Bench shut down in December 2024 and was acquired days later. What to move to depends on whether you were buying software or buying a service.
Bench stopped operating on 27 December 2024. Employer.com announced an acquisition three days later, and historical data has been reached through that portal since. If you are here because you were a customer, the first job is getting your history out, and the second is deciding what it should be replaced with.
Answer one question before you look at any product: were you buying software, or were you buying a service?
Bench sold both in one subscription, which is why the shutdown was so disruptive and why the replacement decision is harder than it looks. Customers who thought they were buying software mostly discover they were buying the people. Replace a service with software and the receipt-chasing, the vendor questions, and the classification calls all land back on you.
If you want the service, the replacement is a bookkeeper or a firm. It costs more than Bench did — Bench’s pricing was subsidized by a venture-funded model that ultimately did not hold — and the relationship does not vanish over a holiday weekend.
If you want the software, the question becomes which ledger. The older products are broad and well-supported. The newer ones are rebuilt around automation. Weigh them on the things that are expensive to get wrong later: whether foreign currency is handled where you need it, whether the document behind an entry stays attached to that entry, and whether you can get your data out.
That last one is not an abstract concern anymore.
Best for: Retrieving your historical books. Employer.com acquired Bench days after the shutdown, and prior statements and transaction records are reached through that portal.
Watch out: Whatever you decide long-term, export your history rather than leaving it somewhere you do not control.
Best for: Anyone who was buying Bench as a service and wants to keep buying a service. This is the closest like-for-like replacement, and the relationship does not disappear overnight.
Watch out: Costs more than Bench did, and you become the source of every receipt and clarification — the coordination work moves to your desk either way.
Best for: Businesses that need breadth in one product — payroll, inventory, time tracking — and an app marketplace with years of integrations behind it.
Watch out: It records what you give it, including a wrong entry, and will not tell you which it is holding. The catch comes from reconciliation, not from the software.
Best for: Working with an accountant who already lives in Xero. Draft invoices and bills stay out of the general ledger until approved, which is a genuine pre-commit step.
Watch out: Multi-currency sits on the Established plan, so cross-border billing means the top tier.
Best for: Simple single-currency books at no cost. A real double-entry ledger with bank connections and invoicing, free.
Watch out: An invoice with online payments enabled has to be in your business currency, so foreign-currency billing and getting paid do not fully overlap.
Best for: US startups that want an agent-native ledger rather than an older one with automation layered on top.
Watch out: Built around the US market. Confirm what it does with foreign currency before committing if you bill across borders.
Best for: Businesses that want automated books and month-end close from a ledger designed for it, described by its makers as AI-native.
Watch out: Its public material does not document multi-currency or coverage outside the US, so ask directly if either applies to you.
Best for: North American SaaS and ecommerce companies where the evidence trail matters — foreign-currency receipts, input tax credits, a year-end someone will review.
Watch out: Ours, and the youngest company on this list — which is a fair thing to hold against us if you are here because a young company folded over a holiday weekend.
Bench shut down abruptly on 27 December 2024, and Employer.com announced an acquisition three days later, taking on the platform and a workforce reported at over 600 people. Access to historical Bench data now runs through Employer.com.
Historical statements and transaction records are reached through the Employer.com portal. Export them. The lesson most Bench customers took from December 2024 is that books you cannot download are books you do not fully have.
Start there, because it decides everything after it. Bench sold a service with software attached, so replacing it with software alone moves real work onto you. Replacing it with a bookkeeper keeps the service and the cost. Neither answer is wrong, but picking software when you wanted a service is the common and expensive mistake.
Claims about other products last verified August 20, 2026