Completely alleviated stress while reducing my bookkeeping costs

When I first heard about Bench, I was nervous about switching from a standard, old school accounting firm I'd worked with for many years. Within a week, my fears were dissipating. Three years later, my fears are completely gone. Bench completely meets my needs as a small business owner - while saving me time and money.

Pros

Bench is SIMPLE. The software provides me an accurate and easy to understand overview of my monthly and annual financials with easy-to- process visuals and graphs. The software integrates automatically with my bank and credit card, alleviating the back and forth calls and emails I used to labor through with my former "brick and mortar" accountants. When I have a question, the Bench team is always available and quick to respond.

Cons

Nada! No complaints here! I have not experienced a single problem with the Bench software

Excellent Book Keeping Software For Running Your Business

Understanding the financial health of our business has been critical in making decisions both long and short term. Bench helped free up the minimal time that we as business owners have and spend more of that time focusing on our business, which has been very helpful.

Pros

It was great to see a breakdown of all three financial statements for our business, both from a macro and micro perspective. Being able to pull up accounts and see specific transactions from desktop and on the go through mobile was indispensable in running a healthy business and planning for the future. The messaging system was prompt and efficient for keeping in touch with our book keepers and account manager with any pressing questions. They were always very professional and did high quality work. Any questions or concerns with categorization and interpreting information were answered well.

Cons

I think it would be helpful to expand the software to allow for the dropping of all receipts into our account in order to have a one stop location for accessing and printing receipts for accounting and tax purposes. We were informed that only high ticket items needed receipts, and so we ended up using other third party software to track mileage and keep track of receipts.

Bench dropped the ball & gave me a partial refund.

I tested Bench out at the end of 2019 and then hired them for my entire 2020 books. In the beginning, they were on top of things. Then, mid-summer they dropped the ball. My account got passed to another team, and they didn't even touch my books for months. It was a mess. I reached out to customer service and they did give me 2 months of a refund, because the customer service rep (who was very kind & courteous) saw what I saw. In December, I requested for my bookkeeper to fix some miscategorized transactions and later asked, "Hey were those fixed?" She said she fixed them, which was a blatant lie! On top of all of that, it took them about TWO MONTHS to do my final end of year books that I could pass onto my CPA. I was told they were uploaded, but then they weren't there when I looked for them. I had to request, "Please upload them again." They apologized and did so right away, but by the time I saw them, thank goodness for the COVID extension, because I literally didn't have my deliverables from Bench until April 2020. My filings would have been late.

Pros

Bench is easy to use and navigate. In the beginning, they were fantastic at answering questions I had to help understand how my bookkeeping was being handled. That's about the only good thing I have to say.

Cons

I spent more time dealing with Bench all year long than when I was doing my own bookkeeping on a simple spreadsheet. I expected a learning curve in the beginning. They promised it would get easier "as we learn about your business and transactions," but I found month after month that the same transactions got flagged needing my input. Then, when I did thorough checks on my books, I found several transactions not in the right category. The other thing I didn't like was that my bank constantly needed to be reconnected. I truly felt like I spent more time handling Bench than I would've spend just doing my own bookkeeping.

Extremely happy with my choice!

Overall, really great! They're super helpful. Most of the time they're quick to respond, but at times have needed to have an extra poke to get a response. That is a rarity. Usually, I'll hear back from someone by the next day at the latest.

Pros

Having all the data to see my business stats has been really helpful. They call it the "Pulse" which shows you the health of your business with a way to visualize how you're doing over time. I like that a lot. Bookkeeping is really easy for me now and I'm thankful I outsourced it. I just connect my accounts and drag and drop invoices and receipts that I scan or receive into the documents section and they take care of things. They also provide a nice, clean, easy to understand summary at the end of each year so my accountant can do my taxes easily. I have no regrets going with Bench. It definitely saves me a lot of time and stress.

Cons

I wish there are some nice comparable summaries like percentage growth or changes month to month, by quarter, and YoY. Prices still feel a little high to me and I wish there was an option for invoicing and receiving payments into my checking accounts.

A great value of service for taking care of bookkeeping

Great experience and helpful service. Awesome value since an in-person CPA would be double the cost. Bench was especially around tax time when it comes to working with me to get my numbers buttoned up.

Pros

The iOS app is simple and easy to use. I appreciate the quick access to messaging back and forth with my bookkeeper, making notes about transactions, and they referred me to Gusto for an integrated payroll service

Cons

Some of the features like their Pulse tab of real time bank account syncing and electronic PDF statement syncing are glitchy.