of the manual / refinement work. These tasks are at odds with one another. If you automate things you remove power from the teams who are incentivized to scale their org charts. With LLMs, Bench should have been positioned to own this space entirely, and offer a superior or equivalent product with much better margins. Bur they decided to become a services company and not a technology company.
All I can take away from it is a few lessons, because this is a pretty awful outcome for almost every party.
Bench just forced me to switch to an annual contract a few days ago too. What a bunch of crooks.
Bench was a terrible service in my experience. I used it for one of my startups a few years ago. I personally invested a lot into said start-up. I checked my books and everything seemed ok. Eventually I found that they had hidden my Gusto payroll line items from view and they were no longer taken into consideration in my books. This led to a $300k shortfall from where I thought I was vs reality. Their team just shrugged when I brought the issue to their attention. The impact was immediate layoffs affecting real people who depended on me.
Sure ultimately everything falls upon me the founder. But something so common as GUSTO payroll should never be miscategorized and hidden from view.
Current (I guess now former) bench customer here. Concerned about this comment in their FAQ:
> On this website, by December 30th, you’ll be able to enter your Bench login credentials to download your current and prior year-end financials, as well as any documents you’ve uploaded such as receipts and bank statements.
This makes it sound like they are only making the year-end financials available - not the individual transactions/ledger entries. I’m concerned about this - aren’t the individual transactions required if one were to be audited? Would this create a lot of liability for their former customers?
Shocking, but not terribly surprising from a business perspective... From everyone I know who's worked there, the operation was just a thinly veiled wrapper around human accountants. The plan for profitability was that they'd eventually automate the human part away, but eventually never came.
My condolences to the employees who now have a stressful new year.
I don't know much about accounting, but isn't shutting down an accounting service three days before the end of the year a huge slap in the face if the clients of the service, maybe even fraudulent?
And if it is, is it really normal in this sector and "part of the deal" of working with startups?
Does shutting down mean bankruptcy? My businesses will have real damages from this - both the money that has been paid to bench all year for now no output of annual books/a financial summary as well as the cost of now having to pay to redo my 2024 books.
Seems like my experience may not have been typical. I used Bench from 19-23 for a startup and always felt like I was getting great service. I agree that they were a bit expensive, but the financials passed external reviews and always made my investors happy.
It is a shame to see them closing down this way, awful timing and awful treatment of their customers. As a founder, you need to fully understand your financials, but you should have a pro managing the day-to-day and even month-to-month.
The fact that they are recommending Kick makes me view that company with suspicion. This whole thing is really leaving a bad taste in my mouth.
Wow, what a shock. I cancelled my account just days before the annual renewal earlier this month. I feel for all of the small businesses this is going to hurt. The service had been getting worse for an while and the last straw was when they sent an email saying the year-end financial report would be ready by April 10th, 5 days before the tax deadline.
I’m gonna have a go with plain text accounting for the bookkeeping for a bit. Looking at what Bench was doing, and my books in general not being too complicated I think it’ll be fine, maybe better actually because I’ll have a closer eye on things. Still using a CPA to file taxes though.
I was just sold bench.co for my three businesses and the sales person Luc Lewarne made me sign a payment agreement with Capchase. The agreement states that I still owe Capchase the full amount for a year, even if Bench.co shuts down...
Does anyone have any contacts or experience with Capchase? I never even started my service, which was supposed to begin January 1st, 2025 and now I will have to pay out 12 months to Capchase?!?!
It seems to me that this is the key takeaway for founders:
Your accounting stack is
1. accounting software
2. bookkeeping (ie operating the accounting software)
3. cpa / cfo (ie for tax and financial planning)
In contrast, the minimal risk approach is to source your accounting stack from different vendors:
1. accounting software (eg quickbooks, xero, wave)
2. bookkeeping (hire a person or use a service)
3. cpa / cfo (hire a person or use a service)
Im based here in the US, and unfortunately i signed up yesterday after learning about the bookkeeping special...for a small business $1005 is alot...Square (my bank) basically said they cant do anything about it since i autho the payment...Any suggestions?
Hey, Arjun here, CEO of doola (Business-in-a-Box for LLCs) (YC S20)
If you are a solopreneur or run an Ecom business and are looking for support with dedicated bookkeeping (including a human bookkeeper), check out https://www.doola.com/bookkeeping/
Happy to support anyone looking for help with bookkeeping + business tax filings for their business going into the new year (we support Non-US tax filings as well if you are a Non-US founder)
I've heard they claimed to have SOC 2 security compliance, but refused to prove it (show the SOC2 report to customers) -- that's really fishy.
$60m Series C 3.5 years ago. My hypothesis is they shut it down when they were unable to turn it into a rocketship.
Perhaps I'm old school, but how hard is it to hire a bookkeeper part time, a CPA a few times a year, and use Quickbooks? Was there some special value that Bench provided?
You guys are lucky. I didn't even get an e-mail. I just found out I couldn't login and happened across the website. So what are the chances of getting any kind of refund for the services I paid for and will not receive?
This thread is full of accounting service founders promoting their product, often with a discount for Bench refugees. Why are there so many of those accounting startups and how do they manage to survive in such a crowded market? Or are they also going to do a last-minute shutdown when the VC money runs out?
This is really frustrating. I'll admit their services have been going downhill dramatically (all my books Jan-Nov were still open as of last week and usually they would close subsequent month), but I still think shutting down right before the tax year ends is downright scummy.
What are the alternatives that handle bookkeeping and tax filing? Maybe I should just get a local CPA...
They charged us for our next month of service the day before they shut down. That’s fraud.
This is really sad to hear. We offer a related service in Canada, and therefore I am keenly interested in what didn’t work. If anyone from Bench is interested in chatting about what went wrong and what to avoid I would really appreciate your time / happy to grab a coffee if you are in Toronto.
For any Canadian corps caught up in the Bench shutdown. We bundle corporate governance, bookkeeping, tax and payroll for $250 CAD/month but only serve straight forward small Canadian corporations.
- Nick co-founder at Ribbon Business (https://getribbon.ai), nicholas.wesley-james@getribbon.ai
This is the problem with SaaS. If it shuts down you loose access to your data and app. This is why we should have local native apps!
Glad I dropped Bench a few months back for my own solution. They started out great, but over the past 18 months, I was always having to reconnect via Plaid and then be told way after the fact to manually upload bank statements because my data wasn't syncing. Even worse, I started having to manually categorize nearly all transactions despite there being existing identical transactions they could auto-categorize from. Finally just built an app that imports data from my bank and lets me bulk categorize/fuzzy search transactions.
If you have been affected by this, don't go from one tech bro service to another. Find a company ran by a tax professional. There is no viable automated solution for bookkeeping and tax now. These are customer intensive fields that require inquiries and clarification, things that AI isn't adept at. This is my field and while I do use software to automate some work, it still hallucinates and can transpose items or be unable to read data. I do suggest doing a tax extension right away and letting your employees know. Depending on the state of your books, you may need to hire spmeoen to review them and process any 1099s and W2s you need to get out.
always so annoying to find bookkeepers at a fair price.
In particular, charging on expenses or on transaction volume isn't aligned with value generated. Instead, bookkeepers should charge on "anomalous transactions identified and corrected"
https://www.ledgerup.ai/ (a YC co) has a bookkeeping agent integrated with quickbooks. I've migrated to them after trying Fondo (also a YC co) and a local SMB bookkeeper in the past.
There's so many YC backed bookkeepers - Pilot, Afternoon, Fondo, LedgerUp
To everyone navigating this transition, we understand the challenges and want to help make this process smoother. At Docyt, we are offering 30 days free to businesses impacted by this change, and we won’t enforce annual contracts because we believe flexibility and support are critical.
Docyt has extensive experience with migrations and can: * Perform rapid migration of unlimited years of Bench data. * Deliver full accrual basis bookkeeping. * Support 20+ industry verticals and 30+ revenue systems. * Handle multi-entity and intercompany accounting. * Provide continuous reconciliation of key balance sheet accounts done daily. * Offer integrated bill pay, receipt management, and expense reporting software.
We know this transition may feel overwhelming, but you don’t have to face it alone. Docyt is here to help businesses keep their books accurate and operations seamless. Reach out to me via LinkedIn if this has affected you - we are here to help!
This is terrible. I paid them ~$4500 to do all my taxes and book keeping (just started my business this past June). What recourse do I have to get that money back?
Not even a tiny bit surprised given their pricing [0]. The only thing you're getting with those rates are juniors with questionable training and worse supervision. Likely outsourced to a cheap country on top of it.
As a reference point their MONTHLY rate would get you 1-2 hours of senior associate time at a B4 provider.
It's the equivalent of hopping onto fiverr and hiring a coder after sorting by low price, and then being surprised when you receive LLM code that doesn't compile. It's entirely your own fault if you thought that would work...
[0] http://web.archive.org/web/20241223225539/https://www.bench....
Just got an email from them out of nowhere and they are closing down more or immediately. Very surprising.
The cloud is someone else's computer, including SaaS and when they suddenly go away.
If there's an opportunity to open-source this code so people who can't simply migrate to one option after considering many, self-hosting might be an option at least in the interim.
Looks like Bench is being acquired after all? Content of the linked page was updated thing morning.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42547803
also on tech crunch: https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/30/bench-to-be-acquired-after...
Wow. We need an alternative to Intuit.
I created a subreddit in case any current/former Bench users would like to continue talking to one another and compare notes: https://www.reddit.com/r/BenchUsers
Does anyone have experience with Kick.co? It seems more self-managed with AI. I don’t want to migrate to another company that’s just going to close again despite being well funded.
7 years with bench and just renewed the annual plan last month. Seems like it’s unlikely we’ll see any refund for the 11 months remaining. Very frustrating to have to mirage somewhere else and pay for 2024 catch up.
Tossing another hat in the game. https://treewalk.com/bench-accounting-conversion/
Accounting firm run by an entrepreneur that specializes in small to medium size businesses.
Offering free migration/onboarding for the first 100 clients who join them from Bench.
my wife's company was literally talking to bench support few days ago for her last year LLC & personal taxes that they have been delaying for months. this new is crazy.
Anyone looking help with only LLC & personal takes then just email me here and we'll help you out: vip@joinotto.com
Hi, I am the founder of entity.inc and several accounting firms. We are offering free migration from bench, tax planning and compliance as well as legal services. If anyone has any issues or needs, whether you are based in the US or abroad, please reach out.
No mention of refunds for unused months
What are the best alternatives?
Interesting that they didn’t even consider doing an “AI pivot”
Got the same email. Totally shocking.
hmmm another "unicorn" from vancouver that bites the dust, i remember one with an owl as mascot logo can't recall what they did or their names but many ppl from vancouver mentioned it while ago.
I wonder why that place can't compete with American cities, i think even Toronto /Montreal is more successful than Vancouver.
for one the low salary must be demoralizing on top of being one of the most expensive cities in the world.
have there been notable canadian startup unicorn that turned IPO or major acquisition (100x ROI and up?) other than Shopify?
seems like nobody can really compete with America when it comes to creating IPOs and billionaires.
Does anyone know the reason?
This is so fucked up**. I have an annual account and they have not done my books since July and now this... An no refunds?!
Poor.
Is the list of the board members or VCs involved in this confidential?
I have been a Bench customer for eight years. I have simple books, and the service was perfect at the time. Over the last three years, the turnover was bananas - and for the last three years, the year-end financials kept taking longer and longer to complete. This year, it was to the point I was going to leave. They offered a discount and a chance to adjust. They did much better, until this month when the announcement came that you had to sign a year contract and choose within TWO WEEKS to avoid another price hike and FORCED year. That, or leave. I was shocked when I asked if I could at least have my year-end done, as this was happening right at the end of the year. Straight up, the answer was no. You have to have a subscription for the year to get that. I was going to stay the coming year solely because of the timing to move and set up elsewhere, but now, I see this was simply in the cards. They wanted to see if things could be salvaged by how many annuals they got - clearly, there weren't enough. What is MORE of a slap in the face is the AUDACITY to - IN YOUR TERMINATION EMAIL - HAVE AN AFFILIATE RECOMMENDATION TO ANOTHER SERVICE - ARE YOU INSANE???? Do they think we are COMPLETE MORONS??? I smell a lawsuit brewing, not from me but from larger companies. Some things are COMPLETELY rotten here.
Truly crazy news and timing for this to happen over the holidays.
I'm the founder/CEO of Digits - if you're a tech startup on Bench, we'd love to work together. Reach out to vip@digits.com and we'll extend our friends/family discount and make this as painless for you as possible.
Off topic, but what is going on with the comments in this discussion? Seems like a ton of new accounts, and strange behavior like commenting gibberish or exact same comment text within minutes of each other, for example:
strattonoak 39 minutes ago | prev | next [–]
The no access to data smells like a ransomware event. Why is data not available to export out and everything is taken down and not accessible? Seems like it's way more work to take down access that to leave it up?
theoak 40 minutes ago | prev | next [–]
The no access to data smells like a ransomware event. Why is data not available to export out and everything is taken down and not accessible? Seems like it's way more work to take down access that to leave it up?[dead]
If you’re a tech startup and previously used Bench, I’d strongly encourage you to check out Pilot.com - we work with literally thousands of startups. (Disclaimer: I’m one of the founders.)
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Hey everybody -- I'm the founder and CEO of Afino. We offer all of the same services as Bench and ready to help any founder affected by this sudden shutdown.
Check out our services on our site (www.afino.ai) and book a priority meeting to talk to me and my team (https://app.reclaim.ai/m/afino/priority-intro)
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We just moved to CleerTax. Not sure if they are good yet but pretty responsive.
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CEO of Finaloop (real-time financial solution) just offered a migration package and 75% off.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7278469880629067776-...
If you're a ecommerce brand, we specialize in ecomm bookkeeping and can get you migrated and caught up for 2024 immediately.
DayZero - ondayzero.com - or send me an email michelle@ondayzero.com. Always happy to be a resource
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FYI: "You will have until Friday, March 7th at 5:00pm ET to download your Bench data from this website."
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does any one know who is in charge at Bench accounting? Does anyone know where the scum bag is. I want to find this ass hole. I want to swear criminal warrants for them. Anyone who has info on this situation please contact John adams 678-508-1590 or email john@thebrasslantern.com
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Come to factsfinancegroup.com
Real people.
Won't bore you with technical talk, your books will simply be done. You will be tax ready and tax efficient.
Last, but not least, you will have everything you need to grow at your fingertips.
We simply want 100 clients.
We'll focus on 100 of you and continue to the moon together.
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EVA Business Solutions can help any impacted Bench customers. Contact them at info@evabusiness-solutions.com or call 615-461-7157.
If you are an ecom brand or tech startup - I'm CEO of Afternoon.co (YC F25) providing same services as Bench including year end tax filing, ready to onboard you asap, just email me at roman@afternoon.co
I'm sorry for all those affected by the Bench Accounting shutdown. If any of you are solopreneurs, feel free to reach out to my friend Nate at Cookie Finance. They are a highly trusted accounting platform (US based) that provides full-service accounting/tax. Nate also shared with me that they’ve already worked with a lot of former Bench clients.
His contact info is below.
Nate Coughran info@cookiefinance.co
The company is over a decade old and was not cheap to use, I don't think they could have suddenly run out of money as customers typically pay upfront and are in long term contracts. Could it be staffing issues? Corporate misbehavior? Data loss? Ransomware? Has a member of their team gone rogue? Misappropriation of funds?
We were bench customers until a few months ago, paying thousands of dollars per year for what could only be described as hundreds of dollars worth of service. The service was not very good so moving away was an easy choice but on a per-customer basis they must be making money hand over fist.
I expect we'll find out more eventually, hopefully employees will leak some insight. For now, this is inexplicable.