TechBrot vs Bench Accounting.
An honest, useful comparison.

Bench abruptly shut down on December 27, 2024, telling customers the platform would no longer be accessible effective immediately, and giving them until March 7, 2025 to download their data. Three days later, on December 30, 2024, it announced it was being acquired by Employer.com, a San Francisco HR-tech company. Bench then filed for bankruptcy in Canada in January 2025 (Bench was Vancouver-based), revealing debts of over $65 million, and resumed operations that month under the Bench brand as an Employer.com subsidiary. So Bench exists again, but under new ownership and integrated into a payroll-focused company — a different operation from the pre-shutdown Bench. Access to historical Bench data is now managed through the Employer.com / Bench portal.

• Can I still get my data out of Bench?

  Generally yes. Historical Bench data is now managed through the Employer.com / Bench portal, and most former customers can log in to retrieve statements and transaction records. TechBrot operators can help with export and migration even when access is partial — and if you exported during the original March 7, 2025 download window, you should have local records already.

• Should I trust the new Bench?

  That’s a judgment call we won’t make for you. Some former customers stayed with Bench after the Employer.com acquisition; others migrated to QuickBooks-based services for portability and continuity. Both choices are defensible — the question is which risk profile fits your business.

Three reasons. First, portability — QuickBooks files transfer cleanly between providers, while proprietary formats don't. Second, CPA compatibility — most U.S. tax preparers work directly from QuickBooks files, whereas non-QuickBooks reports often require re-keying. Third, continuity — if your bookkeeping provider goes out of business, a QuickBooks file is recoverable and another professional can pick it up. Bench's December 2024 shutdown, which locked roughly 12,000 small businesses out of their books right before tax season, made the continuity argument concrete.

At the entry level, Bench's roughly $299/month starting tier was cheaper than TechBrot's $400–$700/month Essentials tier. What you got at that price was meaningfully different — Bench used proprietary software with internal-team support; TechBrot uses your own QuickBooks file with a named Certified ProAdvisor. For businesses that need a professional ProAdvisor working in QuickBooks, TechBrot's pricing is competitive. For businesses that genuinely needed only basic bookkeeping with no QuickBooks involvement, Bench's entry tier was cheaper.

For ongoing monthly bookkeeping, yes — with significantly more depth on cleanup, catch-up, payroll, sales tax, and multi-entity work. For Bench's tax-preparation add-on, TechBrot doesn't prepare taxes directly — operators coordinate with your CPA or recommend one. Compared with Bench's hands-off subscription experience, TechBrot is more substantive (a named operator, your real QuickBooks file, written scopes) but less of a pure set-and-forget subscription.

Several, depending on your needs. Pilot, for venture-backed startups with audit and fundraising-specific needs. QuickBooks Live, if you want Intuit's own bookkeeping service inside QuickBooks Online. Local CPA firms, if you want tax and bookkeeping under one roof. Solo bookkeepers, if you want the lowest cost and don't need continuity guarantees. We maintain comparison pages for each, written with the same honest read.

Typically three to eight weeks total. The discovery call happens in week one. Export and migration into QuickBooks runs two to six weeks depending on history. Any cleanup needed runs two to four weeks. Then monthly bookkeeping begins. We can compress this if you have a hard deadline — tax filing, a lender review, fundraising — but the work itself isn't fast; it's methodical.