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.
I'd guess staffing issues, since my bookkeeper would change every month. I'm still not sure how they couldn't afford to hire better staff, though. You're right that it could be something nefarious.
> I'm still not sure how they couldn't afford to hire better staff,
Because they never figured out how to automate enough of the process to scale revenue up without scaling expenses.
All the investments in these VC funded companies is a bet that the companies will develop automation that will allow them to not hire staff, period (relative to the growth in customers).
Im betting secured debt was called. Given the "instant" nature, it likely means a debt covenant was broken, that is one of the few things that can shut a company down in 24 hours.
Doubley so if the business isnt really profitable.
I’m a CFO and was a layperson on this until I started having to deal with it. I don’t have any resources other than my work experience with a few companies that have debt covenants. First, they can be rather arbitrary as they’re literally made up for each deal and meant to align somewhat to the growth story that’s being “sold” to the lender during the debt issuance; they’re negotiated between lender/borrower so take a lot of different shapes. The ones I’ve seen are usually 1) a reporting requirement 2) monthly/quarterly/annually frequency is negotiable 3) usually have some financial metric or growth metric that the company should be hitting by a certain time. So, I’ve seen EBITDA margin, gross margin, cash flow, and revenue growth stats as these metrics. But again, it could be anything.
As GP said, usually if the covenant isn’t being met but the company is profitable or has a good excuse the lender will not call the debt. They’ll work with you. I’ve seen tons of flexibility here from lenders. Usually the lender will start having more questions about the strategy and current forecasts if the metrics are underperforming and you’ll (CEO/CFO) will have to start being a bit more transparent than required or maybe just more frequent check in meetings to discuss status. In most cases, if you actually have a good story and have a healthy partnership the lender doesn’t want to call the loan and wants to see how they can help (within tolerance) get you back on track.
The moment the lender calls the loan typically, in startup land, there’s no cash reserves to pay off the debt and so the company is instantly insolvent and operations cease. This is why the lender is flexible, calling is typically a nuke for the business. But also, it can be a bit of a stop/loss. Meaning the cash in the bank can at least be recouped.
One standardized metric used as a covenant is the debt service coverage ratio, especially for commercial real estate. The lender gets to monitor business performance in almost real time, and if it goes below what the borrower agreed to, they can force a renegotiation of terms or call the loan.
Anything is possible and running out of money is the most probable explanation but it seems so hard for this type of business to get itself into this type of situation. Customers pay thousands of dollars per year, usually upfront. That’s the type of revenue predictability that most of us would love for our businesses because it makes forecasting so much easier. They must have known months ago that they were running out of money. Failing to become sustainable and going through layoffs is one thing, shutting down overnight with zero warning is another. But yes, you’re probably right, it’s just hard to imagine how they could have imploded like this.
And yet, it's as simple as money ran out. They never turned a profit, investors ran out, the last round of funding was a loan with strings attached that led to a bunch of cost cutting and other poor decisions that explain the poor service quality.
A few staff guessed it might close 3 weeks ago at best though everything was very uncertain, but most of the accountants probably didn't see this coming either.
Not sure if sarcasm, but in case it is not: in theory accountants could see this coming but most benchmates were junior book keepers, with no visibility into their employer's financials.
If I can't see the books I move on. The only reason people hide books is because they are bad. You can't expect a bunch of mushrooms to help you grow a company. Employees deserve to keep tabs on the financial health of the company.
Last company I was at was an ESOP. Talk about a scam. They are under no obligation to let employees monitor the health of their "retirement plan." It's a tax shelter for business owners who want to retire. Coming from a company that had open books I had assumed that ESOP members would have some rights, nope.
Having left that shit show for a startup I'm getting regular financial health and funding updates constantly.
Nitter's been dead for about a year at this point. I'm pretty sure any Nitter instance still running is using some abstract method and not the actual Nitter system.
It's the same Nitter, but using real accounts instead of the "guest accounts" that were used previously.
"Guest accounts" were accounts you could generate to access Twitter without actually signing up, but then Elon Musk killed them so then Nitter was basically declared dead because most people don't want to spend time making tons of actual accounts to run a Nitter instance and then Elon Musk also made the ratelimits stricter so you needed even more accounts.
Some of the bigger Nitter instances used thousands of guest accounts.
Nitter also offers better UX for those who just want to read a Twitter thread and not interact with it. It's been like that even before the Musk acquisition.
Thanks, does nitter still work? Thought it was running into trouble so used xcancel with ok results.
However, I've found that 'the only winning move has been not to play'. Anytime I venture back it's like my psyche entering the matrix and always coming off worse.
Yes it is. If they had written “if you’re posting about hamburgers you need to reevaluate your life” that would be a post expressing their opinion about hamburgers.
> Your post above is a failed attempt at a petty gotcha.
Aside from the poster I was talking to not appearing to agree with you (they immediately made another Elon post), no, it isn’t. If upon seeing the phrase “I don’t like hamburger” I am swept up with an urge to dunk and say “re evaluate your life choices for talking about hamburger” it is very obvious that I’ve taken my time to tell you that I have strong feelings about hamburger and take issue with the position taken, not the subject matter.
Seeing as they then wrote “elon hate is real” moments after my response, it is doubly clear that the issue isn’t mention of the guy but rather any negative mention of the guy.
If I go out of my way to police any negative mention of something, that is a direct expression of how I value that thing.
(The post has since been edited to “obsession with elon is real”, which, yes, it is. Some folks absolutely cannot scroll past that name without it sparking an urge to dunk)
With all due respect to the founder, it's impossible to know, even in hindsight, whether things in a startup would have been similar, better, or worse. This is not an endorsement to firing the CEO or saying that the board was capable in any way. This founder or CEO trap is more common that we think about. It is not only a Steve Jobs story. Founders know that giving equity and power to others include risks.
I advise caution in believing his statements to be true, particularly about Bench’s board and investors. The truth will live in their financial statements, which no doubt will be revealed in bankruptcy proceedings in the coming months.
Ian, I emailed you a couple years ago when I felt Bench had become worse and worse for customers. I was sad to discover that you’d left and I felt the difference was definitely attributable to your departure. I switched providers shortly thereafter.
So, speaking as a former customer, the tragedy and timeline you mention pass the sniff test for me. So glad your next venture has been going well for you!
I’d like to clarify - and ought to have done above - that I’m not saying you’re lying in your Tweets. Just that the story of any business failure is often more nuanced than “investors are bad”. And that story may be revealed in court filings as I’m sure creditors will be going to court to get their money back in the coming months.
Pray tell, how was he possibly supposed to help the customers of the company he was fired from 3 years ago?
I found his posts interesting. I was a Bench customer for several years until we sold our business, and I appreciate the background information about the bullet we dodged.
You're arguing a different point. The old CEO claims it's his absence that caused the failure, not the presence of the new CEO. You're arguing that it's the presence of the new CEO that caused the failure. GP is pointing out that if the absence of the old CEO is what caused the company to fail as the old CEO claims, and not the actions of the new CEO, then it wasn't in good shape to start with.
Ah. That's a bit more sane for sure. Although with some big caveats. A founder can be crucial for a long time, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's a tradeoff. You don't want to spend time operationalizing the business before it's stable for example. That's just a waste of time. The board very well could be mistaken on which stage the business is in.
Bad investors and a dysfunctional board can destroy a company. When late-stage investors push to fire the CEO, they often do so to install a puppet CEO who will give them greater control over the board. This allows them to prioritize financial decisions that serve their own interests, often at the expense of other shareholders, such as early employees, whom they disregard.
You make a fair point. I would have liked him to elaborate more on the potential acquisition that was declined.
However, he mentioned they just raised $60 million. If his approach wasn’t working, why would anyone invest that amount? And if the plan was to fire him, given that his vote was required, wouldn’t it have been more transparent to say upfront: “If you reject the acquisition and opt for this $60 million investment instead, we’re going to fire you”?
I agree that the financial statements will be a key artifact of truth + I cannot speak to the validity of the statements made by Ian as I have no context or knowledge of Bench outside of my experience of being a long time customer.
However I can, albeit anecdotally from my perspective, say that I felt there was a marked difference in Bench's quality/service/responsiveness/performance/etc about 3yrs ago. This aligns with the timeline given by the former CEO in his post for his departure.
Kick is not affiliated with Bench in any way. We've onboarded a significant number of customers from Bench onto Kick before this happened, so this may have been why were were mentioned.
We're working fast right now to try to provide resources and help Bench users migrate and will be sharing updates here: https://x.co/kickfinance
Thanks Conrad however in the interest of clarity + transparency can you add some insight/details into how/why this statement came about in both the shut down email customers got today + what is currently posted on the Bench.co page?
"For continued support with your bookkeeping, we recommend exploring Kick, a modern accounting software, which has created an exclusive offer to handle your ongoing needs: kick.co/bench."
Having an "exclusive offer" listed in the initial closure communication/announcement + you having a landing page ready to go sounds like there was more to Bench just happening to mention Kick because your company has "onboarded a significant number of customers from Bench onto Kick before this happened"...
Hopefully you'll get an answer from Conrad, but the landing page does not mention the shutdown, so I would point out when I was comparison shopping something else recently, their website had dedicated pages to why you should choose them over each major competitor, and a switching discount is also not uncommon.
It's entirely possible this landing page is Kick's competitive offer, and Bench linked to it because it offers all the people they just screwed over by collapsing a discount.
Good point! I like what I see so far in Kick. It's just given the level of pain Bench has just caused me, my businesses, and a couple very unlucky employees in my office + the financial cost = I have to make super duper sure Kick is not related to/involved with Bench in any way shape or form.
If they asked Kick to be listed as an alternative in the closure email or asked them to do a discount nbd I have no issue there. I just want the full story given Bench events.
I am not related to any of the parties in this dolce, but I did discontinue a product once.
On the shutdown page I listed some alternatives people could try. I found them via Google, but i didn't first try them or talk to them.
They were really just a helpful hint for folk wanting to change to get started. (The thing I was killing was a product not a service so it wasn't going to actually stop working, it was just no longer being updated.)
So, in this case, a simple statement of fact (as above) would be good enough for me. But feel free to do your due diligence.
So you're planning on offering tax filings, or just recommendations? tbh this should have been included in the notice because I wrote y'all off immediately because taxes was the main pain point Bench solved for me (electing to file as an S-Corp).
A friend of mine mentioned Taxfyle as an alternative to Bench. They offer free bookkeeping migration, a free Xero subscription, dedicated bookkeeper to do your books and professional tax support where they handle your taxes too. They seem like a good fit for you! Check them out here: https://www.taxfyle.com/
I signed up to the paid account ($125 per month), added credit card details. Your system has me on free trial until early January.
I've followed all the steps required to unlock the "sorry to hear about the Bench situation" onboarding.
Now after jumping through all the hoops, I'm told that the "free onboarding" and call only happens after the payment is processed later in January.
Why wait?
It's difficult to vet your service without this assistance. Money aside, time is of the essence here.
Really hoping to be proven wrong here, but this feels like an opportunistic sales initiative that claims to be more, but is really just a "20% off for your first year" coupon code.
I tried to sign up for Kick and received an email that you don’t support my industry. Were an artist studio that makes and retails physical goods. Do you expect to support more industries soon?
While you have documentation about migrating to your platform, you don't seem to have any documented promises around export and leaving your service.
Also, it seems a bit odd to me that the "balance sheet" ability is two non-free pricing levels deep into your service. Isn't that a baseline expectation?
Not to mention all the money businesses paid in advance for services they’ll likely never get back. It’s a terrible situation—small businesses really RELY on these services, and now they’re left stranded with no clear resolution. Truly, reckless and insane.
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.
This is accurate (from a former employee). They were not at odds, the platform was simply never sufficient on its own to do the books. Bookkeepers were required to fill the massive gaps.
Tracks with what I've seen from other companies that tout their accounting AI/automation. Never measures up .I was never a customer - did Bench overpromise to their customers directly? They always struck me as the most human from the outside.
I’m sure all of this will be played out in spectacular fashion in the courts of British Columbia in the coming months. Directors in BC are liable for unpaid wages to employees. No doubt they pulled the rug just in time to ensure people got their statutory severance. But beyond that, anyone hoping for more will have to get in a long line behind secured creditors. Man this sucks.
In a situation like this, someone with a contract not receiving consideration mere days after signing can probably just not pay. It would be very difficult for a company in the midst of shutting down to fight anyway.
It would indeed be foolish to pay an invoice to a company that has very publicly declared insolvency. Many if not most contracts I have ever signed contain a provision voiding the obligations of the parties if either party is insolvent.
I'd be shocked if you didn't get reimbursed. But if you don't, let me know and Afino might be able to mitigate a portion of your losses with a friendly discount. That just ain't right.
When a company goes bankrupt, there’s a specific order that everyone who’s owed money gets paid out in. I wouldn’t be surprised if “operational costs” like refunds are low on the list.
I signed up with Capchase on a 12-month contract, too. Does this mean my contract is with Capchase and I’ll have to pay for the next 12 months even if I don’t get the service? Feels like a great scam. Sign a whole bunch of new customers in 12-month contracts and get paid upfront from Capchase in full and leave us paying off our debt to Capchase. I’m so frustrated.
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.
When I was using Bench, they were only doing cash accounting (not GAAP). We had to switch to a different service when we switched over to accrual accounting.
Quick note that cash vs accrual basis accounting is orthogonal to whether the balances are correct or not. IANAA but afaik GAAP does not preclude cash basis accounting, provided the conditions where cash accounting is permitted pertain.
you’re right, although cash basis would only fly under GAAP if you earn revenue at the time of cash receipt. In other words, anyone collecting money for services not immediately rendered (any subscription service) should be accrual
I don't think cash basis precludes having a liability on the books for un-delivered services. It just means you recognize the revenue when the payment is received. Lots of small companies use cash basis because it's simpler and easier to understand. IANAA.
That’s right. Financial accounting and taxation are not the same thing. Even if you are taxed on a cash basis, it’s prudent to manage your business with appropriate revenue deferrals.
I thought by definition you never have any revenue liability on the books (no unearned revenue) with cash basis because you’re recognizing the revenue on the date the cash is received. Nothing is deferred therefore no liability.
If someone pays up front for a service to be delivered over a period, you have a liability, no matter whether on a cash or accrual basis.
The difference is that you can recognize the revenue on receipt of the cash, but at the same time, you also recognize the liability to deliver the service (based on COGS etc for the liability).
The liability reduces as you expense (and actually pay on a cash basis) the cost of supplying the service.
At least that's my non-accountant idea of how it works.
What gave you that impression? I always consulted my financials when making decisions. Unfortunately the books were wrong and I made incorrect choices from that bad data.
This is why you have to do a quick back of the envelope go over of the big numbers and make sure they are at least close. Loosing track of $300K is partly your fault. The scale means you have to be looking at it as part of a big picture summary uncontaminated by technology. With Nuclear Treaties it is called "Trust but Verify" and is applicable to business cash flows. You have to be skeptical of the automated numbers that employees touch as there can be either error or worse fraud.
When I go over my household budget I'd notice if I wasn't paying my mortgage even if someone deleted it from my spreadsheet. It's important enough to me that it's front of mind when I'm thinking about money. I expect to see it on the list. I'd look for it if it wasn't there. Salaries are apparently not that big of a deal in the same way so asking for a higher one seems like a good idea.
Generally good advice in general, $10-20k is nothing to even a small business but is probably a lot to you. It's not often an asymmetry works out in the employees favor.
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.
> The plan for profitability was that they'd eventually automate the human part away, but eventually never came.
Every. Damn. Time. I've fought and lost this battle at so many companies with directors and executives who were genuinely completely delusional about how much of a human process could be automated.
It's always the tasks that are easy and don't take up much time. If you end up solving one of the genuinely hard problems then you should just pivot to packaging and selling that as your business.
It's how virtually all automation works. You figure out how to make a computer do 80% of the problem domain and give humans tools to intervene effectively when you're outside that subset.
Many of the most reliable systems you can think of work this way, from the mail, to taxes, to factories, to autopilot systems. The key to building them is to be intentional about what you're doing and especially avoid blaming the humans for the system's failures.
Accounting startups that rely on automation are doomed to fail. Customers demand perfect accounting at automation-reflective prices. It’s just not possible.
Well yeah, if you're saying you can automate something, something as tractable as bookkeeping, then why would customers expect less quality? It should be perfect, and instant— that's the entire sales pitch of having a machine do it in the first place.
It might not be optimal, a human tax professional might be more creative and save you money, but it should always produce correct forms.
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.
I used them from around '18-'22. There were a couple of minor glitches sometimes, but it was generally fine and they were always quick to respond to questions. My accountant liked working with them.
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?!?!
Solidgiant, this is Luc Lewarne. I assure you that I am just as shocked as you are. I woke up today, along with my colleagues, to an email telling us that Bench was insolvent, and that all operations and employment would cease effective immediately. I know what it is like to be mislead in a buying process - it feels terrible. I want to let you know, person to person, that I had no bad intentions or knowledge of Bench’s future when I sold you our services. As for Capchase, I’m pretty sure they haven’t processed a payment from you yet, which means they haven’t sent us any funds. If you contact them, you should be able to get out of it.
Thanks Luc for the response, I have emailed Capchase support and they asked me to talk to bench.co I wasn't trying to publicly name you to shame you, but was looking for help in case someone knew where to point me. Hindsight I can see, should have probably left that out. The public page on Bench.co didn't have any contact or way to talk to anyone so I used the only contact I had. I do wish you the best in your next endeavors.
I imagine it wasn't very fun to wake up to the news that you lost your job, and then to have your name personally called out :( I don't doubt you were just as mislead as your customers were. I hope you are able to take a few days to process the situation and decompress, and then you rebound quickly into your next position! I don't think anyone will hold it against you personally :)
Well in hindsight, that was a silly thing to do...
First step- make sure you have read and understand your contract. Is there a cancellation period? What state laws may apply (Some states a allow a cooling off period, but often this applies only to consumer contracts, not B2B).
Second, contact Capchase via email and see if they will will allow you out of the contract "peacefully". If they are smart, they will so "sure, no problem, of course" and cancel the contract. If not, name and shame them everywhere you have an audience.
Third, if that doesn't work, you can either proactively sue them to cancel the contract, or just don't pay them and let them decide whether or not to sue you. Doing the latter may result in a negative report on your business credit.
> I was just sold bench.co [...] 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...
I might ask a lawyer if that looks like fraud. (And then wouldn't be surprised if the lawyer can quickly make it like the sale never happened, other than your time wasted, and the lawyer fees.)
Or maybe ask your state AG's office if that looks like fraud.
(Edit: I mean the appearance that Bench.co was entering contracts to provide service for a period, knowing that they probably wouldn't provide that service, and, further, attempting to obligate you to pay for service for the entire period anyway. Or something like that. I'm not a lawyer, so I'd ask one.)
Which is part of why I didn't put the name in. The essence was that the company might have signed contracts that they knew they wouldn't fulfill.
Of course, salespeople should have professional reputations (e.g., for honesty, or for dishonesty). But don't let them be a scapegoat for the more likely real culprit or bigger fish.
I don't know the dollar figure here and I would hope Capchase is a company that will value their reputation over screwing you on that dollar figure, but I would definitely question why you signed an agreement to pay for a product even if that product is not deliverable. One of the primary value adds to the middleman in a transaction is generally that they take on some of the risk.
I’m guessing Capchase is a financier of sorts. Capchase pays Bench for the full term up front, then the customer pays Capchase in monthly increments.
So Capchase is delivering their product, the financing. Which is why there would be a clause that the customer still owes Capchase even if Bench closes; Capchase has already paid Bench and wants to be made whole.
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)
The benefit and problem with "nextgen" solutions like bench, kick, etc is that they provide a proprietary solution for the entire stack. This could be better/faster/cheaper but also comes with risk, as we are seeing in real time.
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)
If you use "standard" accounting software, you can change the other layers of your accounting stack at will. The total cost of layers 1 and 2 might be $6k-$8k per year for a company with revenue, which looks more expensive than the nextgen solutions. But the reduced risk and increased flexibility may be worth it.
Look into Paro.ai. They are a marketplace with good and reliable bookkeeper, accountants, CFOs. My AI startup got a CFO from them 3 years ago and the relationship is still going strong. They haven't hiked up my rates over 3 years. CPA firms increase rates every year, or dump you if you don't make enough money for them
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?
I'm not a lawyer, but I'd be filing a fraud complaint. They had to have known this yesterday but still sold you a service. At least, that's the argument I'd be making, and I doubt the Bench team will have the bandwidth to dispute complaints right now.
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)
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?
Been there done that several times over. One PT bookkeeper would only do books if they also got paid to process payroll which like the books was always behind. They did a good job on the books but I have small brick and mortar biz's. While I can wait a bit for books I can't to get my employees paid correctly, once someone's payroll isn't right/paychecks take longer/etc it gets heated.
Another would produce books that required a lot of work from my CPA which made the CPA a lot more expensive.
I've had it pretty easy - friends of mine have had PT/local bookkeepers do every form of damage you can think of - it's a messy world for SMB books. And those are nothing compared to the carnage I've observed small biz's with an employee PT or FT in house doing the books.
You’re probably so small that you don’t need to worry about keeping good books. If you have a decent number of customers and employees and worry about payroll then you need proper accounting software.
I use GnuCash for my personal accounting, and have a flow down to import my monthly cashflow and categorize everything into my ledger. What does such accounting software provide on top of that?
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?
I'm wondering the same thing. I paid for Bench through Freshbooks, who said they'll be offering refunds for services not rendered. If they didn't get back to me with this, I was going to dispute the charge with my credit card company. If you paid by CC, you could try that.
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
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 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?
Then how did Bench collapse? How many of those startups have enough customers to be profitable? How could I, as a business owner, decide based solely on their HN advertisements?
We don't know. There have been many companies that collapsed while competitors grew and new competitors started out. Companies collapse for various reasons. One good explanation is that secure debt got called in and that was the end of them.
> How many of those startups have enough customers to be profitable?
Who knows. How many of the VC ran startups are running at a loss to grow but if they just cut back would be profitable?
> How could I, as a business owner, decide based solely on their HN advertisements?
Because literally no one knows how to keep books and manage a double entry system. We had a family business for 40+ years and most of the revenue was from fixing bookkeeping and accounting mistakes made by untrained individuals trying to use software (QuickBooks). "If the software lets me do it then it must be correct."
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...
Local CPA isn't a bad option though it could be pricey. (CPAs don't want to do book keeping either). I think one of the things that makes the bench.co shutdown challenging is that they used "proprietary" software so now you're going to have to migrate soon. Switching to accounting software that CPAs are more likely to be familiar with would be a step in the right direction and working with someone to aid that and help do catch up would be a good idea. I can help with both so that this isn't the catastrophe that it's shaping up to be
You can hire a bookkeeper to work with the CPA. I had a freelance freelancer who would keep books up to date, and then turn over the books to the CPA for tax prep and analysis. I estimate the cost was about half as much as if the CPA firm did everything, and everyone was doing what they wanted to do.
My local CPA had previously guided me to using Bench. "Accountant" and "bookkeeper" are separate disciplines. My accountant manages my tax filings and other complicated transactions. The bookkeeper makes sure all our ledgers balance out.
That's a fair assessment. I'd advise hiring a part-time bookkeeper if the transactions are sufficiently numerous or complicated to warrant it. The cpa can handle period closing concerns, trial balances, all that stuff. Many family-sized firms offer this as included, so there might not be much of a difference.
For others reading along, one huge difference is that bookkeeping tends to be vastly cheaper per hour. It would get very expensive to pay a CPA to transcribe your credit card statement into Quickbooks (or previously Bench, or whatever else you're using for your ledgers).
Bookkeeping is sufficiently complex that I'd personally rather pay someone to do a good job of than muddle through on my own, but it's not rocket science. Perhaps most importantly, they understand accounting jargon. When my CPA asks me to send over the Fnord-Smootson report, and that's not the exact name of a report in my bookkeeping software, I have no freaking idea how to get that to him. A competent bookkeeper asks whether he needs that report frobnicated by date or by time-value and they work out the details.
A good CPA makes rocket science look easy. You typically pay them crazy amounts per hour, but for only a few hours a year. They take those bookkeeping journals and explain your situation to the IRS in a way favorable to your interests.
You want a good bookkeeper and you want a good CPA. If you can get both of those under the same roof, freaking awesome! Your life just got easier and more profitable.
Absolutely. I am actually not familiar with Bench, so I'm just talking in general, but I've never heard accounts of good experiences with highly parallel XaaS. Your f&a operation sort of necessarily needs to be close to your operation. It's tough to farm it out. There's a big continuity story in your books.
They can though. Dying businesses take time to die. Even if nothing else, they could have decided to shut down _earlier_ so that customers would have more time to deal with the fallout. Or they could have decided to shut down _at the same time_ but just messaged about it earlier.
It seems unlikely they didn't know they were going down until just a few days before having to shut down services.
And given that this happens during the holidays, ot wouldn't surprise me if some customers don't find out about this until after the window to extract your data has expired. Or people have to work on fixing this mess who were supposed to be on PTO.
The investors aren't going to let you burn all the cash just because. They want out now with whatever is left so they can flip the coin to the next bet.
Maybe if the investors could be held liable for the damage they cause for suddenly shutting something down like this, they would be more likely to give customers more warning before shutting something down.
I have a friend who works at Taxfyle and they are a great alternative. They do both taxes and bookkeeping and work with software like Quickbooks and Xero where the pro does everything for you. Definitely worth checking out if you want to check their website: https://www.taxfyle.com/bookkeeping
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
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
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?
same here. and my spouse signed up for the year to get taxes done quickly because we had an issue with 2023 -- and he hated them. I have used them for years. now I'm just at a loss. I don't know how to get money back. I'm sick.
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...
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.
Their software is designed to enable hundreds of bookkeepers to do the accounting with some interesting automations, self hosting makes little sense. As an individual, if you want to do things yourself, you're better off using gnucash.
With how much they were charging and how little service they were providing, I can't comprehend how they've never been able to figure out the business model.
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.
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.
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
I wanted some features for shipping and receiving and ability to find closest assets. I'll be importing zip codes which have lat lng needs to be stored and queryable.
We're sorry to hear about Bench shutting down, particularly coming into tax season.
As a company that specializes in solopreneur finance (formation, accounting, tax and payroll) we know that this time of year is stressful as is. If Collective can support or help you and your business in any way, please reach out at http://collective.com, join one of our Q+A sessions, or reach out to me at hooman@collective.com.
If we're a good fit for your business, use the code HERETOHELP to get a discount off of your membership.
We have years of experience working with former Bench customers and our team is working through the weekend to help any small businesses who need urgent help. We're here to support you.
If you're an employee that was impacted, we also have lots of job openings at www.collective.com/careers.
They had been slapping on a bunch of "AI" tools this year, all of which required me to manually converse with the AI to categorize transactions. I was wondering what I was even paying Bench for with how much manual work I had to do each month i.r.t. to my books.
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.
US companies pay more and obviosuly it’s a bigger market. It means the pool of good engineers and leaders is constantly leaking across the border. I’ve made Vancouver work for me for 20 years but there are significant headwinds and for young people with no ties there is very little incentive to stay.
There is a lot more happening on the East coast though.
> seems like nobody can really compete with America when it comes to creating IPOs and billionaires.
This is another way of saying American tech VCs throw a lot of money around, often into poor investments, in the hope of cornering the market on $nextBigThing. In a world where any Tom, Dick and Harry can run up massive losses and still IPO through an SPAC, how is that an indicator of anything good?
>In a world where any Tom, Dick and Harry can run up massive losses and still IPO through an SPAC, how is that an indicator of anything good?
Anyone can IPO, but few earn money doing it. In the last 10 years, how many owners made any significant money IPO-ing through an SPAC? The market has mostly rewarded good businesses with cash flow and profits and growth, and others have lagged behind a relatively risk-less SP500 investment.
This very thread is an example of yet another business shutting down because the business couldn’t achieve the desired profit margins. If the owners could have IPO’d and made money, they would have.
> Anyone can IPO, but few earn money doing it. In the last 10 years, how many owners made any significant money IPO-ing through an SPAC?
If owners are holding stock (instead of say, options), then the only reason to IPO would be if they can sell the stock on the secondary market at a profit. They wouldn't need to IPO to raise capital, the VCs can offer that. So what would be event where such a SPAC IPO wouldn't make money for the founder?
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.
Are you a single member LLC? Digits is focused on C Corps right now and for C Corps we can offer personal tax returns. Fill out this form: https://tinyurl.com/digits-bench here. Our team is fully focused on helping Bench customers through the rest of the holidays!
I have a friend who works at Taxfyle and they cater to single-member LLCs and newly formed businesses. They seem like a great fit for you if you need taxes and bookkeeping done. Check out their website: https://www.taxfyle.com/bookkeeping
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?
So: that specific comment was posted three times, by accounts named strattonoakmont, strattonoak, and theoak. I googled the first and got this wikipedia page:
> Stratton Oakmont, Inc. was a Long Island, New York, over-the-counter brokerage house founded in 1989 by Jordan Belfort and Danny Porush. It defrauded many shareholders, leading to the arrest and incarceration of several executives and the closing of the firm in 1996.
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.)
Genuine question: why did you raise $100 million Series C for a bookkeeping company? I'm a Pilot customer, and my heart dropped when I saw your funding announcement on the homepage a while back.
The disconnect you have with me (your customer) is that I don’t want or need a “tech enabled service”.
I just want the service.
Sometimes being a Pilot customer feels like I’m being experimented on. Instead of humans reliably doing our books, now I need to hire a fractional CFO (which you conveniently also provide) to double check your work.
We find errors in our Pilot books at a staggering rate. Things that would never be missed if we just had a human bookkeeper.
The value prop for a “tech enabled service” from a customers perspective is non-existent. It’s not cheaper for the customer (I pay you over $25k/yr for doing very little), the quality isn’t any better, and as we see with Bench (who also raised $100 million) there’s incredible risk in relying on it as a business critical service.
Anyone reading this, just please go hire a human bookkeeper. Don’t believe the marketing spin pitched by these tech enabled services companies.
Hey cj, just created an account here to reply to your thoughts, as they strike home. I own Merrittbookkeeping.com. It's a bookkeeping service run by humans, offering very affordable monthly rates. I'm surprised how many new companies are launching "AI powered bookkeeping", but for more money than we are! Why would the end user care if it's AI, unless it's way cheaper? Same thing you are expressing here. Not sure why companies promote fancy tech unless it is a benefit to the end user, not the company themselves.
I’m interested in migrating over to Pilot. How is the migration process from bench? It seems we can do a data export in a few days. Can pilot do 2024 catch up?
We have a number of folks who have switched from Bench, and as you can imagine there's enough volume here that it's worth building some bespoke stuff for this.
And yes, we can do 2024 catch-up work.
(waseem@pilot.com if folks have any specific questions)
I guess we now know that the price of a bookkeeping and tax preparation service that won’t shut down without warning is the 2x pilot are charging of what bench were charging.
And how does this compare to a local accounting firm?
Hint: ask the salesman what happens in the event of an IRS audit. A good local CPA will go to the wall for you. Will the service you're considering do the same?
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.
Awesome. Since you're here, could you share pricing? I know it may vary, but since you are offering to bring on Bench customers perhaps you could share pricing for similar service as Bench's offerings?
You're right that it varies a lot but we're priced competitively with all of our peers. I haven't seen a quote that we can't beat. We're playing a long game here and aren't going to lose a good customer on price.
Bookkeeping starts at $500/mo, Fed + State Taxes at $2,400. We do a long list of FP&A and fractional CFO services as needed. We get our prospects a detailed quote from just a 30-min call.
Additionally, they took down all of their accounting articles without notice. They had valuable summaries on various tax topics. Thankfully, Wayback Machine has archives of my bookmarks.
All the more reason to self-host your own archived versions of bookmarks...
is there an easy solution for this? I recently found myself looking through old bookmarks from a long previous project and only about 1/3 worked and it made me sad.
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
Not for filing. The hard part is understanding how to find exemptions, deductions, ect. It has already outperformed both my CPA and tax attorney and at this point I am using it to correct them before taking their advice.
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.
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.
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