Bookkeeping for local businesses

Whether you run a bustling cafe, a busy salon, a local restaurant, or a retail shop—we take cash flow, sales tax filings, and POS receipts off your plate every single month.

✓A dedicated bookkeeper you can call or message — the same person every month

✓Every account reconciled, transaction by transaction

✓Year-end financials ready to file from, and tax filing if you want it

See how Bench works

Your books now vs. your books on Bench

Income

Sales

$486,200

Expenses

Cost of goods

$142,300

Payroll

$189,400

Other expenses

$92,600

Net income

$61,900

Revenue

Services

$358,900

Retail products

$89,300

Gift cards & packages — not earned yet

$38,000

Cost of sales

Supplies used on customers

$71,500

Retail stock sold

$70,800

Staff

Wages

$148,200

Tips paid out

$41,200

Running the place

Rent & utilities

$58,400

Card processing fees

$12,900

Insurance, licenses, marketing

$21,300

Net income

$23,900

What you get

You can see where the money actually went.

Same year, broken out line by line: services versus retail, supplies versus stock, wages versus tips. That's the detail you need to price a service, drop a product line, or decide whether you can afford another hire.

Bench, in one screen

What Bench is, and what you actually get

What it is

A bookkeeping service — not software you have to run yourself

Who does the work

A dedicated bookkeeper. The same person every month

What you get

Monthly financials, plus year-end statements to file from

How your numbers are grouped

By the kind of work you sell, so you can compare what pays

Taxes

Available with your bookkeeping, or bring your own accountant

Price

100% tax-deductible

Built for local businesses with a front door — restaurants and cafés, hair salons and barbershops, spas and nail salons, dry cleaners and laundromats, pet groomers and fitness studios.

How we help

How Bench can help your business specifically

Your card deposits never match your sales

You rang up $4,100 on Saturday. The bank shows $3,847 landing on Tuesday, bundled with Sunday. Fees came off somewhere, and matching it all up is a job nobody has time for.

What Bench does

Your bookkeeper ties your card payouts back to the sales that earned them, with fees recorded as their own cost — so your sales figure is your real sales figure.

You can't tell which side of the business pays

Services and retail, food and drinks, cleaning and alterations — it all lands in one line called Sales. So you don't know whether the products on the shelf are earning their space or just sitting there.

What Bench does

Income and costs get grouped by what you actually sell, so you can see each side of the business on its own and stop guessing.

Staff is your biggest cost and you see it too late

Hours shift week to week, tips run through payroll, and you find out what labor really cost you a month after the month is over — long after you could have changed the schedule.

What Bench does

Wages and tips are recorded separately and closed every month, so you can see what staff cost you against what came in — while it's still useful.

Your Options

Three ways local business owners handle their books

All three work for somebody. Here's the honest difference, so you can tell which one you are.

Doing it yourself in software

Hiring a local bookkeeper

Bench

Who does the work

You, usually after closing

Someone local, on their schedule

A dedicated bookkeeper, every month

What you do each month

Categorize everything yourself

Gather and hand over your paperwork

Connect your accounts once, then answer the occasional question

Who you ask when you're unsure

A help article, or a forum

Them, if they pick up

The same person every time, by phone or message

If you fall behind

It's on you to catch up

Usually billed by the hour

Catch-up is part of what we do, free on an annual plan

Taxes

Separate — find your own preparer

Usually separate

Available with your bookkeeping, or bring your own accountant

Best for

Owners who like the numbers and have the evenings

Owners who want someone in town they can sit down with

Owners who'd rather be on the tools, and still want to know where they stand

Bench is a bookkeeping service, not accounting software. If what you want is a tool you operate yourself, one of the first two columns will serve you better — and we'd rather tell you that now.

In their own words

What local business owners say

★★★★★

I've been with Bench since 2017

"I've been with Bench since 2017, I've trusted them when I started my store, when I sold my store and now as an online retailer and content creator I trust no one else to be one time and on top of everything when it comes to my books."

Tim Manalo

✓ Verified Bench user

Read on Trustpilot →

Questions we actually get

Bookkeeping questions from local business owners

My card deposits never match my sales. Can Bench sort that out?

Yes — that's a normal part of the monthly close. Card processors pay out days later, bundled, and net of their fees, so a bank deposit is almost never one day's sales. Your bookkeeper ties the payouts back to the sales that earned them and records the fees as their own cost.
The result is a sales number that matches what you actually rang up, and a clear line showing what card processing cost you for the year.

Can Bench show me whether services or retail products make more money?

Yes. Your income and the costs that go with it get grouped by what you sell — services one side, retail the other, or however you split food and drinks, cleaning and alterations, treatments and packages. Your bookkeeper sets those groups up with you at the start using the words you already use.

How do gift cards and prepaid packages get handled?

A gift card is money you're holding, not money you've earned — you still owe the service. Your bookkeeper records it that way and moves it into your income as it gets redeemed, so a strong December of gift card sales doesn't look like a strong December of profit.

What about tips?

Tips are recorded separately from wages, so your payroll line reflects what the business actually paid out and what simply passed through to your staff. Bench doesn't run your payroll — a payroll provider does that, and Bench reconciles it.

Do I have to change my point of sale?

No. Keep ringing sales through whatever you use now. Bench bookkeepers can also work inside your existing QuickBooks account if that's what you'd prefer.

What if I'm behind on my books?

Common, and fixable. Bench works backward through the months or years you're missing and delivers finished financials for each, then keeps you current. Catch-up bookkeeping is free when you sign up for an annual plan.

Plans start at $199/mo, billed monthly and 100% tax-deductible. See what's included