One Accounting Software vs. Wave Accounting

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
One Accounting Software
Score 0.0 out of 10
N/A
N/AN/A
Wave Accounting
Score 7.4 out of 10
N/A
Wave Accounting is a free, cloud-based accounting platform exclusively for small businesses. It supports double-entry bookkeeping and permits unlimited user access, invoicing, and expense management. Wave Accounting integrates with Wave's invoicing, receipt scanning, payment processing and payroll apps.
$0
Pricing
One Accounting SoftwareWave Accounting
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Starter
$0
Pro
$16
per month
Pro - billed annually
$170
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
One Accounting SoftwareWave Accounting
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
One Accounting SoftwareWave Accounting
Considered Both Products
One Accounting Software

No answer on this topic

Wave Accounting
Chose Wave Accounting
I use QuickBooks for another business and Wave isn’t even close. You can get a live person 24/7 and you get paid in 24 hours. This business is too small for QB.
Chose Wave Accounting
It is a useful solution but not designed for the UK market. For a businesses that want to see their debtors, creditors, profit and loss and balance sheet it is a great solution, however with those needing legal UK compliance the software will not work as well and the other free …
Chose Wave Accounting
Albeit Xero is much more robust and does require a monthly subscription payment. Wave Accounting is perfect for the very small client that does not have funds to pay for accounting subscriptions nor the high level of transactional/account management required of some clients.
Chose Wave Accounting
quickbooks seems to be more feature rich and can connect to my POS. At some point i may witch over if my accounting becomes too complicated for Wave Accounting
Chose Wave Accounting
Wave is easier to understand for the accounting illiterate
Wave is free
Chose Wave Accounting
Xero, Facebook Business Manager (formerly Pages Manager), Google Search Console, DataCamp and BuildSmart
Chose Wave Accounting
It doesn't in anyway due to the fraud that is inflicted on so many companies!
Chose Wave Accounting
This was my first invoice company. I had seen Freshly before. Venmo is far less of an accounting tool. QuickBooks seems terrible with a monthly cost. Which is why I hadn't moved companies yet. But I just learned my Website host, Wix, offers it right through my site and Clients …
Chose Wave Accounting
Wave's price point was in line with what my company needed to manage basic accounting (payable and receivable accounts). It made it easy for me to issue monthly invoices to clients and track when invoices were paid. The software makes these tasks easy to manage and inputting …
Chose Wave Accounting
I shopped Wave and Quickbooks. I loved Wave's interface and ease of use. It had everything I needed for the free version.
Chose Wave Accounting
The best feature about wave is that they let you use it for free for basic accounting and pay per use payments. But based on my horrible experience with how they cancelled my payments feature, I would never use them again!
Chose Wave Accounting
Wonderful, great support, and many videos on how to do it. Fast response to emails. Does "Fund Accounting" that is required for many non-profits.
Chose Wave Accounting
As I stated previously, Wave is a free system. It serve you well as non-resident of USA/Canada for your basic bookkeeping needs, as a micro-business. If you are a resident of those countries, you will benefit immensely from the payroll function as well. If you are looking for a …
Chose Wave Accounting
Circling back to the "free" thing again. For a small business, I am getting for free what QuickBooks online charges no less than $40/month. Moving away from "free," these other solutions I listed above do more, and these would be the right solutions for the right needs. All of …
Chose Wave Accounting
Wave Accounting is very similar to QuickBooks Online. The functions of Wave Accounting are very similar to QuickBooks Online. The major difference is that with the low pricing of Wave Accounting, it lacks all of the bells and whistles that QuickBooks Online has like …
Chose Wave Accounting
I was not impressed with Xero or Zipbooks simply because they were expensive and still as, if not more, confusing than QuickBooks. QuickBooks is, unfortunately, the standard. I dislike it, and I think it is just a huge corporation trying to steal small businesses money, but …
Chose Wave Accounting
Wave feels more geared toward a younger generation. QB feels very old and stuffy, though they're slowly coming around. QB feels much more powerful than Wave but Wave did what I needed it to do. My CPA had never heard of it before so I ended up needing to have both, but Wave …
Chose Wave Accounting
I chose to keep Wave first because it is free and easy to use but I also could not find anything else that allowed me to create customer categorizations at least not with a free account. There have been a lot of improvements to Wave over the years so the reasons I was looking …
Chose Wave Accounting
Basically, we selected Wave because it was a free accounting system. We have not tried another accounting system that is so much better than Wave Accounting that we should leave Wave Accounting. Every time, we find another online accounting system we do a review of the system …
Chose Wave Accounting
Invoicing is the only feature I was looking for and for that Wave had a better UI, which is why I selected it versus Stripe. I believe Stripe has more functionality, but it was more than I needed for my purposes. That being said, I do use Stripe in conjunction with Wave …
Chose Wave Accounting
Honestly, it stacks up pretty good except for the ACH transactions. With QuickBooks, ACH transactions were in my account in 2 business days at the 1% charge (that both companies charge).

The support is similar on both sides. I spent 18 days trying to cancel my QuickBooks …
Chose Wave Accounting
Unfortunately we did not do our due diligence before selecting Wave. We came across them through our payroll provider (ADP) and assumed that it was good since we have had a great experience with ADP. In the future I would strongly recommend others to not just read online …
Chose Wave Accounting
I trialled Freshbooks a while back but they pack too much into the system for what it is. Wave has a super simple UI and dashboard and doesn't feel overly complicated to navigate yet offers all the features everyone is looking for. Being able to customize the system to brand …
Chose Wave Accounting
For the pricing arrangement, the ease of use and the user-friendliness of the app, Wave crushes Quickbooks Online and Zoho Books. Freshbooks was a little bit closer as the two are more of an apples-to-apples comparison, but Freshbooks doesn't offer a non-paid option and they …
Features
One Accounting SoftwareWave Accounting
Payroll Management
Comparison of Payroll Management features of Product A and Product B
One Accounting Software
-
Ratings
Wave Accounting
6.2
Ratings
20% below category average
Pay calculation00 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Benefit plan administration00 Ratings7.50 Ratings
Direct deposit files00 Ratings1.20 Ratings
Salary revision and increment management00 Ratings7.70 Ratings
Reimbursement management00 Ratings7.40 Ratings
Customization
Comparison of Customization features of Product A and Product B
One Accounting Software
-
Ratings
Wave Accounting
8.5
Ratings
12% above category average
API for custom integration00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Plug-ins00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
One Accounting Software
-
Ratings
Wave Accounting
6.4
Ratings
25% below category average
Single sign-on capability00 Ratings6.40 Ratings
Role-based user permissions00 Ratings6.40 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
One Accounting Software
-
Ratings
Wave Accounting
9.2
Ratings
16% above category average
Dashboards00 Ratings9.10 Ratings
Standard reports00 Ratings9.60 Ratings
Custom reports00 Ratings8.90 Ratings
General Ledger and Configurable Accounting
Comparison of General Ledger and Configurable Accounting features of Product A and Product B
One Accounting Software
-
Ratings
Wave Accounting
7.4
Ratings
3% below category average
Accounts payable00 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Accounts receivable00 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Cash management00 Ratings9.70 Ratings
Bank reconciliation00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Expense management00 Ratings9.40 Ratings
Time tracking00 Ratings9.80 Ratings
Fixed asset management00 Ratings9.80 Ratings
Multi-currency support00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Multi-division support00 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Regulations compliance00 Ratings5.00 Ratings
Electronic tax filing00 Ratings5.90 Ratings
Self-service portal00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Global Financial Support00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Primary and Secondary Ledgers00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Intercompany Accounting00 Ratings4.00 Ratings
Localizations00 Ratings5.20 Ratings
Journals and Reconciliations00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Enterprise Accounting00 Ratings4.00 Ratings
Configurable Accounting00 Ratings5.00 Ratings
Centralized Rules Framework00 Ratings1.00 Ratings
Standardized Processes00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Inventory Management
Comparison of Inventory Management features of Product A and Product B
One Accounting Software
-
Ratings
Wave Accounting
8.1
Ratings
10% above category average
Inventory tracking00 Ratings5.60 Ratings
Automatic reordering00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Location management00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Manufacturing module00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Order Management
Comparison of Order Management features of Product A and Product B
One Accounting Software
-
Ratings
Wave Accounting
7.6
Ratings
2% above category average
Pricing00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Order entry00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Credit card processing00 Ratings2.30 Ratings
Cost of goods sold00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Order Orchestration00 Ratings5.80 Ratings
End-to-end order visibility00 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Order exception Resolution00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
One Accounting SoftwareWave Accounting
Small Businesses
QuickBooks Self-Employed (discontinued)
QuickBooks Self-Employed (discontinued)
Score 5.2 out of 10
QuickBooks Self-Employed (discontinued)
QuickBooks Self-Employed (discontinued)
Score 5.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Zoho Books
Zoho Books
Score 9.0 out of 10
Zoho Books
Zoho Books
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Performance Management
Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Performance Management
Score 7.4 out of 10
Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Performance Management
Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Performance Management
Score 7.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
One Accounting SoftwareWave Accounting
Likelihood to Recommend
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
7.8
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.6
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
6.7
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
2.9
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
2.1
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
4.7
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
3.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
One Accounting SoftwareWave Accounting
Likelihood to Recommend
No answers on this topic
Wave is free to use, and they have some premium features you can pay for. For someone just starting out as a small business, freelancer or independent contractor, this is a Godsend. You can look professional, have something easy to manage, and yet also have excellent records come the end of the year. You won't spend a bunch of time having to learn the program, it's very intuitive and you get a host of great features that will make getting paid easy.
Read full review
Pros
No answers on this topic
  • The dashboard provides instant views of month-by month income & expenses for the past 12-24 months, a breakdown of current year expense by category, and net income for the past year and year-to-date.
  • Invoicing has easy templated set up has lots of per invoice options such as single/recurring payment options, due dates.
  • Year end reports are easy to generate in either pdf or csv format.
Read full review
Cons
No answers on this topic
  • One area of improvement for Wave would be combining the various mobile applications into one app.
  • Another room for improvement would be on the dashboard level. It would be great if they could use more bar graphs and get away from pie charts for things like expenses.
  • Some of the other areas from improvement have been addressed by recent updates so I am excited to see what else Wave brings out.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
Easy to use for clients with no accounting background and the price is right.
Read full review
Usability
No answers on this topic
Wave [Accounting] is very simple and easy to use. Minimal training was required for all our users as the interface is very user-friendly, especially for small businesses looking to use something to track their financial data, Invoice and make payments. I loved using Wave [Accounting]. It lookes professional and [has] all the features we were looking for.
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
WAVE is always available when we need it ! Peter
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Performance
No answers on this topic
Wave does tend to slow down when filtering your transactions screen especially by date. This is more of an issue when trying to trouble shoot certain transactions or clean-up a set of books.
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Support Rating
No answers on this topic
I've only had to reach out to support once and they were quick to respond and offered valuable insight to resolve my issue quickly. The team is knowledgeable and if the person you're dealing with doesn't have an answer for you, they get back to you quickly with an answer. It was clear that the support team is genuinely concerned about users making the most of the software.
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Online Training
No answers on this topic
easy to use and east to train on ! Our WAVE clients enjoy the ease of use
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Alternatives Considered
No answers on this topic
Wave's price point was in line with what my company needed to manage basic accounting (payable and receivable accounts). It made it easy for me to issue monthly invoices to clients and track when invoices were paid. The software makes these tasks easy to manage and inputting data for accurate accounting and invoicing is a breeze. It really offers a lot of flexibility, so you can use the software the way you need it.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
Once they out grow what is ability to move up to a more robust system?
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Return on Investment
No answers on this topic
  • Wave has enabled our accounts payable to maintain a 99% closure rate by leveraging auto reminders through the email system.
  • Our quote to invoice process is a single click, saving time and effort. Even minor changes during that transition occur simply and easily.
  • Aside from payments, Wave has been free for our usage. Our bottom line is better because we're not investing in software but instead embracing an entire ecosystem.
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