Bench

Love Bench!

Comments: Bench is the easiest way to manage our books online. It's been a huge time and money saver over the last few years.

Pros:

I've been using Bench for years now and it's so simple to see and manage my books. When something isn't categorized correctly, I add a comment and it's moved over to the right one. It's been great and easy to use.

Cons:

The monthly income statements are behind often. I have to ask to get them on time. I wish it integrated with Quickbooks as my CPA can easily manipulate the data for reports.

Life and Business Changing

Comments: In the wake of COVID I left the agency I was at to do my own agency. While I had my business as a side-agency for a number of years and applications like Freshbooks and then Quickbooks Self-Employed helped me manage things I dreaded tax season and all the work I needed to do every year. During COVID I had to get my business up and going, get clients, execute projects, and get things done. I had zero time for managing my books. When the end of the year came up I dreaded the work that was ahead of me with several big projects in progress. Then, through the service I use to pay my contractors, I found out about Bench and it has changed my business AND my life. Bench took 15 months' worth of books that needed to be done and assigned them to a "catch-up" accountant. He went through everything, classified all my expenses, and had a simple way to ask me to review anything they need clarification on. They pulled difficult things to deal with like my processing fees from Stripe and instantly accounted for them. On top of that, having an honest to goodness accountant and accounting team to know how to PROPERLY set up a Chart of Accounts and classify expenses was game-changing. This service easily pays for itself in the time it saves me and the peace of mind it gives me.

Pros:

- An accounting team to get me on track. - Tax resources with their Bench Tax service. - A beautiful interface that is easy to understand and use. - Superb customer service with timely replies to any questions you have. - An easy way to review anything your team needs clarification on, I rarely spend more than 5 minutes a month classifying expenses for them. - EXPERTISE, Bench isn't just software to do your books, THEY are doing your books, understand small businesses and bring accounting expertise at a very affordable price. - Completed my taxes easily and reduced my tax burden, it was the most painless tax process I've had in years.

Cons:

- Communication early in Bench Tax could be improved but I mostly put this on me for being behind. - Having a separate signon for Bench Tax is a bit of a pain but not a big deal.

Bench review

Pros:

Easy to master accounting software and programmatic marketing is a little easier and is practically with Bench

Cons:

One of the easiest software to find and use. No problem likely

Completely botched our accounting--left with thousands of dollars of fines--Non Responsive

Comments: It is a scam. They want you to think that you're using a product but in reality it's a bunch of people in the background trying to maintain the appearance of tech. They have caused us to incur fines of over $15,000. Do not use Bench.

Pros:

It seemed like it was going to be easy and helpful but that is not the case

Cons:

It's impossible to talk to support, they didn't file any returns for us even though we have paid them for 3 years. Customer support is rude and non-responsive. I would trust them with anything.

My first bookkeeper

Comments: So far it’s been great. Good communication from my team, easy to use software.

Pros:

I like the user experience, easy to navigate website.

Cons:

My bank didn’t integrate, not entirely sure that’s Bench’s fault so I don’t want to leave bad marks just for that.