Wave Accounting Review 2023: Pricing, features & more

Wave’s invoicing is free and unlimited, with three customizable templates and a user-friendly interface, putting it on par with some of the best invoicing software solutions for small businesses. Other capabilities include recurring invoicing and the option to let repeat clients opt into automatic credit card billing. Creating an invoice is as easy as opening a form and pulling down lists of customers, products, services, taxes, and the like from the available fields (column labels are customizable). You can add new customers, items, and taxes on the fly if they haven’t already been defined, and you can now add a discount, either as a percentage or dollar amount.

It’s very easy to get used to the WaveApps interface, as it is intuitive and straightforward. Get support from Wave’s team of bookkeeping, accounting, and payroll experts. This feature is perfect for those who are just getting started with accounting. The best part of Wave advisors is that they are available year-round and will provide advice tailored to your business goals. The app offers a user-friendly, feature-rich application that works for those who don’t have much accounting experience.

Wave is a company that provides financial services and software for small businesses. Wave is headquartered in the East Bayfront neighborhood in Toronto, Canada. Wave also built a COVID-19 help section into their software, which allows businesses to see tax relief options for their business. They also created a helpful resource section with links to government relief sites. Within the Accounting tab, Wave allows you to track transactions, reconcile accounts, and keep a chart of accounts.

She has owned Check Yourself, a bookkeeping and payroll service that specializes in small business, for over twenty years. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from UCLA and has served on the Board of the National Association of Women Business Owners. She also regularly writes about travel, food, and books for various lifestyle publications. You can’t count on Wave for managing fixed assets, which isn’t surprising for a free program. In our case study, Fit Small Business purchased a job trailer with a bank loan. Wave will record the purchase price in the fixed asset and note payable accounts—but that’s the only thing it does.

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Like Wave, QuickBooks Online is easy-to-use, cloud-based accounting software. QuickBooks Online boasts a robust set of features, including advanced options like project management and inventory features you won’t find with Wave. QuickBooks Online also has hundreds of integrations, connecting your accounting solution with other small business software and apps. On the other hand, QBO only supports up to 25 users on its most expensive plan. Additionally, QuickBooks does not have a free plan like Wave, with prices starting at $30/month.

Wave is best known for two things—its free version and ease of use. We’ll show how the app keeps track of your cash flow, and go over the most important app features, pricing, and pros and cons. In August, 2012, the company announced the acquisition of Vuru.co,[17] an online stock-tracking service.

Manage your money like a boss

If you live in one of the 14 full-service states, though, Wave can make your payments and file the required paperwork with state agencies and the IRS. These states are Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Accounting For Asset Exchanges Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. Merchant Maverick’s ratings are editorial in nature, and are not aggregated from user reviews.

• In contrast to Wave and its competitors, Xero includes inventory management with every plan, even its cheapest plan.
• Wave includes the basic features that all accounting platforms should have, even though they’re not as powerful as what you can find with paid platforms.
• Despite its advanced capabilities, it’s easy for non-accountants to learn how to use it and maintain their financial books.
• Click on “support” and a box will appear, letting you search for your issue in Wave’s help center.

It’s one of the few really free choices available and may help you handle all of your accounting tasks in one simple location. Wave is very similar to FreshBooks, another user-friendly and modern accounting software. It also competes with Xero and QuickBooks, though it’s less nuanced than those tools.

Customer support

Wave has one of the easiest, affordable and the best payroll solutions for its users. Support for non-paying users is limited to the chatbot and self-service Help Center. If you’re interested in our payroll software, you can start a free 30-day trial when you sign up for Wave.

Wave offers email support for its free users and phone along with online chat support for its paid (payroll) users. Its customer service isn’t as strong as other paid alternatives, with customers complaining about slow response times. It can take at least a day or so for a representative to answer any questions. Xero’s starting price is half the price of QuickBooks, which makes Xero a more suitable Wave alternative for freelancers on a budget.

Create beautiful, free invoices that reflect your business branding. Automate overdue reminders, set up recurring bills, and add notes or terms of service with ease. Wave adheres to double-entry accounting standards, but it does the grunt work in the background. Despite its advanced capabilities, it’s easy for non-accountants to learn how to use it and maintain their financial books. Wave does not integrate with QuickBooks, but if you want to connect QuickBooks and Wave you can use Zapier as a solution. You can import Wave data into QuickBooks Online if you are switching accounting software without needing a Zapier integration.

Free Wave Plan

Scroll down, and you see a profit and loss graph and totals for taxable income and expenses. You can’t drill down on any of this, though, since the app doesn’t offer access to transactions. Once you’ve created a customer record, Wave creates a page for it with content divided into three sections. It also provides totals for what the customer has paid over the last 12 months and what is unpaid.

All the online accounting services I’ve tested offer a dashboard that displays similar types of information, but Wave’s is one of the best I’ve seen. The Cash Flow report appears at the top of the screen in graph form, followed by Profit & Loss. Below that is a list of outstanding invoices and bills—mini aging reports. You can click on any of them to view the underlying transactions. The Dashboard also displays account balances and income/expense numbers and charts, as well as links to common activities like adding customers and customizing your invoices. In testing and evaluating accounting services, we consider which are best for both small businesses and very small businesses (such as sole proprietors and freelancers).

Wave Accounting New Features for 2023

They seem to be knowledgeable about the software and able to solve most issues quickly. One of the biggest disadvantages of Wave is that it doesn’t have any dedicated time-tracking features. If you need to track your time for billing or invoicing purposes, you’ll need to use separate time-tracking software. Last but not least, Wave integrates with popular accounting software. If you’re already using QuickBooks or Xero, you’ll be happy to know that Wave has add-ons to integrate with both of these popular accounting software platforms. Millions of small businesses use Wave’s award-winning accounting and bookkeeping software by Wave.

Wave offers customizable views within the Invoice screen that display, for example, a list of invoices for a specific customer or date range. The site also provides report templates that can be generated and viewed within the application and exported as CSV or PDF files. Competitor Patriot Software Accounting integrates with Patriot Software Payroll. Users in all 50 states can choose between self-service and full-service, for a slightly more affordable monthly fee. Lendio doesn’t have its own payroll application, but it can be integrated with Gusto. It’s one of the cleanest, most understandable business services I’ve seen and is easier to use than Lendio and Patriot Software in some areas.