Wave Accounting Reviews

It was free to use the accounting services
I was able to invoice customers using Stripe as a Payment Gateway which was great value
The Design and User Interface is very professional compared to others that I have seen
The Payment Gateway was also very professional when sent to customers, it added to the credibility of the business

My particular Bank would not allow me to sync my account with Wave, but that was a local issue not a general issue.
I was very very happy with the invoicing. but I always felt that the ledger views were not as robust.

I use Wave Mobile App for my business' finance, for managing my income and expenses. I use wave for billing and creating invoices for my clients. After using Wave for over 2 years now, I can say it works quite well. It allows me to create client contacts, which the app automatically uses to create client record books. The interface is simple and easy to get along with. The fingerprint unlock integration is one of my best features because I am able to sign in to the app without trying hard to remember passwords or pins. Above all, I think the best thing about Wave is, you get most of the relevant features needed for FREE!

There are few hitches I encounter using wave. I am not able to write off a partly paid bill as bad debt if all attempts to reclaim the payment from my clients fail. Sometimes, people pay about 70% and fail to pay for the rest. In order to close the invoice, I will have to mark it as completely paid and doing that can overstate or affect my financial records and reports within Wave.

This is a very complete software that allows you to build quotes and convert them into invoices in a fraction of a second without much effort.

Wave is excellent especially when it comes to credit card processing which is done automatically with a very low 1% fee.

It is very easy to set up and use and the cost is low or even free. Personally, I recommend buying this package because it comes with support: from setting up your account to the specific categories for your company .

The other advantage of Wave is the presence of a number of applications to send invoices when you are away from your workplace.

So even when you're away from home you can download them. In this case, all you have to do is take the photo on the spot.

The problem on the Wave software is not so numerous, but we notice that it is impossible to close a period correctly.

All members who are able to make transactions have the possibility to change or add entries from the previous year.

For me an administrator must have the ability to close a period so that no changes are made. User growth is also very limited.

The lack of audit trails for transaction entries is also a case of imperfection at Wave . Admittedly, it is possible to generate transactions, then generate reports, then cancel the transactions, etc.

But there is no proof that these changes are made yes or no, because the software is unable to remember its categorizations.

The keyword search function is absent from Wave in the transactions section and sometimes it makes us lose a lot of time.

I use Wave to keep track of my personal finances, from income to spending. In that lens, Wave performs quite well, allowing you to tag transactions that are automatically imported from your bank. It also lets you generate some simple reports such as your income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow. The interface is simple to use and understand, and I was able to pick it up (coming from an accounting background) in under a few minutes, without having gone through a walkthrough. The included ability to reconcile statements is also quite handy and allows me to verify that all transactions are posted appropriately. The inclusion of receipt tracking and tagging is also quite handy!

The best part about Wave is the price! If you don’t need features such as invoicing and payroll (some SMB’s may find these handy. From a personal perspective, I did not), the accounting software is completely free.

Wave still appears to be in its infancy, although the product has been there for a while. The user interface will frequently be updated (the reconciliation flow changed 3 times since I signed up about 6 months ago), and new features will constantly be added without any notification, often shifting often things around from where you expect them to be.

The reports from Wave are also very limited, so don’t expect any customizable reports as of 08/2019. You get about 12 reports total, some or all of which may not be very relevant to you, depending on your end goal. These reports are completely canned, system generated, and you do not have the ability to create new reports. This may change in the future, but as it stands, this is the current state of affairs.

The receipt tracking feature is definitely handy to have. While Wave will OCR your receipts and tag them to a category, it will actually post an entire transaction to the ledger when you save it down. For those of us with a bank account and credit card linked to auto import transactions, you’ll get a duplicate: one from the CC, and one from the receipt. It would be nice if Wave included some intelligence to automatically match the receipt and transaction together, but for now, you need to manually merge each.

Finally, as a small point, Wave does not obtain any service assurance through SOC1 or SOC2 reports, an issue that most people wouldn’t ever care about.

This is great for the very new or very small business. It's easy to use and has all of the basic features that you will need for an unbeatable price.

It's very easy to use and the documentation and support have been very helpful. There is no phone option but live chat is available and I have never had to wait more than a day for an e-mail response.

It is truly free to use for accounting. You have the options of accepting credit card and bank payments for a very competitive rate. The only other cost is for payroll if you were to use that feature.

The software is in active development and since I started using it they have added great features such as Invoicing app, recurring payments, and bank payments and it keeps getting better.

Limited reporting, you get all of the basics that you will need to measure your financial health, receivables, etc but there are no custom reports. While you can very easily reconcile your bank account, you can't print a reconciliation report.

There is no class/job tracking feature and while it looks like many users have requested it, it doesn't look like the developers are planning on implementing it anytime soon. So if your business needs this feature, this is not the right option for you.

Wave is so easy to use. In the past, we used QuickBooks and mostly put up with some of the quirks that platform has. With Wave, though, things are streamlined and fairly intuitive.

You have access to a dashboard that shows you all the important things going on with your account, invoices are easy to template and track, and you can link your bank accounts for even tighter tracking and money management.

Mostly what I like about Wave is that I can get in and get out and not get a giant headache trying to figure all of this out.

And we are on the free plan, so that alone is great.

That, however, does come at a price...

I'm not an accountant, so it's not Wave's fault that I don't quite get all the ins and outs I should. But my actual tax accountant tells me that she gets frustrated with how some of the reporting is handled and the way things are reconciled.

Part of that, I think, is that everyone is used to how things run on QuickBooks. So we've ironed out some of the issues and made due where we can. I did mention above that we are on the free plan, so we don't have access to a dedicated rep or some of the bigger features. That's ok for us, but other larger companies might not agree.

We have also had issues at times with how Wave handles syncing to our bank accounts. Sometimes operator error on our end, but sometimes not. Again, it's free, so you should expect to maybe have to put in some extra work here and there. Just letting you know.

I had struggled with my accounts for many years and sometimes avoided them until it was absolutely necessary. Tax time became a nightmare and I felt embarrassed each time the accountant asked me questions I had no answers to.

My business is pretty easy to account for so I didn't need a large software program. With Wave, I was able to set up and update my accounts in one afternoon. It's helped me reconcile all my wallets and I love the fact that I can generate any reports I require very fast.

They don't have an offline version so I can't update my accounts without internet access.

Wave doesn't feel like a free product. The thoughtful interface, bank/credit card syncing, receipt processing, and reporting gives you the feel of a premium paid accounting application. And to know that Wave also has paid professional help when it comes to taxes or other issues makes it an easy one-stop-shop for smaller businesses.

The transaction importing process is a bit clunky if you aren't using bank sync. There are limited functions that you can do when mass editing transactions that you don't initially think about. But when you want to perform something that seems intuitive you can't. So you shouldn't expect the power of a Quickbooks at a free price, so it's to be expected.

Free/low cost options and flat fee options. Newer solutions like invoicing and credit card processing have enriched the no-cost version.

When I first started using Wave for both my office (as a trial) and my personal finances I was surprised by the inability to import data from prior periods.

Ease of use: Wave provides the easiest and most user-friendly interface I've ever seen for a free accounting application. From entering invoices to entering bills to running reports, it's all self-explanatory.
Invoicing: Create your sharp-looking invoice template that you can send to clients to request payment. The application will track and notify of the invoice from being read to receiving payment.

Etsy Integration: The Etsy integration is a great idea and makes things even easier. However, I discovered this integration after I had been using the application for months. Since I had manually entered hundreds of invoices manually, there was no way to match those existing invoices with the existing invoices from Etsy.

When I was using it, it was so easy to set up. It allowed my to have a large client database. I loved the dashboard view that helped me stay on track!

I didn’t like that I couldn’t customize my invoices as much as I would have liked. Also, payroll could have been more user friendly.

It does what expensive software does, in an easier way, and FREE. And for a small cost, it will handle what you otherwise will pay huge someone to handle. It made accounting easier

I created a couple issues when connecting my bank account, the issues were resolved, but it needed a little bit of a trained wow to see it. It wasn't the software problem, but I wish it would have had more warnings when something didn't look right.

It's a super powerful accounting system that helps me manage invoicing to clients, receipts for expenses and quotations for new projects. The mobile app is great for tracking invoices, sending reminders and adding payments.

The estimate system definitely needs some work. It feels like this aspect was built by a seperate team and the UI/UX is nowhere near as polished as the invoicing system is.

I really like that I can have multiple businesses with separate accounting in Wave. New features that were recently added have sped up my job of auditing each transaction considerably. I am able to manage everything online and provide my accountant with accurate information for tax filing. My bank accounts are connected, and automatically upload the transactions for me.

I lost one of the features I really liked in the upgrade. I used to be able to take a transaction and move it to a different business account. That is no longer available, sadly. The upgrade made it more "accountant" friendly. I'm not an accountant, and preferred the old functionality, except for the speed, which was dismally slow.

It's FREE! I've been spending dollars per month with two other online bookkeeping programs and this free program does pretty much everything they do. It's simple, quick (fairly quick page load times) and offers all the reports I need. Customer support is great and they have 3 live training's every week. I'm impressed with how much they offer with virtually no costs. They also offer bank and debit/credit invoice payments right in the program with 1% and I think the usual 2.9% processing.

Sometimes pages take a while to load because it's an online program. Also, pages open up in new tabs which isn't even that bad to me, I just find myself gathering up 10+ tabs then having to close them all out. Reconciling can be tricky because it's not a conventional reconcile and I find myself going back and forth between pages looking for the mismatch culprits.

Wave is really user-friendly and easy to set up. Great software for keeping track of all my invoices and expenses!

There's nothing I don't like, except for the fees that are charged when a client pays an invoice through Visa or direct deposit. But Wave has to make money somehow!

I used Wave to process invoices and keep track of sales to various clients. Was easy to customize invoices.

They do take a large chunk of credit card payments and also take 7 business days to release funds that are paid through the bank

I have used QB for over a decade and never in all that time have I understood it’s complexity. I am starting a new franchise in 2021 and discovered Wave by accident. In less than 30 minutes I had my bank account linked, transactions downloaded and chart of accounts established. The ease and clarity is tremendous. I will use their payroll and payment processing to payback the value they’ve provided in their free accounting program.

There is not an iPhone app to use presently. But the Wave receipts app is perfect instead.

I absolutely love that it is free and syncs to my bank account. We can sort transactions and run reports for all things accounting.

I wish they had a credit card/debit card that we could use to link our transactions a little faster. We normally have to wait a few days for transactions to come through.

I really like waveapps. It was completely free to sign up when I started, and it allowed me to take credit card payments and other online payments super easily on my generated invoices. The recurring invoice and automatic payments make it very easy for my clients to pay me on time.

There's a bit of a learning curve in terms of making sure your invoices are scheduled how you want them to. But once you get the hang of it, it makes sense.

Our small business has less than 100 transactions per year, and Wave is perfect for helping us manage invoices, transactions, and receipt images. It links directly to our business checking account for updating transactions, and creates all the basic reports needed to manage the business. There are mobile apps for capturing the receipt images and managing invoices while you are on the go. Other team members can be invited to help manage the accounts. Getting started was very quick and easy with creating accounts, categories, products, and vendors.

I wish the reports had default time periods like "last year". This would be especially useful at tax time when I need to report on what happened last year. Instead, I have to constantly adjust the dates every time I run a report.

I love that it's free for to use the basic accounting services. I already pay my accountant to do the heavy lifting, so I just want an online platform to keep tabs on my incoming and outgoing expenses such as invoicing and expense tracking.

Since it's a free platform for the basic services, there is likely going to be lots of upsell ads, and soliciting.

billing integration with Stripe merchant, recurring Invoice with automated payments, simple financial reports, easy categorization of bulk transactions, responsive customer support, payroll integration, very user friendly dashboard

no cost accounting modules, income statements by revenue streams.

Wave has really helped my small business in tracking expenses, invoices, quotes and transactions. Before, we had a Google spreadsheet where we tried to remember to put our hours in, calculate costs to send to clients, and just emailed them a PDF version of the spreadsheet and a PayPal invoice so they could pay us. Now, we can do all of that through Wave's FREE version! It's much easier (and much more professional looking) to send an email through Wave where we can process credit cards or they have an option to mail us a check. It's been great!

Wave has been adding app features for awhile, but I still haven't seen (at least on Android) an all inclusive Wave app as of yet. I have a Receipts app and an Invoice app, but sometimes I like to check my account and my transactions while on the go and while I can go to the website on my phone, it isn't the best experience.

That Wave is free is fantastic for a small business. Other accounting software can be extremely expensive, so getting most of those features for free is fantastic.

I had very few complaints until Wave announced that bank integrations outside the US will no longer work from 2020. This means that transactions will need to be manually added, which will be much more time-consuming.