Wave Accounting a good fit for small startups and entrepreneurs
April 06, 2015
Wave Accounting a good fit for small startups and entrepreneurs
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Modules Used
- Core Accounting, Receipts app, Invoices app, Payments
Overall Satisfaction with Accounting by Wave
While we do not use Wave Accounting at Squire for our internal accounting needs, as an accounting software company we do outsourced accounting for companies using the software and consult and train other companies in setting up and using Wave more efficiently. Wave is a great solution for small businesses in service-based industries looking for an affordable way to track simple accounting needs in a powerful and easily accessible way.
- Price point - most features are free
- Cloud and mobile based software available on many devices wherever you are
- Clean and simple user interface
- Functionality to download all transaction history to CSV for off-site records or conversion to another software at a later date
- Functions are simple and basic - really tailored for service-based industries
- There is little growth opportunity within the software for rapidly growing entrepreneurs
- No fully functioned tablet app, instead there are a family of separate apps for different functions or accessing the main site via the tablet browser
- For our clients, better visibility into their business is one of the biggest impacts
- Mobile access to records, especially as an advisor working with the client remotely is huge
- For our clients, being able to track receipts and accept payment from a mobile phone while on-site with the client is big.
- QuickBooks Online,QuickBooks Pro,QuickBooks Premier,QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions,QuickBooks for Mac,Sage 100 Contractor,FreshBooks
It is hard to compare Wave to many of the QuickBooks products because QuickBooks desktop products have a different feature set and client focus. Clients already using QuickBooks likely would not switch to Wave. Wave is designed as an entry-level accounting software for recent startups and small businesses. It compares closer to the new QuickBooks Online Self-Employment version in feature sets. Compared to QuickBooks or QuickBooks Online, Wave lacks several features like sub-accounts, classes, stronger inventory tracking, a more robust bank reconciliation module and a more functional mobile app. Where it makes up is in price and overall ease of use. It definitely has a niche market focus, but tends to excel in that market. As it compares to FreshBooks, FreshBooks is not an accounting software, it's an invoicing application. Wave offers similar invoicing functions, but with the benefit of a dual-entry general ledger behind it.