Bench

Love Bench!

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

Fordele:

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.

Ulemper:

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

Kommentarer: 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.

Fordele:

- 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.

Ulemper:

- 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 dropped the ball & gave me a partial refund.

Kommentarer: 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.

Fordele:

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.

Ulemper:

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.

SaaS, but with people you get to know

Kommentarer: 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.

Fordele:

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

Ulemper:

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.

Very Happy

Fordele:

My Team and I are very happy with the Bench software and customer service. It's easy to use, a breeze to read, and simple to update.

Ulemper:

The lag time to get a response from a human being is something I'm getting used to as our world is moving to the online/AI experience.