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Bench accounting services shutting down
51–60 of 399 posts
Re: Bench accounting services shutting down
#52I 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.
Re: Bench accounting services shutting down
#53This 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...
“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
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.
Re: Bench accounting services shutting down
#54FYI: "You will have until Friday, March 7th at 5:00pm ET to download your Bench data from this website."
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...
Not sure why flagged. Link rot is one of the scourges of the internet.
Re: Bench accounting services shutting down
#55This is so fucked up**. I have an annual account and they have not done my books since July and now this... An no refunds?!
Re: Bench accounting services shutting down
#56This is really frustrating. I'll admit their services have been going downhill dramatically (all my books Jan-Nov were still open as of last week and usually they would close subsequent month), but I still think shutting down right before the tax year ends is downright scummy. What are the alternatives that handle bookkeeping and tax filing? Maybe I should just get a local CPA...
Local CPA isn't a bad option though it could be pricey. (CPAs don't want to do book keeping either). I think one of the things that makes the bench.co shutdown challenging is that they used "proprietary" software so now you're going to have to migrate soon. Switching to accounting software that CPAs are more likely to be familiar with would be a step in the right direction and working with someone to aid that and hel…
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.
Re: Bench accounting services shutting down
#57Bench 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 shrug…
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Re: Bench accounting services shutting down
#58Bench 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 shrug…
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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.
Re: Bench accounting services shutting down
#59What are the best alternatives?
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.