
About Wave Accounting
Wave is a fully integrated solution designed for small businesses with 9 employees or less. With our total focus on small business owners, you’ll never have to navigate inflated or cluttered to find what you need, right now. With an easy to navigate interface and single login, it’s never been easier to find what you need, when you need it.
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Use the 100% free accounting tools in Wave to gain the insights you need, without the legwork. With our automatic bank connections, your information flows seamlessly into Wave, without the manual entry. And even though it’s easy to navigate and understand, it’s still a real, double-entry application. Collaborate with your accountant or bookkeeper in real-time, and save both of you time!
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Use Wave’s invoicing tools to collect your money faster. Choose the template that best reflects your business, load your own logo, and choose a color for your invoices. Email invoices right from Wave, and collect credit card payments through our payment processing. Use Wave’s invoicing tools to stay professional, get paid faster, and keep track of where your money is.
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Everyone loves getting paid, but no one likes running payroll. Now, use Wave’s Payroll tools in America and Canada to take the headaches out of running your payroll. With guaranteed accuracy, direct deposit and employee self-service all included, at $5 per employee per month or less it’s never been more affordable for your employees to get paid.
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Use Wave’s personal finance tools to gain better insights into where your money goes. With simple budgeting tools, real time investment tracking, and more, Wave’s personal tools are the best way to master your personal finances.
Pricing starting from:
N/A
- Free Version
- Free Trial
- Subscription
Top 5 alternatives to Wave Accounting
Key benefits of Wave Accounting
Wave is 100% focused on the real small business owners, with nine employees or less. That means you’ll never see cluttered, complicated software that you can’t navigate, never mind understand.
What you will see is all the tools you need to gain better insights into your personal and business finances, all with one login. Whether it’s invoicing, payroll, or personal investment tracking, the days of multiple logins are in the past. And with free accounting and invoicing tools and totally affordable payroll, getting organized has never been more affordable.
Get paid faster, gain insights into your businesses financial health, know where your money goes and pay your employees, all with Wave.
Devices
Business size
Markets
Australia, Canada, China, Germany, United Kingdom, India, Japan, United States and 3 others
Supported Languages
English
Pricing starting from:
N/A
- Free Version
- Free Trial
- Subscription
Top 5 alternatives to Wave Accounting
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Features
Total features of Wave Accounting: 65
Alternatives
Quickbooks Online

FreshBooks

Xero

QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise

Reviews
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- Industry: Photography
- Company size: Self Employed
- Used Weekly for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
Best accounting software to grow as a small business
Reviewed on 14/5/2022
The overall experience with Wave has been very good. With some hiccups on the roadmap, Wave has...
The overall experience with Wave has been very good. With some hiccups on the roadmap, Wave has evolved by leaps and bounds from a pretty basic software to quite a powerhouse, even for the free version. If my business grows and I will feel the need to add more features such as payroll and tax advisor use, I will still remain a Wave believer!
Pros
I've used Wave since 2009!!! I feel like my company grew with it. It's helped me understand all I was doing right (and wrong!) financially in my business. It helps tremendously when filing monthly sales taxes. I keep a habit of staying organized, verifying all transactions and reconciling with my bank accounts. All of this, plus categorizing everything the right way makes tax time an absolute breeze - my taxes are done in two days and I don't need to freak out about it because everything is organized ahead of time and all I do is input expenses and sales.
Cons
What I least like about Wave is that a few years ago they stopped support for free accounts. Absolutely no human support whatsoever. Disagree with that big time!!!
Sometimes also a bank connection will be interrupted and you cannot reconnect for many many months and since there is no support, you are left without any help.
I am a small business of one person and I do not need any of the paid features that Wave offers so I could be upgraded to paid support, so I am always stuck in no human support land. It doesn't feel good, especially to someone who has used this software for as long as I have.
Alternatives Considered
FreshBooksReasons for Choosing Wave Accounting
Absolutely hated QuickBooks. It felt overwhelming, like I needed to go to school to learn yet another piece of software. Absolutely could not get used to the awful interface and I ditched it immediately, although I paid a few hundred dollars for a desktop version that was rendered obsolete by Intuit after 3 years. Apparently, that is quite a frequent practice from Intuit regarding QuickBooks.Switched From
QuickBooks Desktop ProReasons for Switching to Wave Accounting
Interface, ease of use and pricing - FREE!- Industry: E-Learning
- Company size: Self Employed
- Used Weekly for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
Great accounting software if your business is just getting started.
Reviewed on 14/6/2022
I found that the interface was easy to use and learn.
I found that the interface was easy to use and learn.
Pros
The best thing about Wave software is that it's free to get started. So if you are starting a new business on a budget and feel you don't have the money to spend on a book-keeper or expensive software this is good first choice. I used Wave to run Profit & Loss statements and Balance Sheets. I found that the interface was easy to use and learn. It was recommend by my accountant for book-keeping, and I'm glad I started with it.
Cons
I was only allowed to upload about 6 months worth of old transactions from my bank, but I had a lot more.
- Industry: Law Practice
- Company size: 2-10 Employees
- Used Weekly for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 2.0 /10
Not enough features and virtually NO customer support
Reviewed on 1/6/2022
It was fine when we had one part-time employee. But for all the real-life scenarios that pop up...
It was fine when we had one part-time employee. But for all the real-life scenarios that pop up when you have full-time employees, it's useless. The customer service is also super disappointing and unhelpful. We only use it for payroll, which should not require much in terms of software so I can't imagine trying to use it for accounting.
Pros
I like how easy it was to set-up--that process was straightforward and the interface initially was easy to understand. Unfortunately as we needed to do more after adding a full-time employee, it proved impossible to work with or use.
Cons
For payroll you have no options, and even when they recognize this, they don't provide a solution. A good example--we had an employee who had maxed out her vacation hours, but we agreed to let her take a few unpaid vacation days. There was no way for us to do this within Wave (you get paid vacation time or nothing). I chatted and even emailed with various representatives--all of which were super unhelpful, and we ended up wasting a lot of time before just being told this isn't an option. That's another huge con--there is virtually no support. The chat bot is not only unhelpful, but real agents are usually unavailable or there's a 20+ minute wait. The system is also not improving like I'd expect. I was notified today that my card declined for some reason so I followed the instructions that Wave emailed me to try to fix it, and it's like someone wrote them without looking at Wave's website because none of the instructions match. Not only is there not a change payment button but there's a Q/A at the end of the page where a user specifically asked this question, and there's no answer! I kick myself for picking this software, and we're in the process of moving to Gusto right now.
Reasons for Switching to Wave Accounting
Price and what we thought was ease of use. Now the price has gone up to match competitors (but the features have not), so it was a mistake.- Industry: Civil Engineering
- Company size: 2-10 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 0.0 /10
Wave Accounting
Reviewed on 31/3/2022
I was able to quickly send professional estimates and invoices on go and I didn't have to keep a...
I was able to quickly send professional estimates and invoices on go and I didn't have to keep a lot of envelopes with receipts any more, I could just scan receipts and attach them to a bank transaction. Before I even get an accountant, I would easily see the performance of the business from the cash flow graphs and profit and loss graphs.
Pros
Setting reminders to be sent to clients for payment is the most important feature from wave in my opinion. Also being able to create recurring invoices you you don't have to do the same thing every week or every month. My other favorite is customer statements. Pulling out customer statements and sending to your clients gives you points in terms of professionalism. I also appreciate that when Wave stopped operating in South Africa they recommended Zoho and gave us a year of free use of Zoho. Even though I did not like changing, this was a very thoughtful move by wave.
Cons
For some reason wave starting giving limited access to its South African customers and partnered with Zoho for customers to migrate. Even though the apps are similar, they're not the same and it took a little bit of time to now learn Zoho a new app.
Alternatives Considered
QuickBooks Online AccountantReasons for Switching to Wave Accounting
Wave Accounting came highly recommended by friends. In addition when I first opened wave, the dashboard look simple and it was easy for me to follow.- Industry: Marketing & Advertising
- Company size: Self Employed
- Used Weekly for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Excellent value
Reviewed on 15/6/2022
Pros
It's incredibly easy to use, generates extensive reports, and makes invoicing clients simple.
Cons
None. I am completely satisfied with this software.
Wave Accounting FAQs
Below are some frequently asked questions for Wave Accounting.Q. What type of pricing plans does Wave Accounting offer?
Wave Accounting offers the following pricing plans:
- Starting from:
- Pricing model: Free Version, Subscription
- Free Trial: Available
Accounting & Invoicing - Free Receipt Management - Free Credit card processing - $0.30 + 2.9% per transaction Bank payment/ACH processing - 1% per transaction ($1 minimum fee) Payroll (tax service states): $35/month base fee + $4/active employee + $4/independent contractor paid Payroll (self service states): $20/month base fee + $4/active employee + $4/independent contractor paid
Q. Who are the typical users of Wave Accounting?
Wave Accounting has the following typical customers:
Self Employed, 2-10, 11-50, 51-200
Q. What languages does Wave Accounting support?
Wave Accounting supports the following languages:
English
Q. Does Wave Accounting support mobile devices?
Wave Accounting supports the following devices:
Android (Mobile), iPhone (Mobile)
Q. What other apps does Wave Accounting integrate with?
Wave Accounting integrates with the following applications:
Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, PayPal, Shoeboxed, Zapier
Q. What level of support does Wave Accounting offer?
Wave Accounting offers the following support options:
Email/Help Desk, FAQs/Forum, Knowledge Base, Chat
Related categories
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