Wave Accounting Review: Features & Pricing

• Wave vs QuickBooks
• Wave vs Xero
• Wave vs FreshBooks
• Wave vs ZipBooks

Wave took a hit in my assessment of general features primarily due to its weak transaction management features. For example, it doesn’t let me classify transactions by class or location or create custom tags to attach to transactions. Additionally, I can’t set a closing date to lock prior-year transactions, which would help prevent unauthorized changes to my financial data.

Another useful feature I wish it had is the ability to use account numbers in the chart of accounts. For freelancers and solopreneurs, account numbers probably aren’t necessary; but for companies with a bigger chart of accounts, account numbers can help organize the accounts and make data input much faster.

Nevertheless, Wave still provides plenty of ways to properly set up and organize your data. For instance, I can set up my chart of accounts based on common accounts and categories, but I can add other accounts if necessary.

Adding a new account in Wave

Our Wave Accounting General Features Video

Wave scored poorly for banking and cash management because it doesn’t allow users to print checks, and I don’t find the bank reconciliation feature as functional as those in other software like QuickBooks Online. The reconciliation doesn’t allow for entries in the books that have not yet cleared the bank, like outstanding checks. This presents a challenge if I need to write many paper checks as I will be unable to reconcile my account until all outstanding checks have cleared the bank.

Additionally, the free Starter plan does not allow me to connect a live feed to my bank or credit card accounts. However, it’s a good thing that I’m able to upload my bank statements from CSV or Excel files and perform bank reconciliations.

During the reconciliation process, Wave attempts to match manually inputted transactions to transactions imported from your bank and does a pretty good job. However, if it fails, it doesn’t allow you to manually match the imported transaction to the manually inputted transaction. You’ll need to watch for this carefully and then delete the imported transaction to avoid duplication. It’s not ideal, but Wave does clearly indicate imported transactions that have to be dealt with.

Our Wave Accounting Banking & Cash Management Video

Wave is one of our best A/P software because of its ability to record unpaid bills, even with the free Starter plan. I couldn’t award it a higher mark, though, because I found some weaknesses, such as the inability to input vendor credits, create purchase orders, track transactions by vendor, and attach receipts to unpaid bills.

Nevertheless, I am impressed with how easy it is to manage unpaid bills in Wave. I can easily manage my A/P transactions from the Purchases menu, which consists of all the features I need to record purchases: Bills, Vendors, and Products and Services.

Depending on your subscription, you can snap a photo of your expense receipt and upload it to Wave through the mobile app. All users can attach a receipt to transactions in the desktop interface, although you can’t attach them to unpaid bills.

To record a bill in Wave, click on the Create a Bill button, and then the Add bill screen will appear:

Creating bills on Wave

Unfortunately, Wave doesn’t allow users to create a recurring transaction directly from the bill, which is possible in other software like QuickBooks. It also won’t let you set up recurring expenses and create and send purchase orders.

Our Wave Accounting A/P Video

The program did fairly well in A/R management. It provides decent invoicing features, but I hope to see some advanced A/R functionality in the future.

Invoicing

I find Wave adequate for basic invoicing, and I like that the invoices in the paid version can be customized to look professional. My only concern is that it doesn’t allow me to add custom fields to my invoices.

Sample Invoice from Wave

Once an invoice is created, you can email it directly to your customer in the paid tier. The free plan doesn’t let you do that, but it provides you with a link to your invoice so that you can include it in your own email.

Another benefit of the paid Pro tier is that you can attach documents to your customer’s invoice. With a subscription to Wave Payments, you can include a payment link in your customer’s invoice.

Advanced A/R Management

The lack of advanced A/R features is mainly what cost Wave points in my assessment of A/R. For instance, I can’t issue a sales receipt for an immediate customer payment and track and add labor and expenses to my invoices. I also hope the provider considers adding a customer portal where customers can easily track their invoices and process their payments.

Our Wave Accounting A/R Video

Wave lacks a feature to accumulate costs by project, so it’s not great for project-based businesses. It allows me to create customized estimates for project bids, but there is no way to compare actual costs to the estimate automatically. These are why I couldn’t award Wave more points in this criterion.

Sample estimate in Wave

You might find Wave’s estimate feature helpful, but I recommend you check out our roundup of the best project accounting software for more comprehensive project accounting features.

Our Wave Accounting Project Accounting Video

Wave provides the basics, like adding sales taxes to invoices, estimates, and invoice transactions. Whenever I enter a transaction with a sales tax, it records the amount automatically in the sales tax liability account. However, there’s no way to file tax returns, which explains its low score in this category.

On the bright side, I like that Wave allows users to track payments and generate 1099s for their independent contractors. However, this feature requires either the Pro plan or a subscription to Wave Payroll. Another key functionality missing in Wave is the ability to automatically calculate sales tax rates based on the customer’s location—a feature I really appreciate in QuickBooks Online.

Note: The sales and income tax features are evaluated across our other categories, so there is no dedicated video.

Wave lacks inventory management features, so if you’re a product-based business, consider QuickBooks Online. You can add a product or service but not the quantity purchased or sold. This means that Wave can’t calculate your COGS, which is important if you deal with inventory.

Note: I examined Wave’s inventory management feature across the other categories, mostly in A/R and A/P, so there is no separate video for inventory.

Wave received a relatively good score in this category because it provides all the basic financial reports users need to file their tax returns. Specifically, you can generate the following:

• P&L statement
• cash flow statement
• A/P aging
• A/R aging
• general ledger
• trial balance
• transaction list by customer
• expense by vendor

However, while the reports are accurate, I don’t find them very professional looking—especially the balance sheet that doesn’t provide a beginning and an ending balance. The reports also lack any customization options.

Our Wave Accounting Reporting Video

As seen in my rubric score, the Wave app is pretty limited, especially for Starter subscribers. The most useful features are the ability to send invoices and estimates and collect payments. Users can also add customers and items to their products and services list.

Pro subscribers, as well as Starter subscribers with a Receipts add-on, can scan receipts and classify income and expense transactions directly within the app. There are some basic overview charts to see the financial status of your company, but no complete reports.

If having a good mobile app is important to you, I highly recommend Zoho Books—which aced our mobile app category.

Wave took a hit in my integration evaluation because I can’t connect it to time tracking and electronic bill pay processors. For comparison, QuickBooks actually has electronic bill pay and time tracking built into all its plans except Simple Start.

Wave has some useful integrations, like Google Sheets and BlueCamroo, but all others must be made through Zapier. If you have a Zapier subscription, you can integrate many other apps—but it will be more difficult than having a deep integration, such as those offered in other accounting software.

On the positive side, Wave integrates with its payroll and payment processing services, Wave Payroll and Wave Payments, which are crucial functions for most businesses.

I assessed Wave’s usability based on these four major aspects:

Ease of Setup

Ease of Use

Wave is easy to use and has a shallow learning curve, whether you’re using the free or paid version. The interface is clean and not overwhelming, and you can easily find your way around. The dashboard includes shortcut buttons so that you can easily create new transactions, like bills, estimates, and invoices. Even if you don’t have accounting experience, you can familiarize yourself with the features of Wave in less than a week.

Wave’s dashboard

Customer Support

Assisted Bookkeeping Options

Yes—and it still has the best of all free accounting software that I’ve reviewed. It also has a paid version that you’ll need if you want to connect your bank account, have multiple users, and scan receipts, plus a few other nice features.

Yes. Wave uses 256-bit transport layer security (TLS) encryption for data security, and all accounting data are stored in servers monitored 24/7. Your credit card numbers are also not stored in Wave.

Yes, Wave offers payment processing through Wave Payments. You only need to pay for the processing fees: 2.9% plus 60 cents per transaction for Visa, Mastercard, and Discover; and 3.4% plus 60 cents for American Express. When you upgrade to the Pro tier, the 60 cents per transaction is waived.

Yes, Wave includes a sales tax tracking feature. You can set up multiple sales tax rates, apply them to invoices, and generate reports to help with tax compliance.