Wave

RATING:

4.4

(1599)

About Wave

Online accounting software that provides features including invoicing, billing, payment tracking, payroll management, finance management, credit card processing, and receipt scanning. Wave Accounting is designed to help businesses streamline bookkeeping processes. With Wave's bank reconciliation tools, businesses can manage all bank account and credit card information in real-time to improve bookkeeping efficiency and accuracy. Businesses can also generate reports that include various data such as sales tax, balance sheet, cash flow, profit/loss, plus more. Wave's dashboard includes an invoicing tool that collects invoice payments. A small business owner can choose customizable invoicing templates based on unique business needs. Invoices can be sent via email and the so...

Awards and Recognition

FrontRunner 2024
Software Advice's FrontRunners report ranks top products based on user reviews, which helps businesses find the right software.

Wave Pricing

Accounting & Invoicing - Free Receipt Management - Free Credit card processing - $0.30 + 2.9% per transaction Bank payment/ACH processing - 1% per transaction ($1 minimum fee) Payroll (tax service states): $35/month base fee + $4/active employee + $4/independent contractor paid Payroll (self service states): $20/month base fee + $4/active employee + $4/independent contractor paid

Starting price: 

$20.00 per year

Free trial: 

Available

Free version: 

Available

Wave dashboard
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Wave Reviews

Overall Rating

4.4

Ratings Breakdown

Secondary Ratings

Ease-of-use

4.5

Customer Support

4

Value for money

4.5

Functionality

4

Most Helpful Reviews for Wave

1 - 5 of 1,501 Reviews

Jose

Marketing and Advertising, 1 employee

Used less than 6 months

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

Reviewed February 2021

If you're a small company just starting out this is the tool for you!

User Profile

Kari

Verified reviewer

Human Resources, 2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed May 2021

I LOVE Wave!

Overall, I highly recommend Wave if you are running a business and want low costs and an easy way to manage your finances. My business is simple and Wave makes it so much easier for me to stay on top of things and know where I need to focus my energy.

PROS

I have been using Wave since around 2015 and my books were a mess when I first began because I was doing them (not my strength) and once I heard about Wave's bookkeeping services, I couldn't believe how affordable they were. It's super easy to set up and use, run reports and know about your financials. I tried switching to QB for about 1 month and hated it, so I switched back. Lesson learned and I'm sticking around!

CONS

One thing I had to get used to was because I had my bank account connected and until the month is reconciled, when a invoice is paid I mark it paid and then the 'payment' comes in again from banking. It was easy to catch and now my Wave bookkeeper keeps all that reconciled. Thank you!

Reason for choosing Wave

I chose Wave because of a family recommendation and how easy it was for me to set up an account and get things moving. The others may have changed, but I still recommend Wave to anyone who is looking for an easy & affordable way to get their business going.

User Profile

Felix

Verified reviewer

Accounting, 5,001-10,000 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed September 2019

A Solid Free Small Business Accounting Software

It’s been a solid piece of cloud accounting software, albeit limited. It’s hard to beat the price of it, and I have yet to find a similar but more fully featured one at the price of FREE!

PROS

I use Wave to keep track of my personal finances, from income to spending. In that lens, Wave performs quite well, allowing you to tag transactions that are automatically imported from your bank. It also lets you generate some simple reports such as your income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow. The interface is simple to use and understand, and I was able to pick it up (coming from an accounting background) in under a few minutes, without having gone through a walkthrough. The included ability to reconcile statements is also quite handy and allows me to verify that all transactions are posted appropriately. The inclusion of receipt tracking and tagging is also quite handy! The best part about Wave is the price! If you don’t need features such as invoicing and payroll (some SMB’s may find these handy. From a personal perspective, I did not), the accounting software is completely free.

CONS

Wave still appears to be in its infancy, although the product has been there for a while. The user interface will frequently be updated (the reconciliation flow changed 3 times since I signed up about 6 months ago), and new features will constantly be added without any notification, often shifting often things around from where you expect them to be. The reports from Wave are also very limited, so don’t expect any customizable reports as of 08/2019. You get about 12 reports total, some or all of which may not be very relevant to you, depending on your end goal. These reports are completely canned, system generated, and you do not have the ability to create new reports. This may change in the future, but as it stands, this is the current state of affairs. The receipt tracking feature is definitely handy to have. While Wave will OCR your receipts and tag them to a category, it will actually post an entire transaction to the ledger when you save it down. For those of us with a bank account and credit card linked to auto import transactions, you’ll get a duplicate: one from the CC, and one from the receipt. It would be nice if Wave included some intelligence to automatically match the receipt and transaction together, but for now, you need to manually merge each. Finally, as a small point, Wave does not obtain any service assurance through SOC1 or SOC2 reports, an issue that most people wouldn’t ever care about.

Reason for choosing Wave

I mostly chose Wave over Xero for the price. As I’m using this for personal finance tracking, and not a small business, I didn’t want to have to pay Xero’s rather pricy monthly subscription.

Donald

Construction, 11-50 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed July 2024

Online Invoicing Program

Invoice creation and processing requires zero manual processes with Wave.

PROS

Wave has robust features that enables me to eradicate manual processes during data entry in various aspects such as bank reconciliation, AP and AR.

CONS

I have never come across any error on the pro plan.

Tanya

Legal Services, 1 employee

Review Source
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

1

EASE OF USE

1

VALUE FOR MONEY

1

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

1

FUNCTIONALITY

1

Reviewed July 2024

Not a happy customer

I was excited to try wave and get rid of Quickbooks! So I go to set up my account and they state I have to be reviewed. Promised it would take 2-3 days. It took over a week. Then to say I wasn't approved! Insane I have been in business for almost 11 years and have had great success no charge backs or refunds. Makes no sense. Not sure what they are looking for but not successful small businesses obviously.

PROS

I can't give anything I didn't get the chance to try it.

CONS

I can't give anything I didn't get the chance to try it.

Reasons for switching to Wave

I didn't like Quickbooks insane fees! They charge $35 a month plus a percentage of each sale.