Pricing and plans
During your free trial, we’ll walk you through the services included in each Bench bundle to determine which is the best fit for your business.
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.
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.
My Free Trial
Your free trial includes one prior month of bookkeeping. You’ll also get a full tour of the Bench platform. To give you an idea of how Bench works, we’ll set up your accounts and integrations within the platform.
Whether or not you decide that Bench is the right fit for your business, the income statement and balance sheet are yours to keep.
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 in 1-2 days. 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.
When your financial statements are complete, we review them with you on the phone. This call is an opportunity for you to ask any further questions you may have about our service before you make a financial commitment to Bench.
Nope! We only collect your payment info if you decide to continue with our service. Your trial is 100% risk-free—no surprise auto-billing.
Bookkeeping and Accounting
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.
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 an in-app 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.
Once we receive all of your documents, we’ll complete your bookkeeping for the month within 15 business days. This gives us enough time to make any necessary adjustments before the end of the month.
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.
This depends on how many months of Catch Up bookkeeping you need, but typically it takes us about 2-4 weeks to complete one year’s worth of overdue bookkeeping.
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
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.
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.
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.
Tax
Yes, we’ll prep and file your taxes for you as part of our Premium plan!
Once your bookkeeper completes your year end financials, your dedicated Tax Coordinator, Bench Tax Advisor, and Taxfyle Tax Preparer will work on your 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 in-house tax professionals are on hand for all your tax planning needs. With check-ins throughout the year, your tax team leaves no deductions behind.
To start, the Bench Onboarding Team will walk you through the Taxfyle platform, help collect your tax documents, and make sure that we have an accurate understanding of your tax situation. Meanwhile, your Bench Bookkeeper will be at work wrapping up your Year End Financials.
When your financials are complete, your Tax Coordinator will connect you with a licensed Taxfyle Tax Preparer, who will work with you to complete your returns and remit any required payments. Once your tax filings are wrapped up, our Bench Tax Advisors will set up a tax planning call with you. We’ll make sure that you’re getting the most out of your tax return so you can make informed, tax-related decisions—and hit every deduction at year-end.
Both Bench and Taxfyle are SOC 2 compliant organizations. We take every possible measure to keep your data secure, and do not share your information with external parties.
Yes! Personal federal and state income tax filings are included for sole proprietors in our Premium plan.
For S-Corps, C-Corps, and Partnerships, you can add-on personal filing for 1 partner or shareholder for just $59/mo when billed annually or $69/mo when billed monthly.
Yes, all Tax Professionals in Bench’s tax service line and at our partner Taxfyle 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.
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.
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? What are the tax implications of my PPP loan?
Your Bench Tax Advisors are available year-round, and will answer your questions in 2 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.
Integrations and Add-ons
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.
We don’t sync your data from any other bookkeeping software.
When you sign up for our service, we’ll take bookkeeping off your plate completely—which means you won’t need to use any other software with Bench. We connect with your business accounts to view your transactions. We use that data as our source of truth, and make all adjustments in the Bench platform.
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 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.
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.
Bench 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 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 connect your bank and merchant processor accounts to Bench for seamless data transfer. So, for the most part, we’ll have all of the transaction information we need to do 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 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.
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.
About Bench
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 Tax Coordinator, Bench Tax Advisor and Taxfyle Tax Preparer.
All of our bookkeepers work out of our Vancouver headquarters. We don’t outsource your bookkeeping, and we never will.
Bench bookkeepers are trained in-house. Collectively, they have experience supporting thousands of small business owners. Our team knows how to serve your business’s unique bookkeeping needs, and they do it very well.
We’ve been in business since 2012.
We serve over 11,000 small business owners across the United States. You can find real reviews from over 400 Bench clients here.