Posted on 12/28/2024 3:23:12 PM PST by Steven Scharf
TechCrunch
Bench shuts down, leaving thousands of businesses without access to accounting and tax docs Charles Rollet 1:52 PM PST · December 27, 2024
Bench, a Canada-based accounting startup that offered software-as-a-service for small and medium-sized businesses, has abruptly shut down, according to a notice posted on its website.
“We regret to inform you that as of December 27, 2024, the Bench platform will no longer be accessible,” the notice reads.
The company’s entire website is currently offline except for the notice, leaving thousands of businesses in the lurch. Bench touted having more than 35,000 U.S. customers just hours before it was shut down, according to a snapshot saved by the Internet Archive.
Bench, which had raised $113 million from high-profile backers such as Shopify and Bain Capital Ventures, developed a software platform to help customers store and manage their bookkeeping and tax reporting documents.
The move is a shock to current and former customers. Justin Metros, the co-founder and CTO of Radiator, said years of his company’s accounting and tax documents are still stored on the site, although he no longer uses the platform. He learned about the shutdown from TechCrunch.
. . .
Bench’s notice says its customers should file a six-month extension with the IRS to “find the right bookkeeping partner.” It also says customers will be able to download their data by December 30 and will have until March 2025 to do so.
The notice recommends customers migrate to Kick, a new accounting startup that announced its $9 million seed raise in October 2024 in a round led by OpenAI and General Catalyst. Kick’s CEO and founder, Conrad Wadowski, posted a message on LinkedIn to former Bench users about how Kick is “working to get your financials back in your hands.”
(Excerpt) Read more at techcrunch.com ...
“We know this news is abrupt and may cause disruption, so we’re committed to helping Bench customers navigate through the transition.”
That is why we have taken all data off line and won't make it available until Monday. or maybe Tuesday. Hmm, will the staff show up to actually make that happen?
Reason # 1 not to use subscription services for mission critical operations.
The notice recommends customers migrate to Kick, a new accounting startup
Why would I trust any recommendation from these losers or put my marbles in with a unknown company.
Best Practices: The 3-2-1 Backup Rule
3 copies of your data: 1 primary and 2 backups.
2 different types of media: e.g., local drive and cloud.
1 copy off-site: Ensures protection from local disasters.
I occasionally get criticized for not storing my stuff in the "cloud" but instead keeping it an external drive that is downloaded daily to an off-site server. No matter what I will never lose more then 24 hours of records.
Unless the big EMP hits and in which case paying taxes will be way down on my list of worries.
“The notice recommends customers migrate to Kick, a new accounting startup that announced its $9 million seed raise in October 2024 in a round led by OpenAI and General Catalyst. Kick’s CEO and founder, Conrad Wadowski, posted a message on LinkedIn to former Bench users about how Kick is “working to get your financials back in your hands.””
riiiiiight, migrate mission-critical financial data from one failed online accounting startup to a newer, untested, and even shakier online accounting startup ... any company that does this absolutely deserves what happens to them ... period ...
Even if you have the data it is still going to be a pain to reconstruct the year of accounting.
Just pay the RANSOM .(/S)
seems like once bit, twice shy would be a good strategy to pursue in a case like this ...
> Best Practices: The 3-2-1 Backup Rule
> 3 copies of your data: 1 primary and 2 backups.
> 2 different types of media: e.g., local drive and cloud.
> 1 copy off-site: Ensures protection from local disasters.
I’m doing 3 and 2 but not offsite hard drive. I should probably put a copy in my bank’s safety deposit box.
I have a local drive backup and online with both Dropbox and Google Drive.
This might be overkill as I’m just a person and not a business.
But this is why I don’t trust online apps that have recently popped up or are so small they may not last.
You don't own your data.
They do.
And they can do anything they want with it.
ctl-alt-del
What kind of off site server do you use?
“Reason # 1 not to use subscription services for mission critical operations.”
Too damn funny that people would actually think on-line services would always be around forever!
For my taxes, one on the Hard Drive, one on Disk Drive, and one in the Cloud. NONE of them have my Social Security Number on it, as there is no need - I just hand write it in before submitting taxes, as I memorized my SS several years ago.
The day I hope to see is when GPS goes out, then let’s see if anyone makes it home from work.
Thanks for the warning.
And one off-site location capable of running the company for a period of time.
Conduct drills falling back onto the offsite backup location using the media you described.
Kick, October 2024. ...
Something fishy going on ...
“The day I hope to see is when GPS goes out,”
Sourpuss!
No, I am serious. Bought an inexpensive server, put it in my mom's closet and, when we visit a couple of times a week do what little maintenance it needs.
Would not work if you are doing thing that you need major security on but works for my business files, payroll and what have you.
If you have a multinational company it is very useful to have cloud access around the world. But keep backups ona very regular frequency.
“NONE of them have my Social Security Number on it”
Anyone with internet access can find your SS number.
That is why Medicare stopped using it.
What jerks. Should have given notice and let customers move their data.
I’ve been using intuit Quickbooks desktop (not web) version since 2004 but it’s very expensive now that they moved to subscription model. I am thinking I will move to something else starting Jan 1. Was looking at Xero.com or quickbooks online since I don’t need all the features of the desktop version. However the interfaces are all different so I have to learn new either way. But this makes me nervous about switching to a small company. Still I don’t want to pay $375 a month to Quickbooks for what I have now. Don’t need it as much as I did a decade ago.
And imho companies that run website services like Shopify, who collect the money for small businesses, they should remit the sales taxes to each state. Small businesses, it’s a lot of paperwork and they don’t really make the data easily exportable to the tax forms. Many many hours of manual labor every quarter. They are the tech people they should make it easy. But they don’t. Somehow they invested in this small accounting company and still ruined it. $120 million in investment and 35,000 US customers, they should have been viable. Probably too many employees and not enough automation. But since Shopify is an investor I wonder why they don’t take it over and integrate it to their web store services. They’d corner a big market to offer both online sales services and full service back-end accounting.
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