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Comment by ezekg | Hacker News Reader

This is really frustrating. I'll admit their services have been going downhill dramatically (all my books Jan-Nov were still open as of last week and usually they would close subsequent month), but I still think shutting down right before the tax year ends is downright scummy.

What are the alternatives that handle bookkeeping and tax filing? Maybe I should just get a local CPA...

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Local CPA isn't a bad option though it could be pricey. (CPAs don't want to do book keeping either). I think one of the things that makes the bench.co shutdown challenging is that they used "proprietary" software so now you're going to have to migrate soon. Switching to accounting software that CPAs are more likely to be familiar with would be a step in the right direction and working with someone to aid that and help do catch up would be a good idea. I can help with both so that this isn't the catastrophe that it's shaping up to be

You can hire a bookkeeper to work with the CPA. I had a freelance freelancer who would keep books up to date, and then turn over the books to the CPA for tax prep and analysis. I estimate the cost was about half as much as if the CPA firm did everything, and everyone was doing what they wanted to do.

Definitely a local CPA. Building that relationship will pay off, even if it's just peace of mind.

My local CPA had previously guided me to using Bench. "Accountant" and "bookkeeper" are separate disciplines. My accountant manages my tax filings and other complicated transactions. The bookkeeper makes sure all our ledgers balance out.

That's a fair assessment. I'd advise hiring a part-time bookkeeper if the transactions are sufficiently numerous or complicated to warrant it. The cpa can handle period closing concerns, trial balances, all that stuff. Many family-sized firms offer this as included, so there might not be much of a difference.

For others reading along, one huge difference is that bookkeeping tends to be vastly cheaper per hour. It would get very expensive to pay a CPA to transcribe your credit card statement into Quickbooks (or previously Bench, or whatever else you're using for your ledgers).

Bookkeeping is sufficiently complex that I'd personally rather pay someone to do a good job of than muddle through on my own, but it's not rocket science. Perhaps most importantly, they understand accounting jargon. When my CPA asks me to send over the Fnord-Smootson report, and that's not the exact name of a report in my bookkeeping software, I have no freaking idea how to get that to him. A competent bookkeeper asks whether he needs that report frobnicated by date or by time-value and they work out the details.

A good CPA makes rocket science look easy. You typically pay them crazy amounts per hour, but for only a few hours a year. They take those bookkeeping journals and explain your situation to the IRS in a way favorable to your interests.

You want a good bookkeeper and you want a good CPA. If you can get both of those under the same roof, freaking awesome! Your life just got easier and more profitable.

Absolutely. I am actually not familiar with Bench, so I'm just talking in general, but I've never heard accounts of good experiences with highly parallel XaaS. Your f&a operation sort of necessarily needs to be close to your operation. It's tough to farm it out. There's a big continuity story in your books.

Depending on state and industry, accountants/CPAs are also auditors of the work performed by the bookkeeper.

“shutting down right before the tax year ends is downright scummy”

as if a dying business can magically decide to stay open longer and shut down at a more convenient time

Just like the strategic announcement of bad news....on a Friday.

It seems unlikely they didn't know they were going down until just a few days before having to shut down services.

And given that this happens during the holidays, ot wouldn't surprise me if some customers don't find out about this until after the window to extract your data has expired. Or people have to work on fixing this mess who were supposed to be on PTO.

It is irony of all ironies that an accounting services company would be surprised about their own insolvency.

In reality, they had to have known for months. The director were probably just holding out for a Hail Mary funding injection.

This is bad bad business, especially for a financial services company.

For sure staff was surprised, leadership not so much (I'd hope) but bear in mind the CEO was replaced just ~a month ago.

I bet they were hoping for a christmas miracle.

The investors aren't going to let you burn all the cash just because. They want out now with whatever is left so they can flip the coin to the next bet.

Maybe if the investors could be held liable for the damage they cause for suddenly shutting something down like this, they would be more likely to give customers more warning before shutting something down.

They can though. Dying businesses take time to die. Even if nothing else, they could have decided to shut down _earlier_ so that customers would have more time to deal with the fallout. Or they could have decided to shut down _at the same time_ but just messaged about it earlier.

I have a friend who works at Taxfyle and they are a great alternative. They do both taxes and bookkeeping and work with software like Quickbooks and Xero where the pro does everything for you. Definitely worth checking out if you want to check their website: https://www.taxfyle.com/bookkeeping

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