Looking for a Bench alternative?
Bench stopped operating without notice on 27 December 2024. It was bought out of insolvency three days later, and in August 2025 the brand was retired into Mainstreet. If you are searching for Bench, that is what happened — and here is how to choose what comes next.
What actually happened to Bench
On 27 December 2024, Bench Accounting ceased operations with no advance warning, locking customers out of the platform their books lived on in the middle of year-end close. Three days later, on 30 December, Employer.com announced it had acquired the company out of insolvency.
In January 2025 Bench and its subsidiary 10Sheet Services Inc. filed an assignment in bankruptcy in Canada. Court filings reported roughly $2.8 million in cash against $65.4 million in liabilities.
On 11 August 2025, Employer.com retired the Bench brand and folded the business into Mainstreet alongside other acquisitions. Bench as a company name no longer exists.
The real lesson: whose ledger are your books in?
The reason the Bench shutdown hurt so much was not the shutdown itself — providers change. It was that customers' books lived inside a proprietary ledger they did not control, so losing the provider meant losing access to the records at the same moment.
That is an architecture question, not a vendor question, and it is worth asking of whoever you pick next. We work inside your own Xero, QuickBooks Online, DATEV or Exact file. If you stop working with us tomorrow, the file is already yours and nothing has to be extracted or rebuilt.
How the options actually differ.
| Salt | Benchnow Mainstreet | Pilot | In-house hire | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Multi-country compliance | 10 countries | US only | US only | One jurisdiction per hire |
| Works in your own accounting file | Xero, QBO, DATEV, Exact | Proprietary ledger historically | QuickBooks Online | Yes |
| Your data stays exportable | You own the file | Export concerns documented in 2024 | QBO file is yours | Yes |
| Operating continuity | Independent, profitable | Insolvency and rebrand since 2024 | Venture-backed, operating | Single point of failure |
| Named delivery lead | Yes | Pooled support | Yes | Yes |
| CFO-level advisory | Included tiers | No | Premium add-on | Only at CFO salary |
| Catch-up and cleanup projects | Yes | Limited | Yes | Rarely — no capacity |
| Starting price | $350/mo | $299/mo | $499/mo | $4,500/mo fully loaded |
Competitor pricing and capabilities are as published at the time of review and change without notice. Assessments of fit are our own opinion. Last verified .
How to move without losing your records.
- 01
Export everything you can still reach
Pull your general ledger, trial balance, bank feeds and source documents to your own storage before anything else. Do this first, even if you have not chosen a replacement — access is the thing you cannot get back.
- 02
Establish which periods are actually closed
Do not assume the last closed month is genuinely reconciled. Tie the closing bank balance in the books to the statement for each of the last six months. This is where mid-transition cleanups usually find their surprises.
- 03
Open a ledger you own
Set up Xero or QuickBooks Online in your own account, under your own billing. Whoever does your bookkeeping should be a user in your file, never the owner of it.
- 04
Rebuild opening balances from a verified point
Pick the last month you can genuinely tie out and treat it as the conversion balance. Rebuilding from an unverified balance just carries the error forward.
- 05
Clear the compliance backlog in deadline order
Sales tax, VAT or GST first where penalties accrue per period, then income tax filings. Sequence by which deadline penalises you soonest, not by which is easiest.
Looking for a Bench alternative?
Get a written migration quote in 24 hours.
Thirty minutes. We review where your books stand and where the money's actually going — no obligation.