Wave Accounting

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
Wave Accounting	Score 7.5 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.	$16 per month

Pricing

Wave Accounting

Editions & Modules

Starter: $0
Pro: $16
per month
Pro - billed annually: $170
per year

Offerings

Pricing Offerings
Wave Accounting
Free Trial
No
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No

Entry-level Setup Fee

No setup fee

Additional Details

—

More Pricing Information

Community Pulse
	Wave Accounting
Considered Both Products	Wave Accounting Verified User Executive 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. Helpful? Nikki Brandt, CPCU, AU, AIS, AINS President & Founder Chose Wave Accounting I used to have Quickbooks and it was very expensive and had functions I just didn't need. This is simple and easy to use. Perfect for small business owner. Incentivized Helpful? DJ Daniel Jaworski Certified Public Accountant 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Lisa A Lewis Owner 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. Incentivized Helpful? Allen Eshmoili President/CEO 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 Helpful? Verified User Professional Chose Wave Accounting Wave is easier to understand for the accounting illiterate Wave is free Helpful? Tony Rayl Chief Executive Officer Chose Wave Accounting It doesn't in anyway due to the fraud that is inflicted on so many companies! Helpful? 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 … Helpful? 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Partner 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. Incentivized Helpful? Rachelle Smith Principal & Chief Positivity Officer, Professional Speaker & Author Chose Wave Accounting Wave was more user friendly for me as a new entrepreneur. It was intuitive and helped me navigate the accounting process and issues. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Administrator 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! Helpful? HA Harry Abell Treasurer 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. Helpful? Magdalene van der Walt Managing Director 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Vin Campbell President 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 … Incentivized Helpful? JaCoby Marston, CPA Chief Financial Officer » Finance Management \| Accounting \| Taxation \| Cost Controls 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 … Incentivized Helpful? SM Stephanie Majeran Owner 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Ashley Mumm Owner 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Andrea Mitchell, MSW, APSW Owner 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Patrick Contreras Creative Executive 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Professional 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Marc Garcia President 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 … Helpful? SS Sean Stewart Partner 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 … Helpful? David Schwartz IT Director 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 … Helpful?

Features

Wave Accounting

Payroll Management

Comparison of Payroll Management features of Product A and Product B
	Wave Accounting 6.2 24 Ratings 20% below category average
Pay calculation	7.123 Ratings
Benefit plan administration	7.54 Ratings
Direct deposit files	1.220 Ratings
Salary revision and increment management	7.712 Ratings
Reimbursement management	7.48 Ratings

Customization

Comparison of Customization features of Product A and Product B
	Wave Accounting 8.5 13 Ratings 10% above category average
API for custom integration	9.99 Ratings
Plug-ins	7.011 Ratings

Security

Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
	Wave Accounting 6.5 45 Ratings 23% below category average
Single sign-on capability	6.532 Ratings
Role-based user permissions	6.536 Ratings

Reporting & Analytics

Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
	Wave Accounting 8.0 73 Ratings 2% above category average
Dashboards	7.871 Ratings
Standard reports	8.970 Ratings
Custom reports	7.237 Ratings

General Ledger and Configurable Accounting

Comparison of General Ledger and Configurable Accounting features of Product A and Product B
	Wave Accounting 7.2 76 Ratings 6% below category average
Accounts payable	8.459 Ratings
Accounts receivable	8.470 Ratings
Cash management	9.262 Ratings
Bank reconciliation	8.565 Ratings
Expense management	8.664 Ratings
Time tracking	9.811 Ratings
Fixed asset management	9.812 Ratings
Multi-currency support	10.019 Ratings
Multi-division support	7.19 Ratings
Regulations compliance	5.016 Ratings
Electronic tax filing	5.914 Ratings
Self-service portal	8.040 Ratings
Global Financial Support	9.02 Ratings
Primary and Secondary Ledgers	9.05 Ratings
Intercompany Accounting	4.05 Ratings
Localizations	5.23 Ratings
Journals and Reconciliations	8.530 Ratings
Enterprise Accounting	4.07 Ratings
Configurable Accounting	5.017 Ratings
Centralized Rules Framework	1.03 Ratings
Standardized Processes	7.019 Ratings

Inventory Management

Comparison of Inventory Management features of Product A and Product B
	Wave Accounting 8.1 11 Ratings 7% above category average
Inventory tracking	5.68 Ratings
Automatic reordering	9.95 Ratings
Location management	8.12 Ratings
Manufacturing module	9.01 Ratings

Order Management

Comparison of Order Management features of Product A and Product B
	Wave Accounting 7.6 53 Ratings 0% above category average
Pricing	9.926 Ratings
Order entry	10.018 Ratings
Credit card processing	2.345 Ratings
Cost of goods sold	10.034 Ratings
Order Orchestration	5.85 Ratings
End-to-end order visibility	8.24 Ratings
Order exception Resolution	7.02 Ratings

Best Alternatives
	Wave Accounting
Small Businesses	QuickBooks Self-Employed (discontinued) Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies	Zoho Books Score 9.1 out of 10
Enterprises	SAP S/4HANA Cloud Score 8.5 out of 10
All Alternatives	View all alternatives

User Ratings
	Wave Accounting
Likelihood to Recommend	7.4 (82 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	7.8 (3 ratings)
Usability	8.7 (17 ratings)
Availability	6.7 (4 ratings)
Performance	2.9 (2 ratings)
Support Rating	2.1 (12 ratings)
Online Training	4.7 (3 ratings)
Product Scalability	3.0 (2 ratings)

User Testimonials
	Wave Accounting
Likelihood to Recommend	Wave 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 Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Pros	Wave 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. HA Harry Abell Treasurer Read full review
Cons	Wave 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 J.P. VanderLinden Owner Read full review
Likelihood to Renew	Wave Easy to use for clients with no accounting background and the price is right. Jeanne Harris President Read full review
Usability	Wave 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 Melissa Whaley Owner Read full review
Reliability and Availability	Wave WAVE is always available when we need it ! Peter Peter Cullen Partner at Core Performance Read full review
Performance	Wave 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. Melissa Whaley Owner Read full review
Support Rating	Wave 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 Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Online Training	Wave easy to use and east to train on ! Our WAVE clients enjoy the ease of use Peter Cullen Partner at Core Performance Read full review
Alternatives Considered	Wave 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 Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Scalability	Wave Once they out grow what is ability to move up to a more robust system? Penny Breslin Account Manager Read full review
Return on Investment	Wave 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 Lukas Sundahl, MBA Co-Founder Read full review
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