All Wave Accounting Reviews

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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 Accounting

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.

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Dedre

Verified reviewer

Luxury Goods & Jewelry, 2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

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

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed June 2023

Easy to use free invoicing app, but it has limitations

Overall, besides the minor cons, it is still my favourite app to use for invoicing since it is so easy to use and straight-forward with a very slight learning curve.

PROS

We started using Wave for our small business as it was free to use, and extremely user-friendly. Setting up your database of products/services and adding customers are easy and makes sending invoices a breeze. Financial reporting is also easy with a variety of filters to use in order to produce the financially statements and/or reports based your chosen criteria. You can also send a monthly bill or statement to your customers.

CONS

Online payment gateways are limited to only 3 options, including PayPal, Stripe and Square. As a South African company, these options are not beneficial or even available in our country. So customers cannot pay invoices automatically upon receipt of the invoice. This is an inconvenience and we use a manual EFT workaround. Support and use of Wave Accounting in South Africa has been discontinued.

Reasons for switching to Wave Accounting

We were looking for something with more features than simply invoicing.

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 Accounting

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.

Janet

Internet, 2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

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

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed November 2023

Easy to Use Online Invoicing - No Monthly Fee

PROS

No monthly fees just the fee to process the online transaction.

CONS

No telephone number for customer support just a chatbot.

Reasons for switching to Wave Accounting

My customer base grew to over 50 clients and the monthly fee nearly doubled.

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 Accounting

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!

Josh

Food & Beverages, 2-10 employees

Used weekly for more than 2 years

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

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

3

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed June 2023

Grea, free, and built for Canadians

I always recommend Wave for new businesses.

PROS

first.. it is free. Hard to beat having a free accounting software, let alone one this useful.It can connect right to your bank account (if you have a good bank)invoicing is super easy and includes tracking so you know if invoices have been viewed

CONS

Nothing you can really complain about.Support is almost non-existent, but you're not paying for it and the help docs are decent enough.could be more customizable, but it is accounting software... it doesn't need to be fancy.

Reason for choosing Wave Accounting

simply put.. it did what I needed without too much hassle and all for free.

Christina

Health, Wellness and Fitness, 1 employee

Used weekly for less than 12 months

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

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed August 2023

Great free software

This is an awesome free alternative to quickbooks. It’s not quite as polished but worth the money I’m saving.

PROS

I switched from Quickbooks which god a bit expensive for me. This is a very cheap alternative which is easy to use. I was able to connect my banks and credit cards pretty easily.

CONS

I don’t like that I am unable to push a bank sync so sometimes I have to just wait. I’m also bummed that mobile receipt scanning costs extra. I was unable to sync my square account but I can do all of my accounting without it and will just have to add my square fees later.

Reason for choosing Wave Accounting

It had a lot of feature for free.

Reasons for switching to Wave Accounting

Quickbooks became too expensive when there was a free option available.

Angel

Non-Profit Organization Management, 51-200 employees

Used monthly for less than 2 years

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

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

4

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed July 2023

Riding the Wave Accounting in Business

Using Wave Accounting the most important features we have used are the automated transaction categorization, bank reconciliation, multi-currency support, real-time financial reporting, tax calculation, and integration with payment processors and third-party apps for enhanced functionality.

PROS

The most liked part of is Real-time financial reporting as it provides up-to-date and accurate insights into a business's financial performance, allowing for informed decision-making and monitoring of key metrics.

CONS

Wave Accounting does not have advanced features that allow us to directly connect to other systems to import the data through an API instead of manual input.

Reason for choosing Wave Accounting

Salesforce is very expensive and did not meet our budget and skills.

Reasons for switching to Wave Accounting

Abila is not as user friendly and doesn't work very well with our flexible needs.

Sean

Health, Wellness and Fitness, 1 employee

Used weekly 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:

5

EASE OF USE

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed November 2023

Great free bookkeeping and invoicing

Amazing, highly recommend to small self employed businesses

PROS

Great free platform. Better than Quickbooks and costs less.

CONS

Banking integration doesn't always work. Would like the ability to pause recurring invoices.

Reason for choosing Wave Accounting

Because of the cost and because it was recommended.

Reasons for switching to Wave Accounting

Recommended by bookkeeper. Free to use with the same invoicing fees as Quickbooks

Anonymous

51-200 employees

Used monthly for less 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 January 2024

Accounting without Stress

Easy to use, integrate with other applications and preparation of financial reports

PROS

Super accounting application which is free, user-friendly, secure and with many features to assist in the whole accounting process for sole-proprietor or other SMEs

CONS

The fact that it is now only available in the USA and Canada, thus blocking other local currency features.

Reason for choosing Wave Accounting

We needed a system accessible to all with ease of use and automated features

Andi

Verified reviewer

Marketing and Advertising, 2-10 employees

Used weekly for less than 2 years

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

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed May 2019

Wave Shows Me the Money!

Before I used Wave, I was behind every month on my invoicing. I hated sending invoices, and I really, REALLY hated being the Collections person, asking my clients to pay their bills. Then I found Wave, and my whole life changed. I was able to get set up super quickly, connect to my bank, add my clients' contact information, and set up the template for my invoices. Now, I have "Monthly Invoicing" on my calendar, and it takes me about 15 minutes to handle the task (instead of 2 hours). My favorite emails are, "Congrats! You Got Paid!" from Wave. I feel fantastic!

PROS

Wave has absolutely changed my business for the better. It used to take me about 2 hours a month to do my invoicing, which I hated doing, and so I avoided it. Now, I handle monthly invoicing in about 15 minutes. Plus, as new clients come in or one-off projects are completed, I can send the invoices quickly—like 5 minutes. So ease of use is absolutely the first thing I love about Wave. Second, as a small business owner, I am in charge of acquiring new clients, executing the work, invoicing for the work, and then acting as collections when clients are late in paying. With Wave, I check a simple box that sends reminders to the client when things are past due. What a relief! It's coming from "my accounting department" rather than me. Hallelujah! Third, the payment process is so easy for my clients! They can pay any way they want—check, credit card, bank, whatever. It's so easy for them, and I have had zero complaints. It's also fantastic to know when clients have (or haven't) viewed the invoice. And getting the emails from Wave announcing that I've been paid are the best emails of the day. The fact that all of this amazingness is free? That's just the icing on the cake. Thank you, Wave!

CONS

My only issue with Wave is probably a rare use-case. I manage invoicing for a client of mine. (Side note: Wave made it SO EASY for me to be an admin of her account but not the manager, and I can log into my account to access hers. It is AWESOME!) She sells programs, and her clients generally pay in one invoice. Occasionally, her clients need to pay in installments. It was not easy to set up a recurring invoice for only three months to send to the client, especially without a credit card on file. I had to create three different invoices, and label them as Installment #1, #2, etc. However, I recognize that this is probably a one-off user scenario that not many people would need. And I can't complain when the tool is free, and I found a workaround.

Reason for choosing Wave Accounting

Honestly, it seemed ridiculous to pay a monthly fee and such high service charges with ProCharge. I'm not big enough nor do I send enough invoices to justify the cost. For Invoicely, the free plan accepts PayPal payments only, so this would be difficult for many of my clients that are businesses and don't use a PayPal account. And there's no branding available. Wave just offers a perfect solution for small businesses that's free while still being robust. I love it!

Brooke

Design, 1 employee

Used daily for more than 2 years

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

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

4

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed August 2020

LOVE LOVE LOVE

Wave no longer integrates with CapitalOne Spark Business Checking & Savings. CapitalOne is going through some changes so I don't blame Wave too much but manually uploading bank statements every month is a hassle. Though I love Spark, I'm hopefully that Wave's banking that is coming soon will be a good future solution. I love Wave for everything else. It's the most rounded and affordable solution for my small business finances.

PROS

It's everything I need in one place. As a small business, Wave is the best solution for me. I can invoice my clients for free, and easily keep my finances up-to-date making tax season worry free.

CONS

Wave no longer integrates with CapitalOne Spark Business accounts, so I have to manually upload two bank statements every month into Wave; One for my checking and one for my savings account, both of which are Spark.

Reasons for switching to Wave Accounting

Quickbooks is too expensive and more difficult to use. Wave is a miracle.

Jonathan

Marketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

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

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

3

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed August 2022

It’s free, but better than any paid accounting software.

We’ve been using wave since beta. We tried Quickbooks and a few other accounting platforms after a consultant suggested we review other platforms. Ultimately, we never left wave and will not in the foreseeable future.

PROS

Wave is free, but it’s powerful. Wave is suitable for any small to medium business. Wave handles all our accounting needs.

CONS

Wave has two major areas of improvement. 1. Their customer service is difficult, especially if you have an urgent matter. Their chargeback dispute process is not easy and confusing. Again, customer support regarding chargebacks is difficult considering you have a few days to submit a dispute package.

Reason for choosing Wave Accounting

It was free.

Reasons for switching to Wave Accounting

At first it was because Wave is free. But then we discovered how powerful Wave is, it’s perfect for our business.

Andrew

Accounting, 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

3

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed December 2022

Wave Accounting

My overall experience with Wave was excellent and I had no issues with this software. If it was not for a change in business practice, I would still be using Wave now.

PROS

The best thing about this software is that it is free and offer just as much if not more features than some of its paid competitors. You can also access it online from any PC.

CONS

They don't have a robust support line but considering you are not paying for the software, you can't blame them. Plus there really isn't any reason for you to need support as everything is user-friendly and there is adequate help features in the software.

Reason for choosing Wave Accounting

Price

Reasons for switching to Wave Accounting

Wave was free and offer the same functions and services.

Anonymous

2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 2 years

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

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

4

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed March 2022

Wave Accounting

I was able to quickly send professional estimates and invoices on go and I didn't have to keep a lot of envelopes with receipts any more, I could just scan receipts and attach them to a bank transaction. Before I even get an accountant, I would easily see the performance of the business from the cash flow graphs and profit and loss graphs.

PROS

Setting reminders to be sent to clients for payment is the most important feature from wave in my opinion. Also being able to create recurring invoices you you don't have to do the same thing every week or every month. My other favorite is customer statements. Pulling out customer statements and sending to your clients gives you points in terms of professionalism. I also appreciate that when Wave stopped operating in South Africa they recommended Zoho and gave us a year of free use of Zoho. Even though I did not like changing, this was a very thoughtful move by wave.

CONS

For some reason wave starting giving limited access to its South African customers and partnered with Zoho for customers to migrate. Even though the apps are similar, they're not the same and it took a little bit of time to now learn Zoho a new app.

Reason for choosing Wave Accounting

Wave Accounting came highly recommended by friends. In addition when I first opened wave, the dashboard look simple and it was easy for me to follow.

User Profile

Dave

Verified reviewer

Marketing and Advertising, 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 September 2022

Great Tool for small business accounting - option for QuickBooks

Been using the product for over 7 years

PROS

Invoicing is easy to use, easy to build custom template for products and services

CONS

Ad Hoc Reporting is weak - not easy to build reports by customer

Reason for choosing Wave Accounting

Ease of use and cost

Michael

Music, 1 employee

Used daily for less than 2 years

Review Source
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

3

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed November 2020

Wave Was/Is My Go To From QB Online

My overall experience has been great! I have to do some thinking/remembering at tax time to separate the double entries of income. I show an invoice paid by check WAVE shows that income on my account. I go to the bank and deposit, there is that check again. For the total amount of money saved, around $450-500, I will put up with it.

PROS

It is FREE in the cloud, works on ALL platforms Windows 7,10, Android, iphones. Accepts all credit cards including Amex for 2.9% I am saving $420+ yearly by not having QB, I don't have to print invoices. Since WAVE is in the cloud I email my invoices and receipts.

CONS

I wish it had more storage of customer service that has been performed in the past but I suspect that would require some expense. It only had 3 invoice templates and there wasn't much customization on those. You can't compound taxes on your invoices, let me rephrase, you can compound 1 tax but no more. Since my only taxes are State and County I found it best to compound none for fear of forgetting which one I had compounded

Reason for choosing Wave Accounting

Wave had a more complete suite of the tools I needed that were familiar to me from my experience with Quickbooks

Reasons for switching to Wave Accounting

Quickbooks Online wasn't as good as the desktop version but as long as Windows 10 is still under construction I won't chance having another desktop version made unusable due to another Windows 10 "update". I don't need to be concerned about it anymore now that I have WAVE!

Anonymous

51-200 employees

Used weekly for more than 2 years

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

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed November 2021

Great Software. Super Affordable.

PROS

For a small business, or probably even a larger one, it's a really great software with all of the accounting and billing basics needed, and it's basically free. The online payment system works really well for getting payments from clients. They can either pay with a credit card or ACH, which is great. You can turn off credit card payments too if you don't want to have a fee taken from your payments, which I also find as a nice feature. The invoices look very professional, can be white-labeled, so it just has your branded information on it. The invoices are also really easy to make. We had been trying to use Excel as an accounting system when we first started our small business, and found Wave soon after. It was a huge upgrade, and not very expensive. The reports are great, and it's easy to track expenses and monies brought in. It solved all of our accounting needs as a small website building business.

CONS

The one thing we really think can be improved are the recurring invoices. It doesn't make the invoice numbers in order based on that client's invoices, so they're oddly out of order. It's not a huge deal, but would be much better if it kept the invoice numbers specific to each set of clients.

Reasons for switching to Wave Accounting

We wanted something like looked more professional, and tracked everything in one place. Problem solved for sure!

User Profile

Jennifer

Verified reviewer

E-Learning, 1 employee

Used weekly for more than 2 years

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

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed June 2021

Free invoicing, billing, and accounting software with paid upgrade features

I like that I can do my own bookkeeping and light accounting and this keeps me relatively sane come tax time. I highly recommend Wave to anyone who's willing to learn at least a bit about accounting! With Wave Payments and Wave Payroll, the software works well for self-employed folks just getting started and will grow with them as they add to their team.

PROS

The cost is compelling -- free! -- but beyond that I find the software is advanced enough to do what I need without being utterly overwhelming like other options. I'm not accountant and there's only so much geeking out I want to do. I can send invoices, get paid, track all my expenses and payments, handle business AND personal finances from the same account, and it all works really well with my bank and integrates decently with Stripe via Zapier.

CONS

I'd love Wave Payments to allow for payments in more than one currency. I can invoice in USD and CAD (my main), but I can only accept online payments via Wave in CAD. No biggie.

Reason for choosing Wave Accounting

In addition to the cost, I always like supporting Canadian-owned businesses.

Reasons for switching to Wave Accounting

FreshBooks pricing was too much for me, and at least back then, it didn't have the features I came to need as my business evolved. I used QB for a while for a different business and found it a complete beast. That might be great if you're an accountant but it wasn't for me. Big nope.

Corinne

Health, Wellness and Fitness, 1 employee

Used daily for more than 2 years

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

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed December 2019

Satisfied daily user since 2015

I'm a sole proprietor of a service-based clinic, and I sell a very small amount of retail product (less than $500 per year). I use Wave to generate customer invoices, track payments, organize expense receipts, calculate taxes payable, and run reports. The app does allow for a "Personal" account which I do not currently use to my advantage but I plan to incorporate that into daily use next year to help keep better track of my overall financial situation.

PROS

Wave is free to use which makes it excellent for my small business. It has an app to facilitate easy upload of receipts for my expenses. Being cloud-based enables me to access my accounting from my clinic or my home office (or on the go) with ease in real-time. It syncs with my RBC account to import my transactions and is very user-friendly. Customer service is friendly and responsive.

CONS

My complaints about this software are very minor. There is an option to "save and send" invoices by email with a single mouse click, but to print the invoices takes three clicks. My other complaint is that there is no simple Customer Statement to print. The Customer Statement that is available shows every transaction posted, so for most of my clients there will be three entries for each visit to my clinic; one invoice date, one copay payment, and one insurance payment applied. I would prefer to be able to generate this statement showing a list which includes ONLY the invoice date and total amount charged. They are very minor complaints. I am quite pleased with this product.

Reason for choosing Wave Accounting

Wave was free, and had a nice-looking layout. I was already disappointed with Quick Books and looking to move on from that. I did consider Sage 50 because I was quite familiar with that from working in a clinic which used it, however, it was very expensive and like Quick Books had a lot of features I didn't need.

Reasons for switching to Wave Accounting

Quick books was not user-friendly and was heavily populated with features I didn't need but couldn't turn off, and I was only able to access it on a single computer. When it was time for me to pay for a new version I looked elsewhere for software that I could easily access from home.

Spencer

Photography, 1 employee

Used monthly for less 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

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed August 2021

Very powerful free features with the option to purchase high-quality premium services!

I am very impressed with Wave Accounting. Their free products aren't skimpy or limiting, but are actually very full and would likely not be free from another service provider! Wave's premium offerings are extensive as well. Overall, I've found that Wave Accounting is perfect for a wide target audience including small businesses, sole proprietors, independent contractors and freelancers, or people looking to take their invoicing, accounting, payment collecting, etc. to anything beyond their basic capacity and limitations. Highly recommend to a broad audience needing such services.

PROS

Wave Apps software features not only very beautiful interfaces for their products' dashboard, but the platform is at once very feature-heavy and thoughtfully well designed. The aesthetically-pleasing graphics for content such as cash flow, profit and loss, and expense breakdowns on the primary dashboard are sharp and clean in addition to being so helpfully data-driven, and all that is just on the landing page. As you navigate through categories of sales, purchases, accounting, banking, you experience how well-constructions the pages are for options within each section including sales, purchases, accounting, etc. I love just how many of the feature-heavy options are completely *FREE.* Wave Apps offers select premium services, such as Wave Advisors and bookkeeping, even business insurance with "NEXT," while offering things such as accounting, invoicing , etc. free of charge. It's an excellent product for anyone looking for a beautiful interface, but also wanting lots of features without needing to immediately spend money for quality products.

CONS

So many elements within Wave are intuitively navigable and to use with simple data entry. One area that was a little more challenging for me to set up with the chart of accounts section in the accounting area of the interface. It's so nice that it's deeply customizable, but the challenge was that it took me a little extra time to understand and knowledgeably input the data of my assets, liabilities/credits, income, expenses, equity. This is something that would be challenging for anyone not familiar with basic accounting on any software, so I probably would've benefitted from a few "help" pop-ups/set-up assistance here than perhaps some other areas. Where my limitations with setup start is however where Wave's premium products with bookkeeping and accounting are so valuable to the user. There are many great pop-up notices throughout the platform that inform you about new features of ways to most effectively use Wave Apps features, which is great, and of course, they're complete with beautiful graphics.

User Profile

Nweke

Verified reviewer

Design, 2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

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

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

4

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed April 2023

A good start for small businesses to easily manage their billing and invoicing

It made my startup process easy and saved my business a lot of expenses. I also learnt a lot as a novice with basic financial knowledge.

PROS

First of all, it is completely FREE part from other optional extra services that have recently been added at a cost. Very easy-to-use in creating invoices and billing customers. I was able to integrate with my startup business processes and it improved our professionalism. I loved the app because I could easily manage my business finances from my mobile phone, follow up on due payments, track payments, monitor cashflow, and also customize all correspondence with my brand colors and logo.

CONS

I was sad when most features were limited to US residents and I also couldn't access the mobile app in the app store for my region. Users outside the USA might have some limitations especially with connecting banks or credit cards and no access to the mobile app

Reason for choosing Wave Accounting

It was free and easy-to-use

Chris

Consumer Goods, 1 employee

Used daily for more than 2 years

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

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed November 2018

Great alternative to Quickbooks for small biz users

I have two small e-commerce business, and needed a way to track my inventory purchases, sales, shipping expenses, etc. I also had two independent contractor businesses, needing to track expenses such as mileage, supplies, etc. With Wave, I have each venture as a separate company, I can customize the chart of accounts for each one, create invoices for my independent contractor gigs, track invoice status so I don't overlook if something doesn't get paid on time, and review my income and expenses each month. I sometimes do consignment sales for clients in my e-commerce business, and Wave helps me keep track of those sales and settle up with clients each month. Truly a lot of great features offered, and I don't even use all of them (like Banking & Payroll). So glad I found Wave, and I have recommended it to many others.

PROS

Wave offers a lot of the basic accounting functions needed for small business users, and the best part is that it's FREE TO USE! Woo hoo! I used QuickBooks in my previous career, and liked the detail it provided, but once I started my own small e-commerce business, I didn't want to spend hundreds of dollars on software, or get locked into a recurring monthly subscription. I was thrilled to find Wave and amazed that it was FREE!

CONS

I wish there was a keyword search function in the Transactions section. Sometimes I need to look for a specific transaction but don't remember the exact date it occurred, so have to scroll through several pages to find what I'm seeking. A workaround is to export an Income Statement, then search or sort in Excel, but obviously that takes several extra steps and time. But since it's not costing me anything, this is a minor inconvenience.

Dane

Accounting, 1 employee

Used daily for more than 2 years

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

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed July 2019

Wave is a Great Accounting Suite - and it's FREE!

PROS

Wave is a great piece of accounting software that rivals Quickbooks and Xero. The biggest winner, which it obvious to anyone who has researched Wave as an accounting platform for their small business: it’s FREE! Both Quickbooks and Xero have fairly low-cost pricing models for small businesses that range all the way to fairly high-cost for larger businesses. Wave, on the other hand, is specifically tailored to the small business, and offers only features popular with those businesses. But, because of this, their base accounting software is completely free. Their only products you would be billed for would be payroll or credit card processing, both of which are priced competitively to Quickbooks/Intuit’s and Xero’s offerings as well. Wave also offers a lot of the same features, including automatic bank and credit card feeds, customized charts of accounts, multiple businesses on one account, smart expense categorization (software learns over time), and more.

CONS

Wave does have its limitations and is more basic than Quickbooks or Xero, especially to us accountants who can see the glaring differences. However, even as an accountant and bookkeeper, I recommend Wave to a lot of my smaller clients whose biggest consideration is cost, simply because you can’t beat free. Plus, a lot of the additional features that offerings like Quickbooks or Xero feature, smaller businesses will not always utilize anyway, so Wave fits them perfectly. All-in-all, there are no large drawbacks.

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