Sage 50 vs. Wave Accounting

Sage 50 Accounts is well-suited for small to medium-sized enterprises, where there is a moderate number of expenses and invoices that need processing, typically by a company with a smaller finance team. Sage 50 is probably less suitable for a large organisation that needs to handle a higher volume of transactions and manage significant stock levels.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• We can build "templates" for recurrent charges/invoices. This saves some time and also ensures that we always use the right accounting rubric.
• A lot of additional information can be filled out such as client information (name, address, ...) which makes the software a little more complete.
• If you don't need an updated version every year (my case) then the software is not too expensive. The pro version that I'm using was just a little over $300.
• I really like the banking statement consolidation which allows you to ensure you got the right information registered.

Incentivized

• 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.

• Sage 50 could use some improvement in the Invoicing Module to allow for more flexibility in the design of the Invoice fields. The report customization tools could use some upgrading for easier use.
• Fixed assets management module needs to be included with unlimited number of fixed assets.

• 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.

Incentivized

I use this rating simply because I have a thriving Sage 50 consulting practice and will continue to keep my expertise in the product. I have consulted on both Sage 50 and QuickBooks for over 25 years so I have to maintain expertise in the solution as well as accounting and verticals.

Incentivized

Easy to use for clients with no accounting background and the price is right.

I think Sage 50 is a trusted product and is reliable from a product delivery and support perspective. They have deep domain expertise in the non-profit space and should be a consideration for new non-profit startups or existing non-profits looking to migrate from other platforms. Overall, I believe that Sage 50 does many things well with few limitations.

Incentivized

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

WAVE is always available when we need it ! Peter

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.

They were very knowledgeable of the product, understood my timeline was limited for a software issue and allowed me to get back to my day to day work. The dial into your computer is great so you can monitor what they are doing and learn some tricks yourself

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

easy to use and east to train on ! Our WAVE clients enjoy the ease of use

We implemented Sage 50 Premium Accounting in house, not using any third party or professional service. It was a relatively trouble free process, but can be tricky. Just read all instructions carefully, especially if you need to load the program on a network with more than one user

Incentivized

As we did the conversion almost 10 years ago it is hard to answer this question. At the time it was the ease of being able to produce both cash and accrual financial statements and reporting that led us to pick Sage

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

I define scalable from two perspectives; 1) the scalability to handle more bookkeepers/accountants using the product, and 2) the scalability to handle increasing customer/vendor/employee and transactional data. Sage 50 does a good job on both fronts. From the single users operating a micro-business accounting for customer invoices and bill payments only, to the multi-staff, multi-location, multi-departmental complex transactional operation. Although Sage 50 is quite expensive for that smallest user, it is quite inexpensive for the larger business entity. So, for the new enterprise expecting rapid growth, Sage 50 is the application of choice.

Once they out grow what is ability to move up to a more robust system?

• Sage definitely needs to do a better job with customer service. I have had to use them only a handful of times and it was not a great experience but not the worse I've seen. They didn't make us a priority and I felt that they didn't have a sense of urgency. They did address my lack of satisfaction and I can see that they are at least aware of the issues and they are trying to correct them.
• Sage is exactly what we need in my current organization and I wouldn't change it for another system. I have used quite a few in my lifetime and I would say that it fits our needs.

• Wave has been ROI positive for our company. With not having to pay for the service we can use our money for growing our business.
• The fees on credit card transactions for invoices are reasonable especially as we don't pay a monthly subscription.
• The invoicing feature has made our lives easier for us and our customers. The invoicing piece and AR tracking has been ROI positive as well.

Incentivized