ZipBooks vs Wave Comparison: Which Is Best for You?

ZipBooks and Wave are cloud-based accounting programs that offer free plans. ZipBooks is ideal for service firms billing clients by the hour, while Wave is the better choice for companies with transactions in multiple currencies. ZipBooks currently doesn’t have a mobile app but allows you to track time and track income and expenses by project. Wave, in contrast, does have an app that lets you create invoices and accept payments on the go but lacks a time tracking feature.

• ZipBooks: Best for service firms that bill by the hour
• Wave: Best free software for basic bookkeeping needs

Neither ZipBooks nor Wave is adequate if you have inventory. We recommend QuickBooks Online for inventory accounting, and it also has the advantage of a huge network of independent ProAdvisors to help you.

• QuickBooks Online: Best for small businesses with inventory or wanting local bookkeeping help

Fit Small Business Rating	3.3 ★	2.8 ★	4.4 ★
Monthly Pricing	$0 to $35	$0 or $16	$38 to $275
Number of Users	1 to unlimited	1 or unlimited	1 to 25
Bank Reconciliation	✓	✓	✓
Send Invoices & Track Collections	✓	✓	✓
Manage Unpaid Bills	✓	✓	✓
Track Inventory	✕	✕	✓
Multiple Currencies	✕	✓	✓
Create Locations & Classes	✓	✕	✓
View Transactions per Vendor	✓	✕	✓
Capture & Organize Receipts	✕	✕	✓
Manage 1099 Contractors	✓	✓	✓
Time Tracking	✓	✕	✓
Track Income & Expense By Project	✓	✕	✓

Use Cases and Pros & Cons

Looking for more alternatives? 

Read our picks for the

best small business accounting software

.

User Reviews: ZipBooks Wins

Most reviewers said they love ZipBooks for its ease of use, layout, and usability. It has straightforward features that some users may prefer, especially if they want to avoid complex features. However, its best features are locked in the highest plan, Sophisticated. Many reviewers expressed that they didn’t like that the free plan lacks many features essential for accounting.

Meanwhile, those who appreciate Wave like that it comes with payroll and tax assistance. If ever you don’t want to do your books, you can get a Wave Advisor to do them for you. What reviewers dislike about Wave is that it doesn’t allow bank account connection in the free plan, which was available prior to the introduction of the new paid plan, Wave Pro.

Pricing: Wave Wins

Businesses looking for an affordable option will be satisfied with either ZipBooks or Wave, as both offer the most basic bookkeeping services for free. However, Wave wins in pricing because its paid plan is only $16 and includes unlimited users, bank feeds, and all the basic bookkeeping features you’ll need. We recommend picking ZipBooks over Wave if you need advanced features like recurring expenses and custom tags.

Takeaway:

ZipBooks charges for plans with advanced features, some of which are available for free with Wave. However, other features in ZipBooks’ advanced plans aren’t found in Wave.

Features

• Free plan: Wave wins
• Paid plan: ZipBooks wins

Rating Explanation:
5.0-4.6★: Excellent     2.5-1.6★: Fair
4.5-3.6★: Very Good  1.5-0.6★: Poor
3.5-2.6★: Good          0.5-0.0★: Very Poor

For features, we give the win to Wave for the free tier and to ZipBooks for the paid plan. Compared with ZipBooks Starter, Wave Starter has more features in A/P and sales tax tracking—you can manage payables easily and track sales tax on transactions.

Most of ZipBooks’ best features are locked in the highest plan, Sophisticated, which is why ZipBooks takes the lead for paid plans. If you pick Sophisticated, you have access to more features such as creating recurring expenses and adding unbilled expenses to invoices, to name a few. While Wave Pro is a capable paid alternative, we still believe that ZipBooks Sophisticated is the best value for money given its feature set.

Takeaway:

Many of the same features can be found in both ZipBooks and Wave, with the major distinction being that ZipBooks can track time and tag by location. However, neither program can track the cost of inventory. If you have inventory, we highly recommend advanced software like QuickBooks Online and Xero, and you can learn about these solutions by reading our

QuickBooks Online review

and

review of Xero

.

Accounts Payable: ZipBooks Wins

• Free plan: Wave wins
• Paid plan: ZipBooks wins

Wave wins the free plan category, whereas ZipBooks leads in the paid plan category. Users who prefer to go with the free version should choose Wave since ZipBooks doesn’t allow you to track unpaid bills in the free tier. Meanwhile, ZipBooks’ paid options are better than Wave because they have more features like recurring expenses and billing independent contractor payments to customers.

ZipBooks’ A/P features work great for recording unpaid bills. Users can create vendors, designate vendors as 1099 contractors, and assign bills to expense accounts. The form layout of ZipBooks’ bill creation window is simple and easy to understand. You can add attachments to support your entry and even enter the payment terms. Since ZipBooks doesn’t have inventory tracking, the software doesn’t ask for quantities of goods ordered. You’ll need to use a spreadsheet to keep track of inventory units and costs.

Wave shares the same features as ZipBooks and is also a great application for tracking and managing unpaid bills. Unlike ZipBooks, Wave asks about the quantity of the goods you ordered. This feature puts Wave at a slight advantage over ZipBooks since it shows the number of units, which can be vital for manually tracking units.

Takeaway:

Wave and ZipBooks have very similar A/P capabilities, with ZipBooks having a slight edge due to recurring expenses. Wave can record the quantity of goods purchased, which is helpful for tracking inventory, but it doesn’t calculate COGS. It’s up to you whether the free or paid version appeals to your needs.

Accounts Receivable

• Free plan: Wave wins
• Paid plan: ZipBooks wins

Similar to our evaluation of A/P, Wave takes the lead in the free tier category, while ZipBooks wins for the paid plan. In the free option, Wave is better since it gives users more features to use for tracking A/R and invoices such as creating recurring invoices. ZipBooks has this feature as well, but it is locked in its Sophisticated plan, making ZipBooks a better pick if you prefer paid software.

Recurring invoicing is often reserved for the higher and more premium plans of accounting software like QuickBooks Online Plus. If you like this feature, you must upgrade to Sophisticated. For only $35 a month, you get a flagship feature for an extremely low price.

Invoices in Wave are a bit better looking than those in ZipBooks. You can upload your company logo in either Wave plan and change the invoice theme color in the paid tier. When creating invoices, you can directly add a new customer, which makes Wave easier and more efficient to use. It also includes premium features, like creating recurring invoices and detailed tax reports, which aren’t present in ZipBooks unless you upgrade to ZipBooks Sophisticated.

Takeaway:

ZipBooks and Wave have different A/R strengths. Wave allows better customization of invoices, whereas ZipBooks allows you to track labor and expenses and add them to invoices easily, which is crucial for service-based businesses that bill by the hour.

Reporting: ZipBooks Wins

• Free plan: Wave wins
• Paid plan: ZipBooks wins

In the free plan, Wave comes out ahead, but in the paid option, the win goes to ZipBooks. Though free, Wave lets you generate eight reports, whereas ZipBooks can only make four reports. But with ZipBooks Sophisticated, ZipBooks undoubtedly excels in its reporting compared with Wave—with the ability to generate reports that we believe should be available in small business accounting software. A bonus is the variety of data-driven intelligence reports, which allow you insight into your company’s performance.

It will even assign your business a health score and score your completed invoices by quality. Wave offers only 12 reports, and it doesn’t allow for report customization. However, both ZipBooks and Wave allow you to export reports from the print screen.

Sales & Income Tax: Tie

• Free plan: Wave wins
• Paid plan: ZipBooks wins

Wave’s free plan is far better than ZipBooks’ free plan, which doesn’t even allow you to add sales tax to an invoice. ZipBooks Sophisticated leads by one-tenth of a percentage point against Wave Pro, but we see this as a tie. The small lead isn’t a major feature in our evaluation.

In ZipBooks, you can add sales tax items by jurisdiction and then add them to your invoices but you first need to encode sales tax rates in the settings. In Starter, you can include 1099 classification for independent contractors and charge sales taxes to invoices. Wave shares the same features, plus it lets you create sales tax adjustments on credit memos and view sales tax liabilities in detail.

Takeaway:

Wave offers more features for tracking sales tax than ZipBooks. Viewing tax liabilities in detail will be of great help in planning sales tax payments and filing. However, you can’t file sales tax returns and pay sales tax liability within ZipBooks or Wave.

Ease of Use: ZipBooks Wins

Rating Explanation:
5.0-4.6★: Excellent     2.5-1.6★: Fair
4.5-3.6★: Very Good  1.5-0.6★: Poor
3.5-2.6★: Good          0.5-0.0★: Very Poor

ZipBooks and Wave are designed for the accounting novice, and both make it easy to find what you’re looking for without the need to spend much time learning the software. For overall ease of use, however, ZipBooks takes the win.

ZipBooks Ease of Use

Upon sign-in, ZipBooks displays a financial performance dashboard that provides a summary of all recent expense and invoicing activity. An intuitive user interface means less time learning the application. Navigation is easy, with the vertical menu to the left of the main screen offering quick access to all system functions:

ZipBooks dashboard

1. Home: The navigation bar on the left side gives you access to Invoices, Transactions, Reports, Contacts, Tracking, and Payroll. You can also access these at the top of the page.
2. Financial performance: This report is shown in graph format and is a summary of your business’ revenue, expenses, and net income.
3. Finish setup: This is displayed to show your progress with tasks needed to set up your account, including adding an address and phone number, adding a logo, and connecting a bank.
4. Expenses: After you connect your bank account, your transactions will be downloaded and displayed here automatically.
5. Tracked time: This feature summarizes your unbilled time so that you can see the status of what is yet to be invoiced. There is also a timer at the top of the page, which you use and then import into ZipBooks.

Sending a Simple Invoice

Adding a line to a ZipBooks invoice

Because the Starter version doesn’t use items on its invoices, you type the description you want on each line of the invoice. For this reason, we included it as the best free software for simple invoices in our roundup of the best free accounting software. However, while it’s simple, it’s also inefficient because you’ll need to retype product and service descriptions in each invoice.

Wave Ease of Use

Wave also has a dashboard that displays current business performance along with a cash flow graph, a two-year net income summary, and a graph that illustrates expenses by category. You accept credit cards on invoices by going through the setup process on this page:

Wave dashboard

1. Left navigation bar: Use this section to navigate to various sections of the software, including Sales, Purchases, Accounting, Banking, Payroll, Reports, Wave Advisors, and Tax Filing.
2. Accept payments: This feature walks you through accepting credit card payments on your invoices and signs you up for Payments by Wave.
3. Cash flow: This report reflects the cash going in and out of your business.
4. Profit and loss: This report shows income and expenses only, including unpaid invoices and bills.
5. Payable and owing: This section summarizes both invoices payable to you and unpaid bills, broken down by aging periods.
6. Net Income: This is a two-year comparison that shows income, expense, and net income figures.
7. Expense breakdown: This graph illustrates your expenses by category so that you can view what percentage is spent in each.

Takeaway:

Both ZipBooks and Wave are easy to use and offer new users an accessible interface, but Wave goes one step further by guiding users through the entire setup process.

Assisted Bookkeeping: Wave Wins

ZipBooks doesn’t provide assistance with the preparation and filing of income tax returns, but it offers bookkeeping and tax support services for an additional monthly fee, providing you with a dedicated bookkeeper and online support. Prices range from $125 per month for Simple Bookkeeping to $145 per month for more advanced bookkeeping. Form 1099 reporting and preparation starts at $175 per month and includes all features of Simple Bookkeeping. The bookkeeping plans already include a ZipBooks plan.

Meanwhile, Wave Advisors assist with bookkeeping, accounting coaching, and taxes. You can hire Wave Advisors to handle bookkeeping tasks, such as categorizing bank transactions, performing bank reconciliations, and tax planning.

• Bookkeeping and payroll support: For $149 per month, Wave Advisors will categorize transactions, perform account reconciliations, and take care of your payroll.
• Accounting and payroll coaching: For a one-time fee of $379, Wave Advisors will help you set up your Wave account and teach you how to do the bookkeeping and payroll yourself.

Customer Support: Tie

Support is limited for both ZipBooks and Wave. ZipBooks offers a chatbot, live chat, and self-help information on its Help Center. Hence, we call this criterion a tie even if Wave scored higher by a little. It offers self-help information, and you can access live chat and email support when you purchase an add-on to the free plan or upgrade to the Pro tier.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Bottom Line

Both ZipBooks and Wave offer free plans for basic accounting needs, but ZipBooks has paid plans if you want more advanced features. ZipBooks can also track time and manage 1099 contractors, two features that aren’t available with Wave. Wave can handle multiple currencies, while ZipBooks cannot. While Wave has an app for invoicing customers and receiving payments, ZipBooks’ app is currently discontinued.

User review references:

^[1]ZipBooks | GetApp
^[2]ZipBooks | G2
^[3]Wave | Software Advice
^[4]Wave | G2