Nitter's been dead for about a year at this point. I'm pretty sure any Nitter instance still running is using some abstract method and not the actual Nitter system.
coldtrait 1 hours ago [-]
Yea I don't think there's an alternative after Elon made changes to Twitter's API
cebert 6 hours ago [-]
It’s not like it’s hard to get a Twitter account
bdangubic 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
trg2 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
bdangubic 5 hours ago [-]
“hating elon” :) only fucking idiots care about “elon” (especially enough to hate him). if your life is so empty you have to talk about elon you need to re-evaluate your life choices
jrflowers 5 hours ago [-]
> if your life is so empty you have to talk about elon you need to re-evaluate your life choices
This post, that you’ve typed up and posted online, for all to see, is about your opinion of Elon Musk
Dylan16807 4 hours ago [-]
It is not.
jrflowers 4 hours ago [-]
Yes it is. If they had written “if you’re posting about hamburgers you need to reevaluate your life” that would be a post expressing their opinion about hamburgers.
Dylan16807 3 hours ago [-]
No, it would not be. Their opinion about Z and their opinion about people that care too much about Z are different things.
Your post above is a failed attempt at a petty gotcha.
4 hours ago [-]
bdangubic 4 hours ago [-]
obsession with elon is real… :)
jrflowers 4 hours ago [-]
This post too
ttul 9 hours ago [-]
I advise caution in believing his statements to be true, particularly about Bench’s board and investors. The truth will live in their financial statements, which no doubt will be revealed in bankruptcy proceedings in the coming months.
Hi Ian. Sorry to see this happen to the company you founded. Can you say what the board's strategy was that conflicted with your vision?
8 hours ago [-]
propter_hoc 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
kstrauser 3 hours ago [-]
Pray tell, how was he possibly supposed to help the customers of the company he was fired from 3 years ago?
I found his posts interesting. I was a Bench customer for several years until we sold our business, and I appreciate the background information about the bullet we dodged.
edoceo 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
boxed 8 hours ago [-]
> every good ship can get a new captain and sail on. If not, the problem isn't the sailors it's the captain (who set the ship before the fall).
You're seriously claiming a bad leader can't destroy a company/organization/project/country?
patrickhogan1 7 hours ago [-]
Bad investors and a dysfunctional board can destroy a company. When late-stage investors push to fire the CEO, they often do so to install a puppet CEO who will give them greater control over the board. This allows them to prioritize financial decisions that serve their own interests, often at the expense of other shareholders, such as early employees, whom they disregard.
benatkin 7 hours ago [-]
This in the response made me cringe a little:
> I wanted to continue with what was working and with what our partners had signed on to distribute.
How does he know it was working? He says it so matter of factly.
And that’s what this big-mad comes down to.
patrickhogan1 6 hours ago [-]
You make a fair point. I would have liked him to elaborate more on the potential acquisition that was declined.
However, he mentioned they just raised $60 million. If his approach wasn’t working, why would anyone invest that amount? And if the plan was to fire him, given that his vote was required, wouldn’t it have been more transparent to say upfront: “If you reject the acquisition and opt for this $60 million investment instead, we’re going to fire you”?
IAmGraydon 7 hours ago [-]
How does he know? He was the CEO. I'm guessing that he had access to the company's metrics.
benatkin 6 hours ago [-]
Metrics alone don't tell you if a strategy is working in the long term. It was no doubt a highly informed opinion, but still an opinion.
jeanlucas 8 hours ago [-]
> "this is exactly what happened"
In a direct reply to the thread. Well, it is confirming the original thread.
thayne 7 hours ago [-]
> every good ship can get a new captain and sail on
If the new captain is good. But a bad captian can sink any ship, unless the crew is willing and able to mutinee to prevent it.
rvba 7 hours ago [-]
Start-ups by nature are not good ships.
yolo2122 8 hours ago [-]
I agree that the financial statements will be a key artifact of truth + I cannot speak to the validity of the statements made by Ian as I have no context or knowledge of Bench outside of my experience of being a long time customer.
However I can, albeit anecdotally from my perspective, say that I felt there was a marked difference in Bench's quality/service/responsiveness/performance/etc about 3yrs ago. This aligns with the timeline given by the former CEO in his post for his departure.
aimazon 16 hours ago [-]
The company is over a decade old and was not cheap to use, I don't think they could have suddenly run out of money as customers typically pay upfront and are in long term contracts. Could it be staffing issues? Corporate misbehavior? Data loss? Ransomware? Has a member of their team gone rogue? Misappropriation of funds?
We were bench customers until a few months ago, paying thousands of dollars per year for what could only be described as hundreds of dollars worth of service. The service was not very good so moving away was an easy choice but on a per-customer basis they must be making money hand over fist.
I expect we'll find out more eventually, hopefully employees will leak some insight. For now, this is inexplicable.
ezekg 16 hours ago [-]
I'd guess staffing issues, since my bookkeeper would change every month. I'm still not sure how they couldn't afford to hire better staff, though. You're right that it could be something nefarious.
Where did you move to?
encoderer 8 hours ago [-]
Ah sorry to hear you were caught up in this.
Cronitor uses pilot. It was a little crazy at first but the last year+ feels like they have stabilized operations.
lotsofpulp 5 hours ago [-]
> I'm still not sure how they couldn't afford to hire better staff,
Because they never figured out how to automate enough of the process to scale revenue up without scaling expenses.
All the investments in these VC funded companies is a bet that the companies will develop automation that will allow them to not hire staff, period (relative to the growth in customers).
paxys 16 hours ago [-]
Why do you think it wasn't possible for them to run out of money? It's not like a 10 year old business is immune to failure.
The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.
aimazon 16 hours ago [-]
Anything is possible and running out of money is the most probable explanation but it seems so hard for this type of business to get itself into this type of situation. Customers pay thousands of dollars per year, usually upfront. That’s the type of revenue predictability that most of us would love for our businesses because it makes forecasting so much easier. They must have known months ago that they were running out of money. Failing to become sustainable and going through layoffs is one thing, shutting down overnight with zero warning is another. But yes, you’re probably right, it’s just hard to imagine how they could have imploded like this.
BehindBlueEyes 14 hours ago [-]
And yet, it's as simple as money ran out. They never turned a profit, investors ran out, the last round of funding was a loan with strings attached that led to a bunch of cost cutting and other poor decisions that explain the poor service quality.
A few staff guessed it might close 3 weeks ago at best though everything was very uncertain, but most of the accountants probably didn't see this coming either.
source: I know a few former employees.
bryanrasmussen 7 hours ago [-]
>but most of the accountants probably didn't see this coming either.
I would expect this was the kind of thing an accountant should see coming though.
BehindBlueEyes 7 hours ago [-]
Not sure if sarcasm, but in case it is not: in theory accountants could see this coming but most benchmates were junior book keepers, with no visibility into their employer's financials.
toomuchtodo 12 hours ago [-]
There’s an accountant shortage, so I imagine it wasn’t hard for those folks to prepare to bail, if they did.
porter 16 hours ago [-]
what service did you move to?
acaloiar 13 hours ago [-]
> We know this news is abrupt and may cause disruption, so we’re committed to helping Bench customers navigate through the transition.
No, you're not. The minimum for commitment is a longer notice.
teruakohatu 9 hours ago [-]
This must terrible for small businesses. Not sure how they can even help 10k customers with transition if they have shutdown and staff are laid off.
genman1 8 hours ago [-]
Not to mention all the money businesses paid in advance for services they’ll likely never get back. It’s a terrible situation—small businesses really RELY on these services, and now they’re left stranded with no clear resolution. Truly, reckless and insane.
conradwa 13 hours ago [-]
I can’t imagine the frustration you’re going through if you’re a Bench user.
Paying for a service and not getting what you expect, especially when it comes to your taxes is no joke.
Instead of having to start from scratch, our team at Kick is moved quickly to build these resources to help prior Bench customers:
1. Free Bench migration
2. Free 2024 Bookkeeping review calls
3. Free Daily Live Q&As (coming soon)
We’re moving fast and sharing additional resources and updates in real time here:
Other resources on the way include a Tax Extension Guide and Accountant Directory to make sure folks get a soft landing is this difficult time.
If you're running into issues, my email me at conrad@kick.co and I’ll do the best I can to route you to the right place.
yolo2122 13 hours ago [-]
Is Kick owned by, affiliated with, or invested in by Bench in any way?
Also are any of the C-Level execs from Bench involved in Kick in any way?
conradwa 12 hours ago [-]
Kick is not affiliated with Bench in any way. We've onboarded a significant number of customers from Bench onto Kick before this happened, so this may have been why were were mentioned.
We're working fast right now to try to provide resources and help Bench users migrate and will be sharing updates here: https://x.co/kickfinance
yolo2122 11 hours ago [-]
Thanks Conrad however in the interest of clarity + transparency can you add some insight/details into how/why this statement came about in both the shut down email customers got today + what is currently posted on the Bench.co page?
"For continued support with your bookkeeping, we recommend exploring Kick, a modern accounting software, which has created an exclusive offer to handle your ongoing needs: kick.co/bench."
Having an "exclusive offer" listed in the initial closure communication/announcement + you having a landing page ready to go sounds like there was more to Bench just happening to mention Kick because your company has "onboarded a significant number of customers from Bench onto Kick before this happened"...
ocdtrekkie 11 hours ago [-]
Hopefully you'll get an answer from Conrad, but the landing page does not mention the shutdown, so I would point out when I was comparison shopping something else recently, their website had dedicated pages to why you should choose them over each major competitor, and a switching discount is also not uncommon.
It's entirely possible this landing page is Kick's competitive offer, and Bench linked to it because it offers all the people they just screwed over by collapsing a discount.
yolo2122 10 hours ago [-]
Good point! I like what I see so far in Kick. It's just given the level of pain Bench has just caused me, my businesses, and a couple very unlucky employees in my office + the financial cost = I have to make super duper sure Kick is not related to/involved with Bench in any way shape or form.
If they asked Kick to be listed as an alternative in the closure email or asked them to do a discount nbd I have no issue there. I just want the full story given Bench events.
bruce511 4 hours ago [-]
I am not related to any of the parties in this dolce, but I did discontinue a product once.
On the shutdown page I listed some alternatives people could try. I found them via Google, but i didn't first try them or talk to them.
They were really just a helpful hint for folk wanting to change to get started. (The thing I was killing was a product not a service so it wasn't going to actually stop working, it was just no longer being updated.)
So, in this case, a simple statement of fact (as above) would be good enough for me. But feel free to do your due diligence.
santoshalper 13 hours ago [-]
This would be a great question to answer and would provide a lot of peace of mind.
ezekg 13 hours ago [-]
So you're planning on offering tax filings, or just recommendations? tbh this should have been included in the notice because I wrote y'all off immediately because taxes was the main pain point Bench solved for me (electing to file as an S-Corp).
claudiogodoyb 12 hours ago [-]
A friend of mine mentioned Taxfyle as an alternative to Bench. They offer free bookkeeping migration, a free Xero subscription, dedicated bookkeeper to do your books and professional tax support where they handle your taxes too. They seem like a good fit for you! Check them out here: https://www.taxfyle.com/
oxidant 8 hours ago [-]
I used Bench in the past and they partnered with Taxfyle up until ~November 2023 (date of the email I received stating the partnership was ending).
The service was fine, interesting that their relationship ended just over a year ago.
kopirgan 9 hours ago [-]
Strange that kick seems to know and had time to build all this but customers didn't get any heads up?!
benatkin 7 hours ago [-]
> had time to build all this
They didn't need a heads up to build this. It takes between half an hour and half a day.
porter 16 hours ago [-]
Bench just forced me to switch to an annual contract a few days ago too. What a bunch of crooks.
Schiendelman 13 hours ago [-]
Wait a minute, they pushed you into an annual contract? And now that they aren't going to perform their end of the contract?
This is fascinating. That smells like actual fraud on their part.
ttul 10 hours ago [-]
I’m sure all of this will be played out in spectacular fashion in the courts of British Columbia in the coming months. Directors in BC are liable for unpaid wages to employees. No doubt they pulled the rug just in time to ensure people got their statutory severance. But beyond that, anyone hoping for more will have to get in a long line behind secured creditors. Man this sucks.
Schiendelman 8 hours ago [-]
In a situation like this, someone with a contract not receiving consideration mere days after signing can probably just not pay. It would be very difficult for a company in the midst of shutting down to fight anyway.
blakebilliet 10 hours ago [-]
I'd be shocked if you didn't get reimbursed. But if you don't, let me know and Afino might be able to mitigate a portion of your losses with a friendly discount. That just ain't right.
JusticeJuice 2 hours ago [-]
When a company goes bankrupt, there’s a specific order that everyone who’s owed money gets paid out in. I wouldn’t be surprised if “operational costs” like refunds are low on the list.
solidgiant 13 hours ago [-]
Me too, and signed with Capchase. What are you looking to do? I'm trying to find someone at capchase, but not finding anyone...
beibeiq 13 hours ago [-]
I would LinkedIn DM Capchase folks with support or customer service titles.
10 hours ago [-]
fudged71 5 hours ago [-]
They also hired at least 20 people in the last 30 days according to LinkedIn
pplante 16 hours ago [-]
Bench was a terrible service in my experience. I used it for one of my startups a few years ago. I personally invested a lot into said start-up. I checked my books and everything seemed ok. Eventually I found that they had hidden my Gusto payroll line items from view and they were no longer taken into consideration in my books. This led to a $300k shortfall from where I thought I was vs reality. Their team just shrugged when I brought the issue to their attention. The impact was immediate layoffs affecting real people who depended on me.
Sure ultimately everything falls upon me the founder. But something so common as GUSTO payroll should never be miscategorized and hidden from view.
MichaelZuo 14 hours ago [-]
How could this kind of ‘hiding’ comply with GAAP standards in any scenario?
What sort of accounting books were being prepared where such a function is even needed?
cj 12 hours ago [-]
When I was using Bench, they were only doing cash accounting (not GAAP). We had to switch to a different service when we switched over to accrual accounting.
dboreham 8 hours ago [-]
Quick note that cash vs accrual basis accounting is orthogonal to whether the balances are correct or not. IANAA but afaik GAAP does not preclude cash basis accounting, provided the conditions where cash accounting is permitted pertain.
cj 7 hours ago [-]
you’re right, although cash basis would only fly under GAAP if you earn revenue at the time of cash receipt. In other words, anyone collecting money for services not immediately rendered (any subscription service) should be accrual
SoftTalker 5 hours ago [-]
I don't think cash basis precludes having a liability on the books for un-delivered services. It just means you recognize the revenue when the payment is received. Lots of small companies use cash basis because it's simpler and easier to understand. IANAA.
jwsteigerwalt 4 hours ago [-]
That’s right. Financial accounting and taxation are not the same thing. Even if you are taxed on a cash basis, it’s prudent to manage your business with appropriate revenue deferrals.
cj 4 hours ago [-]
I thought by definition you never have any revenue liability on the books (no unearned revenue) with cash basis because you’re recognizing the revenue on the date the cash is received. Nothing is deferred therefore no liability.
rswail 1 hours ago [-]
If someone pays up front for a service to be delivered over a period, you have a liability, no matter whether on a cash or accrual basis.
The difference is that you can recognize the revenue on receipt of the cash, but at the same time, you also recognize the liability to deliver the service (based on COGS etc for the liability).
The liability reduces as you expense (and actually pay on a cash basis) the cost of supplying the service.
At least that's my non-accountant idea of how it works.
I may be completely wrong.
willcipriano 15 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
dang 10 hours ago [-]
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
What gave you that impression? I always consulted my financials when making decisions. Unfortunately the books were wrong and I made incorrect choices from that bad data.
Projectiboga 12 hours ago [-]
This is why you have to do a quick back of the envelope go over of the big numbers and make sure they are at least close. Loosing track of $300K is partly your fault. The scale means you have to be looking at it as part of a big picture summary uncontaminated by technology. With Nuclear Treaties it is called "Trust but Verify" and is applicable to business cash flows. You have to be skeptical of the automated numbers that employees touch as there can be either error or worse fraud.
15 hours ago [-]
willcipriano 15 hours ago [-]
When I go over my household budget I'd notice if I wasn't paying my mortgage even if someone deleted it from my spreadsheet. It's important enough to me that it's front of mind when I'm thinking about money. I expect to see it on the list. I'd look for it if it wasn't there. Salaries are apparently not that big of a deal in the same way so asking for a higher one seems like a good idea.
rudolf1995 9 hours ago [-]
Seems like a pretty sweeping generalization to take from a single anecdote about how one person was confused by a bad UI.
Spivak 12 hours ago [-]
Generally good advice in general, $10-20k is nothing to even a small business but is probably a lot to you. It's not often an asymmetry works out in the employees favor.
jbeard4 3 hours ago [-]
Current (I guess now former) bench customer here. Concerned about this comment in their FAQ:
> On this website, by December 30th, you’ll be able to enter your Bench login credentials to download your current and prior year-end financials, as well as any documents you’ve uploaded such as receipts and bank statements.
This makes it sound like they are only making the year-end financials available - not the individual transactions/ledger entries. I’m concerned about this - aren’t the individual transactions required if one were to be audited? Would this create a lot of liability for their former customers?
benchdude444 16 hours ago [-]
I havent been at Bench for over 6 years but it’s always been a business on the verge of failure. The main issue was just the schizophrenic strategy that was being employed. On one hand you have a software company with useful tools and services to automate bookeeping. On the other you had a division of bookeepers that would do a lot of the manual / refinement work. These tasks are at odds with one another. If you automate things you remove power from the teams who are incentivized to scale their org charts. With LLMs, Bench should have been positioned to own this space entirely, and offer a superior or equivalent product with much better margins. Bur they decided to become a services company and not a technology company.
All I can take away from it is a few lessons, because this is a pretty awful outcome for almost every party.
jegolden1 9 hours ago [-]
Q - is it that the strategy was at odds? Or was it that the software wasn’t good enough yet, so expensive bookkeepers were required to supplement?
tonkatsu2222 6 hours ago [-]
This is accurate (from a former employee). They were not at odds, the platform was simply never sufficient on its own to do the books. Bookkeepers were required to fill the massive gaps.
nextworddev 13 minutes ago [-]
Interesting that they didn’t even consider doing an “AI pivot”
rglover 57 minutes ago [-]
Glad I dropped Bench a few months back for my own solution. They started out great, but over the past 18 months, I was always having to reconnect via Plaid and then be told way after the fact to manually upload bank statements because my data wasn't syncing. Even worse, I started having to manually categorize nearly all transactions despite there being existing identical transactions they could auto-categorize from. Finally just built an app that imports data from my bank and lets me bulk categorize/fuzzy search transactions.
mjr00 14 hours ago [-]
Shocking, but not terribly surprising from a business perspective... From everyone I know who's worked there, the operation was just a thinly veiled wrapper around human accountants. The plan for profitability was that they'd eventually automate the human part away, but eventually never came.
My condolences to the employees who now have a stressful new year.
Spivak 11 hours ago [-]
> The plan for profitability was that they'd eventually automate the human part away, but eventually never came.
Every. Damn. Time. I've fought and lost this battle at so many companies with directors and executives who were genuinely completely delusional about how much of a human process could be automated.
It's always the tasks that are easy and don't take up much time. If you end up solving one of the genuinely hard problems then you should just pivot to packaging and selling that as your business.
AlotOfReading 7 hours ago [-]
It's how virtually all automation works. You figure out how to make a computer do 80% of the problem domain and give humans tools to intervene effectively when you're outside that subset.
Many of the most reliable systems you can think of work this way, from the mail, to taxes, to factories, to autopilot systems. The key to building them is to be intentional about what you're doing and especially avoid blaming the humans for the system's failures.
jegolden1 9 hours ago [-]
Accounting startups that rely on automation are doomed to fail. Customers demand perfect accounting at automation-reflective prices. It’s just not possible.
Check out story of scalefactor.
WesJam 3 hours ago [-]
This is really sad to hear. We offer a related service in Canada, and therefore I am keenly interested in what didn’t work. If anyone from Bench is interested in chatting about what went wrong and what to avoid I would really appreciate your time / happy to grab a coffee if you are in Toronto.
For any Canadian corps caught up in the Bench shutdown. We bundle corporate governance, bookkeeping, tax and payroll for $250 CAD/month but only serve straight forward small Canadian corporations.
- Nick co-founder at Ribbon Business (https://getribbon.ai), nicholas.wesley-james@getribbon.ai
jakecarpenter 10 hours ago [-]
Seems like my experience may not have been typical. I used Bench from 19-23 for a startup and always felt like I was getting great service. I agree that they were a bit expensive, but the financials passed external reviews and always made my investors happy.
It is a shame to see them closing down this way, awful timing and awful treatment of their customers. As a founder, you need to fully understand your financials, but you should have a pro managing the day-to-day and even month-to-month.
kstrauser 2 hours ago [-]
I used them from around '18-'22. There were a couple of minor glitches sometimes, but it was generally fine and they were always quick to respond to questions. My accountant liked working with them.
Nelkins 14 hours ago [-]
The fact that they are recommending Kick makes me view that company with suspicion. This whole thing is really leaving a bad taste in my mouth.
conradwa 13 hours ago [-]
We've onboarded a significant number of folks from Bench onto Kick before this happened, so this may have been why were were mentioned.
Working fast right now to try to provide resources and help Bench users migrate and will be sharing updates here: https://x.co/kickfinance
Nelkins 13 hours ago [-]
Gotcha, thanks for that. I'm sure you're a solid company with happy users.
Totally agree. There is no contact page or reviews online for kick. I can’t afford to get into this mess again.
ergocoder 1 hours ago [-]
I lol'ed.
jsnyoung 14 hours ago [-]
exactly.
yolo2122 16 hours ago [-]
Does shutting down mean bankruptcy? My businesses will have real damages from this - both the money that has been paid to bench all year for now no output of annual books/a financial summary as well as the cost of now having to pay to redo my 2024 books.
ABS 16 hours ago [-]
on social media some employees are saying it's insolvent
burlesona 2 hours ago [-]
They charged us for our next month of service the day before they shut down. That’s fraud.
taspeotis 2 hours ago [-]
Think of it as two months of read access rather than one month of read/write access!
> You will have until Friday, March 7th at 5:00pm ET to download your Bench data from this website.
solidgiant 13 hours ago [-]
I was just sold bench.co for my three businesses and the sales person Luc Lewarne made me sign a payment agreement with Capchase. The agreement states that I still owe Capchase the full amount for a year, even if Bench.co shuts down...
Does anyone have any contacts or experience with Capchase? I never even started my service, which was supposed to begin January 1st, 2025 and now I will have to pay out 12 months to Capchase?!?!
lucatbench 10 hours ago [-]
Solidgiant, this is Luc Lewarne. I assure you that I am just as shocked as you are. I woke up today, along with my colleagues, to an email telling us that Bench was insolvent, and that all operations and employment would cease effective immediately. I know what it is like to be mislead in a buying process - it feels terrible. I want to let you know, person to person, that I had no bad intentions or knowledge of Bench’s future when I sold you our services. As for Capchase, I’m pretty sure they haven’t processed a payment from you yet, which means they haven’t sent us any funds. If you contact them, you should be able to get out of it.
solidgiant 5 hours ago [-]
Thanks Luc for the response, I have emailed Capchase support and they asked me to talk to bench.co I wasn't trying to publicly name you to shame you, but was looking for help in case someone knew where to point me. Hindsight I can see, should have probably left that out. The public page on Bench.co didn't have any contact or way to talk to anyone so I used the only contact I had. I do wish you the best in your next endeavors.
ensignavenger 5 hours ago [-]
I imagine it wasn't very fun to wake up to the news that you lost your job, and then to have your name personally called out :( I don't doubt you were just as mislead as your customers were. I hope you are able to take a few days to process the situation and decompress, and then you rebound quickly into your next position! I don't think anyone will hold it against you personally :)
ensignavenger 13 hours ago [-]
Well in hindsight, that was a silly thing to do...
First step- make sure you have read and understand your contract. Is there a cancellation period? What state laws may apply (Some states a allow a cooling off period, but often this applies only to consumer contracts, not B2B).
Second, contact Capchase via email and see if they will will allow you out of the contract "peacefully". If they are smart, they will so "sure, no problem, of course" and cancel the contract. If not, name and shame them everywhere you have an audience.
Third, if that doesn't work, you can either proactively sue them to cancel the contract, or just don't pay them and let them decide whether or not to sue you. Doing the latter may result in a negative report on your business credit.
neilv 12 hours ago [-]
> I was just sold bench.co [...] made me sign a payment agreement with Capchase. The agreement states that I still owe Capchase the full amount for a year, even if Bench.co shuts down...
I might ask a lawyer if that looks like fraud. (And then wouldn't be surprised if the lawyer can quickly make it like the sale never happened, other than your time wasted, and the lawyer fees.)
Or maybe ask your state AG's office if that looks like fraud.
(Edit: I mean the appearance that Bench.co was entering contracts to provide service for a period, knowing that they probably wouldn't provide that service, and, further, attempting to obligate you to pay for service for the entire period anyway. Or something like that. I'm not a lawyer, so I'd ask one.)
benatkin 12 hours ago [-]
Do account execs get a heads up about a shutdown? If not, maybe there wasn't a good reason to mention the account exec by name here.
thih9 10 hours ago [-]
Agreed. Also, even if they did get a heads up, hn is not the place to resolve this kind of dispute. Emailing them, or a lawyer sounds more productive.
Shaming companies publicly is fine; shaming individual workers and posting personal data is bad taste to say the least.
neilv 12 hours ago [-]
Which is part of why I didn't put the name in. The essence was that the company might have signed contracts that they knew they wouldn't fulfill.
Of course, salespeople should have professional reputations (e.g., for honesty, or for dishonesty). But don't let them be a scapegoat for the more likely real culprit or bigger fish.
9 hours ago [-]
benatkin 9 hours ago [-]
Good call.
thih9 10 hours ago [-]
Please do not name individual workers, they were likely unaware and no longer work there.
Shaming companies is fine, shaming individual workers is not; usually they are powerless, likely here too.
josephcsible 12 hours ago [-]
Wouldn't "you have to pay even if we don't deliver the product you're buying" be considered unconscionable?
caseyohara 12 hours ago [-]
I’m guessing Capchase is a financier of sorts. Capchase pays Bench for the full term up front, then the customer pays Capchase in monthly increments.
So Capchase is delivering their product, the financing. Which is why there would be a clause that the customer still owes Capchase even if Bench closes; Capchase has already paid Bench and wants to be made whole.
runako 12 hours ago [-]
This is how I read it as well. I hope OP got a significant discount on Bench service in exchange for this kind of agreement.
ShakataGaNai 12 hours ago [-]
Yea. That doesn't sound right. I'd say Op should talk to a lawyer ASAP.
I mean, bad to agree to in the first place, but it doesn't seem like a contract where the other party is non-performant, should be enforceable.
CoastalCoder 10 hours ago [-]
> I was just sold bench.co for my three businesses and the sales person Luc Lewarne made me sign a payment agreement with Capchase.
I'm sorry for the troubles you had, but is it really fair to say the salesman made you sign an agreement?
ocdtrekkie 13 hours ago [-]
I don't know the dollar figure here and I would hope Capchase is a company that will value their reputation over screwing you on that dollar figure, but I would definitely question why you signed an agreement to pay for a product even if that product is not deliverable. One of the primary value adds to the middleman in a transaction is generally that they take on some of the risk.
2 hours ago [-]
arjawn 15 hours ago [-]
Hey, Arjun here, CEO of doola (Business-in-a-Box for LLCs) (YC S20)
If you are a solopreneur or run an Ecom business and are looking for support with dedicated bookkeeping (including a human bookkeeper), check out https://www.doola.com/bookkeeping/
Happy to support anyone looking for help with bookkeeping + business tax filings for their business going into the new year (we support Non-US tax filings as well if you are a Non-US founder)
bagelss 14 hours ago [-]
I’m interested in migrating over. We have one account in GBP currency, can you handle this too? It’s with wise.com. Do you over 2024 catch up too?
arjawn 14 hours ago [-]
Hey we don't have multi-currency support (yet) but it's on the roadmap
Wow, what a shock. I cancelled my account just days before the annual renewal earlier this month. I feel for all of the small businesses this is going to hurt. The service had been getting worse for an while and the last straw was when they sent an email saying the year-end financial report would be ready by April 10th, 5 days before the tax deadline.
I’m gonna have a go with plain text accounting for the bookkeeping for a bit. Looking at what Bench was doing, and my books in general not being too complicated I think it’ll be fine, maybe better actually because I’ll have a closer eye on things. Still using a CPA to file taxes though.
runako 16 hours ago [-]
$60m Series C 3.5 years ago. My hypothesis is they shut it down when they were unable to turn it into a rocketship.
ahstilde 8 hours ago [-]
always so annoying to find bookkeepers at a fair price.
In particular, charging on expenses or on transaction volume isn't aligned with value generated. Instead, bookkeepers should charge on "anomalous transactions identified and corrected"
https://www.ledgerup.ai/ (a YC co) has a bookkeeping agent integrated with quickbooks. I've migrated to them after trying Fondo (also a YC co) and a local SMB bookkeeper in the past.
There's so many YC backed bookkeepers - Pilot, Afternoon, Fondo, LedgerUp
deepsun 16 hours ago [-]
I've heard they claimed to have SOC 2 security compliance, but refused to prove it (show the SOC2 report to customers) -- that's really fishy.
BehindBlueEyes 14 hours ago [-]
They had that cert for the last ~3 years and were audited yearly and had a standard package to share with clients so doubt there's much to this rumor
deepsun 12 hours ago [-]
Nope, just confirmed, they refused to share SOC2 Report with their paying customers.
CoastalCoder 10 hours ago [-]
Can someone explain why potential customers would put up with this?
I'd think that the last thing a company wants to do is hire an bookkeeping company that seems shady.
jnwatson 9 hours ago [-]
Perhaps I'm old school, but how hard is it to hire a bookkeeper part time, a CPA a few times a year, and use Quickbooks? Was there some special value that Bench provided?
arjvik 4 minutes ago [-]
I use GnuCash for my personal accounting, and have a flow down to import my monthly cashflow and categorize everything into my ledger. What does such accounting software provide on top of that?
yolo2122 8 hours ago [-]
Been there done that several times over. One PT bookkeeper would only do books if they also got paid to process payroll which like the books was always behind. They did a good job on the books but I have small brick and mortar biz's. While I can wait a bit for books I can't to get my employees paid correctly, once someone's payroll isn't right/paychecks take longer/etc it gets heated.
Another would produce books that required a lot of work from my CPA which made the CPA a lot more expensive.
I've had it pretty easy - friends of mine have had PT/local bookkeepers do every form of damage you can think of - it's a messy world for SMB books. And those are nothing compared to the carnage I've observed small biz's with an employee PT or FT in house doing the books.
blindriver 8 hours ago [-]
You’re probably so small that you don’t need to worry about keeping good books. If you have a decent number of customers and employees and worry about payroll then you need proper accounting software.
balls187 8 hours ago [-]
You’re not old school.
This is just how the tech industry works.
I ofc know nothing about Bench, but am aware of tech companies that try to disrupt established businesses with the aid of free* unlimited* money.
ezekg 16 hours ago [-]
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...
aphilbert 16 hours ago [-]
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
1123581321 15 hours ago [-]
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.
ibejoeb 16 hours ago [-]
Definitely a local CPA. Building that relationship will pay off, even if it's just peace of mind.
kstrauser 11 hours ago [-]
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.
ibejoeb 11 hours ago [-]
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.
kstrauser 10 hours ago [-]
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.
ibejoeb 10 hours ago [-]
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.
delfinom 8 hours ago [-]
Depending on state and industry, accountants/CPAs are also auditors of the work performed by the bookkeeper.
foolfoolz 16 hours ago [-]
“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
aftbit 15 hours ago [-]
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.
thayne 16 hours ago [-]
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.
jnwatson 9 hours ago [-]
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.
BehindBlueEyes 4 hours ago [-]
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.
Ylpertnodi 16 hours ago [-]
Just like the strategic announcement of bad news....on a Friday.
claudiogodoyb 12 hours ago [-]
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
lamp91 14 hours ago [-]
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nickcknight 15 hours ago [-]
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carloshdx 16 hours ago [-]
Im based here in the US, and unfortunately i signed up yesterday after learning about the bookkeeping special...for a small business $1005 is alot...Square (my bank) basically said they cant do anything about it since i autho the payment...Any suggestions?
kstrauser 11 hours ago [-]
I'm not a lawyer, but I'd be filing a fraud complaint. They had to have known this yesterday but still sold you a service. At least, that's the argument I'd be making, and I doubt the Bench team will have the bandwidth to dispute complaints right now.
deepsun 16 hours ago [-]
Ask them for prorated refund. You paid for a service and didn't receive it.
solidgiant 13 hours ago [-]
I signed up two weeks ago and they made me sign an ACH agreement with Capchase. Did you sign with capchase?
bayarearefugee 7 hours ago [-]
If they won't help you navigate such an obvious fraud, report Square to the CFPB (while it still exists).
And keep situations like this in mind every time you hear some libertarian idiot railing against regulations.
sirjaz 9 hours ago [-]
This is the problem with SaaS. If it shuts down you loose access to your data and app. This is why we should have local native apps!
Havoc 8 hours ago [-]
Not even a tiny bit surprised given their pricing [0]. The only thing you're getting with those rates are juniors with questionable training and worse supervision. Likely outsourced to a cheap country on top of it.
As a reference point their MONTHLY rate would get you 1-2 hours of senior associate time at a B4 provider.
It's the equivalent of hopping onto fiverr and hiring a coder after sorting by low price, and then being surprised when you receive LLM code that doesn't compile. It's entirely your own fault if you thought that would work...
You guys are lucky. I didn't even get an e-mail. I just found out I couldn't login and happened across the website. So what are the chances of getting any kind of refund for the services I paid for and will not receive?
Networkplumber 14 hours ago [-]
I'm wondering the same thing. I paid for Bench through Freshbooks, who said they'll be offering refunds for services not rendered. If they didn't get back to me with this, I was going to dispute the charge with my credit card company. If you paid by CC, you could try that.
ottoaj 13 hours ago [-]
my wife's company was literally talking to bench support few days ago for her last year LLC & personal taxes that they have been delaying for months. this new is crazy.
Anyone looking help with only LLC & personal takes then just email me here and we'll help you out: vip@joinotto.com
Nelkins 15 hours ago [-]
This is terrible. I paid them ~$4500 to do all my taxes and book keeping (just started my business this past June). What recourse do I have to get that money back?
Nelkins 15 hours ago [-]
Also allegedly they were supposed to file an S Corp election. I've emailed them, but have no idea if I'll find out if it was actually sent.
mt1973 14 hours ago [-]
same here. and my spouse signed up for the year to get taxes done quickly because we had an issue with 2023 -- and he hated them. I have used them for years. now I'm just at a loss. I don't know how to get money back. I'm sick.
genman1 8 hours ago [-]
Brutal timing. Truly feel for all the small businesses left scrambling by their sudden shutdown.
Wishing everyone affected a smooth transition and hoping you find the support you need quickly. If you’re left scrambling, we’re ClearingStation—offering fast data migration, catch-up bookkeeping, and human support starting at the same rate of $299/month.
Does anyone know who the CEO or corp officers of this Bench accounting
Does anyone have names or home address, any info to track these assholes down, they ripped us off for over 8K and I want their ass.
Call John adams 678-508-1590 or email john@thebrasslantern.com
avs733 5 hours ago [-]
while I can imagine the frustration, I'm not sure this is a post you want attached to your name if you have to get into a legal battle with them.
entityinc 3 hours ago [-]
Hi, I am the founder of entity.inc and several accounting firms. We are offering free migration from bench, tax planning and compliance as well as legal services. If anyone has any issues or needs, whether you are based in the US or abroad, please reach out.
daft_pink 14 hours ago [-]
Wow. We need an alternative to Intuit.
knuckleheads 17 hours ago [-]
Just got an email from them out of nowhere and they are closing down more or immediately. Very surprising.
gkedzierski 17 hours ago [-]
With how much they were charging and how little service they were providing, I can't comprehend how they've never been able to figure out the business model.
Accounting firm run by an entrepreneur that specializes in small to medium size businesses.
Offering free migration/onboarding for the first 100 clients who join them from Bench.
9 hours ago [-]
16 hours ago [-]
taxbirdie 6 hours ago [-]
If you have been affected by this, don't go from one tech bro service to another. Find a company ran by a tax professional. There is no viable automated solution for bookkeeping and tax now. These are customer intensive fields that require inquiries and clarification, things that AI isn't adept at. This is my field and while I do use software to automate some work, it still hallucinates and can transpose items or be unable to read data. I do suggest doing a tax extension right away and letting your employees know. Depending on the state of your books, you may need to hire spmeoen to review them and process any 1099s and W2s you need to get out.
bagelss 15 hours ago [-]
Does anyone have experience with Kick.co? It seems more self-managed with AI. I don’t want to migrate to another company that’s just going to close again despite being well funded.
7 years with bench and just renewed the annual plan last month. Seems like it’s unlikely we’ll see any refund for the 11 months remaining. Very frustrating to have to mirage somewhere else and pay for 2024 catch up.
aimeess24 15 hours ago [-]
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ihaveanaupair 14 hours ago [-]
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toddwx 14 hours ago [-]
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bagelss 14 hours ago [-]
I agree, not a great first impression. I have several questions before we jump to another provider especially an untested one.
ihaveanaupair 14 hours ago [-]
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nervous_jessica 16 hours ago [-]
No mention of refunds for unused months
ABS 16 hours ago [-]
on social media employees are saying it's insolvent so no refunds :-(
>Have CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS postgis; installed.
Why is postgis a requirement for an accounting package?
journal 16 hours ago [-]
I wanted some features for shipping and receiving and ability to find closest assets. I'll be importing zip codes which have lat lng needs to be stored and queryable.
numbsafari 16 hours ago [-]
Sales tax calculations maybe?
16 hours ago [-]
claudiogodoyb 11 hours ago [-]
I know I mentioned this earlier but trying to help out any way I can to those looking for an alternative to Bench.
Taxfyle is a great tax and accounting solution and have thousands of CPAs in their network. They offer free bookkeeping migration, a free Xero subscription, a dedicated bookkeeper to do your books and professional tax support where they handle your taxes too. Check them out here: https://www.taxfyle.com/bookkeeping
cyrusradfar 14 hours ago [-]
First off, it's tragic to see this happen to folks. As a business owner, I understand how painful bookkeeping is and having your accountant drop you at the end of the year is remarkably terrible.
Collective.com should be able to help for 2025. I can't speak to 2024 as, frankly, most of the affected aren't sure what the state of the books / export is.
Bias (my brother is a co-founder). My two brothers both use the service for their S-Corps so, like Hair-Club, he's not only the CEO but he's also a customer.
cyrusradfar 10 hours ago [-]
Collective formally responded on LinkedIn with:
We're sorry to hear about Bench shutting down, particularly coming into tax season.
As a company that specializes in solopreneur finance (formation, accounting, tax and payroll) we know that this time of year is stressful as is. If Collective can support or help you and your business in any way, please reach out at http://collective.com, join one of our Q+A sessions, or reach out to me at hooman@collective.com.
If we're a good fit for your business, use the code HERETOHELP to get a discount off of your membership.
We have years of experience working with former Bench customers and our team is working through the weekend to help any small businesses who need urgent help. We're here to support you.
If you're an employee that was impacted, we also have lots of job openings at www.collective.com/careers.
I know there are already several founders of startup accounting companies in this thread, but just want to throw another option into the mix since my friend started it and there's a free 3-months deal: https://www.prometryx.com
Looks like the pricing is pretty reasonable and they use QBO as the general ledger software, so data's not locked into some random platform. He told me to share and can also email directly at hello@prometryx.com to get a quote.
j45 9 hours ago [-]
The cloud is someone else's computer, including SaaS and when they suddenly go away.
If there's an opportunity to open-source this code so people who can't simply migrate to one option after considering many, self-hosting might be an option at least in the interim.
BehindBlueEyes 7 hours ago [-]
Their software is designed to enable hundreds of bookkeepers to do the accounting with some interesting automations, self hosting makes little sense. As an individual, if you want to do things yourself, you're better off using gnucash.
16 hours ago [-]
mdlm 16 hours ago [-]
Got the same email. Totally shocking.
evabiz7 9 hours ago [-]
EVA Business Solutions can help any impacted Bench customers. Contact them at info@evabusiness-solutions.com or call 615-461-7157.
marcobambini 17 hours ago [-]
Does anyone know the reason?
cmosser 9 hours ago [-]
I’m Crystal, Director of Relationships and Sales at Breakaway Advising. We deeply feel for the employees and clients of Bench left in a lurch, especially during this season. In light of the recent news and in the spirit of the holidays, I’m offering complimentary setup for QuickBooks Online (QBO) or Xero to help you get started.
Breakaway Advising is a franchise model with no entry fee for bookkeepers, controllers, and CFOs. Backed by a community of expert professionals, we provide exceptional financial services with an entrepreneurial approach. Think of me as your client/advisor matchmaker—here to connect you with the perfect professionals to meet your unique needs.
Whether a Bench employee or client and if you value exceptional service, great people, and a community-driven spirit, let’s connect! Reach out to me at cmosser@breakawayadvising.com.
lindsi 15 hours ago [-]
This is so fucked up**. I have an annual account and they have not done my books since July and now this... An no refunds?!
johnkadams 5 hours ago [-]
Bench CEO and the rest of you scum bags we are going to find you and you are going to jail every last one of you!!!
John Adams
johnkadams 6 hours ago [-]
does any one know who is in charge at Bench accounting? Does anyone know where the scum bag is. I want to find this ass hole. I want to swear criminal warrants for them. Anyone who has info on this situation please contact John adams 678-508-1590 or email john@thebrasslantern.com
pkkkzip 10 hours ago [-]
hmmm another "unicorn" from vancouver that bites the dust, i remember one with an owl as mascot logo can't recall what they did or their names but many ppl from vancouver mentioned it while ago.
I wonder why that place can't compete with American cities, i think even Toronto /Montreal is more successful than Vancouver.
for one the low salary must be demoralizing on top of being one of the most expensive cities in the world.
have there been notable canadian startup unicorn that turned IPO or major acquisition (100x ROI and up?) other than Shopify?
seems like nobody can really compete with America when it comes to creating IPOs and billionaires.
justinhj 9 hours ago [-]
US companies pay more and obviosuly it’s a bigger market. It means the pool of good engineers and leaders is constantly leaking across the border. I’ve made Vancouver work for me for 20 years but there are significant headwinds and for young people with no ties there is very little incentive to stay.
There is a lot more happening on the East coast though.
wilkystyle 14 hours ago [-]
Off topic, but what is going on with the comments in this discussion? Seems like a ton of new accounts, and strange behavior like commenting gibberish or exact same comment text within minutes of each other, for example:
strattonoak 39 minutes ago | prev | next [–]
The no access to data smells like a ransomware event. Why is data not available to export out and everything is taken down and not accessible? Seems like it's way more work to take down access that to leave it up?
theoak 40 minutes ago | prev | next [–]
The no access to data smells like a ransomware event. Why is data not available to export out and everything is taken down and not accessible? Seems like it's way more work to take down access that to leave it up?
jsnell 13 hours ago [-]
My guess is that this page is ranking very high for the kind of search anyone would use for finding out more about the closure.
So disgruntled customers are finding the page and complain, competitors are finding the page to use for lead generation.
dang 10 hours ago [-]
Yes, this seems to be what happened.
(But the specific accounts mentioned by the GP were a bit of a special case.)
LordDragonfang 14 hours ago [-]
So: that specific comment was posted three times, by accounts named strattonoakmont, strattonoak, and theoak. I googled the first and got this wikipedia page:
> Stratton Oakmont, Inc. was a Long Island, New York, over-the-counter brokerage house founded in 1989 by Jordan Belfort and Danny Porush. It defrauded many shareholders, leading to the arrest and incarceration of several executives and the closing of the firm in 1996.
It's the company from the Wolf of Wall street.
jseibert 15 hours ago [-]
Truly crazy news and timing for this to happen over the holidays.
I'm the founder/CEO of Digits - if you're a tech startup on Bench, we'd love to work together. Reach out to vip@digits.com and we'll extend our friends/family discount and make this as painless for you as possible.
Nelkins 14 hours ago [-]
Do you do personal tax returns in addition to business taxes as part of a package?
beibeiq 14 hours ago [-]
Are you a single member LLC? Digits is focused on C Corps right now and for C Corps we can offer personal tax returns. Fill out this form: https://tinyurl.com/digits-bench here. Our team is fully focused on helping Bench customers through the rest of the holidays!
Nelkins 13 hours ago [-]
Single member LLC, so I don't think Digits is the right fit for me at the moment. Thanks for taking the time to respond.
claudiogodoyb 12 hours ago [-]
I have a friend who works at Taxfyle and they cater to single-member LLCs and newly formed businesses. They seem like a great fit for you if you need taxes and bookkeeping done. Check out their website: https://www.taxfyle.com/bookkeeping
lgreer 16 hours ago [-]
I have been a Bench customer for eight years. I have simple books, and the service was perfect at the time. Over the last three years, the turnover was bananas - and for the last three years, the year-end financials kept taking longer and longer to complete. This year, it was to the point I was going to leave. They offered a discount and a chance to adjust. They did much better, until this month when the announcement came that you had to sign a year contract and choose within TWO WEEKS to avoid another price hike and FORCED year. That, or leave. I was shocked when I asked if I could at least have my year-end done, as this was happening right at the end of the year. Straight up, the answer was no. You have to have a subscription for the year to get that. I was going to stay the coming year solely because of the timing to move and set up elsewhere, but now, I see this was simply in the cards. They wanted to see if things could be salvaged by how many annuals they got - clearly, there weren't enough. What is MORE of a slap in the face is the AUDACITY to - IN YOUR TERMINATION EMAIL - HAVE AN AFFILIATE RECOMMENDATION TO ANOTHER SERVICE - ARE YOU INSANE???? Do they think we are COMPLETE MORONS??? I smell a lawsuit brewing, not from me but from larger companies. Some things are COMPLETELY rotten here.
801accounting 15 hours ago [-]
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mt1973 14 hours ago [-]
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wdaher 16 hours ago [-]
If you’re a tech startup and previously used Bench, I’d strongly encourage you to check out Pilot.com - we work with literally thousands of startups. (Disclaimer: I’m one of the founders.)
cj 11 hours ago [-]
Genuine question: why did you raise $100 million Series C for a bookkeeping company? I'm a Pilot customer, and my heart dropped when I saw your funding announcement on the homepage a while back.
Happy pilot customer at both my startups (gyroscope & bit.io), and will be using them again for my third.
Nelkins 13 hours ago [-]
Do you service single member LLCs/S Corps?
wdaher 2 hours ago [-]
We do, yes.
porter 16 hours ago [-]
Pilot looks very expensive!
aimazon 16 hours ago [-]
I guess we now know that the price of a bookkeeping and tax preparation service that won’t shut down without warning is the 2x pilot are charging of what bench were charging.
porter 16 hours ago [-]
You don't know they won't shut down. And how does this compare to a local accounting firm?
CamperBob2 12 hours ago [-]
And how does this compare to a local accounting firm?
Hint: ask the salesman what happens in the event of an IRS audit. A good local CPA will go to the wall for you. Will the service you're considering do the same?
wdaher 15 hours ago [-]
Price should be comparable to a high-quality local provider, but if that's not what you're seeing, I'd love to know that.
santoshalper 13 hours ago [-]
Your bookkeeping service shutting down with no notice over the holidays is not cheap either, my friend. Some things are worth paying for.
dustingetz 11 hours ago [-]
let’s hear your metrics on the issues of timeliness, accuracy, cost and bookkeeper churn that Bench faced?
bagelss 15 hours ago [-]
I’m interested in migrating over to Pilot. How is the migration process from bench? It seems we can do a data export in a few days. Can pilot do 2024 catch up?
wdaher 15 hours ago [-]
We have a number of folks who have switched from Bench, and as you can imagine there's enough volume here that it's worth building some bespoke stuff for this.
And yes, we can do 2024 catch-up work.
(waseem@pilot.com if folks have any specific questions)
Joup 16 hours ago [-]
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blakebilliet 12 hours ago [-]
Hey everybody -- I'm the founder and CEO of Afino. We offer all of the same services as Bench and ready to help any founder affected by this sudden shutdown.
Awesome. Since you're here, could you share pricing? I know it may vary, but since you are offering to bring on Bench customers perhaps you could share pricing for similar service as Bench's offerings?
blakebilliet 10 hours ago [-]
You're right that it varies a lot but we're priced competitively with all of our peers. I haven't seen a quote that we can't beat. We're playing a long game here and aren't going to lose a good customer on price.
Bookkeeping starts at $500/mo, Fed + State Taxes at $2,400. We do a long list of FP&A and fractional CFO services as needed. We get our prospects a detailed quote from just a 30-min call.
euph0ria 16 hours ago [-]
We just moved to CleerTax. Not sure if they are good yet but pretty responsive.
bolshchikov 11 hours ago [-]
CEO of Finaloop (real-time financial solution) just offered a migration package and 75% off.
If you're a ecommerce brand, we specialize in ecomm bookkeeping and can get you migrated and caught up for 2024 immediately.
DayZero - ondayzero.com - or send me an email michelle@ondayzero.com. Always happy to be a resource
MubarakShahCPA 14 hours ago [-]
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ezekg 14 hours ago [-]
Your website doesn't mention tax filing. Is this a new offering or am I missing it somewhere?
mmetr 14 hours ago [-]
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ColdSpringBiz 15 hours ago [-]
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mgkimsal 17 hours ago [-]
FYI: "You will have until Friday, March 7th at 5:00pm ET to download your Bench data from this website."
laleck 16 hours ago [-]
Additionally, they took down all of their accounting articles without notice. They had valuable summaries on various tax topics. Thankfully, Wayback Machine has archives of my bookmarks.
All the more reason to self-host your own archived versions of bookmarks...
aftbit 15 hours ago [-]
Not sure why flagged. Link rot is one of the scourges of the internet.
avs733 5 hours ago [-]
is there an easy solution for this? I recently found myself looking through old bookmarks from a long previous project and only about 1/3 worked and it made me sad.
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They don't do taxes so not appealing to me. That was the main pain point Bench solved for me.
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pdoconnell 14 hours ago [-]
If they're insolvent, depending on who they're using for their infrastructure their systems and services may have literally been turned off on them.
MayowaO 10 hours ago [-]
Come to factsfinancegroup.com
Real people.
Won't bore you with technical talk, your books will simply be done. You will be tax ready and tax efficient.
Last, but not least, you will have everything you need to grow at your fingertips.
We simply want 100 clients.
We'll focus on 100 of you and continue to the moon together.
digitcatphd 16 hours ago [-]
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ezekg 15 hours ago [-]
How can Claude file your taxes for you? And without hallucinations? Seems dangerous tbh
rolandjeon 14 hours ago [-]
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romanzubenko 8 hours ago [-]
If you are an ecom brand or tech startup - I'm CEO of Afternoon.co (YC F25) providing same services as Bench including year end tax filing, ready to onboard you asap, just email me at roman@afternoon.co
davidkopf 10 hours ago [-]
I'm sorry for all those affected by the Bench Accounting shutdown. If any of you are solopreneurs, feel free to reach out to my friend Nate at Cookie Finance. They are a highly trusted accounting platform (US based) that provides full-service accounting/tax. Nate also shared with me that they’ve already worked with a lot of former Bench clients.
His contact info is below.
Nate Coughran
info@cookiefinance.co
Rendered at 08:26:17 GMT+0000 (UTC) with Wasmer Edge.
https://x.com/ianwcrosby/status/1872724231999381790
https://nitter.poast.org/ianwcrosby/status/18727242319993817...
More about nitter: https://github.com/zedeus/nitter
This post, that you’ve typed up and posted online, for all to see, is about your opinion of Elon Musk
Your post above is a failed attempt at a petty gotcha.
I found his posts interesting. I was a Bench customer for several years until we sold our business, and I appreciate the background information about the bullet we dodged.
You're seriously claiming a bad leader can't destroy a company/organization/project/country?
> I wanted to continue with what was working and with what our partners had signed on to distribute.
How does he know it was working? He says it so matter of factly.
And that’s what this big-mad comes down to.
However, he mentioned they just raised $60 million. If his approach wasn’t working, why would anyone invest that amount? And if the plan was to fire him, given that his vote was required, wouldn’t it have been more transparent to say upfront: “If you reject the acquisition and opt for this $60 million investment instead, we’re going to fire you”?
In a direct reply to the thread. Well, it is confirming the original thread.
If the new captain is good. But a bad captian can sink any ship, unless the crew is willing and able to mutinee to prevent it.
However I can, albeit anecdotally from my perspective, say that I felt there was a marked difference in Bench's quality/service/responsiveness/performance/etc about 3yrs ago. This aligns with the timeline given by the former CEO in his post for his departure.
We were bench customers until a few months ago, paying thousands of dollars per year for what could only be described as hundreds of dollars worth of service. The service was not very good so moving away was an easy choice but on a per-customer basis they must be making money hand over fist.
I expect we'll find out more eventually, hopefully employees will leak some insight. For now, this is inexplicable.
Where did you move to?
Cronitor uses pilot. It was a little crazy at first but the last year+ feels like they have stabilized operations.
Because they never figured out how to automate enough of the process to scale revenue up without scaling expenses.
All the investments in these VC funded companies is a bet that the companies will develop automation that will allow them to not hire staff, period (relative to the growth in customers).
The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.
A few staff guessed it might close 3 weeks ago at best though everything was very uncertain, but most of the accountants probably didn't see this coming either.
source: I know a few former employees.
I would expect this was the kind of thing an accountant should see coming though.
No, you're not. The minimum for commitment is a longer notice.
Paying for a service and not getting what you expect, especially when it comes to your taxes is no joke.
Instead of having to start from scratch, our team at Kick is moved quickly to build these resources to help prior Bench customers:
1. Free Bench migration
2. Free 2024 Bookkeeping review calls
3. Free Daily Live Q&As (coming soon)
We’re moving fast and sharing additional resources and updates in real time here:
- https://kick.co/bench
- https://x.com/kickfinance
Other resources on the way include a Tax Extension Guide and Accountant Directory to make sure folks get a soft landing is this difficult time.
If you're running into issues, my email me at conrad@kick.co and I’ll do the best I can to route you to the right place.
Also are any of the C-Level execs from Bench involved in Kick in any way?
We're working fast right now to try to provide resources and help Bench users migrate and will be sharing updates here: https://x.co/kickfinance
"For continued support with your bookkeeping, we recommend exploring Kick, a modern accounting software, which has created an exclusive offer to handle your ongoing needs: kick.co/bench."
Having an "exclusive offer" listed in the initial closure communication/announcement + you having a landing page ready to go sounds like there was more to Bench just happening to mention Kick because your company has "onboarded a significant number of customers from Bench onto Kick before this happened"...
It's entirely possible this landing page is Kick's competitive offer, and Bench linked to it because it offers all the people they just screwed over by collapsing a discount.
If they asked Kick to be listed as an alternative in the closure email or asked them to do a discount nbd I have no issue there. I just want the full story given Bench events.
On the shutdown page I listed some alternatives people could try. I found them via Google, but i didn't first try them or talk to them.
They were really just a helpful hint for folk wanting to change to get started. (The thing I was killing was a product not a service so it wasn't going to actually stop working, it was just no longer being updated.)
So, in this case, a simple statement of fact (as above) would be good enough for me. But feel free to do your due diligence.
The service was fine, interesting that their relationship ended just over a year ago.
They didn't need a heads up to build this. It takes between half an hour and half a day.
This is fascinating. That smells like actual fraud on their part.
Sure ultimately everything falls upon me the founder. But something so common as GUSTO payroll should never be miscategorized and hidden from view.
What sort of accounting books were being prepared where such a function is even needed?
The difference is that you can recognize the revenue on receipt of the cash, but at the same time, you also recognize the liability to deliver the service (based on COGS etc for the liability).
The liability reduces as you expense (and actually pay on a cash basis) the cost of supplying the service.
At least that's my non-accountant idea of how it works.
I may be completely wrong.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> On this website, by December 30th, you’ll be able to enter your Bench login credentials to download your current and prior year-end financials, as well as any documents you’ve uploaded such as receipts and bank statements.
This makes it sound like they are only making the year-end financials available - not the individual transactions/ledger entries. I’m concerned about this - aren’t the individual transactions required if one were to be audited? Would this create a lot of liability for their former customers?
All I can take away from it is a few lessons, because this is a pretty awful outcome for almost every party.
My condolences to the employees who now have a stressful new year.
Every. Damn. Time. I've fought and lost this battle at so many companies with directors and executives who were genuinely completely delusional about how much of a human process could be automated.
It's always the tasks that are easy and don't take up much time. If you end up solving one of the genuinely hard problems then you should just pivot to packaging and selling that as your business.
Many of the most reliable systems you can think of work this way, from the mail, to taxes, to factories, to autopilot systems. The key to building them is to be intentional about what you're doing and especially avoid blaming the humans for the system's failures.
Check out story of scalefactor.
For any Canadian corps caught up in the Bench shutdown. We bundle corporate governance, bookkeeping, tax and payroll for $250 CAD/month but only serve straight forward small Canadian corporations.
- Nick co-founder at Ribbon Business (https://getribbon.ai), nicholas.wesley-james@getribbon.ai
It is a shame to see them closing down this way, awful timing and awful treatment of their customers. As a founder, you need to fully understand your financials, but you should have a pro managing the day-to-day and even month-to-month.
Working fast right now to try to provide resources and help Bench users migrate and will be sharing updates here: https://x.co/kickfinance
BTW, that link to your X profile returns a 404. It should be https://x.com/kickfinance .
> You will have until Friday, March 7th at 5:00pm ET to download your Bench data from this website.
Does anyone have any contacts or experience with Capchase? I never even started my service, which was supposed to begin January 1st, 2025 and now I will have to pay out 12 months to Capchase?!?!
First step- make sure you have read and understand your contract. Is there a cancellation period? What state laws may apply (Some states a allow a cooling off period, but often this applies only to consumer contracts, not B2B).
Second, contact Capchase via email and see if they will will allow you out of the contract "peacefully". If they are smart, they will so "sure, no problem, of course" and cancel the contract. If not, name and shame them everywhere you have an audience.
Third, if that doesn't work, you can either proactively sue them to cancel the contract, or just don't pay them and let them decide whether or not to sue you. Doing the latter may result in a negative report on your business credit.
I might ask a lawyer if that looks like fraud. (And then wouldn't be surprised if the lawyer can quickly make it like the sale never happened, other than your time wasted, and the lawyer fees.)
Or maybe ask your state AG's office if that looks like fraud.
(Edit: I mean the appearance that Bench.co was entering contracts to provide service for a period, knowing that they probably wouldn't provide that service, and, further, attempting to obligate you to pay for service for the entire period anyway. Or something like that. I'm not a lawyer, so I'd ask one.)
Shaming companies publicly is fine; shaming individual workers and posting personal data is bad taste to say the least.
Of course, salespeople should have professional reputations (e.g., for honesty, or for dishonesty). But don't let them be a scapegoat for the more likely real culprit or bigger fish.
Shaming companies is fine, shaming individual workers is not; usually they are powerless, likely here too.
So Capchase is delivering their product, the financing. Which is why there would be a clause that the customer still owes Capchase even if Bench closes; Capchase has already paid Bench and wants to be made whole.
I mean, bad to agree to in the first place, but it doesn't seem like a contract where the other party is non-performant, should be enforceable.
I'm sorry for the troubles you had, but is it really fair to say the salesman made you sign an agreement?
If you are a solopreneur or run an Ecom business and are looking for support with dedicated bookkeeping (including a human bookkeeper), check out https://www.doola.com/bookkeeping/
Happy to support anyone looking for help with bookkeeping + business tax filings for their business going into the new year (we support Non-US tax filings as well if you are a Non-US founder)
And we can help with 2024 catchup
You can book a free demo here, excited to help if we can: https://www.doola.com/bookkeeping/book-a-demo/
I’m gonna have a go with plain text accounting for the bookkeeping for a bit. Looking at what Bench was doing, and my books in general not being too complicated I think it’ll be fine, maybe better actually because I’ll have a closer eye on things. Still using a CPA to file taxes though.
In particular, charging on expenses or on transaction volume isn't aligned with value generated. Instead, bookkeepers should charge on "anomalous transactions identified and corrected"
https://www.ledgerup.ai/ (a YC co) has a bookkeeping agent integrated with quickbooks. I've migrated to them after trying Fondo (also a YC co) and a local SMB bookkeeper in the past.
There's so many YC backed bookkeepers - Pilot, Afternoon, Fondo, LedgerUp
I'd think that the last thing a company wants to do is hire an bookkeeping company that seems shady.
Another would produce books that required a lot of work from my CPA which made the CPA a lot more expensive.
I've had it pretty easy - friends of mine have had PT/local bookkeepers do every form of damage you can think of - it's a messy world for SMB books. And those are nothing compared to the carnage I've observed small biz's with an employee PT or FT in house doing the books.
This is just how the tech industry works.
I ofc know nothing about Bench, but am aware of tech companies that try to disrupt established businesses with the aid of free* unlimited* money.
What are the alternatives that handle bookkeeping and tax filing? Maybe I should just get a local CPA...
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.
as if a dying business can magically decide to stay open longer and shut down at a more convenient time
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.
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.
I bet they were hoping for a christmas miracle.
And keep situations like this in mind every time you hear some libertarian idiot railing against regulations.
As a reference point their MONTHLY rate would get you 1-2 hours of senior associate time at a B4 provider.
It's the equivalent of hopping onto fiverr and hiring a coder after sorting by low price, and then being surprised when you receive LLM code that doesn't compile. It's entirely your own fault if you thought that would work...
[0] http://web.archive.org/web/20241223225539/https://www.bench....
Anyone looking help with only LLC & personal takes then just email me here and we'll help you out: vip@joinotto.com
Wishing everyone affected a smooth transition and hoping you find the support you need quickly. If you’re left scrambling, we’re ClearingStation—offering fast data migration, catch-up bookkeeping, and human support starting at the same rate of $299/month.
https://www.clearingstation.ca/bench.htm
Does anyone have names or home address, any info to track these assholes down, they ripped us off for over 8K and I want their ass.
Call John adams 678-508-1590 or email john@thebrasslantern.com
Accounting firm run by an entrepreneur that specializes in small to medium size businesses.
Offering free migration/onboarding for the first 100 clients who join them from Bench.
7 years with bench and just renewed the annual plan last month. Seems like it’s unlikely we’ll see any refund for the 11 months remaining. Very frustrating to have to mirage somewhere else and pay for 2024 catch up.
Edit, found it myself: https://www.reddit.com/r/Accounting/comments/1hnhoxq/comment...
Doing my best wish someone would help.
>Have CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS postgis; installed.
Why is postgis a requirement for an accounting package?
Taxfyle is a great tax and accounting solution and have thousands of CPAs in their network. They offer free bookkeeping migration, a free Xero subscription, a dedicated bookkeeper to do your books and professional tax support where they handle your taxes too. Check them out here: https://www.taxfyle.com/bookkeeping
Collective.com should be able to help for 2025. I can't speak to 2024 as, frankly, most of the affected aren't sure what the state of the books / export is.
Bias (my brother is a co-founder). My two brothers both use the service for their S-Corps so, like Hair-Club, he's not only the CEO but he's also a customer.
We're sorry to hear about Bench shutting down, particularly coming into tax season.
As a company that specializes in solopreneur finance (formation, accounting, tax and payroll) we know that this time of year is stressful as is. If Collective can support or help you and your business in any way, please reach out at http://collective.com, join one of our Q+A sessions, or reach out to me at hooman@collective.com.
If we're a good fit for your business, use the code HERETOHELP to get a discount off of your membership.
We have years of experience working with former Bench customers and our team is working through the weekend to help any small businesses who need urgent help. We're here to support you.
If you're an employee that was impacted, we also have lots of job openings at www.collective.com/careers.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hooman_financial-solutions-re...
Looks like the pricing is pretty reasonable and they use QBO as the general ledger software, so data's not locked into some random platform. He told me to share and can also email directly at hello@prometryx.com to get a quote.
If there's an opportunity to open-source this code so people who can't simply migrate to one option after considering many, self-hosting might be an option at least in the interim.
Breakaway Advising is a franchise model with no entry fee for bookkeepers, controllers, and CFOs. Backed by a community of expert professionals, we provide exceptional financial services with an entrepreneurial approach. Think of me as your client/advisor matchmaker—here to connect you with the perfect professionals to meet your unique needs.
Whether a Bench employee or client and if you value exceptional service, great people, and a community-driven spirit, let’s connect! Reach out to me at cmosser@breakawayadvising.com.
John Adams
I wonder why that place can't compete with American cities, i think even Toronto /Montreal is more successful than Vancouver.
for one the low salary must be demoralizing on top of being one of the most expensive cities in the world.
have there been notable canadian startup unicorn that turned IPO or major acquisition (100x ROI and up?) other than Shopify?
seems like nobody can really compete with America when it comes to creating IPOs and billionaires.
So disgruntled customers are finding the page and complain, competitors are finding the page to use for lead generation.
(But the specific accounts mentioned by the GP were a bit of a special case.)
> Stratton Oakmont, Inc. was a Long Island, New York, over-the-counter brokerage house founded in 1989 by Jordan Belfort and Danny Porush. It defrauded many shareholders, leading to the arrest and incarceration of several executives and the closing of the firm in 1996.
It's the company from the Wolf of Wall street.
I'm the founder/CEO of Digits - if you're a tech startup on Bench, we'd love to work together. Reach out to vip@digits.com and we'll extend our friends/family discount and make this as painless for you as possible.
Here's my best articulation of specifically what makes it hard: https://waseem.substack.com/p/tech-enabled-services
Hint: ask the salesman what happens in the event of an IRS audit. A good local CPA will go to the wall for you. Will the service you're considering do the same?
And yes, we can do 2024 catch-up work.
(waseem@pilot.com if folks have any specific questions)
Check out our services on our site (www.afino.ai) and book a priority meeting to talk to me and my team (https://app.reclaim.ai/m/afino/priority-intro)
Bookkeeping starts at $500/mo, Fed + State Taxes at $2,400. We do a long list of FP&A and fractional CFO services as needed. We get our prospects a detailed quote from just a 30-min call.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-7278469880629067776-...
DayZero - ondayzero.com - or send me an email michelle@ondayzero.com. Always happy to be a resource
All the more reason to self-host your own archived versions of bookmarks...
Real people.
Won't bore you with technical talk, your books will simply be done. You will be tax ready and tax efficient.
Last, but not least, you will have everything you need to grow at your fingertips.
We simply want 100 clients.
We'll focus on 100 of you and continue to the moon together.
His contact info is below.
Nate Coughran info@cookiefinance.co