Wave Reviews

Pros
Wave has absolutely changed my business for the better. It used to take me about 2 hours a month to do my invoicing, which I hated doing, and so I avoided it. Now, I handle monthly invoicing in about 15 minutes. Plus, as new clients come in or one-off projects are completed, I can send the invoices quickly—like 5 minutes. So ease of use is absolutely the first thing I love about Wave. Second, as a small business owner, I am in charge of acquiring new clients, executing the work, invoicing for the work, and then acting as collections when clients are late in paying. With Wave, I check a simple box that sends reminders to the client when things are past due. What a relief! It's coming from "my accounting department" rather than me. Hallelujah! Third, the payment process is so easy for my clients! They can pay any way they want—check, credit card, bank, whatever. It's so easy for them, and I have had zero complaints. It's also fantastic to know when clients have (or haven't) viewed the invoice. And getting the emails from Wave announcing that I've been paid are the best emails of the day. The fact that all of this amazingness is free? That's just the icing on the cake. Thank you, Wave!

Cons
My only issue with Wave is probably a rare use-case. I manage invoicing for a client of mine. (Side note: Wave made it SO EASY for me to be an admin of her account but not the manager, and I can log into my account to access hers. It is AWESOME!) She sells programs, and her clients generally pay in one invoice. Occasionally, her clients need to pay in installments. It was not easy to set up a recurring invoice for only three months to send to the client, especially without a credit card on file. I had to create three different invoices, and label them as Installment #1, #2, etc. However, I recognize that this is probably a one-off user scenario that not many people would need. And I can't complain when the tool is free, and I found a workaround.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
It's a super powerful accounting system that helps me manage invoicing to clients, receipts for expenses and quotations for new projects. The mobile app is great for tracking invoices, sending reminders and adding payments.

Cons
The estimate system definitely needs some work. It feels like this aspect was built by a seperate team and the UI/UX is nowhere near as polished as the invoicing system is.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
It was wonderfully easy to use, the invoices looked professional and payment processing features were handy.

Cons
TLDR: Major syncing, reconciling and support issues Two of my accounts synced twice (so I had four accounts in Wave where there should have been two) and they were unable to fix this. Their suggested fixes did not work. They have chat and email support but no phone support and even though they logged in as an admin they were unable to fix this problem. A recent update to their system caused my entire past four years of records to be unreconciled, and the only fix was to go back to the beginning of time and compare each transaction ever made. They offered me a bookkeeper to do this for me for $269/month for a minimum of 12 months, despite my being very diligent about keeping my account up to date for the past four years. I have switched to another system now.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 3/10

Rating breakdown

Pros
That it is free and I am able to process all of my customer and vendor payments without having a monthly subscription fee.

Cons
That it can take sometimes 2 full business days to receive my payments into my bank account. I wish the deposit time was able to be in one day rather than two days.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Simple. Easy and efficient. I love being able to send invoices and collect money through links send in emails. Time saver. Also it integrates your banks with payment and keeps account of your money in bank. This real-time accounting feature did it for me.

Cons
I’ve never had any cons except one, I can’t send estimates or create them for that matter, on the mobile app! It would be perfect it it had that.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Its offer great accounting functionality, where I am also able to generate invoices and email them to clients. You can also configure so that recurring payments can be automatically sent on the set date. Logos and contact details are also included to give it a more professional look

Cons
It does not have inventory tracking which then makes it longer to compile and reconcile the details.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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

Cons
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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
I love Wave! It's so easy to use and to connect with your accounts to keep track of my business, and personal, accounting.

Cons
It took me a little while to understand how everything worked and how to connect the accounts, but once I got it set up it's been an amazing tool.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

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

Cons
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.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
On the positive side, this software's functionality is almost up to par with other options that cost a lot of money. Wave is free and for that price what they offer is unbeatable. It is a fully featured accouting software, as it is a web app, it means multiple people can use it simultaniously and it also works great for a virtual team. I like that it is made with non-accountants in mind. For example, when entering transactions there are "Accounts" - but these are only Accounts as a nun-accountant will understand: Cash, Bank, Owners Investment etc. - everything else is called "Categories". This makes it easier for someone not too versed in finances to understand - but behind the scenes Categories are Accounts, just like they always were (e.g. Office Supply Expense Account) - small and simple changes like this make it very easy to use even for a financial analphabet. Two mobile apps compliment the accounting software, one for writing invoices on the go, the other for scanning and (auto)recording expense receipts.

Cons
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 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. The next level is somoene who can enter all types of transactions (you can turn of access to bank entries and writing invoices) but it would be nice if there was one where I can let someone add receipts with the mobile app but not do anything else.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
Wave is free to use which makes it excellent for my small business. It has an app to facilitate easy upload of receipts for my expenses. Being cloud-based enables me to access my accounting from my clinic or my home office (or on the go) with ease in real-time. It syncs with my RBC account to import my transactions and is very user-friendly. Customer service is friendly and responsive.

Cons
My complaints about this software are very minor. There is an option to "save and send" invoices by email with a single mouse click, but to print the invoices takes three clicks. My other complaint is that there is no simple Customer Statement to print. The Customer Statement that is available shows every transaction posted, so for most of my clients there will be three entries for each visit to my clinic; one invoice date, one copay payment, and one insurance payment applied. I would prefer to be able to generate this statement showing a list which includes ONLY the invoice date and total amount charged. They are very minor complaints. I am quite pleased with this product.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Wave helps me do so much. I can issue invoices, track them (I.e. I can see when a client has viewed it!), and allow clients to make payments directly through the invoice. I can also customize my invoice, which is great. I could do all of this from day 1. I'm a solopreneur and launched my business this summer. I was able to issue professional invoices from day 1 and track my expenses using their receipts app. The other thing I love about Wave is that they are very interested in feedback from their customers. I've had a few interactions with them and it's always been really pleasant. It's also free which helps me out a lot. I do use the credit card payments, which has a fee like any other service would.

Cons
Their mobile app could use some work, and I've given them this feedback. The receipts app is great to take pictures really quickly, but I generally have to use the browser to do anything else.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
I use Wave to keep track of my personal finances, from income to spending. In that lens, Wave performs quite well, allowing you to tag transactions that are automatically imported from your bank. It also lets you generate some simple reports such as your income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow. The interface is simple to use and understand, and I was able to pick it up (coming from an accounting background) in under a few minutes, without having gone through a walkthrough. The included ability to reconcile statements is also quite handy and allows me to verify that all transactions are posted appropriately. The inclusion of receipt tracking and tagging is also quite handy! The best part about Wave is the price! If you don’t need features such as invoicing and payroll (some SMB’s may find these handy. From a personal perspective, I did not), the accounting software is completely free.

Cons
Wave still appears to be in its infancy, although the product has been there for a while. The user interface will frequently be updated (the reconciliation flow changed 3 times since I signed up about 6 months ago), and new features will constantly be added without any notification, often shifting often things around from where you expect them to be. The reports from Wave are also very limited, so don’t expect any customizable reports as of 08/2019. You get about 12 reports total, some or all of which may not be very relevant to you, depending on your end goal. These reports are completely canned, system generated, and you do not have the ability to create new reports. This may change in the future, but as it stands, this is the current state of affairs. The receipt tracking feature is definitely handy to have. While Wave will OCR your receipts and tag them to a category, it will actually post an entire transaction to the ledger when you save it down. For those of us with a bank account and credit card linked to auto import transactions, you’ll get a duplicate: one from the CC, and one from the receipt. It would be nice if Wave included some intelligence to automatically match the receipt and transaction together, but for now, you need to manually merge each. Finally, as a small point, Wave does not obtain any service assurance through SOC1 or SOC2 reports, an issue that most people wouldn’t ever care about.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
I love the simplicity. We are just a small business, so the primary purpose of using this app is to categorize all my expenses, so once tax time rolls around, I just have to send the tax lady a breakdown of my income and expenses. Once a week or so, I'll log in to check all the transactions it imported from my bank account. It auto categorizes most of them which is awesome, I just have to click the check mark button to verify it was categorized correctly. Then once tax season rolls around, I just run the income statement report and send it to the tax office. I even have created a review account for the tax lady to be able to log in and see my business finances. We are just a simple business so we probably don't use some of the more advanced features, but it does what I want and best of all, it's F-R-E-E. I do also like the payroll and invoicing options if we need that in the future, although that is unlikely for our business.

Cons
For some reason, they disabled the ability for deposits to be auto categorized. This is my most common type of bank transactions, since all credit card payments are deposited into my account a few days after they process, so I have tons of transactions I have to go manually mark as the 'Sales' category. I did talk to customer support over chat about this though, and the lady agreed this would be extremely useful so they are looking into this.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Wave is a great piece of accounting software that rivals Quickbooks and Xero. The biggest winner, which it obvious to anyone who has researched Wave as an accounting platform for their small business: it’s FREE! Both Quickbooks and Xero have fairly low-cost pricing models for small businesses that range all the way to fairly high-cost for larger businesses. Wave, on the other hand, is specifically tailored to the small business, and offers only features popular with those businesses. But, because of this, their base accounting software is completely free. Their only products you would be billed for would be payroll or credit card processing, both of which are priced competitively to Quickbooks/Intuit’s and Xero’s offerings as well. Wave also offers a lot of the same features, including automatic bank and credit card feeds, customized charts of accounts, multiple businesses on one account, smart expense categorization (software learns over time), and more.

Cons
Wave does have its limitations and is more basic than Quickbooks or Xero, especially to us accountants who can see the glaring differences. However, even as an accountant and bookkeeper, I recommend Wave to a lot of my smaller clients whose biggest consideration is cost, simply because you can’t beat free. Plus, a lot of the additional features that offerings like Quickbooks or Xero feature, smaller businesses will not always utilize anyway, so Wave fits them perfectly. All-in-all, there are no large drawbacks.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
The software is FREE for everything other than PAYROLL and PAYMENT PROCESSING. If you don't use those components, there is absolutely no charge. For the most part, it is user-friendly and straightforward, and the quality of its printed invoices, customer statements and reports is top-notch. I really appreciate the ability to create recurring invoices (subscription billing) and view monthly income/expense bar charts for a 1- or 2-year period.

Cons
This is bookkeeping software that stresses simple data entry. However, it doesn't have features such as audit trails for transaction entries. With this program, it is possible to generate transactions, generate reports, and then reverse the transactions without any way of knowing that changes were made. Wave attempts to categorize your income and expenditures, but doesn't currently have the ability to remember your categorizations. But the thing I like least about this software is a BUG that causes the program to download bank transactions and incorrectly categorize them as duplicates of previously downloaded transactions if the transaction amounts match. This bug makes it difficult to find transactions when you are attempting to reconcile your transactions.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Wave offers a lot of the basic accounting functions needed for small business users, and the best part is that it's FREE TO USE! Woo hoo! I used QuickBooks in my previous career, and liked the detail it provided, but once I started my own small e-commerce business, I didn't want to spend hundreds of dollars on software, or get locked into a recurring monthly subscription. I was thrilled to find Wave and amazed that it was FREE!

Cons
I wish there was a keyword search function in the Transactions section. Sometimes I need to look for a specific transaction but don't remember the exact date it occurred, so have to scroll through several pages to find what I'm seeking. A workaround is to export an Income Statement, then search or sort in Excel, but obviously that takes several extra steps and time. But since it's not costing me anything, this is a minor inconvenience.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Wave is free, and packed with features one would typically pay for in other premium products. Wave is the perfect accounting solution for small businesses. For starters, it offers all the essential features ANY business needs... plus more. Manage estimates, invoices, and statements with ease. It even supports recurring invoicing, manage payments, and build a massive library of products and services to choose from for your estimates and invoices. Wave even manages receipts, bills and vendors to track expenses. Like more control than just simple single entries? Wave supports traditional double-entry accounting as well, for increase control of your business accounting needs. Need to accept credit card payments? Wave has a built-in merchant account feature that let's you collect payments online through your invoices. Make email invoices, or attach them as PDF files. And when you get paid, Wave notifies you. Funds are transferred to your connected business account in a couple of days. Reporting? Wave has you covered. All essential reports are available at your fingertips: financial statements, taxes, customers, vendors, and other general reports. And if your business has employees, Wave can handle your payroll. But this feature is a premium... everything else is part of your free account.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
This makes my accounting SO EASY! Not only am able to easily keep track of my expenses and costs associated with my business, but I'm able to create, issue, and track invoices. AND, to top it off, the invoices are so nice looking (which, as a designer, is a big deal to me). I can not only issue invoices, but track whether they have been opened, viewed, and/or paid. And when it comes to figuring out my taxes, the system makes it so simple to get whatever information I need. Finally, while I don't use it yet, I will be enabling online payments this upcoming year so my customers can pay their invoices online. Based on my experience thus far, I have NO doubt it will be great!

Cons
This is a difficult one as I really don't have a dislike.... If I really think about it, I guess I wish I could have different addresses (for me) on difference invoices based on the customer. I have two locations so it would be nice to be able to just issue invoices with different business addresses based on the customer.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
As many other reviews have stated, there is no subscription cost for Wave, which is great. There have been a number of features added to Wave since I started to use it, such as recurring invoicing/credit card processing and direct bank payments. Wave's support is helpful, money is transferred quickly, and my invoices look great. I am providing a more detailed review than I did the first time, but I have "sung the praises" of Wave a few times. (Including on Twitter, and they promptly thanked me for it - they listen, which is great). Wave is Canadian, and they are based in Toronto, but that is only one reason I chose to work with their service. I have a couple of complaints about their service, but nothing serious enough which would cause me to switch services. The flexibility of PDF/web-based invoices is great, retains client details, and it just gets the job done for me as a freelancer.

Cons
On a few occasions, my invoices got picked up by my clients' spam filters, so I tend to use the PDF invoice option. Not a big issue, I've followed up on it. Also if I take payment through PayPal, I can get paid in US funds, but I have to invoice in Canadian funds only through Wave because my bank is in Canada (even if I have a US funds account). Oh well, again, no big deal. Apparently, there is auto-reconcile of transactions through AI functionality in Wave's future, which will address another pet peeve I have, but again no big deal.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
This is great for the very new or very small business. It's easy to use and has all of the basic features that you will need for an unbeatable price. It's very easy to use and the documentation and support have been very helpful. There is no phone option but live chat is available and I have never had to wait more than a day for an e-mail response. It is truly free to use for accounting. You have the options of accepting credit card and bank payments for a very competitive rate. The only other cost is for payroll if you were to use that feature. The software is in active development and since I started using it they have added great features such as Invoicing app, recurring payments, and bank payments and it keeps getting better.

Cons
Limited reporting, you get all of the basics that you will need to measure your financial health, receivables, etc but there are no custom reports. While you can very easily reconcile your bank account, you can't print a reconciliation report. There is no class/job tracking feature and while it looks like many users have requested it, it doesn't look like the developers are planning on implementing it anytime soon. So if your business needs this feature, this is not the right option for you.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
Wave allows me to keep track of finances for multiple enterprises - self-employment business, a non-profit, and personal finances. Each account was set up using the Wave wizard and very few changes have been made to the overall function beyond that. The non-profit I manage has a series of account codes that were easily added and applied to transactions. I use multiple income streams for my business and they are all imported automatically. Wave charges for things like payroll administration, credit card processing and bank transfers - all at industry standard rates - and that's how they keep the base platform free. The mobile expense app helps me keep track of receipts and does a really excellent job of deciphering receipts, even in multiple languages and currencies! The mobile invoice app is great for sending quick invoices or following up with clients on payment. Also allows viewing and reporting for authorized agents who can't change any data - a needed feature for the separation of financial powers required with most non-profit setups. My accountant can take a peek too.

Cons
One feature that is present in most accounting systems is the ability to categorize an expense as a reimbursed expense and then assign it to an invoice - at cost or with a markup. With Wave, I needed to set up a separate "reimbursed expenses" account and then - via double entry - add the expense onto invoices with a "reimbursed expense" account code. If entered at cost, the balances zero out in the reporting. If there is a markup, the income category is "reimbursed expense", which isn't helpful for year-end accounting.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 9/10

Pros
We found Wave to be easy to learn and set up and it allowed us to connect to both bank and credit card accounts. Invoicing is easy and flexible allowing us to download a pdf and attach to an email for a client or to send directly from Wave. Our clients can print the invoice and mail us a check or pay online with a credit or debit card through Wave. Wave’s fees are competitive for processing the funds. The funds are directly deposited into our connected bank account, usually within two business days. The invoicing features were our biggest need and the program allows us to send the invoice, send reminders, mark paid and send receipts. Setting up the chart of accounts was probably the most challenging, but there is a default chart which can be edited or added to and we easily found tutorials online. Their customer service was quite responsive to our questions. The reports function gave us what we needed for monthly, quarterly and year-end reporting. All in all, Wave was a great solution for our invoicing and accounting needs.

Cons
We needed some specific tax calculations but found there was no way to add a specific formula into the tax account. This requires manual entries for us. Because the program is a streamlined accounting version, which is what we really like, it does have some limitations.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
Cloud

Cons
Support

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10