Frequently Asked Questions
Contents
Pricing and Plans
Absolutely. Each Bench bundle has a different set of services that are customized to your business’ needs. It is normal for your business’ needs to change over time and when that happens, we’ll be here to support your move into the subscription that works for you.
Unlike other bookkeeping solutions, we don’t remove your login access after your subscription has ended. That means you’ll never lose access to your data within our platform. All reports can be easily exported to an Excel file to share with your accountant or future bookkeeping provider. Want to make the goodbye more permanent? We can fully wipe your data, too—at the end of the day, it’s your info and your call.
During your demo, we’ll walk you through the services included in each Bench bundle to determine which is the best fit for your business.
How Bench Works
Yes, we’ll prep and file your taxes for you as part of our Bookkeeping & Tax plan!
Once your bookkeeper completes your year end financials, your dedicated Tax Coordinator and Bench Tax Advisor will facilitate the preparation, review, and filing of your income tax return. When it’s ready, we’ll reach out to you for the “all clear.” Then, we’ll file your taxes and pull funds directly from your account to pay any applicable taxes.
And since tax time stress isn’t limited to tax season, year-round tax advisory services comes standard. Our licensed tax professionals are on hand for all your tax planning needs. With check-ins throughout the year, your tax team leaves no deductions behind.
We use our own proprietary software to complete your books. You won’t need any other software to work with Bench—we do everything within the platform.
Every report accessible in the Bench platform can be exported to an Excel file for easy sharing with anyone from business partners to accountants.
We don’t sync your financial data from any other bookkeeping software.
We use our own proprietary software to complete your books. You won’t need any other software to work with Bench—we do everything within our easy-to-use platform.
QuickBooks, Xero and other do-it-yourself bookkeeping software give you a tool to do your own bookkeeping and taxes. Bench does your bookkeeping and taxes for you.
If you’re switching from QuickBooks, we’ll work from your closing balances to do your bookkeeping going forward. If you’re not sure whether your closing balances are accurate, we recommend chatting with one of our Onboarding Specialists about Catch Up bookkeeping.
We use Plaid, which lets you securely connect your financial accounts to Bench in seconds. This feature saves you the time and effort of manually uploading documents.
We connect with Stripe, Square, Shopify, PayPal, and Amazon. By connecting your payment processor, all of your transactions are automatically synced to Bench’s platform.
We also support clients that use other merchant processors. We’ll work with you to connect accounts and pull the data we need to reconcile your books.
There are some times that we’ll request documents from you (like account statements or receipts), just to ensure the information we have is correct. If you need to share files with your bookkeeping team, it’s as simple as uploading a file. We’ll take care of the rest.
Shortly after you sign up, we’ll give you a call to learn more about your business and bookkeeping needs. On this call, we’ll connect your accounts to Bench, and gather any extra documentation we need to complete your books.
Once we have everything set up, we’ll complete a month of your bookkeeping. Our bookkeepers reconcile your accounts, categorize your transactions, and make necessary adjustments to your books. The end result is a set of accurate financial statements—an income statement and a balance sheet.
Your bookkeeper reconciles your accounts, categorizes your transactions, and produces your financial statements. They also make adjustments to your books to ensure they’re tax-compliant. Occasionally your bookkeeper might need your input on things like categorizing a transaction properly, but we try our best to make bookkeeping as hands-off as possible for you.
You can also book a call with your bookkeeper (or send them a message) whenever you’d like. There’s no extra fee or hourly charges for support—we’re always happy to nerd out about bookkeeping and your financial statements.
Bookkeeping and Accounting
Yep! You can add any amount of Catch Up bookkeeping to a standard Bench plan. No matter how far behind you are (yes, even years behind), we can get you caught up quickly.
If you’re several years behind on your bookkeeping and taxes, you can get caught up and filed with Catch Up Bookkeeping.
Yes! We provide year-round 1099 reports that include the total amount you paid each contractor during the tax year, payee name, date, and method of payment—so you can file your 1099s confidently and on time.
We don’t offer any of those services, but we do partner with other companies (like Gusto and Freshbooks) that specialize in different areas of business admin. Learn more about Gusto here.
We provide our clients with a modified form of cash basis bookkeeping. With this system, we record transactions as soon as the money has been deposited into your bank or charged to your bank/credit card.
We can complete accrual adjustments like tracking accounts receivable and/or accounts payable, unearned revenue tracking, and more with our specialized accounting add-on. If we are recording accrual adjustments for you, revenues and expenses are recorded when they’re earned throughout the year, regardless of when the money is actually received or paid. At year end we will remove these accrual elements to ensure your bookkeeping is adjusted back to modified cash basis.
If you’re unsure if cash basis bookkeeping will work for your business, talk to us. We’d be happy to understand the needs of your business and determine if Bench is a good fit for you.
Bookkeeping is the process of recording daily transactions in a consistent way, and is a key component to building a financially successful business. Bookkeepers take care of the day-to-day financials, like posting credits and debits, maintaining the general ledger, and completing payroll.
Accounting is a high-level process that uses financial information compiled by a bookkeeper or business owner, and produces financial models using that information.
Further reading: The Difference Between Bookkeepers and Accountants
This depends on how many months of Catch Up bookkeeping you need, but typically it takes us a few weeks to complete one year’s worth of overdue bookkeeping, once we get all the documents we need from you.
Bench is proud to offer bookkeeping services to businesses across the United States. Whether your business is located in a bustling city or a quiet suburb, we have a team of experts ready to help and support you with any of the local details and tax laws you should know about, wherever your business is located. We are here to help you streamline your accounting needs efficiently and effectively.
Once we receive all of your documents and information from you, it'll take us minimum 30 business days to get your books ready for day-to-day decision-making. As the year progresses, if we learn new information about your business's unique financial setup that we weren't previously aware of (such as loans, credit cards, new bank accounts, etc) we may still continue to make adjustments to previous months based on the new information. Around tax season, it's normal for us to make further final year-end adjustments to get your books fully IRS-compliant for tax-filing purposes. These changes will be reflected in your year-end financial package.
If you have specific timeline needs, you can always let your bookkeeping team know and they'll do their best to accommodate them, assuming we have everything we need from you to get your books ready.
Your bookkeeper reconciles your accounts, categorizes your transactions, and produces your financial statements. They also make adjustments to your books to ensure they’re tax-compliant. Occasionally your bookkeeper might need your input on things like categorizing a transaction properly, but we try our best to make bookkeeping as hands-off as possible for you.
You can also book a call with your bookkeeper (or send them a message) whenever you’d like. There’s no extra fee or hourly charges for support—we’re always happy to nerd out about bookkeeping and your financial statements.
Bookkeeping gives you a crystal clear picture of where your money is coming (and going.) When your books are up-to-date, you get an accurate measure of your business’s health, and can make smarter financial decisions.
Having accurate books pays off at tax time, too. When your bookkeeping is up-to-date, you avoid scrambling to get caught up before the tax deadline, or missing out on any deductions.
Tax
Anything and everything tax-related! Here are some examples to get you started:
The IRS just sent me a letter, what does it mean? Do I have to pay quarterly estimates? Should I incorporate my business? Should I write off mileage or get a business vehicle? Would it be advantageous to switch to an S corp?
Your Bench Tax Advisors are available year-round, and will answer your questions in two business days or less. Don’t have any burning questions? That’s okay, too! We’re still on hand to support you, and can give recommendations based on your unique business needs.
Bench currently does not complete tax filings or tax planning for nonprofits, businesses with shareholders who are not US citizens, or personal income taxes for non-US citizens.
Yes, all Bench Tax Advisors are fully licensed and IRS compliant. While these licenses can vary between CPAs, IRS Enrolled Agents, and Tax Attorneys, each of these licenses is granted the same authority for Tax Preparation by the IRS.
Yes, we’ll prep and file your taxes for you as part of our Bookkeeping & Tax plan!
Once your bookkeeper completes your year end financials, your dedicated Tax Coordinator and Bench Tax Advisor will facilitate the preparation, review, and filing of your income tax return. When it’s ready, we’ll reach out to you for the “all clear.” Then, we’ll file your taxes and pull funds directly from your account to pay any applicable taxes.
And since tax time stress isn’t limited to tax season, year-round tax advisory services comes standard. Our licensed tax professionals are on hand for all your tax planning needs. With check-ins throughout the year, your tax team leaves no deductions behind.
Yes, we’ll prep and file your taxes for you as part of our Bookkeeping & Tax plan!
Once your bookkeeper completes your year end financials, your dedicated Tax Coordinator and Bench Tax Advisor will facilitate the preparation, review, and filing of your income tax return. When it’s ready, we’ll reach out to you for the “all clear.” Then, we’ll file your taxes and pull funds directly from your account to pay any applicable taxes.
And since tax time stress isn’t limited to tax season, year-round tax advisory services comes standard. Our licensed tax professionals are on hand for all your tax planning needs. With check-ins throughout the year, your tax team leaves no deductions behind.
Integrations and Add-ons
Yes! We connect with most major banks in North America. Connecting your bank account gives your bookkeeping team access to your transaction history and account statements—nothing more.
We connect with Stripe, Square, Shopify, PayPal, and Amazon. By connecting your payment processor, all of your transactions are automatically synced to Bench.
We also support clients that use other merchant processors. We’ll work with you to connect accounts and pull the data we need to reconcile.
If you’re switching from QuickBooks, we’ll work from your closing balances to do your bookkeeping going forward.
If you’re not sure whether your closing balances are accurate, we recommend chatting with one of our Onboarding Specialists about Catch Up bookkeeping.
We don’t sync your financial data from any other bookkeeping software.
We use our own proprietary software to complete your books. You won’t need any other software to work with Bench—we do everything within our easy-to-use platform.
QuickBooks, Xero and other do-it-yourself bookkeeping software give you a tool to do your own bookkeeping and taxes. Bench does your bookkeeping and taxes for you.
If you’re switching from QuickBooks, we’ll work from your closing balances to do your bookkeeping going forward. If you’re not sure whether your closing balances are accurate, we recommend chatting with one of our Onboarding Specialists about Catch Up bookkeeping.
QuickBooks and other bookkeeping software give you a tool to do your own bookkeeping. Bench does your bookkeeping for you.
With Bench, you get a team of real, expert bookkeepers in addition to software. You’ll always have the human support you need, and a mobile friendly platform to access your up-to-date financials.
Bench Software
Within the Bench app, we protect your data with 256-bit SSL/TLS encryption. That’s the same level of encryption you’ll find with online banking and online shopping.
Every Bench employee goes through a rigorous screening process, including multiple interviews and a criminal record check.
We don’t require any of your previous bookkeeping to complete work going forward, which means we won’t do a full import of your books into Bench. That said, we recommend keeping any previous bookkeeping on hand in case you need to make adjustments around tax time.
Instead of importing your books, we use your bank statements as our source of truth. Send us your latest balance sheet and income statement, and you’re all set.
We use Plaid, which lets you securely connect your financial accounts to Bench in seconds. This feature saves you the time and effort of manually uploading documents.
We connect with Stripe, Square, Shopify, PayPal, and Amazon. By connecting your payment processor, all of your transactions are automatically synced to Bench’s platform.
We also support clients that use other merchant processors. We’ll work with you to connect accounts and pull the data we need to reconcile your books.
There are some times that we’ll request documents from you (like account statements or receipts), just to ensure the information we have is correct. If you need to share files with your bookkeeping team, it’s as simple as uploading a file. We’ll take care of the rest.
We use our own proprietary software to complete your books. You won’t need any other software to work with Bench—we do everything within the platform.
Every report accessible in the Bench platform can be exported to an Excel file for easy sharing with anyone from business partners to accountants.
About Bench
We serve over 11,000 small business owners across the United States. You can find real reviews from over 900 Bench clients here.
We’ve been in business since 2012.
Each customer's main point of contact is a dedicated in-house, professionally-trained bookkeeper, based in North America. Part of what makes Bench unique is that we blend together the human touch with modern technology. Our in-house team is also supported by machine learning technology, which allows us to automatically process large amounts of financial data instantly, and close your books faster and accurately.
Your bookkeeping team consists of 3 professionally trained bookkeepers, including one senior bookkeeper who reviews all of your monthly statements and your Year End Financial package.
We try our best to keep you with the bookkeeping team you’re assigned when you come on board. If there’s any change in your bookkeeping team, we’ll let you know as soon as possible and make sure the transition is a smooth one.
Your Bench Tax team consists of a Bench Tax Coordinator and a Bench Tax Advisor.