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
Images
Features
Total features of Wave Accounting: 65
- ACH Payment Processing
- Access Controls/Permissions
- Account Reconciliation
- Accounting
- Accounting Integration
- Accounts Payable
- Accounts Receivable
- Activity Dashboard
- Activity Tracking
- Alerts/Notifications
- Automatic Billing
- Bank Reconciliation
- Billing & Invoicing
- Budgeting/Forecasting
- CPA Firms
- Cash Flow Management
- Cash Management
- Core Accounting
- Credit Card Processing
- Currency Conversion
- Customer Statements
- Customisable Branding
- Customisable Templates
- Data Import/Export
- Electronic Payments
- Email Reminders
- Estimating
- Expense Tracking
- Financial Analysis
- Financial Management
- Financial Reporting
- Fixed Asset Management
- For Government
- Fund Accounting
- General Ledger
- Income & Balance Sheet
- Inventory Management
- Invoice Creation
- Invoice History
- Invoice Management
- Invoice Processing
- Mobile App
- Multi-Currency
- Nonprofits
- Online Invoicing
- PCI Compliance
- Partial Payments
- Payroll Management
- Profit/Loss Statement
- Project Accounting
- Purchase Order Management
- Real Time Notifications
- Real-time Updates
- Receipt Management
- Reminders
- Reporting & Statistics
- Revenue Recognition
- SSL Security
- Sales Tax Management
- Spend Management
- Status Tracking
- Tax Management
- Third Party Integrations
- Time & Expense Tracking
- Transaction History
Alternatives
Quickbooks Online
Xero
QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise
FreshBooks
Reviews
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- Industry: Design
- Company size: Self Employed
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Awesome free accounting online software for your business that is super professional!
Reviewed on 5/8/2021
There is very little more I can ask for with Wave for my small business. It is free for the...
There is very little more I can ask for with Wave for my small business. It is free for the features I need and allows me to take only ACH or credit card payments with a reasonable fee and I only pay the fixed percentage when I use those features so I can just turn it off and get a check from a client and not pay anything. Great Flexibility!
Pros
Its free for small businesses that just need a good business accounting software! You can take ACH and CC payments if you want and turn them off on invoices you don't want it on. The rates are reasonable enough for using these services. The reports are easy enough for doing taxes. It's awesome and cheap for those that are one man shows or freelancers.
Cons
The thing that is the most annoying is when you want to do a recurring billing. It doesn't use something like Maintenance contract #1 then go to #2 or something like that it makes recurring billing invoice names that were the most recent of any invoices. Maybe I am not using it correctly, but each time I have to go and change invoice names then manually send it to the client.
Alternatives Considered
Quickbooks OnlineReasons for Switching to Wave Accounting
I originally chose Wave as it was free. Now I just love it and it works well for me so no reason to even look somewhere else.
- Industry: Marketing & Advertising
- Company size: Self Employed
- Used Weekly for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
Excellent for freelancers and small businesses
Reviewed on 23/9/2021
Extremely positive. In 3+ years I don't think I've had to contact support once, nor have I ever...
Extremely positive. In 3+ years I don't think I've had to contact support once, nor have I ever considered switching to other tools. It is one of the few software tools I use regularly where I am happy to open it, and I'm happy to give them their percentage.
As a freelancer, Wave has been indispensable to me. Always simple and smooth, and exceptional bang for the buck. Not only would I recommend Wave to freelancers and small businesses, I have recommended it. Numerous times.
Pros
Wave is ideal for freelancers. Set up is really simple and the interface is user-friendly. I have zero background in financial matters, and with Wave that's totally fine.
The price is also right. There's no subscription or hidden fees, they just take a perfectly reasonable percentage from invoice payments. I asked a financial advisor friend of mine before signing up, and she was pleasantly surprised by the low rates, and told me to go for it. I've been using Wave for over 3 years, and I have never once been hit with a fee outside of the basic rates.
Wave also provides a host of reporting and tracking tools in this basic account. They didn't influence my decision to sign up, but they've proven to be very useful.
And finally a small but really helpful feature, especially if you're a freelancer just starting out: immediate money transfers. Once someone pays your invoice, the money is in Wave, and takes 2-3 days to transfer. For 1% more payment, you can transfer money within minutes. For the cash-strapped freelancer, that can be mana from heaven.
Cons
There are no major cons that I can think of. One issue I have is mostly my fault: When I first started using Wave I didn't know what I was doing, and I ended up creating a whole bunch of client and work type records unnecessarily. It would be nice if there were some more in-your-face tutorials, maybe some hover tips for new users. But the messiness is mainly from me leaping in before looking.
Reasons for Switching to Wave Accounting
It was the cheapest option, and the most user-friendly looking. I have no background in finance and didn't want complex features built for accountants - Wave has those features, but only if you want them.- Industry: Leisure, Travel & Tourism
- Company size: 51-200 Employees
- Used Weekly for 2+ years
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Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10
Great Software. Super Affordable.
Reviewed on 17/11/2021
Pros
For a small business, or probably even a larger one, it's a really great software with all of the accounting and billing basics needed, and it's basically free. The online payment system works really well for getting payments from clients. They can either pay with a credit card or ACH, which is great. You can turn off credit card payments too if you don't want to have a fee taken from your payments, which I also find as a nice feature. The invoices look very professional, can be white-labeled, so it just has your branded information on it. The invoices are also really easy to make. We had been trying to use Excel as an accounting system when we first started our small business, and found Wave soon after. It was a huge upgrade, and not very expensive. The reports are great, and it's easy to track expenses and monies brought in. It solved all of our accounting needs as a small website building business.
Cons
The one thing we really think can be improved are the recurring invoices. It doesn't make the invoice numbers in order based on that client's invoices, so they're oddly out of order. It's not a huge deal, but would be much better if it kept the invoice numbers specific to each set of clients.
- Industry: Marketing & Advertising
- Company size: 5,001-10,000 Employees
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Review Source
Overall rating
I want to like Wave, and have been trying for years
Reviewed on 7/6/2015
..., but I need them to help me figure it out. I have a full-time salaried job as a copywriter and...
..., but I need them to help me figure it out. I have a full-time salaried job as a copywriter and a few self-employment careers, like freelance writing, voice acting. I've always found doing my taxes to be a nightmare. I'd spend months stressing about it and trying to calculate income and expenses. Originally, I was adding up all my expenses with a calculator. When I discovered I could put things into Excel, it got a bit easier add numbers. And then about 4 or 5 years ago, I started using a new accountant, and he suggested Wave to me. I was excited to hear that it would important my bank and credit card statements, and that I could then quickly and easily categorize everything. I was sure this would save me so much time and stress. But I found Wave very hard to use. I wasn't sure how to create my own categories. I could never tell if my statements had been uploaded completely, and I would often wind up with duplicate transactions. And I still can't find a way to view the categories after I've allocated transactions to them. I tweeted to Wave a lot, and they were nice enough to send one their IT guys to sit with me in a coffee shop for a few hours. He watched as I tried to do things and he gave me help. He said this was useful to him, to see what people might be having trouble with. And, I figured I would then be ok. But I'm still having a lot of trouble. I'm not asking a lot. All I want to be able to do is import my bank statements and credit card statements, and categorize all the transactions. And being able to invoice people would be nice too. And it seems that his app has those features. But I still find it very complicated. I don't understand the categories. I can't find where the totals are. And lately, my mbna Mastercard has been saying it can't link to Wave. So tonight, I went in and started deleting all the transactions from 2014, hoping that I could start fresh and be sure that everything was imported correctly. But now I see that mbna won't give me the data files for before August (that's an mbna problem, not Wave) and I can't undelete what I deleted. And there's no way to get support without paying for it. But I don't want to pay until I'm confident the site can do the simple things I need it to do. Anyway, I'd love to support a local Toronto company. And I appreciate that someone from the company sat with me in person. And I see people reviewing positively, saying it makes a freelancers life easy. Someone even tweeted today that Wave makes doing accounting fun. But I just don't understand how people are able to use this site. If someone from the company, or one of the satisfied customers, could explain to me how to use this site properly, I'd love to be converted. But at this point, I fear I need to cut my loses and simplify my life by paying for some other software. I just want to be able to file my taxes and concentrate on my creative projects.
Pros
It seems like it offers the ability to import credit card and bank statements, categorize expenses, and invoice people. Those are the features I want. But...
Cons
...I haven't been able to figure out how to smoothly and accurately use the features I want. This app is making my life harder than it was when I just manually typed in all my expenses into a Microsoft Word and added them up with a calculator.
Response from Wave Accounting Inc.
Thanks for sharing with us your experience. Firstly, thanks for being such a valuable customer over the years. We especially appreciate your patience trying to make WaveApps work for your financials.
We have available Premium Support for customers who are getting started with Wave. We suggest those looking to best learn work arounds, and setting up proper customizations subscribe to our chat and phone support (unlimited - 9am-5pm EDT M-F) - $49 for three months. You can place a call and speak to one of our product specialists to help you work through your challenge.
If you could reach out to me [email protected] We'll try to match you with a member of our team to help troubleshoot since you have invested your valuable time into Wave to manage your business financials.
Jennifer from Wave
- Industry: Human Resources
- Company size: 2-10 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
-
Review Source
Overall rating
- Value for Money
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10
I LOVE Wave!
Reviewed on 9/5/2021
Overall, I highly recommend Wave if you are running a business and want low costs and an easy way...
Overall, I highly recommend Wave if you are running a business and want low costs and an easy way to manage your finances. My business is simple and Wave makes it so much easier for me to stay on top of things and know where I need to focus my energy.
Pros
I have been using Wave since around 2015 and my books were a mess when I first began because I was doing them (not my strength) and once I heard about Wave's bookkeeping services, I couldn't believe how affordable they were. It's super easy to set up and use, run reports and know about your financials. I tried switching to QB for about 1 month and hated it, so I switched back. Lesson learned and I'm sticking around!
Cons
One thing I had to get used to was because I had my bank account connected and until the month is reconciled, when a invoice is paid I mark it paid and then the 'payment' comes in again from banking. It was easy to catch and now my Wave bookkeeper keeps all that reconciled. Thank you!
Reasons for Switching to Wave Accounting
I chose Wave because of a family recommendation and how easy it was for me to set up an account and get things moving. The others may have changed, but I still recommend Wave to anyone who is looking for an easy & affordable way to get their business going.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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