About Wave Accounting
What is Wave Accounting?
Wave Accounting, part of Wave’s suite of financial products, is a web-based accounting platform designed to help small businesses manage income, expenses, payments, and invoices.
How do you use Wave Accounting?
Wave Accounting requires no downloads and is accessible from web-connected devices. Data can be imported from other apps, such as Quickbooks. From an online interface, users can access visual dashboards, reporting, invoicing tools, and more.
Who uses Wave Accounting?
Wave Accounting is used by small business owners, freelancers, accountants, bookkeepers, and tax preparers.
How much does Wave Accounting cost?
Wave Accounting is free. Upgraded plans with more features are available for other Wave products.
Does Wave Accounting have an app?
Yes, the Wave Invoicing app (for iOS and Android) provides on-the-go access to invoices.
Wave Accounting pricing
Wave Accounting has a free version and offers a free trial.
Alternatives to Wave Accounting
Wave Accounting Reviews
Feature rating
- Industry: Photography
- Company size: Self Employed
- Used Weekly for 2+ years
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Review Source
Best accounting software to grow as a small business
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: Hospital & Health Care
- Company size: 5,001-10,000 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
To keep tabs on my profits and expenses, I use Wave!
I love this program since it's perfect for startups like mine! It makes accounting responsibilities much easier, especially when you're running a business and need to keep track of everything in one location.
Pros
I like how simple it was to get started, both in terms of the set-up procedure and the user interface. Unfortunately, when our workload increased as a result of hiring a full-time employee, we were unable to use it.
Cons
For payroll, there are no choices, and even if they realize this, there is no remedy. As an illustration, we let one of our employees who had used up all of her paid vacation time to take a few unpaid days off.
- Industry: Law Practice
- Company size: 2-10 Employees
- Used Weekly for 1+ year
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Review Source
Not enough features and virtually NO customer support
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
Wave Accounting
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: E-Learning
- Company size: Self Employed
- Used Weekly for 2+ years
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Review Source
Great accounting software if your business is just getting started.
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.
