All of my book-keeping headaches are gone!

I really like it that Bench people essentially leave me alone and they will do all the bookkeeping stuff for me. It is not my forte, so it is great and done at much lower price point than hiring a firm. The web interface is great and pretty much you upload your expense receipts and they will take care of it.

Occasionally the bank statement transfers stops, then takes a bit of trial and errors for it to work, only happens perhaps once a year or so. No biggie, but could improve it.

Overall, I've been very impressed with Bench. The people, organization, resources, and software are top-notch. The price, however, is too much for someone who is self-employed or a small business owner with limited transactions. I understand that you generally get what you pay for, but I don't feel that you get 10x the value over self-managed bookkeeping using Quickbooks, Freshbooks, or Wave bookkeeping software. Excellent product -- it's just not for everyone.

Everyone I worked with to understand and use the bookkeeping software was friendly, professional, and helpful. The dashboard analytics was very easy to understand and is very appealing. I also like that I can export all data into a single workbook (summaries and itemized transactions).

I don't like that the product is so expensive. Depending on how large your business is and how many transactions you're managing, this product may be too expensive. For example, I've used Quickbooks Self-Employed for years and it's under $20/mo. In comparison, Bench (without any promotions) is hundreds of dollars per month. Granted, they are provided professional bookkeeping services as well as the software, but for a business with 50 transactions per month, it is a little overkill. It's really the only thing I don't love about Bench.

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.

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.

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.

Bench is useful and helped me to navigate the early days of my company, but I could've saved a lot of money doing some of the data correlation myself and hiring a tax expert directly.

I like that Bench can customize the experience and give you almost any list of metrics.

Bench is more expensive than other options I've tried, but much of that is my fault. Their pricing is based on working with much larger companies.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

My accounting was solved using bench, literally it's set it and forget it, these guys are top notch and make your life easy.

Incredibly supportive staff, intuitive friendly user-interface, provided year end tax portfolio that I could easily give to my CPA. Bench is just fantastic, I can't say enough good things about the way they have handled my accounts for the past 3 years, highly recommend. If you're a professional, this is for you.

The only con here is that I didn't switch sooner.

I like that it's easy to use, comes in a user-friendly format, and simplifies accounting for me. It's dummy-proof! I'm mostly looking forward to an easier tax season with this software.

It's a little expensive for a one-person office, so I wish there were more tiers in pricing. But I like the product and will continue to use it, and understand that it costs money for a good product.

I am spending a lot less time on bookkeeping and accounting.

Very easy implementation - love the human support on closing the books each month.

Not all of my business accounts can be connected via feed (ie intuit payroll), which requires a drag and drop upload each month.

This was super easy to set up and describe exactly what I was using it for. other providers took ages to figure out how to integrate my Amazon sales but Bench just got it!

The pricing was a bit on the higher side especially the catch up accounting that ended up being a large lumpsum in my case!

Generally my experience has been good. The device is expensive compared to other bookkeeping devices. My biggest concern is that in working with the company you get handed off to several different staff. It has been hard to build a relationship with my bookkeeper for this reason. I’ve found that I have to reexplain a number of our specifics over and over again because I am working with new people within the company. It would be better to be assigned to one bookkeeper, especially in our case, which included historical books and present day books. My business isnt open yet but some of the limitations in the software (particularly a lack of an A/P system) cause concern for me in considering continuing use once we are open.

I like that the online interface is user friendly, albeit a little glitchy.

Software is glitchy and could use a bit of tweaking in order to ensure that it is more effective.

Bit of a bumpy onboarding with aggressive trials clearly operated by a different team, but so much smoother once you start a subscription and are assigned your bookkeeper.

A pleasant mix of self-service software, with a reliably consistent team who does genuinely get to know my business.

It is a walled garden, so no integrations with any existing software. Leads to a lot of duplicate or redundant content in Xero, Expensify, and other tools I use.

First time around was good. This time around I’m not too pleased with the person assigned to my account

It’s easy to set up and use, semi affordable

I would like to see mileage tracking and the ability to move items to a category myself

I am saving myself hours and hours of handling the bookkeeping. I am confident that it is done correctly and I am not missing anything. I like having someone to ask bookkeeping questions to if need be.

I was hesitant to start Bench because I thought I could handle the bookkeeping for our business on my own. Managing money has always been a strength for me. However, as my company grows I find that I need to keep delegating and removing things off of my plate. At the same time as a business owner I like to keep as much cash inside the company as possible. I finally gave the free trial a chance and it has been the BIGGEST weight off of me. I know that my bookkeeping is totally taken care of and done professionally. The stress of organizing everything for taxes is lifted off, and I know that I always have someone working on it everyday on my behalf. Anytime I have questions I get an immediate response along with very valuable advice. I am a Bench customer for life!

I don't like that it keeps disconnecting to my bank account. We've had a few technical issues with that. It can be very time consuming and frustrating especially since I am extremely busy already. I also have to confirm purchases from months prior and that can take a long time! When I confirm those purchases it is usually 30+ transactions and at that point I don't even remember all of them so it takes a while for me to locate receipts. I really dislike that too. I wish it were less expensive for us a small business owner as well.

As a small business we're constantly prioritizing big time spends and deciding what's worth us outsourcing and spending money on rather than time. Bench was one that, as soon as we were set up and going with them, we've never looked back. It is not cheap. But it's worth it for us, no question about it!

We've been using Bench for a few years now and absolutely love it. It can be basically as hand's off as you want. We get an email once a month when they're working on our books, sometimes an extra contact here and there if they provide other documentation throughout the year. And we have our CPA and Bench people in touch with each other which is even more off our plate. As small business owners, bookkeeping used to take a ton of our time, and now it's a breeze. And logging into our account we can look around at where our money is going with a quick glance

I admit we haven't done a ton of digging around in the actual software - our typical use is them contacting us with any categorization questions once a month (and after a couple years there are hardly ever any). I do wish (or can not find how) we could see how much money we're paying/spending on a particular item. So, say, I want to see how much we're spending on just Facebook ads. What I can do is search for "facebook" (and I can specifically search within whatever time period I want, like Q4 2018 or January 2017), but it won't automatically give me a sum of all of those expenses. I CAN see a summary of expenses by category, but by "line item" (like "Facebook" or "AWS") would be even more helpful.

Bench is amazing. As a small business owner I was spending too much time categorizing expenses and correctly documenting items for the P&L or balance statement. Bench offers such an amazing service and any time I had a question or issue my Bench specialist was right there. I would highly recommend Bench to anyone who needs bookkeeping services (and their tax team is amazing as well). Couple all of that with their service team's (big shout out to [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN]) genuine care for you and your company and you have kind of a no brainer.

The platform is intuitive and easy to use. You speak directly with the individual managing your account, which is nice for continuity. Any discrepancies are easily adjusted or annotated. It exports to multiple file types for integration with other platforms. It links with your accounts so you don't have to manually input everything. AND THEIR TEAM ACTUALLY CARES ABOUT YOU, which is a breath of fresh air.

Sometimes there are functionality issues with linked accounts, but usually it is because of the security protocols of the bank or account.