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.
