Perhaps I'm old school, but how hard is it to hire a bookkeeper part time, a CPA a few times a year, and use Quickbooks? Was there some special value that Bench provided?
Been there done that several times over. One PT bookkeeper would only do books if they also got paid to process payroll which like the books was always behind. They did a good job on the books but I have small brick and mortar biz's. While I can wait a bit for books I can't to get my employees paid correctly, once someone's payroll isn't right/paychecks take longer/etc it gets heated.
Another would produce books that required a lot of work from my CPA which made the CPA a lot more expensive.
I've had it pretty easy - friends of mine have had PT/local bookkeepers do every form of damage you can think of - it's a messy world for SMB books. And those are nothing compared to the carnage I've observed small biz's with an employee PT or FT in house doing the books.
However I can, albeit anecdotally from my perspective, say that I felt there was a marked difference in Bench's quality/service/responsiveness/performance/etc about 3yrs ago. This aligns with the timeline given by the former CEO in his post for his departure.