Wave Reviews

Pros

Bank account management : with Wave you can manage all your bank account.

Cons

The program helps you through all its indicators to make business decisions.

Pros

For our small business, it is nice to have an affordable accounting option.

Cons

I wish they had not done away with the free scan receipts feature. I still pay for it, though.

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Desktop

Reasons for Choosing Wave

QuickBooks was much more expensive and had may more features than I needed for a small business.

Switched From

QuickBooks Online

Reasons for Switching to Wave

Wave was less expensive and easier to learn and teach to our employees.

Pros

Its free version is pretty robust. You can add your branding to forms. You can accept payments.

Cons

Not a good app for job costing Or if you have multiple projects under one customer. Not robust enough for complex accounting situations

Alternatives Considered

FreshBooks and Zoho Expense

Reasons for Switching to Wave

Because it offered the most robust system for free

Pros

Wave has a free, entry-level accounting software option that makes it a no-brainer for new small business. I'm able to use their free tier to reconcile my accounts, automatically import transactions, send professional invoices, and produce financial reports without increasing my overhead. The value provided by Wave given the $0 price tag is huge.

Cons

I have encountered two notable bugs within their software. First, despite efforts to fix it, the Sales Discount account is backwards (it records as a revenue account rather than a contra-revenue account). Second, I've encountered a rounding error within bills that has resulted in my Accounts Payable account being a few cents off even after all bills are paid. There are workarounds that I use weekly to overcome these errors, but Wave has not fixed the errors nor published a timeline for their resolution for months. Finally, most accountants and bookkeepers use QuickBooks and aren't familiar with Wave, so I don't recommend Wave for anyone with an outsourced bookkeeper or complicated tax situation.

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Online

Reasons for Switching to Wave

Wave allowed us to get started for free, and we never looked back.

Pros

-Very affordable for a single owner small business
-EASY to use
-Makes accounting anxiety free
-You can hire professional bookkeeper if needed
-Can add your accountant to the account with ease
-Can invoice and track customer payments

Cons

-Would love more categories for expenses

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Online and Xero

Reasons for Choosing Wave

Xero was increasing their fees and Quickbooks was too costly

Switched From

QuickBooks Online and Xero

Reasons for Switching to Wave

I chose Wave for the ease of use, overall cost, and it's webbased.

Pros

Wave is a great software that is free to most users as a way to pull their accounting records together. Clients that I have that use it, think it works great for it being free.

Cons

I do think overall it is a little less intuitive for someone who doesn't have an accounting background. The transaction screen and recording process with it listing everything in the main screen, is sometimes hard to track, especially if all the accounts are selected. Great for basic bookkeeping, but more complicated businesses with more transactions & accounts, I would recommend a more sophisticated software.

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Online

Reasons for Switching to Wave

Cost of monthly subscription relative to the product features offered

Pros

it's perefect app it help for accounting management, invoices and tax statement

Cons

for the option pay roll it's not available in Quebec

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Online

Reasons for Switching to Wave

it's easy to use and has all what I need and it help me in manage my work

Pros

Wave is easy to use and a huge time saver when it comes to tracking expenses and doing reports. Best thing about it is that it is free for the starter edition.

Cons

You can’t send an estimate directly through Wave without the paid plan but it is a small issue.

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Online

Reasons for Switching to Wave

Cost was an important factor along with was of use.

Pros

It is super easy to use and very affordable for the start-up business owner or side hustler.

Cons

It has limited features in some areas, like payroll, but if you're a solo team, that doesn't matter.

Alternatives Considered

HoneyBook, Stripe and QuickBooks Online

Reasons for Choosing Wave

Because quickbooks was too expensive for my needs

Switched From

QuickBooks Online

Reasons for Switching to Wave

Because it had what I needed for invoicing for the right price

Pros

I have used it for over two years now with great success for my corporation's accounts. I recently asked my accountant if he needed me to get another program to help him with my company's Tax Returns and he flatly said, "No, what you are using now does everything I would want a program to do and is also super simple to use."

Cons

It has all the features I need. I will explore if I can sync it with my corporate credit card to automatically upload entries.

Pros

User friendly, pretty easy to figure out how to do things, simple interface, the free plan offers a lot of tools

Cons

The process for automatically categorizing payments and income doesn't work as smoothly as it could. Their AI tool is alright but makes mistakes. When you use their native Checkouts tool for collecting payments, they are categorized in a way that you cannot fully edit.

Alternatives Considered

Quicken and FreshBooks

Reasons for Choosing Wave

It was too cumbersome and time consuming to manage my own spreadsheet

Reasons for Switching to Wave

Price and ease of onboarding quickly with integrations

Pros

The first greatest thing about Wave is that is FREE!!! If you are just starting out, or a small business where overhead and expense need to be kept to a minimum, I recommend this app. It has all basic functions you need like, quotes, invoicing, statements, entering bills, receipts, reconciling bank statements, etc. All of these services including reporting are included in the free software! It has payroll functions for an additional charge, which we have opted out of for the time being. You can even link your bank account to it and it will import all the your debits and credits for reconciling.

Also, this software is super user friendly and you do not need to be a tech expert to understand it. It will set you up with preloaded items it thinks you need for your business and then you can change them or delete them. You can also add new ones super easy while doing this or after the fact. I really love that its cloud base and can be accessed anywhere. This makes it key for me when traveling for work.

Cons

Honestly Wave is pretty awesome that it was hard to find cons with it. The only drawback for me is the reporting. I wish I was able to customize them and select certain data to analyze. The reports are basic and standard, they just don't quite cover what I am looking for in my reporting.

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Enterprise

Reasons for Switching to Wave

I choose Wave due to pricing, that its also stored on the cloud so it can be accessed anywhere at anytime. Also the setup was super easy and done in a day.

Pros

I love ease of use and functions that match my business needs.
Allows branding and customisation of invoices. Love that I can clone invoices saving time for repeat services to same clients ( art coaching in my case)

Cons

Disappointed that they removed wave receipts for non-US clients. This particular feature was critical to document hard copies of receipts on the go, into the online wave system. Now their is nothing else to integrate the hard copies of receipts into the wave system

Pros

Wave is a simply to use accounting program that allows us to create invoice, receive payemnts, view and print reports and keep up with money that is owed to us. We are able to use this program for all of our accounting and bookkeeping needs. It is so easy to use and the product support is superior to other accounting programs.

Cons

There is nothing not to like about this program

Pros

The most impactful features of Wave Accounting for my business are invoicing and receipting. Generally, it was easy to setup and would recommend it for anyone looking for a bookkeeping app specially designed for small business at little or no cost.

Cons

One thing that can be improved is sending of receipts. If it can be possible to send receipts via WhatsApp for clients that prefer communication on that platform, that will be very helpful.

Alternatives Considered

Zoho Invoice

Reasons for Switching to Wave

I liked the look of the platform and ease of use.

Pros

The software is beyond easy to use. I can design and customize my invoices which helps my business stand out from the rest. Invoices only take a few minutes to create, and clients can pay by clicking directly on the email link.

Cons

I cannot think of any negatives at this time.

Pros

Wave Apps was easy to use and easy to setup. It makes our business much easier to run.

Cons

There was really nothing to not like. The product is amazing.

Pros

Wave automates over 86% of manual repetitive accounting tasks such as invoicing and billing.

Cons

I slightly dislike that Wave lack capabilities for global enterprise organizations but it has a robust backend integration capability.

Pros

I love everything about Wave. I have been using it for several years for small business accounting. Its connected right to my business account so I never have to worry about forgetting anything

Cons

There is not a single thing I can say wrong about Wave. I have used it for several small businesses of different types and it works for them all!

Pros

The only positive thing that I can say about them, is that after THREE years and having to lose the company that my cousins and I started together, we did finally get our money, or rather most of it.

Cons

I will just tell you our story with it. My 2 cousins and I decided to go into business together before COVID happened. We all have degrees in different categories and wanted to join forces. One had a degree in computer engineering, one in graphic design, and I had a business degree although at the time I had a huge following on social media and was working as an influencer. We wanted to help small businesses get their names out, and started a business advertising for them. I used my presence on social media to advertise by word of mouth, while my cousins would design web sites, and create custom logos and business cards for our clients. We began with just friends to test, so we didn't have a set price for anyone. It was also a side gig so we let people set their prices. Thankfully wave was not the only company that we used. I will describe our experience in the next question.

Pros

Free to use most features.
Professional looking branded invoices.

Cons

Lack of support on the free tier.
confusing to set up for non accountants.

Pros

The management of all general ledgers is something the software is well controlled.
There is the transaction recording, where proper accounting is done and budgeting enhanced.

Cons

The capital budgeting details are not well elaborated, and this calls for more involvement with the vendor.

Pros

I like how it workd how it supports our business

Cons

Customer Support
Easy
Billing
Invoices

Pros

This free option for accounting is amazing for starting up your small business. Easy to use, excellent options for sharing with accounting professionals, optional add ins to extend usability. The reconciliation features are the best I’ve tried.

Cons

Navigating from one area to
Another can be clunky and invoicing can be tedious for adding a new customer. I wish annoperional anonymous guest

Pros

Easy to produce invoices and record payments on the go via the iPhone app

Cons

Would be useful to have better customisable options so that searching for invoices is easier. Would also be useful to be able to do quotes by the app. Unfortunately we only use this app for invoicing and not expenses due to the fact that scanning receipts is not yet available in the UK.

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Online

Reasons for Switching to Wave

It was cheaper