Bench Shut Down, Got Bought, and Became Mainstreet — A Timeline
Bench locked customers out with no warning on 27 December 2024. Here is the full sequence, what it cost people, and the one architectural question it should change about how you pick a bookkeeper.
Bench Accounting ceased operations without notice on 27 December 2024, locking customers out mid-year-end-close. Employer.com acquired it out of insolvency three days later, Bench filed for bankruptcy in Canada in January 2025, and on 11 August 2025 the brand was retired into Mainstreet. If you are searching for Bench in 2026, that is what happened.
Bench no longer exists as a company name. The service continues under Mainstreet following the Employer.com acquisition.
The timeline
The sequence matters, because the speed of it is what left customers stranded rather than merely inconvenienced.
- 27 December 2024 — Bench ceases operations with no advance warning. Customers lose access to the platform holding their books, during year-end close.
- 30 December 2024 — Employer.com announces it has acquired Bench out of insolvency, three days after the shutdown.
- January 2025 — Bench and subsidiary 10Sheet Services Inc. file an assignment in bankruptcy in Canada. Filings report roughly $2.8m in cash against $65.4m in liabilities.
- 11 August 2025 — Employer.com retires the Bench brand, folding the business into Mainstreet alongside other acquisitions.
Why it hurt more than a normal provider change
Providers fail. That is a business risk you can plan for. What made this different was that customers' books lived inside a proprietary ledger they did not own, so losing the provider and losing access to the records were the same event.
Compare that with a business whose books sit in its own Xero or QuickBooks Online subscription. If the bookkeeper disappears, the ledger is still there, still current, still exportable. You lose a service, not your financial records.
The question that protects you is not 'is this provider stable?' — it is 'whose account is my ledger in?' Ownership of the file is what survives a provider failing.
What to check before you sign with anyone
Four questions, none of which any honest provider will mind answering:
- Whose account is the accounting file billed to — mine or yours? It should be yours, with the provider as a user.
- If we part ways tomorrow, what do I have to do to keep working? The correct answer is 'remove our access'.
- Can I export a full general ledger and trial balance myself, today, without asking you?
- Where do source documents live, and do I have my own copy?
If you are still on a legacy Bench file
Export first, decide second. Pull the general ledger, trial balance, bank feeds and source documents to storage you control before you cancel anything or start evaluating replacements. Access is the thing you cannot recover after the fact.
Then verify rather than assume: tie the closing bank balance in the books to the actual statement for each of the last six months. Migrations that carry an unverified opening balance forward just relocate the problem.