What happened to Bench Accounting?
Asked by Ryland B.
Answer
By Ryland Beard, founder of Switchbooks · October 27, 2026
Bench, the online bookkeeping service, shut down without warning on December 27, 2024. Roughly 35,000 customers were left without access to their books and tax documents days before year end. On December 30, 2024, Employer.com announced it had acquired Bench and said customers could keep their service or take their data elsewhere (Accounting Today, December 30, 2024).
As of October 2026, bench.co is running again as a bookkeeping service.
The lesson I took from it: whoever keeps your books, make sure you hold a copy. Export your general ledger and year-end statements every year, whatever you use. In Switchbooks, Switch can hand you both as Excel files whenever you ask.