Wave Accounting vs Square Point of Sale Comparison

Payroll

Lacks Square integration

Starts as a free plan Takes Paypal, Stripe and Square

Support is RUDE Even if you invoice using paypal, stripe or square, they will NOT process the payment with them! They force you to use bank transfer, even when you disconnect the account. That's not really secure, smart or consumer friendly.

It is so easy to use, and customized specifically for small business owners. I absolutely LOVE the invoice feature - it's the primary feature that I use - and it just works so well. My completed payments rate is 100% and I believe is at least in part due to how easy the process is to view/pay invoices.

Sometimes I wish the payment speed was faster after a client makes a payment, but then they introduced instant deposits and I'm happy to pay the small fee to get my money faster!

I love the receipts feature, where you can take a photo of a receipt (or upload a screenshot of an invoice, such as you have with Amazon orders) and upload. The app reads the receipt for the business name, date, and total. You can then choose a category that the receipt goes in (i.e. Purchase- goods and materials) and a source (i.e. Cash on hand).

It wasn't immediately obvious to me how to enter income. It would track it automatically if I were using Wave for online invoicing and payments, but I already have an online store with payments through Square, so I had to figure out how to manually enter income from my Square sales if I wanted to get an overall picture of profit and loss. I would LOVE if Wave had a way to import data from Square, Shopify, and other sales apps, which typically have an export (CSV or Excel) feature for reports.

I like that it is easy to use for beginners and for a small business just trying to keep track for tax purposes.

I would like it to be more easy and straightforward to integrate different accounts with it. Like square.

Wave has an incredible number of options for your sales. I like that you can use it as regular invoicing software (generating a good-looking PDF), you can allow for online payments (which transfer quickly to your bank account,) and I particular like the Checkouts option - it allows you to post a link and let people buy/pay for your good or service without invoicing them, which is super handy.

Sometimes I'm moving too quickly and forget that I need to "create" a new item or customer and it kicks me back to a blank field.

Free and not much else.

Many basic things like logging mileage or making bulk changes to income classifications are missing.

I love that the base software is fully functional and yet free, since Wave makes money from credit card processing and not outsourcing to a third party like Square or Stripe.

Nothing so far. All of the pieces of the application work exactly as we expected. We are not disappointed at all.

The software itself is great for a free program, it has a very clean user interface. Simple to set up and use

They seriously need to work on the payment processing. I ended up refunding a client only to reprocess through Square. I would rely on running my payroll with this company

The software is easy to use and has a good user interface.

Their customer support is extremely horrible. They take days to respond and do not answer your questions. They refunded a sale on my account after I had already shipped the product. They did this without checking with me first. When I emailed them asking what happened, they played games with the answers. They refused to be direct and say too bad your loss. Instead, they were giving me the runaround for about 10 days until I realized they couldn't care less and I was left without the money for the sale. "essentially Stealing money from my account". I could not, in all honesty, recommend this software based on that one experience combined with their customer service experience, and the theft of that sale. This is only a stepping stone or backup until something better comes around.

Tout est génial vraiment j'adore bravo. Fantastique.

Aucun point faible. Pourtant j'ai cherché, mais pas trouvé. Bravo.

Wave Accounting is a wonderful resource for small businesses. It’s a free resource that makes tracking your spending incredibly easy.

There are more features/easier functionality for a paid subscription, but you don’t necessarily need it.

I love the ease and simplicity of Wave Accounting. It's direct and to the point with great functionality. You have a lot of control over-invoicing, recurring billing, creating customers, applying expenses to projects, etc.

The reporting is ok, a lot of it's failings are in how I'm using it vs the feature not being available.

I love how easy it is to create and send invoices, and track income for my business.

I wish it was easier to enter a payment received, not necessarily through an invoice. If I received a payment, even if the client doesn't require an invoice, I have to go through the whole process of creating an invoice, instead of just entering the payment.

It has a clean interface that is easy to use. Connnectinf bank accounts was simple and sending invoices were a no brainer. The Wave Receipt app is great for uploading images on the go for no extra charge.

When I used it it did not integrate to Woocommerce so I had to manually add all sales and inventory. This became time consuming as the business grew. Moreover, there wasn't a way to add Stripe, Square, or Amazon Payments.

The freemium entry point is ideal especially considering this is a cloud product, there is no need to management an IT infrastructure.

Lack of features, cost assemblies, inventory management & items system.

Quite frankly, the price point (free) can't be beat. Unfortunately, it can be a bit unwieldy when using Wave for large transaction volumes.

Organizing transactions can be a real bear. It's definitely not something I enjoy doing. Perhaps for small-scale gig workers this is a better solution.

Its Free - there really is no great competition for them at this price point. It does cloud accounting very well for a free platform.

The user interface at times is not quite as intuitive as the paid competition, but can't really complain when its free.

Super easy to create professional invoices and track payment history. I'm able to manage my complete business finances and get prompt financial updates at any point!

Took some tinkering to be able to bill reimbursable expenses on invoices and have it not count as income.

Wave Accounting's ease of use was the best thing about it. I needed something quick and with a small learning curve, it was the right choice. The looks and professionalism of the templates helped me switch from Invoiceable to Wave accounting. And despite all the other apps on the market, this cloud-based software was the best I found.

I didn't like that I couldn't link my bank account anymore after recent updates. There was a huge shift from the international market to just the US. It doesn't have a lot of customization for the invoices or estimates. You have to make do with what you have.

Very simple and quick to set up and start using. Does everything we needed it to do without all the mess of larger systems. Non-accounting people will find this service amazing.

Not much constructive criticism to share, maybe that some of the notification services could be set 'one-time' rather than having to set for each transaction, but that is a small point, overall this service is great!

Wave is AMAZING! When I first started our business I looked high and low for a simple to use, elegantly designed, and inexpensive option for invoicing and Wave was the only one I found that hit all the marks. They have a sleek, beautiful design that is easy to use even for beginners and the software works extremely well for small-medium size businesses. They also offer seamless online payments, reminders, & payroll if needed. Overall we have been very happy with the program.

Not as many accountants are comfortable using anything other than quickbooks at this point but I've found the pro's far outweigh this con.

I like how easy Wave does everything. Not clunky, but money was put in this software especially all it can do. I like the lay-out of it, it's hard to get lost. It is more of a vertical layout if anything.

Nothing I can say right now. As my business grows I will point out the flaws if I see anything that sticks out.

Price is good. Fairly simple to use. Easy to set up.

Beware. They reversed a sale that was made 10 months earlier even though the contract clearly showed the customer received MORE than they paid for. The customer even signed a termination agreement stating very clearly that there was no further obligation upon EITHER party. The facts were clearly ignored or not accurately argued by Wave as they “represented” our interests to Visa. Wave’s low priced service just cost me thousands of dollars. Immediately going back to QuickBooks.

The free version for a single user is nearly unheard of these days. Additionally, there are a TON of features that are available at the free price point. Certainly worth paying for the customization or additional users, though. It's in the cloud and you can access it anywhere. There's even an app for when you're on the go.

Nothing that I can say. I use limited accounting functionality. I only use invoicing and payment recording. Everything just works.

I am a freelance business, so whenever clients want to pay with credit card, I have Square as one my options. I also use an invoicing software that takes credit cards as well as an online website that run through a different system. Square was the first system I used when I first started out and it's a solid system, but I've found better alternatives throughout the years though I still use it occasionally....

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No ability to create invoices for services. I have the old Square attachment for my phone and it doesn't take the new chip cards. I have to purchase the new one in order to process those cards and that's kind of a nuisance.

Square POS is a very intuitive and simple system that makes it easy to add and import items to a sale system.

Square makes you pay for a lot of "add-on" features that seem like they should be included and the interest rate is a bit high.

This software has allowed us to easily and affordably conduct mobile fundraisers and retail sales. The cloud based software allows for a remote administrator to set up the software for use by multiple employees in multiple locations to conduct sales and fundraising. This software has saved our non-profit thousands of dollars in labor costs and travel expenses.

The Square Software can be difficult to merge with an established Quickbooks stand alone accounting system.

Love how easy it is to install and use. Portable and user friendly!

I wish I could figure out if I was able to link transactions to other accounting software.

Square Point of Sale is very easy to use, cost effective, and a good option to using an accounting software program.

It's not an all in one solution like an accounting program, but a great POINT OF SALE option.

Square has great brand recognition which is important to customers when obataining credit card payments. The ability to transfer money to your bank account the same day for a low fee is quite convenient. I appreciate the sales graphs and ease of use when at shows, we can quickly check it customers and send reciepts. It's great that inventory can also be updated to reflect recent sales through the Woocommerce integration feature.

If there was a program to upload Square transactions to Xero Accounting that would make my life easier.

The easy with which this app allows any of our techs to finalize the service call visit charges and process the payment before leaving the client's place.

Reporting options is only available to accounting role. Techs set up for only processing the payment don't get access.