Cloud-based accounting software, such as Bench, has been gaining in popularity for some time now. Among the many decisions that business owners face on a day-to-day basis, determining the way they manage their business finances is crucial to the long-term success of their business. Once your bookkeeper wraps up your books every month, the information is reviewed by an in-house support team that ensures accuracy. Also, they never make assumptions about your business, preferring instead to reach out with any questions.

• With real-time insights, you can make on-the-fly decisions about where to spend and where to save, helping your business stay on budget.
• You’ll be provided with some real-time as well as monthly stats (monthly expenses, for example) about your business.
• Bench saves you time, not to mention precious hair follicles, by arranging a team of accountants (and CPA staff) to keep your books.
• But, the fact that this same reviewer began to see discrepancies in their credit card statements and the figures recorded by Bench is alarming, if this person is actually telling the truth.

QuickBooks Live User Reviews

Finally, Bench gets its bookkeepers to double-check their colleague’s work. According to Bench.co’s website, this quality control, if you will, is performed by a member of Bench’s in-house team. The numerous choices in outsourcing accounting services may be overwhelming to new entrepreneurs.

• However, you’ll have to give Bench one month’s worth of filing history to ensure your books are up to date.
• Automated bank reconciliation will import all transactions from your business bank accounts, but you will have to review and categorize each one.
• To stop you from worrying, Bench.co provides 256 bit-SSL/TLS encryption.
• Understanding operating expenses can help you keep tabs on how efficiently your small business generates revenue.

How to Read and Analyze a Profit and Loss (P and L) Statement

QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping can be added to any of the four QuickBooks plans, but will require an additional monthly cost based on your expenses. Freshbooks offers integrated invoicing that makes it simple to manage your accounts receivable and your accounting in one place. Automated bank reconciliation will import all transactions from your business bank accounts, but you will have to review and categorize each one. Their time-tracking functionality also makes it easy for freelancers who bill by the hour.

Difficult to switch providers

There’s no extra fee or hourly charges for support—we’re always happy to nerd out about bookkeeping and your financial statements. The Premium plan fulfills your bookkeeping needs and also provides help with your taxes. Additionally, Bench customers will get discounts from popular business subscriptions that have a partnership https://www.bookstime.com/ with Bench, like Gusto and Stripe. Our partners cannot pay us to guarantee favorable reviews of their products or services. One is that a best practice in one organization may not translate over into another business. This is the case when the organizational structures and cultures of the two businesses are different.

Bench pricing is flat-rate, and QuickBooks Live is priced based on your monthly expenses, regardless of the number of transactions you have. QuickBooks Live works with any version of QuickBooks Online, which starts at $30 a month for QuickBooks Simple Start while Bench has its own proprietary software. It is for these reasons that we selected Bench as the winner of this category.

• Although Bench is great for small business owners, it may not be able to meet the needs of larger and more complex companies.
• Most small businesses have more basic accounting needs, which means cash basis is often the right fit.
• This could make it difficult to switch bookkeeping services later.
• QuickBooks Live doesn’t offer a free trial, but you can book a free consultation and you can switch or cancel service at any time without incurring fees.
• This one-to-one support (customer service) is available via messaging and calling through Bench’s web-based app as well as by calling by phone.
• She holds a Bachelor’s degree from UCLA and has served on the Board of the National Association of Women Business Owners.

Bench is often less expensive, and the cost is known upfront (the industry standard for bookkeepers is to charge hourly, and clients often don’t know how long their books will take until after the fact). However, one drawback people have noted about Bench is that the accounting service turns over a lot of bookkeepers. Bookkeepers are people too, hence some leave the Bench team for pastures new. So, don’t be shocked if you go through a few bookkeepers during your time spent working with Bench. A positive aspect of Bench is that it gives you the ability to analyze all your cash flow in one system. You can check accounts, vendors, spending categories, dates, credit, and more to ensure your business is on track.

Crystal clear financial statements and reportsSee what your money is up to and get financial insights on your own timeline. If you’re wondering whether Bench is a service for bookkeeping or accounting, it can be both. Bench offers both bookkeeping services and tax preparation and filing services.

• Both Bench and Plaid are SOC-2 compliant with security practices that meet or exceed industry standards.
• QuickBooks Online has a good mobile app for accessing your QuickBooks Online account.
• They also make adjustments to your books to ensure they’re tax-compliant.
• Our mission is to help every business owner thrive, by providing financial insight and peace of mind in one seamless platform.

Your dedicated bookkeeping team will get to know your business closely and answer all your questions within one business day. The main reason the platform didn’t score better in our Bench Accounting review is that it lacks bill payment and invoicing services, but most companies choose to handle those back-office tasks themselves. Also, it doesn’t have financial planning services like investment and business expansion.

Understanding Income Statements vs Balance Sheets

Many or all of the products featured here are from our partners who compensate us. This influences which products we write about and where and how the product appears on a page. A financial forecast tries to predict what your business will look like bench accounting login (financially) in the future—which is key for uncertain, economic times. If you do your accounting own accounting, you need a trial balance. All of your raw financial information flows into it, and useful financial information flows out of it.