December 27, 2024. That’s the day I received an email from my bookkeeping company that they’d be shutting down their services for good, effective immediately. Yeah.

As a one-person business, it’s usually a bit of a balancing act trying to find a professional services company, whether it be a lawyer, accountant, or similar. So back in 2016 or 2017 when I found Bench, an online bookkeeping service, it was a bit of a relief. Good service, affordable pricing.

Over the years I started noticing a bit of turnover and quite frankly, the service just became meh. That lead me to think about the idea of looking for a proper bookkeeper. Problem is, I kept putting it off because well, business can get busy (thankfully).

Fast-forward to Friday, December 27—smack in the middle of the holiday season. I happened to check my email that day (yeah, I know) and was greeted with the following email from Bench:

In case you can’t read the screenshot, the short version is in the first two paragraphs:

We regret to inform you that we will be shutting down Bench services. Effective immediately, the Bench platform will no longer be accessible.
We understand this news may come as a surprise and are committed to helping you navigate this transition in the days to come. For now, please note that your Bench records will be made available for your business use in the future. As of Monday, December 30th, 2024 you will be able to retrieve your records at data.bench.co using your Bench login credentials. This portal will be available for 10 weeks until Friday, March 7th, 2025 at 5pm EST.

After the intense WTF moment passed, I started digging into things and well, the super short version is that Bench was ready to file bankruptcy. But by the time Monday rolled around, they had been acquired by Employer.com. Yeah, I haven’t heard of them either.

Since I had already been thinking the 1-2 years prior of leaving Bench I decided this was the time to do it. Nothing like a fire to spring you into action I suppose.

I posted on my various social channels that I was looking for a bookkeeper, ideally one that worked with solopreneurs such as myself. I got exactly one recommendation from a colleague. I put that in my back pocket and started searching for others as well.

My search into the whole Bench fiasco lead me to LinkedIn and Reddit posts. In a few of those posts I found a couple of companies to look into. I also did my fair share of Googling (DuckDuckGo-ing?).

I ended up with a small list of potential bookkeepers whose websites I had looked through. I whittled my list down to four—one from the recommendation and the rest from my own search. So I headed back to their respective sites and filled out their contact forms and waited.

Much to my surprise, I received exactly ONE reply. One. Out of four inquiries.

What’s the point of having a contact form on your website if you’re not going to reply to inquiries?!

And that, dear reader, is what this post is really all about.

You see, if you’re going to have a contact form on your website I strongly suggest you make sure it’s working. If it is, then make sure you reply to valid inquiries, even if it’s to politely decline. Otherwise, you may as well remove your contact form or shut your website down completely. Extreme? Perhaps. But if you’re not going to entertain prospective business, what’s the point?

The irony of this situation isn't lost on me. Three companies potentially lost a client—not because of their services or pricing, but simply because they couldn't be bothered to respond. Meanwhile, one company gained a client for doing the bare minimum: actually acknowledging my existence.

In case you're wondering how my search ended, perhaps obviously, I went with the bookkeeping company that actually replied to my inquiry. They also happened to be the recommendation from my colleague. And they're super cool to boot. 😎