Over 6.5 million people visited Bench Accounting’s blog during the lockdown, making it a top resource on the Internet for information about U.S. government financial relief programs during COVID-19.
During that time, Bench’s traffic was roughly 7 times what it was pre-COVID.
And it turns out having a real human bookkeeper who can talk you through your problems is a huge relief as well.
According to Blake Turner, Bench’s Head of Engineering, Bench’s Net Promoter Score is at record highs and their churn is at historic lows, allowing them to maintain a growth rate of 40% through the pandemic, despite serving one of the hardest hit sectors in the US.
Bench offers accounting services, which at first may sound boring and conventional. The company is anything but—its bread and butter is subscription access to cloud-based software in combination with in-house bookkeepers, a hybrid approach that serves clients well. Originally named 10Sheet, Bench launched out of TechStars NYC in 2012.
Up next for Bench? A new mission:
We will make a profound difference in the quality of life of 1 million people.
How are they going to do that? Bank accounts.
“Right now, our clients have to do tons of work just to get their transaction data into our system. Even when they connect to best-in-class aggregators, the data is utterly unreliable,” writes Turner.
“If we’re the bank, we can get data we trust directly into our system, with no work required by our clients. This unlocks things like same-day reconciliation, which is frankly impossible with other data sources. Being the bank also fundamentally changes our revenue model, with means we reduce subscription costs for our clients. Essentially we can offer a much better service at a significantly reduced monthly cost.”
Bench is scaling up their engineering team to augment their offering with business checking accounts that integrate seamlessly with their bookkeeping.
Earlier this year Bench was singled out for The Narwhal List as a young Canadian company that has the potential to scale up and reach world-class status. They’re looking for a diverse group of folks who can connect with their mission, and figure out what they need to build in order to have that kind of impact at a massive scale.
Leave a Reply