Wave holds its own against two of its biggest competitors, QuickBooks Online and Xero. Wave’s free pricing structure gives the software its appeal, but users that have larger businesses and require more advanced accounting features may find QBO or Xero to be the better fit. Check out our comparisons among these top three accounting software options to find the right fit for your business. The only downside is that there’s no back button, but navigating the software is still pretty simple. Wave’s software takes very little time to set up and get used to — and it doesn’t require a background in accounting . The company also offers good customer support options, including an accounting guide, to help you learn to balance the books and use the software.

Some are direct connections, like integration with Google Sheets and Shopify. If you connect Wave to apps and services using Zapier, just know that you must set up and manage those integrations in Zapier, not Wave. Competitor Patriot Software Accounting integrates with Patriot Software Payroll. Users in all 50 states can choose between self-service and full-service, for a slightly more affordable monthly fee.

How does Wave Accounting work?

On another note, Wave’s report templates are very user-friendly. Every report template in Wave is optimized to look clean and to be easy to understand, even for people who are not used to seeing these reports. Wave has only 12 report templates, including basic reports, such as cash flow, aged receivables, and profit and loss. When compared to QuickBooks Online or Xero, Wave’s report templates clearly loses in terms of number. Click on “save and continue” to save invoices as a draft.

Free accounting software has no contract and no hidden charges. After providing a few basic details about your business — name, type, currency you use, address — you’ll have instant access to your free account. Support for non-paying users is limited to the chatbot and self-service Help Center.

How Does Wave Compare To Other Accounting Software?

The core software tools—accounting, invoicing, and the business bank account—are entirely free, while other tools like payment processing, payroll, and services come at a monthly fee. Wave allows you to search transactions, design accounting reports and reconcile data across other Wave Wave Hq Reviews 2021 products. Plus, you can calculate sales tax automatically, customize payment terms and enjoy access to easy-to-understand cash flow insights. It also features a well-laid-out, clutter-free dashboard with individual tabs for sales, purchases, accounting, banking, payroll and reports.

Now Wave is holding $11,000 hostage and they won’t give it to me or give it back to my tenant. On the downside, and this can be a big one, you are not able to properly close a period. This means anyone with permission to enter transactions can go and change entries from last year, or add some. This can make things really messy https://www.wave-accounting.net/ and I hope they add a function where an administrator can close a period such as a month, so that no more changes can be made. Further, you can add other users, but the type of users are quite limited. I wish this could be controlled on a more granular level, e.g. there is the option to add a ‘viewer’ who cannot edit anything.

Wave Pricing & Cost

Annual pricing for each plan includes a promotional discount of 60% for the first three months. Currently, Wave does not support multifactor login authentication. However, Google account users may set up the MFA Google sign-in option, which can be applied to their Wave login when signing in with Google. Each report type details business performance, which can inform future business decisions and provide useful tax filing information.

After being acquired by H&R Block in 2019, Wave launched Wave Money, a full-service business bank account. Wave currently serves over 4 million users from 400,000 small businesses. Any of your accounting software invoicing or receipts are free with Wave, so the only exceptions are when you get into credit card processing and payroll. We’ll talk more about this below, but these are the primary categories they cover.

Bank payment and credit card options are built directly into customer invoices. Wave Payments seamlessly integrates with Wave Accounting to make business bookkeeping a breeze. As of November 30, 2020, Wave Accounting software, including email support, had its availability limited to business customers in the U.S. and Canada.

Lastly, the “account transactions” report is a detailed list of all your transactions and total by account. Similar to “focus on customers,” the “focus on vendors” section lets you see the relationship between your vendors and money. This section consists of “aged payables” and “purchase by vendor” reports.

The third tab is for Activity, where you see a list of your interactions with the customer. In testing and evaluating accounting services, we consider which are best for both small businesses and very small businesses . Some very small businesses with employees might find it suitable, too.