QuickBooks Online is a SaaS version of the QuickBooks product. It contains all of the features found in the local version. Higher-priced plans include greater automation, payment management, inventory and time tracking, and analytics features.
$20
per month
Wave Accounting
Score 6.9 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.
N/A
Xero
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Xero is an online accounting software product for small businesses and personal finance. Its features beyond general ledger and double-bookkeeping include quotable invoicing, bank reconciliation, purchase order and expense management, and tax management. Third party apps can extend its features further.
$13
per month
Pricing
QuickBooks Online
Wave Accounting
Xero
Editions & Modules
Solopreneur
$20
per month
Simple Start
$35
per month
Plus
$99
per month
Advanced
$235
per month
No answers on this topic
Early
$13
per month
Growing
$37
per month
Established
$70
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
QuickBooks Online
Wave Accounting
Xero
Free Trial
Yes
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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Prices in table are in USD and just apply to the US - other markets & prices are listed below:
Canada - Starter $18 CAD/month, Standard $45 CAD/month, Premium 5 $58 CAD/month
UK - Starter £14/month, Standard £28/month, Premium £36/month
AU - Starter $29 AUD/month, Standard $59 AUD/month, Premium 5 $76 AUD/month
NZ - Starter $31 NZD/month, Standard $66 NZD/month, Premium $84 NZD/month
Xero provides similar functionality. It recently added a payroll function for my state. It also has the more robust document management system that QBO needs to move towards.
QuickBooks is the grand daddy of accounting. They cater to the end user. Xero caters to accounting and the cloud. Xero is constantly improving their products and services. QBO seems to be just doing enough to stay ahead.
QuickBooks Online and Xero offer many similar features. I believe QuickBooks Online is easier to use. Xero offers tax features for companies that operate in other companies that you have to turn off in several locations if you are using it for a US company.
They are tough competitors. I believe each has their own strengths and weaknesses. Overall, QBO is slightly less expensive than Xero (at the moment, at least), so that is a plus. The real reason that we went with QBO in the beginning is that it was a more mature product, and it …
We liked the fresh approach and the clean aesthetics of Wave, Xero and ZipBooks. However they all lacked the ability to customize a invoice template, which is sad to say, but that was the #1 feature for us, since we had existing customers that we didn't want to disrupt; i.e., …
Wave Accounting is a great free accounting software that small businesses can use at no monthly cost but it has its limitations. Quickbooks Online has many features that are beneficial to businesses even though there is a monthly cost to it. With Quickbooks Online I'm able to …
No competitor quick stacks up. FreshBooks has a speedy UI, but lacks features for a more complex small business. Xero has a UI that I personally don't like as much and it never felt quite right to me. Not as many accountants are familiar either. Zoho Books came the closest …
While my experience with Xero is limited, QuickBooks Online and Premier versions both seem to be more polished overall. Xero's user interface is a bit more oqaque and clunkier, and Intuit just offers a more seamless experience with its QuickBooks products. However, pricing …
Xero is very comparable to QuickBooks Online, they are both good systems. QuickBooks has more integrations, works better for construction in the U.S., and the price is right. There are thousands of resources online and pro advisors to help if you need anything. Typically any …
Quick and easy to set up. QuickBooks Online has a full suite of bookkeeping tools and pricing is affordable. QBO is best suited for Small Businesses and it's cloud-based, which is also well suited for the owners who work remotely. It is flexible and integrates well with …
Verified User
Manager
Chose QuickBooks Online
It is a platform that we consider to be mid-range. Where we are below cost and functionality relative to the more robust players like a SAP Business One, but still powerful enough for a medium or large size operation.
In addition to being one of the few global solutions that …
Ultimately, QuickBooks/Intuit has the most market share when it comes to accounting software. The benefit of so many people using this software is that there's always an answer to a problem that you may be having when it comes to using the software. Intuit has provided a …
Quickbooks has a very friendly user interface and it also integrates with other softwares. Honestly, I think other software may function just as well and if I wasn't so familiar with QuickBooks I may consider using them.
QBO is much more robust than the other free programs. There is so much more you can do with it compared to the other programs. I had zero accounting experience and I'd say the other programs were a bit easier to learn, but overall QuickBooks has more features and capabilities …
QuickBooks Online was much easier to use across a non-profit where we needed people in multiple locations working on different servers to access the financial data at once, it also allowed us to connect our bank accounts to the software which was a huge benefit of the program, …
Tried Xero briefly but did not like it. Seemed less well organized and used too many terms commonly used outside the US. Xero also lacked payroll processing at the time. We looked a couple lower end products but did not like them. You cannot go wrong with QuickBooks in the US. …
We chose QuickBooks online because it was the only option other than QuickBooks Desktop that supports the sub-class functionality that is essential for our business.
We decided to go with something familiar and more industry standard than alternative products. QuickBooks is simple to use, familiar with many. We received some great introductory pricing and will continue using it for the intermediate future. We wish there was more church …
I do use Xero and NetSuite for other companies. I started using Xero a few years ago because QuickBooks Online features were very limited and didn't have the ability to convert a QuickBooks desktop file. I have been impressed with QuickBooks Online's advancements. I think it …
Wave Accounting
Verified User
Consultant
Chose Wave Accounting
Wave is FREE for most functions. Payment processing costs no matter where you go (as does payroll or taxes). Wave rises above tools like QuickBooks Online because they know that for our small firm, being nimble is the name of the game. We don't need exhaustive reporting and …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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.
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 …
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
It doesn't in anyway due to the fraud that is inflicted on so many companies!
Verified User
Administrator
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 …
Verified User
C-Level Executive
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Wave stacks up well against QuickBooks especially from the price aspect. In addition the features within Wave are comparable to those found in QuickBooks. We selected Wave based on the reviews from other consumers and the ease of use with its web based application. Wave is so …
The interface is too complicated and not as user friendly. It was more costly. With online, we want fast, and QB online wasn't that snappy. However, their support was great. With Wave I didn't need support :)
Across the board Wave takes the cake on price at $0/mo aside from payroll fees and credit card processing. That aside I'd say most accounting systems are fairly similar, however what I like about Wave is just how simple the interface is and the outstanding customer support from …
We looked for an affordable, easy to understand solution to process invoices. Wave offered the best solution at the right price "free." We did not think this would be a long-term solution. Its robustness, ability to customize on the fly is one of the reasons we still use Wave …
It fits a niche of clients that are tech savvy, often self employed and want to manage business and personal finances. We are finding that even as these companies grow new features are allowing them to stay in Wave.
Wave's biggest selling point is by far it's price, because their base product for free. Most people sign-up because of that advantage. But here are my opinions of Wave Vs these three other programs I've worked in.
Each of the products I listed had their own list of drawbacks, but the one thing they all had in common, which was right on top of that list of drawbacks, was ease of use. I struggled to get myself accustomed to each system and struggled, but when it came to getting a client to …
Verified User
Professional
Chose Xero
Xero could be slightly more expensive compared to these products but to me, Xero is the most user-friendly platform. It is very easy to use. Their support page and email support are also great. Apart from the platform, Xero has lots of integrations with other software providers …
For one QB, customer service is terrible! The software is clunky and not as user-friendly as Xero. We have chosen Xero for many reasons: Custom Reports, Cost, support, and perks of being a partner.
Xero is 100% better than Quickbooks. Xero was recommended to me by our CRM software and in doing my research, I was highly impressed with the ease of use and the great reviews it received. The customer support from day one of setting this up through my questions over time, …
Verified User
Professional
Chose Xero
Xero is just as infuriating as Quickbooks. We only use it because the last CFO set it up and it's taking us a while to establish a new accounting platform that will allow us to migrate away from this dumpster fire.
In my opinion, the main competitor to Xero is QuickBooks but I migrated from QuickBooks to Xero because I was looking for an accounting software with an interface easier to use.
Xero ranks highly among the competitors, however multi-level reporting is better done in QuickBooks. More price sensitive, micro-businesses can find decent cheaper or free alternatives. Those wanting integration with other apps like cashflow management, inventory, reporting …
Xero is really basic and our team can easily adapt with it rather than using other some other non-user friendly apps. We could focus on the work itself rather than having problems with learning its complexity. Xero is very user-friendly and also gives tutorial which is great! …
I've used a lot of different accounting systems. Many of them so big and powerful, but a hassle to get set up. Xero is light, inexpensive, and easy to use. When I originally selected them they seemed like they were developing new features at a quick rate as well. I was invited …
Xero is very much a market leader and is at a sensible cost point. It offers a wealth of functionality with all accounting features coming as standard. It's easy to add bolt ons such as payroll at any time.
Xero stands out as the industry leader in terms of ease of use, functionality, integration possibilities, usability, and reporting functionality. Having extensive experience with various accounting software as a business owner and mentor, Xero consistently proves to be my top …
Verified User
Director
Chose Xero
Xero has a more modern user interface, better bank account synchronization, better automations, and an overall more pleasurable user experience. The setup is more simple.
Quickbooks Desktop has easier to use and more robust reporting; however, for my needs that is overkill. What …
Just simpler and has a cleaner interface. I would say that quickbooks is designed for less savvy business owners, but that makes it slower to use than Xero. I'm not suggesting that Xero is hard to use, it's really simple, but it does assume you have a level of financial …
Sage at the time we moved to Xero did not really have a suitable Cloud offering and the full SaaS solution it did have was only applicable to very small businesses. Quickbooks was very similar to Xero but during testing, most users preferred Xero for various reasons. Xero's UI …
No product thus far can even compare to Xero. Pastel is tedious and tiresome with everything that has to be captured manually and if an error is made a new journal needs to be drafted to correct it. Zoho Reports are horrible and pulls through limited data.
QuickBooks Online is well suited for businesses looking for a cloud-based accounting software package allowing staff to work remotely or in a hybrid setting. QuickBooks Online is great for companies that want an efficient accounting software package that lends well to basic financial reporting (income statement and balance sheet). We enjoy working in QuickBooks Online.
Wave Accounting was used for a small practice without a lot of the accounting considerations a large company would have. For the price, you really can't beat what Wave offers out of the box. All of the basic tools for things like invoicing and expenses are all easy to use. End of year accounting is easy with exports of data.
In my opinion Xero is well suited for: 1) Standalone organisations, 2) Organisations where the accounting team bench strength is thin, 3) Organisations which are able to leverage on new technologies and apps 4) Organisations which get most of their tech infrastructure within the APAC region Xero may not be as suitable for: 1) Organisations with group structures (especially complex ones) 2) Organisations which are constrained in their use of startup technologies and apps by startups 3) Organisations which get most of their tech infrastructure from the US or EU
Reconciliation is very difficult with multiple Wave transactions that need to be deleted or merged before it can be matched to a bank transaction.
Payroll worked fine for us but took several days to get it set up. We have switched to another bookkeeping system and another payroll system. Canceling with Wave took several days and they charge $6 for something even though the month was paid for in advance.
Credit card processing is nice and worked fine for us.
Repeating invoices (most of my business is monthly recurring invoices) - it does these very well.
Reporting - particularly being able to dig into the different lines of the P&L statement.
Tracking categories - I assign a category to every line of every invoice so it's easy to see how much has been sold of each type of service every month and year, and compare them to previous periods.
Purchase Orders cannot be linked to multiple bill payments which makes tracking purchase orders in QuickBooks Online obsolete. Without the function we have to track this within a different more manual spreadsheet.
Would be helpful if you could "split" bank transactions directly from the "review" downloads from the bank. Currently, to split transactions to multiple accounts we need to first categorize, then review after assigning to 1 account.
I know that credit card processing is a way for Wave to make money, but I really wish they offered ACH payment on Invoices.
I do cash-based accounting, which means I have to make little journal entries at the start and end of each year to get my books to balance because Wave wants to do everything differently. This should just be a setting to flip, whether you want cash-based or accrual-based.
They use Yodlee for bank connection, which doesn't play nice with 2FA. Pretty much every time I log in I have to re-enter credentials, get a code sent to me, reauthenticate, and know that I'm going to have to do it again next week. Not really on Wave, but wish they could get it together nonetheless.
Having different email addresses for different parts of a customer's business (eg invoices and statements to different places)
Easily seeing the text of emails that have been sent through Xero
More easily archiving old pay items. Our HR software updates rates when awards are updated which means a lot of old pay rates are in the system and they have multiple clicks to archive each one. Clicking the ones to archive in bulk and then just click archive for all would be much more efficient.
It like the product 'right out of the box' and I trust Intuit will continually improve it over the years based on my experience with their desktop products. The large providers of Apps makes customizing the entire package relatively easy and seamless for a wide variety of business types.
In addition to the matters covered in this review, my reason for renewing this product is that Xero's functionality and the constant updates that the company provides, makes the software even more business friendly. The software therefore builds a brand loyalty among customers.
While QuickBooks Online is generally easy to navigate, there are some features and functions that often require a Google search in order to find out where they are actually hidden. Additionally, there are some simple customization features that are surprisingly not available for an otherwise advanced program (e.g. only having a pool of 4 fonts to choose from, only having 4 very limited templates for invoicing, not color selection, etc). While I would say that about 75% of users shouldn't have a problem finding their way around with basic functions, there is a learning curve if you want to be able to dive into some of the more useful features, almost to the point that you need to have a dedicated account manager in order to use QuickBooks Online most effectively.
I am a professional bookkeeper and I have no problems using Wave and all of it's features. I can see that certain individuals who have no accounting knowledge might struggle with a few different features and entries, but that is why Wave has an emphasis in connecting users to Wave Pro's who will walk them through things
The dashboard is a simple design where all accounts can be seen from the same screen, unlike other softwares that makes you search for bank accounts that you want to work in. Our clients love that they can easily find their way around their books without having to call our firm to help them.
We have been actively using and 100% Xero based for our ecommerce accounting practice for over 4 years. There has on been one real outage for more than 5 minutes. Xero was open and transparent about the outage, what they were doing to resolve the issue, and provided 15 minute updates. Showing how they care about their customers and partners. Plus, showing that their customers care too, were understanding, and went surfing or in our case took a nap. Couldn't run our business without Xero as a partner.
There are tab issues. When I tab the field doesn't highlight and I have to backspace or delete what is in the field. Happens on the memo field and sometimes other fields. Very time consuming.
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.
Pages generally load quickly, but it's a fairly common occurrence to have pages taking a bit longer than I'd like to load (as in, 4+ seconds). Occasionally I have to refresh a page to get it to work. Bank feed and integrations tend to be slow in general, but that could easily be due to API latency on the side of the other parties. Most of the time, though, the bank feeds refresh before I login so it's not a huge problem. Not necessarily good performance compared to a local app like QuickBooks desktop, but definitely good performance for a cloud application. Room for growth? yes.
In my experience, most representatives keep me on the phone for hours, literally, for a single issue and then usually cannot resolve it satisfactorily. I have 10 open cases that need resolution and, in my experience, there has been NO follow-up communication on any of them.
I never had to call Wave Support as we barely experienced any support-related problems on our side. However, I do know a few people that complained about Wave support. It would be nice as well, though if they could have more in your face tutorials for new users or how-to videos should we struggle to do something
Always respond and keep issues open until you are satisfied with the result. Generally good responses, in the past, I had some support responses that were really basic and really annoying. They type where "have your tried restarting your computer" style of answers. Well, of course, I went through all the basics before contacting them. Duh, but I suppose not everyone does. Otherwise, it would be a 10. The last year has shown a marked improvement in the support responses however.
All of Xero's training is online and available for anyone (business owner or accountants) to learn and become experts in their system. There is a range of content from product training to real world webinars from their partners. Xero is beautiful accounting software and their training is the same.
The person in charge of QB needs to be very accurate with record keeping and is recommended to stay on top of tasks. The biggest issue we have is reconciliation, and those issues occur only when too much time has occurred between reconciliations
If it can be done, time the implementation near a new fiscal year so you can start clean. Otherwise, you have to go back and do historical data from the beginning of the fiscal year, which can be brain draining.
Quick and easy to set up. QuickBooks Online has a full suite of bookkeeping tools and pricing is affordable. QBO is best suited for Small Businesses and it's cloud-based, which is also well suited for the owners who work remotely. It is flexible and integrates well with Third-Party Payments. Bank reconciliation is a breeze.
Wave is FREE for most functions. Payment processing costs no matter where you go (as does payroll or taxes). Wave rises above tools like QuickBooks Online because they know that for our small firm, being nimble is the name of the game. We don't need exhaustive reporting and management like QB offers and we certainly don't want to pay for it
Each of the products I listed had their own list of drawbacks, but the one thing they all had in common, which was right on top of that list of drawbacks, was ease of use. I struggled to get myself accustomed to each system and struggled, but when it came to getting a client to even try and use it was when the true struggle started. Just found it easier to make use of Xero from the very beginning.
As we have grown along our professional path, we have also expanded our use of QB. The scalability is easy and features seem to be waiting for you until you need them. We have increased profits by over 10x from our first year in business to the current and have yet to find a reason to look elsewhere
I have yet to fully stress test the product given the size of the company where I am using it. I am sure as we scale to more customers, more vendors and more reporting requirements, I will have a better understanding of what it is capable of in terms of bandwidth and processing
It has created a lot of cost and in-efficiency whenever we need to talk to support.
I spent a lot of time setting up their automatic reminders for past due invoices and it worked for a couple of months and then it stopped. It's currently being worked on by their tech team but it has been months and it is still not working. It would have saved me a lot of time.
Their multi-currency saves time in sending invoices abroad but it's limiting when a customer wants an invoice in USD instead of a foreign currency so I have to set up different customer accounts for different currencies.
We have saved 1 hour per month on reporting on one of our not-for-profits, which is 12 hours a year at minimum from an investment of 30 minutes on initial setup.
On cleanup files, we are able to save at minimum half the time we would spend and be able to get them cleaned up and moved to a monthly file quicker
Using cash coding on one client as an example it would take us a week to do their bookkeeping last year it took me 8 hours from start to finish.