Businesses Can Bolster Their Bookkeeping Processes By Leveraging the Power of Industry Expertise and AI

In a Nutshell: The emergence of new technologies may threaten a business’s ability to compete, but innovations can help a company prosper. Bench combines the strength of artificial intelligence with its team of experts to deliver bookkeeping solutions for businesses. Bench’s tools help businesses access insights quickly so they can adjust their strategies when necessary to achieve success.

You may think that coming up with a big idea to transform the way people live will instantly make you a success in the business world. But business owners need more than just a winning idea to succeed. An entrepreneur has to overcome many obstacles to establish their business and turn it into a profitable enterprise.

Small business owners wear many hats. They have to market their product to the public. They have to interview and hire employees. They have to keep an eye on what competitors are doing. And they have to mind the books of their business. 

Keeping record of assets and liabilities can help business owners develop strategies for success. Orderly bookkeeping can also make processes more efficient come tax time. 

But not everyone studied accounting in school or can pick it up quickly enough to keep pace with a growing business. Fortunately, business owners can turn to expert accounting solutions for help in managing their company’s books.

Bench provides small business owners with online bookkeeping and tax filing services. We caught up with Jennifer Greenhorn, Bench’s Senior Director of Product Management and Design, to learn more about how the company uses technology and a team of bookkeepers to assist businesses. Greenhorn told us Bench’s philosophy helps it stand out from its competitors.

“While a lot of other bookkeeping platforms might tout features that are customer facing for self-service purposes, we’re actually more focused on removing all of that effort for the customer altogether,” Greenhorn told us. “Bench has been around a long time, and we know that small business owners don’t have the time to do their own bookkeeping. Business owners should be worried about running their business, and let us worry about doing their bookkeeping.”

An example of how Bench makes life easier for business owners is how it handles a company’s receipts management. Some accounting shops require businesses to capture the information on their purchase receipts for use in bookkeeping programs, but Greenhorn told us Bench can get the purchase details it needs without any work on a customer’s part. 

Bench goes directly to the source of a business’s payments — its bank — to access information it needs to know about a business’s transactions

“Our ultimate goal is that businesses log into Bench to gain insights about their spend, not to manually enter data,” Greenhorn told us. “We’re trying to work and bring modern practices to the reality of running a business today. We’re not looking to get rid of the discernment a bookkeeper brings into the mix, but what we’ve been able to do is remove all of that manual effort that’s historically been there for bookkeepers and our customers.”

Advances in technology can influence how we work and communicate with each other. Before the widespread use of the internet, it was hard to imagine holding a video meeting with a colleague on the other side of the world from the comfort of your favorite easy chair.

I read news about advances in artificial intelligence (AI) nearly every time I pick up a newspaper or visit an online news outlet. Bench harnesses the power of AI to help businesses categorize expenses for tax purposes.

Greenhorn told us that small businesses that work with a local bookkeeper typically have to spend time with them explaining why they made a certain purchase for their business. The bookkeeper then uses that information to assign a tax category to the purchase. But Bench has found a way to accomplish the same outcome in less time through the use of large language models (LLMs).

“We’ve actually inverted the whole approach where we can use custom rules and ML to learn about a business and assign categories for their transactions, while a custom LLM Assistant supports them real-time as new activity and spending patterns emerge,” Greenhorn told us. “Our system detects categorizations that are high risk so we flag them for review.”

We often hear about the risks AI can introduce to our way of life. Not everyone’s comfortable with the increasing use of artificial intelligence in business no matter how safe developers are in designing a tool. But people once considered using a credit or debit card to be risky, and now they’re two of the most common tools shoppers turn to when completing purchases.  

Greenhorn told us Bench learns about a business over time to avoid relying on AI too much when working with a customer. Bench seeks to leverage new technologies without bringing unnecessary risk into the tax-compliance landscape.

“I think we’ve done a really great job of that because we use our bookkeeping training and databases to help inform how these AI tools even work in the first place,” Greenhorn told us. “Folks can be scared of AI because it isn’t perfect, and it can make mistakes when you rely on it too much. But the way we’ve designed our systems allows us not to worry about the tool making an error because we actually have put safeguards in place for that.”

I was watching a football game the other night when a graphic popped up on the screen letting viewers know the channel’s analytics program thought the team with the ball should punt. The use of data analytics tools is so entrenched in modern society that it’s difficult to recall how businesses once made important decisions without them.

Bench aims to shorten the time between when a business makes a transaction and when it can use that data to inform an upcoming decision.

Bench provides a dedicated onboarding specialist to help new clients set up the products they’ve purchased and configure them per their specifications. Once a customer is ready to begin using Bench’s tools, the company assigns them a bookkeeper to help answer their questions and troubleshoot any issues that occur.

“Our bookkeepers are really focused on answering some of those harder bookkeeping questions that our clients have at times,” Greenhorn told us. “Some customers have more needs than others, so we really look at who should be serving which customer based on those needs. Our customers are in the driver’s seat to engage with their dedicated bookkeeper how they want and when they want.”

Bench serves a range of clients from small businesses with just a handful of employees to corporations. Greenhorn told us she attributes the company’s diverse customers to Bench’s broad product set and its integration capabilities. 

Though Bench makes use of innovative solutions, there are options available for customers with more complex needs.

“If a customer needs a loan from a vendor that requires manual processing, we want to be able to support that for them,” Greenhorn told us. “Our flexibility enables clients to stay with us for a really long time in their business journey.”

Innovations like self-driving cars and new forms of digital currencies signal that the world is changing. Greenhorn told us that everything is getting faster in the business world, and small business owners feel that reality every day.

Bench’s solutions help businesses keep pace with innovations in technology. The company’s flexible tools adapt to ongoing modernizations within the banking and software arenas.

“The small businesses we work with are actually quicker to adopt new platforms because their businesses are easier to transform than those of big businesses,” Greenhorn told us. “Our product team is building software in a way that allows it to evolve along with a business owner’s needs. A lot of our customers really value the time-savings aspect of our tools because it can give them a really good perspective on the state of their business today.”

Security is always a concern for businesses when it comes to their non-public data. Bench is committed to serving customers in a way that aligns with a business’s ethical and privacy standards around their data. Greenhorn said Bench strives to give its customers confidence that the company is handling its information responsibly. 

With such an innovative offering, you may think Bench’s solutions come with a hefty price tag. But Greenhorn told us the company uses a transparent pricing model and offers its products at competitive rates. Bench’s team often engages in detailed conversations with potential customers to explain its unique approach to bookkeeping.

“One of our biggest challenges is explaining to people that they really do get access to a real person with Bench,” Greenhorn told us. “AI can a lot of work, but they can get access to the human expert when it matters. We’re finding that the blend of humans and technology has been amazing and fulfilling for us as an organization.”