My Honest Review of Wave For Accounting

My Honest Review of Wave For Accounting | Accounting Smarts
Charles Hall

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Charles Hall

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June 10, 2022

Small business owners operating on a budget can look to Wave as the perfect accounting software. Wave offers free plans with plenty of features to get started.

Small business owners operating on a budget can look to Wave as the perfect accounting software. Wave offers free plans with plenty of features to get started.

Wave is a full-service accounting software solution with a wide range of product offerings to consider. The competitive edge for Wave is free pricing on key products like accounting, invoicing, and receipts. They also offer payments for a small transaction fee and more advanced plans to handle payroll and taxes.

Wave is one of the best accounting software picks for small business owners and freelancers. It is difficult to find a competing tool that provides free pricing on so many critical features along with full double-entry accounting support. The only downside to Wave is when growing businesses need to scale, it becomes difficult for the software to keep up.

We currently assist businesses looking to improve their internal accounting processes by matching them up with the best available accounting software to fulfill their needs. We can highly recommend Wave as one of the best options for small business owners, independent contractors, and freelancers. Keep reading to learn more about Wave and the features they have to offer.   

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What Is Wave?

Wave is a cloud-based accounting software that makes it easy for small businesses to manage their finances and get the most out of their business.

Wave frees users from the burden of learning complex software, and from doing complicated manual tasks because the solution is automated. Wave handles all your accounting needs so you can focus on marketing, customer service, and other growth opportunities.

Wave has a very intuitive user interface which makes it easier for users to learn and use the software. It allows users to do their work without having to worry about spending too much time understanding the system.

The Wave platform for accounting seems like the perfect product for any business owner who wants a quick, efficient, and easy-to-use system. It is best used by new business owners and freelancers searching for a low-cost solution. Wave even offers a free version to access the invoicing tool for freelancers.

This software offers many features like automatic financial reports, bank integration, invoicing, and much more. It provides full automation and online file-sharing capabilities. It was designed to help small businesses in the industry by providing them with an easy-to-care accounting solution for their business needs.

Wave Features

The Wave software provides a wide range of features that entice professionals to consider them as their business accounting software solution. Wave Accounting has benefits for both business owners and accountants.

Accountants can use it to manage their client’s accounts more efficiently than before. This is because of the automation of tasks which saves them time from conducting tedious manual work so they can focus on more important aspects of their job.

Business owners also benefit from the software with its features like quick bookkeeping, budget planning, and cash flow forecast. These features help them to make better decisions by planning for the future and going into detail about the current status of their company's finances.

Clean and Intuitive Dashboard

The Wave software is known to be efficient and easy to use. It is also a user-friendly dashboard with a clean and intuitive interface. It’s extremely easy to navigate around for beginners and learning the software is simplified because of it.

Wave’s dashboard takes away any kind of confusion for the customer by showing them their current financial standing at a glance. It also has information about clients’ budgets, revenue, expenses, and other vital financial data that customers need to know to manage their business effectively.

The entire design of Wave is aimed to simplify the accounting process. They aim to serve a market of business owners and freelancers who are not financial experts but need a tool to automate many of their accounting procedures.

The Wave Help Center makes it possible to learn every trick to manage the software more efficiently. There are plenty of FAQs too for any problems you may run into.  

Quick Setup

Wave is a great accounting software for freelancers and small businesses because of its quick setup process. It doesn't take long to get your current invoices out the door.

Wave uses a one-click import that allows users to add new clients or prospects into the program with just one click. And the setup process only takes minutes to complete thanks to Wave prioritizing the time of their users.

After signing up, the Wave Customer Service team will guide you through any further setup required and you will have an active account ready to use within a few minutes.

Wave even has a community where you can chat and collaborate with other users to ask questions or learn new ways to use the software to benefit your business.

Bulk Transaction Updates

Wave allows users to make updates to transactions in bulk, saving you time. For example, if someone pays their credit card bill or vendor invoices, Wave allows you to set rules that will automatically categorize your transaction.

If transactions are scattered, you can search and fix the tags for transactions all at once too. By executing this tedious task in bulk, you eliminate a lot of grunt work that could slow down your operations.  

Automatic Exchange Rate Calculations

Wave Accounting offers an easy way to manage international transactions without the need for an accountant or hours of research. It also ensures that you have accurate conversions to ensure tax compliance, optimize your budgeting, and make sure your business runs efficiently.

The automation of international transactions allows for more efficient planning and management of business operations, as well as reducing the overhead time.

Connect Multiple Businesses

Wave has made it easier for businesses to accomplish tasks such as accounting, invoicing, financial control, reporting, and tax filing. It also makes it easier for an accountant to see what’s happening across all of the different accounts in their company.

It works well for those managing the finances of multiple businesses too. You can connect multiple accounts at once and switch between dashboards to monitor any financial duties you need to accomplish.

Automatic Payments

The Wave platform provides an automated and recurring payments feature for its users. It can automatically bill customers, provide a subscription service, or send out invoices for recurring payments with just a few clicks of the mouse.

Wave’s features also include an online dashboard where users can view their income/expense transactions in real-time as well as integrate seamlessly with other payment platforms like PayPal or Stripe.

Why Is Wave Good For Accounting?

Wave software is a business software that invoices and collects payments. Wave has mastered the profession of accounting, which is why it is one of the most effective software solutions available.

Wave software is a great tool that can help you, whether you are a business owner or a freelancer. This software allows access to multiple accounting tools which helps them keep track of what they are working on and what they need to do next.

When you sign up with Wave, you are given full access to advanced double-entry accounting ledgers with plenty of support from accessory tools like payments, payroll, and reporting. It is a one-stop solution to handle all of your financial processes.

Wave does an excellent job simplifying the entire double-entry accounting procedure for non-accountants. If time tracking is not a necessary tool for your business, then Wave provides you with everything else you need to handle the advanced accounting work to keep your business running smoothly.

The mobile app is also relatively limited, especially for Android users. So if you value a more advanced mobile app, Wave is not the perfect tool for you but still can provide enough support for basic tasks and data access from a mobile device.  

Wave Plans and Pricing

Wave is extremely unique with their product offerings and the way they price each plan for their users. A majority of the plans they do offer are free to use forever, with some paid integrations available along with other upgrades that you may need as your business scales.

Wave aims to help small business owners and freelancers manage finances while keeping costs low. Below is a chart displaying each product offering Wave has along with pricing and some key features for each specific plan.

Product

Pricing

Key Features

Wave Accounting

Free

Unlimited income, expense, and tax tracking. Integrations and full access to financial statements

Wave Receipts

Free

Unlimited receipt capture and mobile app access

Wave Invoices

Free

Customizable invoices with a mobile app to sync

Payments with Wave

Free with fees (2.9% + $0.30 per card transaction)

Pay and get paid directly from invoices. Automatic syncing with your Wave accounting dashboard

Wave Payroll

$20/mo

Direct Deposit. Full-service payroll is available in 14 US states. Self-service payroll is available in an additional 36 US states

Wave Advisors

$129/mo

Access to professional consultants, bookkeepers, and accountants

Wave Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Free plans to get started.
  • Features tailored to serve new businesses, freelancers, and individuals.
  • Double-entry accounting access.
  • Intuitive invoicing tool.
  • Automated transaction management.
  • Multi-Currency support.
  • Instant payout option.
  • Recurring credit card payments.
  • Easy-to-use interface.
  • Low learning curve for beginners.
  • Mobile app access.

Cons

  • Limited payroll features.
  • The Android app is limited.
  • No time-tracking.
  • Minimal customizations are available for invoicing.
  • Difficult to scale for a fast-growing business.

Why Is Wave Free?

Wave generates revenue from credit card processing, payroll memberships, and advanced bookkeeping services. This makes it possible for them to provide such a wide range of plans and features for free.

The freemium pricing strategy is used by many software businesses as a way to generate more leads and upsell them more advanced products as they become more comfortable and scale with your product.

Wave is happy to provide new business owners and freelancers with the free tools to manage everything they need in one place to make their finances and taxes much easier to submit at the end of the year.

If you don’t need to use any of the paid offerings by Wave, then you can simply use the free software as long as you’d like with plenty of customer support and learning resources to continue to improve your ability within the platform.    

Wave Alternatives

If Wave does not seem like the best choice for you, there are plenty of reliable alternatives to consider too. Both FreshBooks and Zoho Books provide some similar features that make Wave so great, and both could be the solution you are looking for.

FreshBooks

FreshBooks is not exactly like Wave but offers a lot of the same features but with better usability and navigation. FreshBooks also provides an easier way of entering data when compared to Wave.

FreshBooks is one popular accounting software for freelancers, startups, small businesses, and mid-sized enterprises. They provide a full suite of products from invoicing, automatic payments, time tracking, project management, and double-entry accounting.

FreshBooks also has a variety of features like automatic account alerts, bank feeds, and more that help with your financial management needs. They also have a sleek mobile app that helps you manage all your finances while on the go.

FreshBooks takes a lot of the headache out of running your business by giving you powerful tools for managing your time, expenses, and invoices in a single place.

The primary downside, when compared to Wave, is pricing. FreshBooks does not provide all of these tools for free, but the cost is still affordable for small businesses.  

Zoho Books

Zoho Books is an accounting software that helps small businesses and self-employed people manage their finances. It offers several features that help its users save time and money.

Similar to Wave, Zoho Books is cloud-based and they sync directly with the Zoho suite of tools. You can run your entire business by simply using only Zoho products.

This software has a lot of benefits to offer for businesses. It can help small businesses stay under budget by offering automatic invoicing and cost tracking tools. They also give business owners and freelancers the tools to manage their finances from anywhere in the world.

Zoho Books excels at automating workflows and provides a wide range of features to help with bookkeeping and inventory management such as inventory reports, sales reports, etc.