Bench
A done for you bookkeeping service, where a real team keeps your books in Bench software, rather than accounting you run yourself.
Bench is not accounting software in the usual sense. You connect your accounts, a human bookkeeping team categorizes your transactions every month, and you log into a simple dashboard to read the results. For owners who hate bookkeeping and would rather hand it off, that is genuinely appealing, and the Premium plan folds in year end tax filing so one vendor handles books and returns. The hard part is trust. Bench abruptly shut down in late 2024, leaving customers scrambling, before Employer.com acquired it and restarted the service. It is running again, but it carries reported complaints about late filings and slow support, and your books live in proprietary software you cannot easily take elsewhere.
Hand the books to a real team, and weigh a shaky recent past.
In its favour
Held against it
Convenience leads, trust is the question.
Bench scores well on ease of use, since the whole point is handing bookkeeping off. Value, depth and our confidence take a hit from the 2024 collapse and reset, which is why it sits below the self serve tools despite the appeal.
Scored against the same five weighted criteria we use across accounting. See the rubric →
a small business owner who will never do their own books and wants a team to handle monthly bookkeeping and taxes.
anyone comfortable with software, on a tight budget, or wary of trusting financials to a service that recently shut down.
What it costs
Per month, billed annuallyPricing as of June 2026. Bench shut down in late 2024 and now operates under Employer.com; current plans are Essential at $299 a month and Premium at $499 a month with tax filing. Catch up bookkeeping may cost extra. Check the vendor for current pricing.