Frequently Asked Questions

Bench is an online bookkeeping service that pairs small business owners with a dedicated bookkeeper and intuitive software, so your books get done for you instead of by you.

Bench is a bookkeeping service with software built in — not a DIY tool. You get a real, dedicated bookkeeper who does the work, plus a platform to see your numbers anytime.

You connect your financial accounts, and your dedicated Bench bookkeeper categorizes transactions, reconciles your accounts, and delivers monthly financial statements you can view anytime.

Yes. Bench connects you with a dedicated bookkeeper who learns your business and prepares your monthly and year-end financials. Bench bookkeepers are trained in and familiar with US bookkeeping and tax requirements, and every bookkeeper completes Bench's in-house training and screening before working with clients.

Bench bookkeepers are trained in-house through 60+ hours of structured training and must pass the program before working with clients. They also receive ongoing training once they start working with clients, to keep refining their skills.

Most owners spend about 15 minutes a month answering their bookkeeper's questions or uploading documents — as long as they use the available in-app integrations and dedicated business accounts. Owners who heavily mix business and personal transactions (for example, using a personal card for business purchases) can expect closer to 45 minutes a month, mostly spent separating business from personal activity, depending on the volume.

You get monthly financial statements — including a profit and loss statement, a balance sheet, and a Top 10 expenses view — plus a year-end financial package, all viewable in real time in the Bench platform.

Bench starts at $199/month, with three main plans depending on how much support you need — and paying annually saves up to 20% versus monthly. (Source: bench.co/pricing)

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• Bookkeeping Grow — starting at $199/month: a lighter-touch plan for lean businesses that want financial clarity as they grow (subject to an eligibility check).
• Bookkeeping Core — starting at $399/month: ongoing monthly bookkeeping and year-end tax-ready financials with your dedicated team and unlimited communication.
• Bookkeeping Core + Tax — starting at $599/month: everything in Core, plus a dedicated team of licensed tax professionals who file your business and personal income taxes.

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Prices shown are starting points and scale with your business's complexity.

Every plan includes a dedicated bookkeeper handpicked for your business, monthly bookkeeping (transaction categorization and account reconciliation), monthly financial statements, and an IRS-compliant year-end financial package. You also get Bench's software to run reports and view your financials anytime, and you can speak with your bookkeeping team. The Bookkeeping Core + Tax plan adds income tax filing and advisory. (Source: bench.co)

Bench does not currently offer a free trial. The best way to see how it works and get pricing for your business is to book a call with the Bench team. (Source: bench.co)

Bench offers monthly and annual subscriptions. Monthly plans can be cancelled within 15 days of your renewal date; annual plans require 60 days' notice to cancel. Your login access isn't removed after your subscription ends, and your reports export to Excel. (Source: bench.co/pricing)

Bench is worth it for owners who want their bookkeeping done for them — not done by them in software — with a dedicated bookkeeper, monthly financials, and predictable flat pricing. (Source: bench.co) Whether it's worth it usually comes down to what your time is worth.

Yes — Bench offers income tax filing and advisory through its Bookkeeping Core + Tax plan, which adds a dedicated team of licensed tax professionals who file your business and personal income tax returns on top of your monthly bookkeeping. (Source: bench.co/pricing) Bench's bookkeeping-only plans (Grow and Core) deliver a tax-ready year-end financial package that you or your CPA use to file.

Bench focuses on bookkeeping and financial reporting rather than running payroll, invoicing, or accounts payable directly. It integrates with the major payroll, invoicing, and bill-pay platforms you already use, and can connect you with a trusted network of providers for those needs.

Bench works on a modified cash basis by default, with limited accrual adjustments as needed. For businesses that need full accrual bookkeeping, Bench offers it as a separate service line handled in QuickBooks Online.

Yes. Bench's catch-up (Retro) bookkeeping gets months — or years — of overdue books in order, quoted separately from your monthly plan.

Yes. Bench offers Excel exports of all your financial documents at any point in time, plus an official Excel year-end financial package. Your login access isn't removed after your subscription ends, so you can download your completed work whenever you need it. (Source: bench.co/pricing; bench.co/how-to-download-your-bench-data)

Bench integrates directly with major banks (via Plaid), Stripe, Square Merchant, Shopify, PayPal, Gusto, Paychex Flex, ADP Run, Justworks, Square Payroll, and Intuit/QBO Payroll. Bench bookkeepers can also be set up with read-only access to a large range of additional banks, merchants, and payroll providers. (Source: help.bench.co/third-party-logins)

Yes. Bench is fully operational as an Employer.com company and is actively onboarding new and returning customers. (Source: bench.co)

Bench paused operations in December 2024 and was acquired by Employer.com, resuming service in January 2025. (Source: bench.co/press-release) Bench operates today with the same in-house bookkeeping model, and customers' historical data is intact.

Bench is owned by Employer.com, which acquired Bench in December 2024 and operates it as a dedicated bookkeeping business staffed by Bench's in-house team. (Source: bench.co/press-release; Wikipedia)

Bench operates as part of Employer.com, with the resources to support long-term stability, and your historical financial data remains accessible to you. Your books are reviewed by multiple bookkeepers each month with a year-end quality-assurance review.

Bench is now backed by Employer.com, which acquired the company to continue and invest in the bookkeeping business and retained Bench's in-house team.

Yes — protecting your financial data is built into how Bench works. Bench is SOC 2 compliant and collects read-only access to your financial institutions, which means your transactions can be imported for bookkeeping but no one can move your money. Every bookkeeper passes employee background checks and screening before handling client books, and your data stays intact and accessible to you — you can download your completed work anytime, including after your subscription ends.

QuickBooks is accounting software you operate yourself; Bench is a service where a dedicated bookkeeper does the books for you, on Bench's own platform. (Source: bench.co/how-it-works) Think of it as the difference between buying the tools and hiring the person who uses them. If you'd rather keep QuickBooks and hire someone to run it, Bench also offers a QuickBooks-certified bookkeeper option that works inside your existing QBO account.

The right fit depends on whether you want software, a freelance bookkeeper, or a done-for-you service, and on how complex your finances are. Bench is the done-for-you option: a dedicated bookkeeper plus software, at a flat monthly or yearly price.

Bench serves US-based businesses and works well for service businesses, freelancers, agencies, consultants, contractors, and e-commerce sellers with relatively straightforward finances. Book a call with our team to see if it's the best fit for your business.

Profit and cash are different: your profit can look healthy while your bank balance is low because money left your account for things that don't show up on your income statement — inventory you've bought, loan payments, transfers to a line of credit, or owner distributions and draws. (Under accrual accounting, unpaid invoices can widen the gap too.) Put simply, the income statement tracks the day-to-day operations that make up your profit, while your bank account also reflects balance-sheet items like paying down debt or paying owners. Accurate, current books are what let you see the gap — and a service like Bench keeps those books up to date so the picture matches reality each month. (Bench reference: bench.co)

Usually transactions haven't been reconciled — categorized and matched against what actually cleared your bank. Reconciliation is the routine fix and the core of monthly bookkeeping. Bench reconciles your accounts every month so they stay matched without you chasing it.

Start with your income statement and check net profit — the bottom line that shows whether your sales are covering your operating expenses. Then look at your balance sheet for two things: your current ratio (current assets ÷ current liabilities; above 1.0 means you have enough short-term cash to cover upcoming bills) and your retained earnings (your cumulative reinvested profit — the business's permanent savings). Reviewed monthly, these tell the real story. Bench delivers both statements every month, so the answer's waiting for you instead of buried in a spreadsheet. (Note: partnerships won't show a single retained-earnings figure — it's spread across current-year earnings and each owner's member-capital account.)

You can do your own books in software if your finances are simple and you have the time — but factor in the hours spent researching how to record things correctly, since getting it wrong can leave your books non-compliant. Most owners hire help once it starts eating hours they'd rather spend on the business, or once the books fall behind. Bench is the done-for-you option for owners who'd rather hand it off.

Three real options: software (cheapest, but you do the work — and risk non-compliant books if you don't research how to record things correctly), a freelance bookkeeper (more hands-off, but quality control varies and you're trusting a single person), or a bookkeeping service (predictable monthly price, work done for you, software included, backed by a team and a quality-control system). Bench is the service option — flat pricing, a dedicated bookkeeper, software built in, and books reviewed not just for completeness but for IRS compliance.

It ranges widely — DIY software is the low end, freelance bookkeepers often bill hourly, and full-service bookkeeping is a flat monthly subscription. Bench's full-service plans start at $199/month (with up to 20% off for annual billing), which is what makes the cost predictable versus hourly billing. (Source: bench.co/pricing)

It's worth it when the hours you'd spend on books are worth more spent on your business, or when mistakes cost you at tax time. Beyond the time saved, a service like Bench gives you peace of mind that your financials are IRS-compliant — tax rules change, and books kept "the way you've always done it" can quietly drift out of compliance. Bench exists for exactly that trade: hand off the books, get the time and accuracy back.

A bookkeeper records and organizes day-to-day finances; an accountant interprets them and advises; a CPA is a licensed accountant who can also file taxes and represent you before the IRS. Bench handles the bookkeeping layer and, on its Bookkeeping Core + Tax plan, connects you with a licensed tax professional for filing and advisory. (Source: bench.co/how-it-works)

Bookkeeping is the ongoing recording and organizing of transactions; accounting is the analysis, reporting, and tax work built on top of that record. You need solid bookkeeping first — it's the foundation. Bench keeps that foundation accurate and current.

Common triggers: you're spending hours on books you'd rather not, you're consistently behind, tax season is a scramble, you can't quickly answer "how did we do last month," or you're not sure how to reflect your business activity correctly and don't have time to research it yourself. Any of those is the signal owners tend to bring to a service like Bench.

You need catch-up (retro) bookkeeping — a service that reconstructs months or years of overdue books quickly, then gets you filing-ready. Bench offers exactly this, quoted by how far behind you are. (Source: bench.co/pricing) Being behind is common — it's a defined service, not a crisis.

At minimum: a finalized profit and loss statement, a balance sheet, and a general ledger showing that the year's activity has been reconciled (accountants often specifically want to see this), plus supporting records like bank and credit card statements and 1099 details for any contractors. Bench's year-end financial package pulls together the P&L, balance sheet, general ledger, and a running list of journal entries. A couple of things it doesn't include: receipts (those are stored in the Bench app only if you upload them) and complete 1099 filing data — Bench offers 1099 tagging on request to help, but filing also requires details you collect from each contractor via a W-9 (full legal name, home address, and SSN/EIN). (Source: bench.co/how-it-works)