Wave Reviews

It's everything I need in one place. As a small business, Wave is the best solution for me. I can invoice my clients for free, and easily keep my finances up-to-date making tax season worry free.

Wave no longer integrates with CapitalOne Spark Business accounts, so I have to manually upload two bank statements every month into Wave; One for my checking and one for my savings account, both of which are Spark.

Wave is a great piece of accounting software that rivals Quickbooks and Xero. The biggest winner, which it obvious to anyone who has researched Wave as an accounting platform for their small business: it’s FREE! Both Quickbooks and Xero have fairly low-cost pricing models for small businesses that range all the way to fairly high-cost for larger businesses. Wave, on the other hand, is specifically tailored to the small business, and offers only features popular with those businesses. But, because of this, their base accounting software is completely free. Their only products you would be billed for would be payroll or credit card processing, both of which are priced competitively to Quickbooks/Intuit’s and Xero’s offerings as well.

Wave also offers a lot of the same features, including automatic bank and credit card feeds, customized charts of accounts, multiple businesses on one account, smart expense categorization (software learns over time), and more.

Wave does have its limitations and is more basic than Quickbooks or Xero, especially to us accountants who can see the glaring differences. However, even as an accountant and bookkeeper, I recommend Wave to a lot of my smaller clients whose biggest consideration is cost, simply because you can’t beat free. Plus, a lot of the additional features that offerings like Quickbooks or Xero feature, smaller businesses will not always utilize anyway, so Wave fits them perfectly. All-in-all, there are no large drawbacks.

Wave allows me to keep track of finances for multiple enterprises - self-employment business, a non-profit, and personal finances. Each account was set up using the Wave wizard and very few changes have been made to the overall function beyond that. The non-profit I manage has a series of account codes that were easily added and applied to transactions. I use multiple income streams for my business and they are all imported automatically. Wave charges for things like payroll administration, credit card processing and bank transfers - all at industry standard rates - and that's how they keep the base platform free.

The mobile expense app helps me keep track of receipts and does a really excellent job of deciphering receipts, even in multiple languages and currencies! The mobile invoice app is great for sending quick invoices or following up with clients on payment.

Also allows viewing and reporting for authorized agents who can't change any data - a needed feature for the separation of financial powers required with most non-profit setups. My accountant can take a peek too.

One feature that is present in most accounting systems is the ability to categorize an expense as a reimbursed expense and then assign it to an invoice - at cost or with a markup. With Wave, I needed to set up a separate "reimbursed expenses" account and then - via double entry - add the expense onto invoices with a "reimbursed expense" account code. If entered at cost, the balances zero out in the reporting. If there is a markup, the income category is "reimbursed expense", which isn't helpful for year-end accounting.

We found Wave to be easy to learn and set up and it allowed us to connect to both bank and credit card accounts. Invoicing is easy and flexible allowing us to download a pdf and attach to an email for a client or to send directly from Wave. Our clients can print the invoice and mail us a check or pay online with a credit or debit card through Wave. Wave’s fees are competitive for processing the funds. The funds are directly deposited into our connected bank account, usually within two business days. The invoicing features were our biggest need and the program allows us to send the invoice, send reminders, mark paid and send receipts.
Setting up the chart of accounts was probably the most challenging, but there is a default chart which can be edited or added to and we easily found tutorials online. Their customer service was quite responsive to our questions.
The reports function gave us what we needed for monthly, quarterly and year-end reporting. All in all, Wave was a great solution for our invoicing and accounting needs.

We needed some specific tax calculations but found there was no way to add a specific formula into the tax account. This requires manual entries for us. Because the program is a streamlined accounting version, which is what we really like, it does have some limitations.

Cloud

Support

For small studios, new and busy entrepreneurs who trying to generate enough revenue to hire or outsource the accounting functions, Wave is like an answer to prayer. It is easy to open an account, it has all the accounting ledgers that the tax accountant needs, it connects to read-only of bank accounts and credit card accounts, and did I mention it is a free cloud-based solution. The user interface is easy to understand. You can create and send invoices as well as connect a business bank account to receive payment with Credit or Debit cards. The bank fees are the same as other payment processors at 3% currently. The invoicing function allows for automatically reminding clients when their invoice is getting close to being due and when it is overdue. Once the money is received it is a simple click or two to mark the invoice paid and tell it which account the money was received into. Like other complicated accounting software, Wave allows for setting up products, sales tax and customers. Unlike the complicated ones, it is easy to do. Running sales tax reports is a piece of cake. There are options for running employee payroll, too. All in all, because of the Wave accounting solution, I am no longer afraid of the books and can easily keep up with the administration of the financial side of my business.

It would be helpful if there were more tutorials available, but because the program is easy to set up, it has not been a big problem to figure things out or find third-party tutorials online.

Bookkeeping is one of my least favorite things about owning a business but this application has helped quite a bit. It makes it super easy to track invoices and collect payments. Invoices are extremely professional looking and easy to edit and update.

I have a tough time figuring out how to use two different currencies and still maintain consistency. There are also a couple of things that I have yet to explore and for that reason I still use a spreadsheet.

This is the best do-it-yourself accounting tool ever. Everything is done for you; even the taxes. All you have to do is type in the name of the tax you want and it calculates everything for you! It even sends out reminders to your clients if payment is not made when indicated.

I honestly can't think of anything that I don't like about this software. My business is simple so my needs are simple. I don't like reminders being sent to clients so I have to ensure the reminder is off. It was a little embarrassing a couple of times when an invoice was already paid and the client got a reminder; oops!

Invoicing has improved greatly with the additional of bank transfers (fee is 1%) so you can kiss the 3 or 4% credit card fees goodbye. This may not make a huge cost savings for those businesses with small ticket items but higher priced ticket items using the bank transfer option save a good chunk of change. Invoices are easy to generate and pay either via the desktop or mobile application. Our organization has multiple banking accounts and we use this tool to consolidate it all into one report. Reporting is solid and meets our basic needs for balance sheet, aged accounts receivable and income statement.

A stronger mobile app for handling accounts payable or pulling an income statement or balance sheet reporting is missing so getting the latest sales figures on your mobile device while your boss is calling you in a panic can be a bit tricky. Extracting the raw data is a bit tricky by having to run transactional reports but overall this still works pretty well.

Its free, easy to setup, no accounting background required to make sense of this service, imported stuff easily, just plain easy and I use it. The iOS and Android apps are great.

Nothing! I'm still not sure when they'll ask for money, because it free and I use it for all my personal and professional businesses.

I enter my bills, get reminders, and create all of my invoices with Wave. I even track my hourly time by creating estimates, then turning those estimates in to invoices once a month. Basic stuff, but very helpful. I used to use Quickbooks, but that was like a Porche when all I needed was an old Ford. I have no bookkeepping background, not an accountant, but I find Wave helpful and simple.

Only one contact per company is allowed, which is annoying. For instance when invoicing, most people want the invoice to go direct to their accounting dept. But if you work for someone other than that accounting person, in order to cc them with the invoice you need to manually enter their email address on each invoice. Every month. There is no function to easily track your time, and if you bill by the hour this can be a big deal. But there is a work around. In my case I invoice monthly on the 15th. So to start I will create an estimate with a date of the following month on the 15th. Enter my product, the description will look something like "11.30.17 Phone call with Steve", quantity is hours or decimals of hours (i.e. 0.5 = 30 minutes), and the price is my hourly rate. It works. Each task will have it's own line on the estimate, and when converted to an invoice the customer gets a detailed invoice with date, what I did, duration, etc.

I've used the Wave accounts solution for the past 6 years. Wave provided all the features I needed as a startup business. The ability to easily produce customized and professional quotes and invoices is an excellent feature of the software. Manage your invoices, accept electronic payments, send reminders and receipts. The comprehensive and customizable dashboard provides a focal point for your business and how it is performing.

I would have liked the ability to create and send Purchase Orders. This would have been a good way of tracking business to business transactions. This transaction type can be recorded manually via the Bills function.

Ease of use is pretty near
Send professional invoices to your clients
Easily send expense invoices to Wave, and they'll input it in your expenses

It's far from a complete accounting package. Well to be honest it's probably not trying to be a complete package.
There are some lacking features, but hey, it's free, and it's easy to get started. You might not need the additional features.

I like the simple layout of the software. I also like the iPhone app that allows me to make and send invoices as soon as I finish a job. They've changed the way transactions show up when downloaded from your bank so now I can easily match them to invoices. The simple reports are perfect for my needs. The best part is that it's pretty easy to figure out how to use Wave on a basic level for sole proprietors who have a dozen or so clients.

Some people might not like the double entry system of accounting. Personally, I've chosen to ignore that feature and simply use the app like a simple transaction register. My accounts don't balance and I don't reconcile with my bank statements. I probably only have 20 or fewer transactions per month so I'm pretty aware of what's going on. If I had to make everything balance, I think the app might be harder to use.

It is free, as in no cost. It was a good feature set that is basic but checks all the boxes. For the money it is a great option and a super place to learn about keeping small business books. Highly recommended if you are just starting out and don't want to get roped into a subscription type service.

There are some aspects of the UI that are clumsy or tedious. For example an operation that could be accomplished in one or two clicks requires 3 or 5 clicks. Sounds like a nit pick, but not when there is an operation that you need to repeat maybe dozens or hundreds of times that requires lots of clicks and submenus. So the flow is not there and it would be easy to correct with some attention to the actual functional user experience. There are also some functions that could easily be automated that are not and so it starts to feel tedious. It also is a more generic set of tools and integrations that are not quite as relevant as some of the other paid options. But it is free and I did use it happily for years.

For a small business, this FREE software does everything we need for it to. We were in search of an alternative to Quickbooks and Wave certainly delivered. We need to create and track invoices and client payments and Wave certainly helped us organize our Accounting. This is also cloud-based so multiple users can log in or access this software anywhere they have an internet browser and internet connection. Our Finance Department is able to pull reports when they need in realtime without having to wait on our team to do anything.

The set up was very easy. I certainly don't have an accounting background and I was able to configure everything with ease.

We don't require the paid features for what we need to do so the fact that Wave is free was such a bonus.

I had a difficult time separating streams of revenue, initially. When I did try to add new accounts, Wave was a little bit "glitchy".

Other than the fact that the software is free to use, I mostly love that it was built for Small Businesses. I Have personally made use of the software since 2013 and recommend it to every business owner that I come across. Most people think that you MUST pay for accounting software to get a good product but this is simply not the case with Wave!

It is difficult to fault this. I guess if anything, I wish it integrated with more platforms such as WooCommerce, and Zoho CRM. With the intergration I would be able to streamline my business process a little better.

Right off the bat, perhaps the biggest pro of Wave Accounting is the fact that it is 100% free. A simple plug & play app that allows users the ability to have an accounting software to keep their books in order. Also, like QuickBooks, the feature that allows users to attach source documents with the transactions is a huge plus. It is very useful in Fiji because our Tax Authority conducts random audits & failure to produce source documents results in huge fines and penalties. The home look as soon as you login is very useful too. It shows the expenses breakdown over a certain period along with other charts like your Profit & Loss as well as your cash flows. Wave Accounting is really good for small & medium business owners who have limited accounting knowledge. The software does the work for them and it is very straightforward.

Perhaps the biggest drawback for me is the difficulty in producing specific reports. I tried to produce an Accounts Payable report to see the Tax Input the business had for the 1st Quarter of 2020. However, the options provided was limited and therefore key fields were left out of selection. Although you could import data from Wave Accounting to Excel, it is very limited. Also, being in Fiji, I noticed that features like Payroll & Banking options are not available here. This was a drawback especially because Bank Reconciliation had to be manually done on an external app or software.

For free software with no ads or other catches, Accounting by Wave is hard to beat. The interface is easy to navigate and simple to understand. For a very small business that has a tight budget and needs basic business reporting accounting, this is perfect. It's also in the cloud, so you can access it anywhere there is an internet connection.

One drawback I see is that there isn't a way to easily back up your data. One click of "delete" and a transaction is gone for good.

It is free to use for tracking income and expenses. It is free to send estimates and invoices. Clients can be billed recurring and can set up auto pay. The cost is the same as paypal, etc.

I have some connectivity issues with some cards that may or may not be due to their software. There is some rigidity in the accounting that I am working through.

The feature set of Wave truly sets them apart from the competition, especially when they are offering the services free.
Wave offers a mobile app to help manage expenses and business functions.
There is a robust chart of accounts platform making organization easier than quickbooks.
Wave also has payment and bank account integrations which could save a business owner hundreds of hours of work per year, however this function is clunky.

This would not be a good platform for construction companies as there is not any project accounting functions.
There are also no good ways to migrate from quickbooks to Wave. I simply reported my data from quickbooks and have it filed, there is no import functions.

Very easy to customize invoices and keep track of billing. I'm NOT an accountant, and this was very easy for me to figure out how to set up a custom invoices and keep track of payments.

Seems like it's really pushing to have me collect payment thru the application. Unfortunately, all of my clients want to pay with direct deposit or a check, so I can't have the invoices paid with a credit card. However, they do let me enter payments manually, so that is fantastic that I am not forced to collect payment thru the app.

Besides the fact that the basic accounting side is FREE, I love how easy it makes my taxes since every transaction is labeled and easy to re-label if necessary. Connecting banks and credit cards is simple, and the interface is intuitive.

Customer support can sometimes be slower than I would like (on the order of a day or two, rather than hours), but I haven't had any emergency issues. I would love to be able to review their payroll feature, but it is not offered in my state yet.