8 ms·

Bench to be acquired after abruptly shutting down

107 points by Nelkins 2y ago

bagelss 2y ago
Let's wait and see. This is a case study in how not to shut down a company. I, like many business owners, will have already started looking at alternatives. With an estimated 35,000 businesses you would have thought Bench would have some acquisition offers on the table before they chose to close.
- swores 2y ago
  It's possible that they explored all acquisition possibilities they could find without the world knowing about their situation, and that the only company or companies who could reach acceptable terms to acquire them didn't have the network links to find out that Bench was acquirable until the news broke that they were shutting down. Obviously not an ideal situation, both parties (if an acquisition is indeed happening) would prefer to have been able to do it before Bench's announcement, but there's simply no way to let every single person & company in the world who might consider acquiring them know what's on the table without the information being public knowledge too.
  - beibeiq 2y ago
    NDR (Net Dollar Retention) in a business like this is the key metric for determining whether there's a business or customer base worth acquiring here. With Bench's rumored churn in recent years, their existing investors which includes top funds like Bain and reputable ones like Inovia (which is top Canada) would've had the opportunity to invest first. Clearly they didn't. With a rumored 2024 revenue of $54.9m in 2024, and peak valuation at $230m+ (4x Rev which isn't unreasonable to pay even for a tech-enabled services business), churn would've been really bad for this deal to end up here.
    - swores 2y ago
      I was commenting on how acquisitions happen, not asking to be spammed by an accounting company masquerading as a relevant comment. I'd suggest deleting it and not continuing this strategy, as I suspect I'm not the only HN reader who will react to your comment by making a mental note that 'Digits' is a company with annoying marketing.
      - beibeiq 2y ago
        Hey that's good feedback. I'll leave the first part since I was also commenting on how acquisitions happen. Note though that the OP is an affected bench customer looking for a transition but I'll respect your part of this thread. Have a great rest of 2024.
thinkingemote 2y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42523061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42523061 "bench accounting services shutting down". 3 days ago, 300 comments
nathancahill 2y ago
Seems like a last second deal. Doesn't inspire confidence. For context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42523061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42523061 And former CEO's post: https://x.com/ianwcrosby/status/1872724231999381790 https://x.com/ianwcrosby/status/1872724231999381790
- cj 2y ago
  It's very possible it has been a deal long time in the making. When you're in an acquisition process, the acquirer will often prey on your weaknesses to get a better deal. If Employer.com had already been in talks prior to the shutdown, then they already knew the financial condition, they may have surprised Bench with a dramatic decrease in the purchase price at the 11th hour in an effort to get a better deal knowing Bench's only other alternative would be to shut down. Maybe Bench called their bluff, called off the deal and shut down. (The only rational reason to do that would be if they think they could successfully sue the acquirer or get the original deal back on the table) Pure speculation, but typically acquisitions take many months to come together. Even a firesale acquisition doesn't happen in a week.
  - benatkin 2y ago
    This might not even be worthy of being called a firesale acquisition. It might just be selling the customer contracts locked in with Capchase.
  - pbreit 2y ago
    Lousy behavior all the way around. And with SMB accounting on the last days of the year.
    - lazide 2y ago
      Yup. Though also, the time of maximum leverage probably?
  - weisser 2y ago
    > It's very possible it has been a deal long time in the making. No. From the acquirer: “It fits our product roadmap. It was super serendipitous…I saw that news. I was like, ‘This is perfect.’ It checks a lot of boxes for us. It was just a really good synergistic opportunity, so we went for it.” https://multitudes.weisser.io/p/how-employercom-acquired-bench-accounting https://multitudes.weisser.io/p/how-employercom-acquired-ben...
GiorgioG 2y ago
[flagged]
- ezekg 2y ago
  Especially when the service the last couple years has been bad...
jsheard 2y ago
> Your service will continue seamlessly with the platform you’ve always trusted. Uh, I think that trust may be a bit compromised until they explain what the hell happened.
- scrapcode 2y ago
  Now with your quote, I'm curious how many times they've changed this lander... > Welcome Back [...] More information on how to continue your services will be available soon.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
dotty- 2y ago
lol, well, the companies who have already started a migration away from Bench are probably not going to stop their migration. Ouch.
- ezekg 2y ago
  Especially when the Bench competitors offering those migrations have a deadline of the 31st to do 2024 books/taxes.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mikebonnell 2y ago
Would you trust Employer when their "About" page looks like this? https://www.employer.com/about https://www.employer.com/about "Our Story There are many variations of passages of available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don't look even..."
- jsheard 2y ago
  They've secured investments from Logoipsum, Logoipsum, Logoipsum and Logoipsum so they must be legit.
  - cmac123 2y ago
    Ha!
- admissionsguy 2y ago
  Sounds like they are not afraid to use AI already, which will give them an unbeatable edge when the LLMs improve. Source: YC investment thesis
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- shesprtytechncl 2y ago
  Yeahhhh I wonder if this is a new shell company spun up to either take on the old one as a way to restructure financially and get rid of some debt (I have no idea how this would work) or to give them enough time to wind down. Or something else? Who knows but definitely weird.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- aimazon 2y ago
codegeek 2y ago
What a comedy of errors. So they screw over their paying customers without any notice and now suddenly they are acquired ? I love capitalism but the way Bench handled this is a disaster and left so many customers unsure of what to do. Especially at year end when accounting becomes even more critical. Shameful.
- brightball 2y ago
  There's not really an economic philosophy that can protect people from bad decisions. In the middle of year end accounting though, this was a train wreck.
  - wbl 2y ago
    There is a right way to do this and a wrong way and they picked the wrong way. The right way is to say "we will do 2024 and work with you to transition for 2025".
    - itake 2y ago
      Where does the money come from to pay for that? As an employee, would you want to work for 6mo, for no promotions, bonuses, stock? Seems like they could have had huge layoffs, to try to maintain, but maybe they thought the sale would go through before the shutdown, meaning no one gets laid off. But the buyer waited until after the shutdown to grab it
      - wbl 2y ago
        From the fees the customers are paying for the bookwork.
        itake 2y ago
        If they were profitable, then they wouldn’t have shut down… Presumably, their cost to serve was higher than what their customers were collectively paying.
    - 2y ago
Nelkins 2y ago
As someone who was affected by this, I opted to go ahead and try and get my money's worth (although I have another service doing this in parallel). Also they were supposed to file an S Corp election for me, so hopefully I'll be able to find out the latest status of that. This whole thing is such a mess.
- Nelkins 2y ago
  A bit of research yields this guy as this owner of employer.com: https://x.com/JesseTinsley https://x.com/JesseTinsley
  - benatkin 2y ago
    At the end of his bio: > Acquiring companies DM me
- teknikl 2y ago
  [dead]
- toddwx 2y ago
  did it immediately let you proceed to your existing data
  - Nelkins 2y ago
    Yes. I'm able to log into the platform. You need to navigate to https://app.bench.co https://app.bench.co. I actually don't remember if they provided that URL, or if I just typed it into my browser out of habit. It may work for everyone who was on the platform.
    - nervous_jessica 2y ago
      have you found anyway to export this year's data? I've logged in but now I'm worried that somehow opts out of getting the export data
tleichli 2y ago
how long does it take for you to get the secure link that has your data from Bench when you opt out of Employer.com
mt1973 2y ago
[dead]
dang 2y ago
Recent and related: Bench accounting services shutting down - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42523061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42523061 - Dec 2024 (304 comments)
dang 2y ago
(We changed the URL from https://www.bench.co/ https://www.bench.co/ to an article that gives more background.)
wdaher 2y ago
For Bench customers that want to look elsewhere, Pilot is doing free migrations from Bench to QBO, even if you don't want to use Pilot. (So you can even take advantage of it if you want to instead DIY or work with some local firm.) https://pilot.com/bench-qbo-migration https://pilot.com/bench-qbo-migration (Disclaimer is that I'm one of Pilot's founders.)
- auston 2y ago
  Your free BOI filing (even if you don't want to use Pilot) is why I use Pilot.
  - counternotions 2y ago
    BOI filing isn’t that hard? Takes 5 minutes to DIY each entity on the FINCEN portal.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - wdaher 2y ago
    Honestly, love to hear this :)
jbeard4 2y ago
Has anyone figured out how to download your data from Bench? In the original email they sent out that announced they were shutting down, they said data would be available to download from http://data.bench.co http://data.bench.co. But right now, this domain appears to be inactive. When I logged back in, they gave me the option to: give employer.com permission to access my data, or download my data. I selected the former option so that I could access the dashboard, but I'd still like to download my data in case it turns out I would like to migrate to a competing service.
- ry4nolson 2y ago
  I'm in this same boat. I started the onboarding with kick.com over the weekend. Yesterday clicked the "Opt Out Download Data" button and still haven't seen any data.
kidhastings 2y ago
Former Bench user here - I selected to opt-out and download my financial data over an hour ago. I still haven't received it and am getting concerned. Has anyone actually received their data from Bench yet?
- jbeard4 2y ago
  Hello, I was wondering if you ever got the email with the download link? Thanks so much.
cmac123 2y ago
The new Bench site asks us to click a button saying we "consent to continue using Bench as part of employer.com." Has anyone clicked that? I'm hesitant, since it does not state clearly what I am "consenting" to.
JoshTriplett 2y ago
In addition to all the other weirdness about this, their email announcing this had a fascinating bug in it: I received an email with subject "Bench is Back — Here’s What You Need to Know". The contents looked like a copy of the previous mail: "We regret to inform you that we will be shutting down Bench services. Effective immediately, [...]". On a hunch, I checked the HTML version rather than the plain text. "Bench has been acquired by Employer.com and we’re thrilled to share with you that as of today, December 30, 2024, we’re back in action. [...]" Somehow, they managed to send out an HTML mail that has the plain-text of a completely different mail. How does that even happen? What possible steps would lead to sending such a mail? ----- For anyone curious about the complete contents of the mail sent to Bench customers (the HTML one they seem to have actually intended to send): Dear Bench customer, We wanted to get in touch with you to give you an update on Bench Accounting. Bench has been acquired by Employer.com and we’re thrilled to share with you that as of today, December 30, 2024, we’re back in action. What You Should Know Is anything changing? No, you will continue to work with the same great team, platform, and service. We’re preparing to wrap up your year-end financials and get you set for a smooth tax season in Q1 2025. Who will be doing my books? The same great Bench team will continue to be supporting you with your books using the Bench.co platform, ensuring that you have a seamless experience moving forward. Next Steps To continue working with the Bench team and platform, simply login to your account, and click “I Consent.” This gives us the permission to continue supporting your account, and transfers your data ownership from Bench to Employer.com If you do not wish to provide consent, you will have the option to opt out. Please note that once opted out, we cannot reverse the action nor can we provide any refunds. We know the sudden shutdown of Bench disrupted things, and for that, we’re truly sorry. This acquisition is about turning things around and making sure your bookkeeping needs are met — better than ever. We look forward to working with you for a successful tax season ahead. Thank you for your patience and understanding, and please reach out if you have any questions. The Bench Team
jbeard4 2y ago
I created a subreddit in case any current/former Bench users would like to continue talking to one another and compare notes: https://www.reddit.com/r/BenchUsers https://www.reddit.com/r/BenchUsers
- Nelkins 2y ago
  Thank you!

107 points by Nelkins 2y ago

Let's wait and see. This is a case study in how not to shut down a company. I, like many business owners, will have already started looking at alternatives. With an estimated 35,000 businesses you would have thought Bench would have some acquisition offers on the table before they chose to close.

swores 2y ago
It's possible that they explored all acquisition possibilities they could find without the world knowing about their situation, and that the only company or companies who could reach acceptable terms to acquire them didn't have the network links to find out that Bench was acquirable until the news broke that they were shutting down. Obviously not an ideal situation, both parties (if an acquisition is indeed happening) would prefer to have been able to do it before Bench's announcement, but there's simply no way to let every single person & company in the world who might consider acquiring them know what's on the table without the information being public knowledge too.
- beibeiq 2y ago
  NDR (Net Dollar Retention) in a business like this is the key metric for determining whether there's a business or customer base worth acquiring here. With Bench's rumored churn in recent years, their existing investors which includes top funds like Bain and reputable ones like Inovia (which is top Canada) would've had the opportunity to invest first. Clearly they didn't. With a rumored 2024 revenue of $54.9m in 2024, and peak valuation at $230m+ (4x Rev which isn't unreasonable to pay even for a tech-enabled services business), churn would've been really bad for this deal to end up here.
  - swores 2y ago
    I was commenting on how acquisitions happen, not asking to be spammed by an accounting company masquerading as a relevant comment. I'd suggest deleting it and not continuing this strategy, as I suspect I'm not the only HN reader who will react to your comment by making a mental note that 'Digits' is a company with annoying marketing.
    - beibeiq 2y ago
      Hey that's good feedback. I'll leave the first part since I was also commenting on how acquisitions happen. Note though that the OP is an affected bench customer looking for a transition but I'll respect your part of this thread. Have a great rest of 2024.

thinkingemote 2y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42523061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42523061 "bench accounting services shutting down". 3 days ago, 300 comments

nathancahill 2y ago

Seems like a last second deal. Doesn't inspire confidence. For context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42523061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42523061 And former CEO's post: https://x.com/ianwcrosby/status/1872724231999381790 https://x.com/ianwcrosby/status/1872724231999381790

cj 2y ago
It's very possible it has been a deal long time in the making. When you're in an acquisition process, the acquirer will often prey on your weaknesses to get a better deal. If Employer.com had already been in talks prior to the shutdown, then they already knew the financial condition, they may have surprised Bench with a dramatic decrease in the purchase price at the 11th hour in an effort to get a better deal knowing Bench's only other alternative would be to shut down. Maybe Bench called their bluff, called off the deal and shut down. (The only rational reason to do that would be if they think they could successfully sue the acquirer or get the original deal back on the table) Pure speculation, but typically acquisitions take many months to come together. Even a firesale acquisition doesn't happen in a week.
- benatkin 2y ago
  This might not even be worthy of being called a firesale acquisition. It might just be selling the customer contracts locked in with Capchase.
- pbreit 2y ago
  Lousy behavior all the way around. And with SMB accounting on the last days of the year.
  - lazide 2y ago
    Yup. Though also, the time of maximum leverage probably?
- weisser 2y ago
  > It's very possible it has been a deal long time in the making. No. From the acquirer: “It fits our product roadmap. It was super serendipitous…I saw that news. I was like, ‘This is perfect.’ It checks a lot of boxes for us. It was just a really good synergistic opportunity, so we went for it.” https://multitudes.weisser.io/p/how-employercom-acquired-bench-accounting https://multitudes.weisser.io/p/how-employercom-acquired-ben...

GiorgioG 2y ago

[flagged]

ezekg 2y ago
Especially when the service the last couple years has been bad...

jsheard 2y ago

> Your service will continue seamlessly with the platform you’ve always trusted. Uh, I think that trust may be a bit compromised until they explain what the hell happened.

scrapcode 2y ago
Now with your quote, I'm curious how many times they've changed this lander... > Welcome Back [...] More information on how to continue your services will be available soon.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

dotty- 2y ago

lol, well, the companies who have already started a migration away from Bench are probably not going to stop their migration. Ouch.

ezekg 2y ago
Especially when the Bench competitors offering those migrations have a deadline of the 31st to do 2024 books/taxes.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

mikebonnell 2y ago

Would you trust Employer when their "About" page looks like this? https://www.employer.com/about https://www.employer.com/about "Our Story There are many variations of passages of available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don't look even..."

jsheard 2y ago
They've secured investments from Logoipsum, Logoipsum, Logoipsum and Logoipsum so they must be legit.
- cmac123 2y ago
  Ha!
admissionsguy 2y ago
Sounds like they are not afraid to use AI already, which will give them an unbeatable edge when the LLMs improve. Source: YC investment thesis
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
shesprtytechncl 2y ago
Yeahhhh I wonder if this is a new shell company spun up to either take on the old one as a way to restructure financially and get rid of some debt (I have no idea how this would work) or to give them enough time to wind down. Or something else? Who knows but definitely weird.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
aimazon 2y ago

codegeek 2y ago

What a comedy of errors. So they screw over their paying customers without any notice and now suddenly they are acquired ? I love capitalism but the way Bench handled this is a disaster and left so many customers unsure of what to do. Especially at year end when accounting becomes even more critical. Shameful.

brightball 2y ago
There's not really an economic philosophy that can protect people from bad decisions. In the middle of year end accounting though, this was a train wreck.
- wbl 2y ago
  There is a right way to do this and a wrong way and they picked the wrong way. The right way is to say "we will do 2024 and work with you to transition for 2025".
  - itake 2y ago
    Where does the money come from to pay for that? As an employee, would you want to work for 6mo, for no promotions, bonuses, stock? Seems like they could have had huge layoffs, to try to maintain, but maybe they thought the sale would go through before the shutdown, meaning no one gets laid off. But the buyer waited until after the shutdown to grab it
    - wbl 2y ago
      From the fees the customers are paying for the bookwork.
      - itake 2y ago
        If they were profitable, then they wouldn’t have shut down… Presumably, their cost to serve was higher than what their customers were collectively paying.
  - 2y ago

Nelkins 2y ago

As someone who was affected by this, I opted to go ahead and try and get my money's worth (although I have another service doing this in parallel). Also they were supposed to file an S Corp election for me, so hopefully I'll be able to find out the latest status of that. This whole thing is such a mess.

Nelkins 2y ago
A bit of research yields this guy as this owner of employer.com: https://x.com/JesseTinsley https://x.com/JesseTinsley
- benatkin 2y ago
  At the end of his bio: > Acquiring companies DM me
teknikl 2y ago
[dead]
toddwx 2y ago
did it immediately let you proceed to your existing data
- Nelkins 2y ago
  Yes. I'm able to log into the platform. You need to navigate to https://app.bench.co https://app.bench.co. I actually don't remember if they provided that URL, or if I just typed it into my browser out of habit. It may work for everyone who was on the platform.
  - nervous_jessica 2y ago
    have you found anyway to export this year's data? I've logged in but now I'm worried that somehow opts out of getting the export data

tleichli 2y ago

how long does it take for you to get the secure link that has your data from Bench when you opt out of Employer.com

mt1973 2y ago

[dead]

dang 2y ago

Recent and related: Bench accounting services shutting down - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42523061 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42523061 - Dec 2024 (304 comments)

dang 2y ago

(We changed the URL from https://www.bench.co/ https://www.bench.co/ to an article that gives more background.)

wdaher 2y ago

For Bench customers that want to look elsewhere, Pilot is doing free migrations from Bench to QBO, even if you don't want to use Pilot. (So you can even take advantage of it if you want to instead DIY or work with some local firm.) https://pilot.com/bench-qbo-migration https://pilot.com/bench-qbo-migration (Disclaimer is that I'm one of Pilot's founders.)

auston 2y ago
Your free BOI filing (even if you don't want to use Pilot) is why I use Pilot.
- counternotions 2y ago
  BOI filing isn’t that hard? Takes 5 minutes to DIY each entity on the FINCEN portal.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- wdaher 2y ago
  Honestly, love to hear this :)

jbeard4 2y ago

Has anyone figured out how to download your data from Bench? In the original email they sent out that announced they were shutting down, they said data would be available to download from http://data.bench.co http://data.bench.co. But right now, this domain appears to be inactive. When I logged back in, they gave me the option to: give employer.com permission to access my data, or download my data. I selected the former option so that I could access the dashboard, but I'd still like to download my data in case it turns out I would like to migrate to a competing service.

ry4nolson 2y ago
I'm in this same boat. I started the onboarding with kick.com over the weekend. Yesterday clicked the "Opt Out Download Data" button and still haven't seen any data.

kidhastings 2y ago

Former Bench user here - I selected to opt-out and download my financial data over an hour ago. I still haven't received it and am getting concerned. Has anyone actually received their data from Bench yet?

jbeard4 2y ago
Hello, I was wondering if you ever got the email with the download link? Thanks so much.

cmac123 2y ago

The new Bench site asks us to click a button saying we "consent to continue using Bench as part of employer.com." Has anyone clicked that? I'm hesitant, since it does not state clearly what I am "consenting" to.

JoshTriplett 2y ago

In addition to all the other weirdness about this, their email announcing this had a fascinating bug in it: I received an email with subject "Bench is Back — Here’s What You Need to Know". The contents looked like a copy of the previous mail: "We regret to inform you that we will be shutting down Bench services. Effective immediately, [...]". On a hunch, I checked the HTML version rather than the plain text. "Bench has been acquired by Employer.com and we’re thrilled to share with you that as of today, December 30, 2024, we’re back in action. [...]" Somehow, they managed to send out an HTML mail that has the plain-text of a completely different mail. How does that even happen? What possible steps would lead to sending such a mail? ----- For anyone curious about the complete contents of the mail sent to Bench customers (the HTML one they seem to have actually intended to send): Dear Bench customer, We wanted to get in touch with you to give you an update on Bench Accounting. Bench has been acquired by Employer.com and we’re thrilled to share with you that as of today, December 30, 2024, we’re back in action. What You Should Know Is anything changing? No, you will continue to work with the same great team, platform, and service. We’re preparing to wrap up your year-end financials and get you set for a smooth tax season in Q1 2025. Who will be doing my books? The same great Bench team will continue to be supporting you with your books using the Bench.co platform, ensuring that you have a seamless experience moving forward. Next Steps To continue working with the Bench team and platform, simply login to your account, and click “I Consent.” This gives us the permission to continue supporting your account, and transfers your data ownership from Bench to Employer.com If you do not wish to provide consent, you will have the option to opt out. Please note that once opted out, we cannot reverse the action nor can we provide any refunds. We know the sudden shutdown of Bench disrupted things, and for that, we’re truly sorry. This acquisition is about turning things around and making sure your bookkeeping needs are met — better than ever. We look forward to working with you for a successful tax season ahead. Thank you for your patience and understanding, and please reach out if you have any questions. The Bench Team

jbeard4 2y ago

I created a subreddit in case any current/former Bench users would like to continue talking to one another and compare notes: https://www.reddit.com/r/BenchUsers https://www.reddit.com/r/BenchUsers

Nelkins 2y ago
Thank you!