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Wave Accounting

Wave Accounting

Overview

What is Wave Accounting?

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.

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Pricing

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What is Wave Accounting?

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…

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Alternatives Pricing

What is Xero?

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…

What is QuickBooks Online?

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.

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Product Demos

How To Use Wave Accounting App | Get a hold of your Money! | Ibukun Awosika

YouTube

Wave Accounting Demo

YouTube
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Features

Payroll Management

Provides for pay calculation and benefit plan administration, in addition to managing direct deposit, salary revisions and payroll tracking.

6.2
Avg 7.2

Customization

This addresses a company’s ability to configure the software to fit its specific use case and workflow.

8.5
Avg 7.2

Security

This component helps a company minimize the security risks by controlling access to the software and its data, and encouraging best practices among users.

6.7
Avg 8.0

Reporting & Analytics

Users can report on and analyze usage, performance, ROI, and/or other metrics of success.

6.4
Avg 7.6

General Ledger and Configurable Accounting

Financial management solution, including capabilities for general ledger and configurable accounting

7
Avg 7.5

Inventory Management

The ability to track and manage the flow of goods or materials into and out of an inventory.

8.1
Avg 6.8

Order Management

The ability to process orders, and track them from quote to cash.

7.6
Avg 7.3
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Product Details

What is Wave Accounting?

Wave Accounting is a fast growing, free, cloud-based accounting platform exclusively for small businesses (less than 9 employees) offered by Wave in Toronto. It supports double-entry bookkeeping and permits unlimited user access to always-available records and reports, as well as unlimited invoicing and expense management. Wave integrates with expense tracking software Shoeboxed. The software is mobile-accessible.

Wave Accounting integrates with Wave's invoicing, receipt scanning, payment processing and payroll apps, into one relatively comprehensive package. However, the automated payments and payroll functionality must be purchased; the payments addition bills per transaction, and the payroll feature bills by number of employees over a flat rate. To support the free platform, Wave integrates advertisements from business partners. Thus these are a necessary facet of the service.

Wave Accounting Competitors

Wave Accounting Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

QuickBooks Online, FreshBooks, and Xero are common alternatives for Wave Accounting.

Reviewers rate Multi-currency support and Order entry and Cost of goods sold highest, with a score of 10.

The most common users of Wave Accounting are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews From Top Reviewers

(1-5 of 80)

Wave Accounting Apps perfect for Very Small Clients with Limited Revenue

Rating: 7 out of 10
June 27, 2024
LA
Vetted Review
Verified User
Wave Accounting
17 years of experience
I use Wave Accounting for a nonprofit Client which has neither large revenue nor transactions. I have them set-up in the free version as they do not require much in the way of accounting software bells and whistles. They are basic with an average of 10-20 transactions per month, 1 bank account, 1 credit card account and payroll.
  • Offers free version
  • Reasonably easy to set-up
  • Works similar to Xero
  • Reporting is more than adequate
Cons
  • Journal entries are not as fluid as QBO
  • Hard to customize reporting
  • Difficult to customize Chart of Accounts
  • Slightly remedial - not good for large organizations
For VERY small clients with minimal revenue and no budget, I would wholeheartedly recommend however if the client is at all large needing robust bookkeeping, I would never recommend Wave Accounting Apps. It all depends upon each client and what their bookkeeping needs will be. This is also good for the smaller clients to handle their own bookkeeping if they cannot afford a bookkeeper.

Wave Accounting - solid bookkeeping software

Rating: 6 out of 10
July 05, 2024
DJ
Vetted Review
Verified User
Wave Accounting
5 years of experience
We use Wave Accounting in our accountancy practice for a small pool of micro clients. Software produces useful reports from transactions including a trial balance, profit and loss and balance sheet that we can then import into our accounts production software. It is free to use for very small businesses who do not require more advanced features such as VAT, MTD etc.
  • Online invoicing
  • Payments online
  • Bank reconciliation
Cons
  • Making Tax Digital
  • VAT reports
  • Payroll
It is a useful software for micro businesses but it is now less suitable for UK market. UK compliance requirements have increased in recent years with the introduction of Making Tax Digital and many businesses, not only VAT registered, need to have this feature, and it is missing in WaveApp software.

Disappointed in Wave Accounting

Rating: 1 out of 10
January 19, 2024
Vetted Review
Verified User
Wave Accounting
2 years of experience
I am an artist and the only user. In trying to reconcile sales tax in wave to what I report to the state by quarter using the P&L, all income by customers and the account balances for the same time period (accrual) show different totals. I am at a loss how they can produce different numbers from what should be the same data. I am finding them unusable.
  • Site is nicely done
  • It's easy to read
Cons
  • In my experience, by quarter reports do not show the same totals
  • They closed the community support page
  • In my opinion, chat bot is useless for anything that isn't simple
  • Reporting on sales tax, I need to print 3 different reports to get the info I need
I would not recommend for anyone who needs to track sales tax, total and taxable sales.

Wave Accounting has become unreliable

Rating: 3 out of 10
July 24, 2023
MF
Vetted Review
Verified User
Wave Accounting
4 years of experience
Wave seems to be down more than it is up. The last few weeks it has been under repair very often making it very hard to do business. I like to use their software for invoicing but I can't get into doing my work. It is strange for a large company like this to be unavailable to its clients.
  • Easy to work
  • Used to be available
  • Familiar
Cons
  • MAINTENANCE
  • Reliability
  • Poor Customer Service
I have been trying to create invoices for two days. It seems strange that they cannot fix the problem. The yellow system is down again.

Wave has all you need for basic acounting

Rating: 10 out of 10
November 19, 2022
AE
Vetted Review
Verified User
Wave Accounting
4 years of experience
I use it for personal and business account. My bookkeeper has access and will update my accounts and generate financial statements and use it to communicate with my accountant at year end. Its nice that it imports all my financial statements from my banks allows me to categorize transactions and view my transactions and a recolcile my books as well. its easy enolugh for me to use as well and I have no finance background. The reports are helpful from P&L and balance sheets and more.
  • Reconcile
  • Categorize
  • Reporting
Cons
  • Access to submit question
  • customer service
I use it on a monthly basis to reconcile my books, see where my money is being spent, look at my profitability and cashflow as well. The reports make this easy to do and categorizing multiple transactions are easy as well. I cant think of many cases where you would not want to use WAVE accounting software
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