[HN Gopher] Bench accounting services shutting down
___________________________________________________________________
Bench accounting services shutting down
Author : knuckleheads
Score : 288 points
Date : 2024-12-27 15:43 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (bench.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (bench.co)
| knuckleheads wrote:
| Just got an email from them out of nowhere and they are closing
| down more or immediately. Very surprising.
| gkedzierski wrote:
| 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.
| marcobambini wrote:
| Does anyone know the reason?
| porter wrote:
| What are the best alternatives?
| journal wrote:
| https://github.com/denys-olleik/accounting
|
| Doing my best wish someone would help.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Cool. Looking forward to going through it.
|
| >Have CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS postgis; installed.
|
| Why is postgis a requirement for an accounting package?
| numbsafari wrote:
| Sales tax calculations maybe?
| journal wrote:
| 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.
| laleck wrote:
| For pure bookkeeping at a small scale, I really like plain text
| accounting with beancount and fava
|
| Bookkeeping is easy but labor intensive. Dealing with US tax
| law... That's when you spend on a local CPA.
| cyrusradfar wrote:
| First off, it's tragic to see this happen to folks. As a
| business owner, I understand how painful bookkeeping is and
| having your accountant drop you at the end of the year is
| remarkably terrible.
|
| Collective.com should be able to help for 2025. I can't speak
| to 2024 as, frankly, most of the affected aren't sure what the
| state of the books / export is.
|
| Bias (my brother is a co-founder). My two brothers both use the
| service for their S-Corps so, like Hair-Club, he's not only the
| CEO but he's also a customer.
| cyrusradfar wrote:
| Collective formally responded on LinkedIn with:
|
| 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.
|
| https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hooman_financial-solutions-
| re...
| mgkimsal wrote:
| FYI: "You will have until Friday, March 7th at 5:00pm ET to
| download your Bench data from this website."
| laleck wrote:
| 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...
| aftbit wrote:
| Not sure why flagged. Link rot is one of the scourges of the
| internet.
| avs733 wrote:
| 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.
| laleck wrote:
| This open-source bookmark manager, hoarder, was posted
| recently and offers local archiving:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42485746
|
| Recently, I've started messing around with vimwiki and
| saving pages as PDF or as safari web archive.
| ezekg wrote:
| 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...
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Definitely a local CPA. Building that relationship will pay
| off, even if it's just peace of mind.
| kstrauser wrote:
| 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.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| 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.
| kstrauser wrote:
| 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.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| 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.
| delfinom wrote:
| Depending on state and industry, accountants/CPAs are also
| auditors of the work performed by the bookkeeper.
| foolfoolz wrote:
| "shutting down right before the tax year ends is downright
| scummy"
|
| as if a dying business can magically decide to stay open longer
| and shut down at a more convenient time
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| Just like the strategic announcement of bad news....on a
| Friday.
| thayne wrote:
| 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.
| jnwatson wrote:
| It is irony of all ironies that an accounting services
| company would be surprised about their own insolvency.
|
| In reality, they had to have known for months. The director
| were probably just holding out for a Hail Mary funding
| injection.
|
| This is bad bad business, especially for a financial
| services company.
| BehindBlueEyes wrote:
| For sure staff was surprised, leadership not so much (I'd
| hope) but bear in mind the CEO was replaced just ~a month
| ago.
|
| I bet they were hoping for a christmas miracle.
| datavirtue wrote:
| 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.
| thayne wrote:
| 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.
| aftbit wrote:
| 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.
| aphilbert wrote:
| 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
| 1123581321 wrote:
| 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.
| claudiogodoyb wrote:
| 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
| aimazon wrote:
| 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.
| ezekg wrote:
| 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.
|
| Where did you move to?
| encoderer wrote:
| Ah sorry to hear you were caught up in this.
|
| Cronitor uses pilot. It was a little crazy at first but the
| last year+ feels like they have stabilized operations.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > 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).
| porter wrote:
| what service did you move to?
| paxys wrote:
| Why do you think it wasn't possible for them to run out of
| money? It's not like a 10 year old business is immune to
| failure.
|
| The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.
| aimazon wrote:
| 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.
| BehindBlueEyes wrote:
| 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.
|
| source: I know a few former employees.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| There's an accountant shortage, so I imagine it wasn't
| hard for those folks to prepare to bail, if they did.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >but most of the accountants probably didn't see this
| coming either.
|
| I would expect this was the kind of thing an accountant
| should see coming though.
| BehindBlueEyes wrote:
| 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.
| datavirtue wrote:
| 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.
|
| Don't be a mushroom.
| cutemonster wrote:
| > If I can't see the books I move on
|
| Are you saying that as a software developer, or you work
| with other things?
| adastra22 wrote:
| Running out of money right at year end, just when accounting
| revenue is likely to pick up is a bit sus.
| beepbopboopp wrote:
| 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.
| theanonymousone wrote:
| Sorry but is there some source about this for a lame person?
| adastra22 wrote:
| "I'm betting"
| conductr wrote:
| 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.
| cutemonster wrote:
| Thanks for such a nice explanation!
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dscr.asp
| beepbopboopp wrote:
| Bravo, I couldn't have explained it better.
| runako wrote:
| $60m Series C 3.5 years ago. My hypothesis is they shut it down
| when they were unable to turn it into a rocketship.
| euph0ria wrote:
| We just moved to CleerTax. Not sure if they are good yet but
| pretty responsive.
| yolo2122 wrote:
| 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.
| ABS wrote:
| on social media some employees are saying it's insolvent
| mdlm wrote:
| Got the same email. Totally shocking.
| benchdude444 wrote:
| 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.
| jegolden1 wrote:
| Q - is it that the strategy was at odds? Or was it that the
| software wasn't good enough yet, so expensive bookkeepers were
| required to supplement?
| tonkatsu2222 wrote:
| 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.
| jegolden1 wrote:
| 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.
| carloshdx wrote:
| 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?
| deepsun wrote:
| Ask them for prorated refund. You paid for a service and didn't
| receive it.
| solidgiant wrote:
| I signed up two weeks ago and they made me sign an ACH
| agreement with Capchase. Did you sign with capchase?
| kstrauser wrote:
| 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.
| bayarearefugee wrote:
| If they won't help you navigate such an obvious fraud, report
| Square to the CFPB (while it still exists).
|
| And keep situations like this in mind every time you hear some
| libertarian idiot railing against regulations.
| nervous_jessica wrote:
| No mention of refunds for unused months
| ABS wrote:
| on social media employees are saying it's insolvent so no
| refunds :-(
| Amfy wrote:
| link please
|
| Edit, found it myself: https://www.reddit.com/r/Accounting/co
| mments/1hnhoxq/comment...
| wdaher wrote:
| 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.)
| porter wrote:
| Pilot looks very expensive!
| aimazon wrote:
| 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.
| porter wrote:
| You don't know they won't shut down. And how does this
| compare to a local accounting firm?
| wdaher wrote:
| Price should be comparable to a high-quality local
| provider, but if that's not what you're seeing, I'd love
| to know that.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _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?
| santoshalper wrote:
| Your bookkeeping service shutting down with no notice over
| the holidays is not cheap either, my friend. Some things are
| worth paying for.
| bagelss wrote:
| 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?
| wdaher wrote:
| 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)
| Nelkins wrote:
| Do you service single member LLCs/S Corps?
| wdaher wrote:
| We do, yes.
| cj wrote:
| 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.
| wdaher wrote:
| It's a fairly capital-intensive business.
|
| Here's my best articulation of specifically what makes it
| hard: https://waseem.substack.com/p/tech-enabled-services
| cj wrote:
| 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.
| dustingetz wrote:
| let's hear your metrics on the issues of timeliness, accuracy,
| cost and bookkeeper churn that Bench faced?
| adam_gyroscope wrote:
| Happy pilot customer at both my startups (gyroscope & bit.io),
| and will be using them again for my third.
| deepsun wrote:
| 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.
| BehindBlueEyes wrote:
| They had that cert for the last ~3 years and were audited
| yearly and had a standard package to share with clients so
| doubt there's much to this rumor
| deepsun wrote:
| Nope, just confirmed, they refused to share SOC2 Report with
| their paying customers.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Can someone explain why potential customers would put up
| with this?
|
| I'd think that the _last_ thing a company wants to do is
| hire an bookkeeping company that seems shady.
| pplante wrote:
| 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.
| willcipriano wrote:
| [flagged]
| pplante wrote:
| 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.
| willcipriano wrote:
| 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.
| rudolf1995 wrote:
| Seems like a pretty sweeping generalization to take from
| a single anecdote about how one person was confused by a
| bad UI.
| Projectiboga wrote:
| 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.
| Spivak wrote:
| 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.
| dang wrote:
| " _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation
| of what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| How could this kind of 'hiding' comply with GAAP standards in
| any scenario?
|
| What sort of accounting books were being prepared where such a
| function is even needed?
| cj wrote:
| 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.
| dboreham wrote:
| 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.
| cj wrote:
| 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
| SoftTalker wrote:
| 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.
| cj wrote:
| 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.
| rswail wrote:
| 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.
|
| I may be completely wrong.
| jwsteigerwalt wrote:
| 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.
| porter wrote:
| Bench just forced me to switch to an annual contract a few days
| ago too. What a bunch of crooks.
| solidgiant wrote:
| Me too, and signed with Capchase. What are you looking to do?
| I'm trying to find someone at capchase, but not finding
| anyone...
| beibeiq wrote:
| I would LinkedIn DM Capchase folks with support or customer
| service titles.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| Wait a minute, they pushed you into an annual contract? And now
| that they aren't going to perform their end of the contract?
|
| This is fascinating. That smells like actual fraud on their
| part.
| ttul wrote:
| 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.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| 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.
| salomonk_mur wrote:
| Very likely paid in advance
| blakebilliet wrote:
| 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.
| JusticeJuice wrote:
| 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.
| fudged71 wrote:
| They also hired at least 20 people in the last 30 days
| according to LinkedIn
| Pikamander2 wrote:
| If you paid with a credit card, consider filing a chargeback.
| lgreer wrote:
| 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.
| lindsi wrote:
| 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?!
| Nelkins wrote:
| 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?
| Nelkins wrote:
| Also allegedly they were supposed to file an S Corp election.
| I've emailed them, but have no idea if I'll find out if it was
| actually sent.
| mt1973 wrote:
| 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.
| bagelss wrote:
| 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.
| jseibert wrote:
| 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.
| Nelkins wrote:
| Do you do personal tax returns in addition to business taxes as
| part of a package?
| beibeiq wrote:
| 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!
| Nelkins wrote:
| Single member LLC, so I don't think Digits is the right fit
| for me at the moment. Thanks for taking the time to
| respond.
| claudiogodoyb wrote:
| 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
| arjawn wrote:
| 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)
| bagelss wrote:
| I'm interested in migrating over. We have one account in GBP
| currency, can you handle this too? It's with wise.com. Do you
| over 2024 catch up too?
| arjawn wrote:
| Hey we don't have multi-currency support (yet) but it's on
| the roadmap
|
| And we can help with 2024 catchup
|
| You can book a free demo here, excited to help if we can:
| https://www.doola.com/bookkeeping/book-a-demo/
| dceddia wrote:
| 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.
| Nelkins wrote:
| 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.
| jsnyoung wrote:
| exactly.
| bagelss wrote:
| Totally agree. There is no contact page or reviews online for
| kick. I can't afford to get into this mess again.
| conradwa wrote:
| We've onboarded a significant number of folks from Bench onto
| Kick before this happened, so this may have been why were were
| mentioned.
|
| Working fast right now to try to provide resources and help
| Bench users migrate and will be sharing updates here:
| https://x.co/kickfinance
| Nelkins wrote:
| Gotcha, thanks for that. I'm sure you're a solid company with
| happy users.
|
| BTW, that link to your X profile returns a 404. It should be
| https://x.com/kickfinance .
| ergocoder wrote:
| I lol'ed.
| jsnyoung wrote:
| 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?
| Networkplumber wrote:
| 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.
| mjr00 wrote:
| 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.
| Spivak wrote:
| > 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.
| jegolden1 wrote:
| Accounting startups that rely on automation are doomed to
| fail. Customers demand perfect accounting at automation-
| reflective prices. It's just not possible.
|
| Check out story of scalefactor.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| 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.
| daft_pink wrote:
| Wow. We need an alternative to Intuit.
| wilkystyle wrote:
| 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?
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| 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.
|
| It's the company from the Wolf of Wall street.
| jsnell wrote:
| My guess is that this page is ranking very high for the kind of
| search anyone would use for finding out more about the closure.
|
| So disgruntled customers are finding the page and complain,
| competitors are finding the page to use for lead generation.
| dang wrote:
| Yes, this seems to be what happened.
|
| (But the specific accounts mentioned by the GP were a bit of
| a special case.)
| conradwa wrote:
| 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:
|
| - https://kick.co/bench
|
| - https://x.com/kickfinance
|
| 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.
| ezekg wrote:
| 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).
| claudiogodoyb wrote:
| 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/
| oxidant wrote:
| I used Bench in the past and they partnered with Taxfyle up
| until ~November 2023 (date of the email I received stating
| the partnership was ending).
|
| The service was fine, interesting that their relationship
| ended just over a year ago.
| rohan_shah wrote:
| I run a accountancy business in India for local customers
| and we are a team of more than ~10 CPA Indian
| equivalents. A few CFAs as well.
|
| Let me know if anyone requires our services for
| Bookkeeping/Accounting.
| yolo2122 wrote:
| Is Kick owned by, affiliated with, or invested in by Bench in
| any way?
|
| Also are any of the C-Level execs from Bench involved in Kick
| in any way?
| santoshalper wrote:
| This would be a great question to answer and would provide a
| lot of peace of mind.
| conradwa wrote:
| 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
| yolo2122 wrote:
| 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"...
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| 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.
| yolo2122 wrote:
| 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.
| bruce511 wrote:
| 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.
| acaloiar wrote:
| For what it's worth Google's index suggests kick.co/bench
| was indexed/last updated: Oct 16, 2024.
| kopirgan wrote:
| Strange that kick seems to know and had time to build all this
| but customers didn't get any heads up?!
| benatkin wrote:
| > had time to build all this
|
| They didn't need a heads up to build this. It takes between
| half an hour and half a day.
| nervous_jessica wrote:
| 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?
| entangledqubit wrote:
| 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?
| solidgiant wrote:
| 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?!?!
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| 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.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| 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.
| jegolden1 wrote:
| And fourth maybe don't name and shame the poor salesperson.
| neilv wrote:
| > _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.)
| benatkin wrote:
| Do account execs get a heads up about a shutdown? If not,
| maybe there wasn't a good reason to mention the account exec
| by name here.
| neilv wrote:
| 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.
| benatkin wrote:
| Good call.
| thih9 wrote:
| Agreed. Also, even if they did get a heads up, hn is not
| the place to resolve this kind of dispute. Emailing them,
| or a lawyer sounds more productive.
|
| Shaming companies publicly is fine; shaming individual
| workers and posting personal data is bad taste to say the
| least.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Wouldn't "you have to pay even if we don't deliver the product
| you're buying" be considered unconscionable?
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| Yea. That doesn't sound right. I'd say Op should talk to a
| lawyer ASAP.
|
| I mean, bad to agree to in the first place, but it doesn't
| seem like a contract where the other party is non-performant,
| should be enforceable.
| caseyohara wrote:
| 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.
| runako wrote:
| This is how I read it as well. I hope OP got a significant
| discount on Bench service in exchange for this kind of
| agreement.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > I was just sold bench.co for my three businesses and the
| sales person Luc Lewarne made me sign a payment agreement with
| Capchase.
|
| I'm sorry for the troubles you had, but is it really fair to
| say the salesman _made_ you sign an agreement?
| lucatbench wrote:
| 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.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| 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 :)
| solidgiant wrote:
| 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.
| thih9 wrote:
| Please do not name individual workers, they were likely unaware
| and no longer work there.
|
| Shaming companies is fine, shaming individual workers is not;
| usually they are powerless, likely here too.
| acaloiar wrote:
| > 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.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| This must terrible for small businesses. Not sure how they can
| even help 10k customers with transition if they have shutdown
| and staff are laid off.
| genman1 wrote:
| 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.
| ottoaj wrote:
| 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
| Kwpolska wrote:
| So you run a bookkeeping company, yet your wife is using a
| competitor?
| yolo2122 wrote:
| Founder/Former CEO Ian Crosby's post about the Bench closure:
|
| https://x.com/ianwcrosby/status/1872724231999381790
| davidcbc wrote:
| Is there a version readable for people without twitter
| accounts?
| tarr11 wrote:
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1872724231999381790.html
| ckrailo wrote:
| Swap the domain of the URL with nitter.poast.org
|
| https://nitter.poast.org/ianwcrosby/status/18727242319993817.
| ..
|
| More about nitter: https://github.com/zedeus/nitter
| Tanoc wrote:
| 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.
| coldtrait wrote:
| Yea I don't think there's an alternative after Elon made
| changes to Twitter's API
| joshuahedlund wrote:
| I don't know how they do it but xcancel works pretty good
|
| https://xcancel.com/ianwcrosby/status/1872724231999381790
| KomoD wrote:
| 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.
| joshuahedlund wrote:
| https://xcancel.com/ianwcrosby/status/1872724231999381790
| ttul wrote:
| 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.
| iwcrosby wrote:
| Ian Crosby here. If you don't believe me, believe the CEO of
| Shopify who was an investor and partner:
| https://x.com/tobi/status/1872753436116332994
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Hi Ian. Sorry to see this happen to the company you
| founded. Can you say what the board's strategy was that
| conflicted with your vision?
| mcenedella wrote:
| 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!
| yolo2122 wrote:
| 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.
| blakebilliet wrote:
| 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)
| runako wrote:
| 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?
| blakebilliet wrote:
| 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.
| bolshchikov wrote:
| CEO of Finaloop (real-time financial solution) just offered a
| migration package and 75% off.
|
| https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7278469880629067776-...
| michliao wrote:
| 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
| jakecarpenter wrote:
| 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.
| kstrauser wrote:
| 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.
| MayowaO wrote:
| 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.
| pkkkzip wrote:
| 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.
| justinhj wrote:
| 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.
| rchaud wrote:
| > 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?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >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.
| rchaud wrote:
| > 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?
| davidkopf wrote:
| 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
| sirjaz wrote:
| 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!
| cmosser wrote:
| I'm Crystal, Director of Relationships and Sales at Breakaway
| Advising. We deeply feel for the employees and clients of Bench
| left in a lurch, especially during this season. In light of the
| recent news and in the spirit of the holidays, I'm offering
| complimentary setup for QuickBooks Online (QBO) or Xero to help
| you get started.
|
| Breakaway Advising is a franchise model with no entry fee for
| bookkeepers, controllers, and CFOs. Backed by a community of
| expert professionals, we provide exceptional financial services
| with an entrepreneurial approach. Think of me as your
| client/advisor matchmaker--here to connect you with the perfect
| professionals to meet your unique needs.
|
| Whether a Bench employee or client and if you value exceptional
| service, great people, and a community-driven spirit, let's
| connect! Reach out to me at cmosser@breakawayadvising.com.
| evabiz7 wrote:
| EVA Business Solutions can help any impacted Bench customers.
| Contact them at info@evabusiness-solutions.com or call
| 615-461-7157.
| jnwatson wrote:
| 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?
| balls187 wrote:
| You're not old school.
|
| This is just how the tech industry works.
|
| I ofc know nothing about Bench, but am aware of tech companies
| that try to disrupt established businesses with the aid of
| free* unlimited* money.
| yolo2122 wrote:
| 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.
| blindriver wrote:
| 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.
| arjvik wrote:
| 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?
| j45 wrote:
| 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.
| BehindBlueEyes wrote:
| 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.
| ahstilde wrote:
| 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
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| If bookkeepers and able to collect an "unfair" price, then why
| are there no publicly listed bookkeeping businesses putting up
| large profit margins?
| romanzubenko wrote:
| 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
| Havoc wrote:
| 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....
| taxbirdie wrote:
| 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.
| johnkadams wrote:
| 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
| johnkadams wrote:
| Bench CEO and the rest of you scum bags we are going to find you
| and you are going to jail every last one of you!!!
|
| John Adams
| jaccounting wrote:
| 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.
| jbeard4 wrote:
| 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?
| entityinc wrote:
| 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.
| WesJam wrote:
| 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
| burlesona wrote:
| They charged us for our next month of service the day before they
| shut down. That's fraud.
| taspeotis wrote:
| Think of it as two months of read access rather than one month
| of read/write access!
|
| > You will have until Friday, March 7th at 5:00pm ET to
| download your Bench data from this website.
| rglover wrote:
| 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.
| nextworddev wrote:
| Interesting that they didn't even consider doing an "AI pivot"
| ezekg wrote:
| 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.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| 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?
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| The reason there are so many is that every company needs an
| accounting service. You don't need to dominate the market to
| have a profitable service.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| 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?
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > Then how did Bench collapse?
|
| 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?
|
| Who knows. Sounds like a foolish thing to do.
| datavirtue wrote:
| 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."
| jegolden1 wrote:
| The reason is that there is tons of money still flowing,
| because accounting is an industry that is easy to pitch to an
| investor in 2024.
|
| 1. It touches everyone 2. Everyone finds it annoying 3.
| Everyone thinks they pay too much 4. AI (still sexy) can fix
| the above
|
| Unfortuntely, we're still decades from strong products.
|
| I wouldn't touch any of these companies with a ten foot pole if
| I was a consumer or investor.
| theanonymousone wrote:
| 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?
| Havoc wrote:
| Running discount promotions on annual plan up until recently is
| also rather sus.
|
| Pages which are now mysteriously offline but still visible on
| way back machine
| theanonymousone wrote:
| Is the list of the board members or VCs involved in this
| confidential?
| amac wrote:
| Poor.
| chrismaeda wrote:
| 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.
| Amfy wrote:
| Agreed, but how do you protect yourself against
| quickbooks/xero/wave going under? Especially with Wave being
| mostly(?) free
| smathur3312 wrote:
| 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
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