Wave

RATING:

4.4

(1579)

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 1,479 Reviews

Jose

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.

Paul

Construction, 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

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed October 2023

Definitely the best invoicing app I've ever used!

My favorite invoicing app, hands down.The invoices that are generated are super professional and detailed, the reminders are very helpful, and it is a sharp looking app with an amazing interface, just hoping for the ability to use our swipe keyboard and predictive texts in the fields that it's most useful, such as item descriptions and such.. For the first few years that I used this app on my android, it was no problem, and we were able to use Swype keyboard, predictive text and speech to text in all fields, and in one of the recent updates, this feature was removed, making it a painstaking process to have to hammer out every single character one at a time, but myself and all the other business owners that use and love this app are holding out hope that this changes like very soon! Hopefully on one of these next updates somebody cares about our feedback!

PROS

The phone app is so amazing to use, so easy and so complete..It's very easily customizable with your logo and information, and the invoices look sharp, clean & professional, with multiple options to send the invoices- PDF, links, etc.This app has become absolutely indispensable to my business.

CONS

The ONLY thing (but a major thing) that I've seen that's frustrated not only myself, but many many others that are part of a small business owner's forum, is the following-and I hope someone does something about it ASAP-In the phone app, we used to be able to use the Swype keyboard, speech to text & predictive text, making it a breeze to fill out or alter item descriptions and such.After one of these recent updates a few months ago, this capability was removed from those fields, obligating us to type one character at a time.This really killed the ease of use of this app, and while I still give it a glowing review, the truth is that if this doesn't get resolved in the near future, by next year I'll have to move on to an app that allows me to use my keyboard & speech to text to fill out these item descriptions.The only reason myself and many others have not switched is bc we've complained about it and we are all really hoping that the development team takes the 5 minutes it would take to switch this back to the way it was, and because of the fact that we all have developed a thorough item list that would be hard to start from scratch, but we are holding out hope bc it's our favorite!Please, Wave Dev team, please revert this function to it's original capabilities!

Reason for choosing Wave

I actually have QuickBooks and can use it for everything that I use wave for, but wave is just so ridiculously easy to use right off my phone, unfortunately like I mentioned above, if the capability of using swipe keyboard, speech to text, and predictive text in the item description fields is not restored in the next few updates, I might have to use my Quickbooks for more than just the accounting!

Samantha

Law Practice, 2-10 employees

Used weekly for less than 2 years

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

OVERALL RATING:

2

EASE OF USE

1

VALUE FOR MONEY

2

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

1

FUNCTIONALITY

3

Reviewed June 2022

Not enough features and virtually NO customer support

It was fine when we had one part-time employee. But for all the real-life scenarios that pop up when you have full-time employees, it's useless. The customer service is also super disappointing and unhelpful. We only use it for payroll, which should not require much in terms of software so I can't imagine trying to use it for accounting.

PROS

I like how easy it was to set-up--that process was straightforward and the interface initially was easy to understand. Unfortunately as we needed to do more after adding a full-time employee, it proved impossible to work with or use.

CONS

For payroll you have no options, and even when they recognize this, they don't provide a solution. A good example--we had an employee who had maxed out her vacation hours, but we agreed to let her take a few unpaid vacation days. There was no way for us to do this within Wave (you get paid vacation time or nothing). I chatted and even emailed with various representatives--all of which were super unhelpful, and we ended up wasting a lot of time before just being told this isn't an option. That's another huge con--there is virtually no support. The chat bot is not only unhelpful, but real agents are usually unavailable or there's a 20+ minute wait. The system is also not improving like I'd expect. I was notified today that my card declined for some reason so I followed the instructions that Wave emailed me to try to fix it, and it's like someone wrote them without looking at Wave's website because none of the instructions match. Not only is there not a change payment button but there's a Q/A at the end of the page where a user specifically asked this question, and there's no answer! I kick myself for picking this software, and we're in the process of moving to Gusto right now.

Reason for choosing Wave

Price and what we thought was ease of use. Now the price has gone up to match competitors (but the features have not), so it was a mistake.

Clyde

Non-Profit Organization Management, 51-200 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 December 2023

The Best Cost Efficient Accounting Software

It was an excellent experience in all aspects, particularly when it came to creating the relevant financial reports

PROS

The software was a savior for our organization, as we needed something easy to understand, practical, and to be able to access and management from an online system. Wave accounting was above and beyond the best accounting software we had used to date. My absolute favorite accounting software!

CONS

Setting up the account initially was a challenging process, as the navigation was a bit difficult.

Reasons for switching to Wave

We needed a more proficient and professional way to account for the organization's funds, and to competently present accurate financial reports to our benefactors