Wave vs Payroll Mate

QuickBooks Enterprise

QuickBooks Online

ADP Workforce Now

FreshBooks

Oyster

Cegid HR

Compare Wave and Payroll Mate based on features, pricing, verified reviews, integrations & more on GetApp. Find out which software is best for your business in 2026.

QuickBooks Online is an all-in-one online business software designed to help manage business finances. The platform is built to scale businesses, unlocking insights and providing the functionality of a larger team, all on one integrated platform.

PayPal

PayPal provides an end-to-end suite of tools that can integrate with a business's existing systems and service providers. Its network of shoppers and businesses provides AI-driven data insights to help businesses reach new customers and drive results.

Abby

Abby helps businesses ensure that customer documents are legal and comply with the rules. Customers can pay online and receive reminders for late payments.


With Wave's comprehensive, free and unlimited invoicing tools, you can send invoices, keep track of who owes what, send reminders and more.

Access Controls/Permissions

Accounting

Accounting Integration

Accounts Payable

Accounts Receivable

ACH Payment Processing

Activity Dashboard

Activity Tracking

Alerts/Notifications

Automatic Billing

Bank Reconciliation

Billing & Invoicing

Budgeting/Forecasting

Cash Flow Management

Cash Management

Chart of Accounts

Collaboration Tools

Commission Management

CPA Firms

Credit Card Processing

Currency Conversion

Customer Statements

Customizable Branding

Customizable Templates

Dashboard

Data Import/Export

Data Security

Direct Deposit

Electronic Payments

Email Reminders

Encryption

Estimating

Expense Tracking

Financial Analysis

Financial Management

Financial Reporting

Fixed Asset Management

For Legal Professionals

For Medical Purposes

For Real Estate

For Religious Organizations

For Small Businesses

Fund Accounting

General Ledger

Income & Balance Sheet

Inventory Management

Invoice Creation

Invoice History

Invoice Management

Invoice Processing

Mobile App

Multi-Currency

Online Invoicing

Partial Payments

Payment Reconciliation

Payment Tracking

Payroll Management

Payroll Reporting

PCI Compliance

Profit/Loss Statement

Project Accounting

Projections

Purchase Order Management

Real-Time Notifications

Real-Time Updates

Receipt Management

Receivables Ledger

Recurring Invoicing

Recurring/Subscription Billing

Reminders

Remote Access/Control

Reporting/Analytics

Reporting & Statistics

Revenue Recognition

Sales Tax Management

Spend Management

SSL Security

Status Tracking

Tax Compliance

Tax Filing

Tax Management

Third-Party Integrations

Time & Expense Tracking

Transaction History

Transaction Management

Reviews for Wave come from a wide variety of industries, including marketing and advertising (11% of reviewers), accounting (6%), and information technology and services (5%). The most frequent use case for Wave cited by reviewers is billing and invoicing (62% of reviewers).

Users and use cases

Most reviewers indicate Wave delivers strong value for money, as they benefit from robust free features and affordable pricing. Some users report drawbacks, including missing advanced features, rising costs for premium services, and limited support on the free plan.

Value for money

The Wave integration most frequently cited by reviewers is PayPal, a payment processing product rated 4.1 out of 5 for its integration with Wave.

Integrations

Wave is a billing and invoicing solution offering key features such as invoice creation, invoice history, online invoicing, expense tracking, and bank reconciliation, among others.

Wave

Web-based

iPhone

Android

Starter

Partner

The starter edition is free which is awesome, you are able to process payroll, invoice clients and perform monthly accounting at no cost.  

Sr. Accountant

It is a pretty basic tool and only offers simple things like tracking cash, expenses, submitting invoices and generating simple reports.

Founder and CEO

The main thing I don't like about Wave is that they don't use standardized "GAAP terminology" for some of their financial management and reporting features. While this may make it more accessible to a certain user base, it actually makes it a bit confusing for me (who has a bit of formal CPA / accounting training).

Managing Principal

The Wave bookkeeping method was not intuitive - listing out every possible account you can possibly add as well as CASH ON HAND - an account that is a default and has no real application.

President

This breaks a core bookkeeping workflow: providing detailed expense records to a CPA for tax filing.

IT Consultant

Like most multi-feature accounting solutions, it can be a bit much to navigate through all of the areas, when you are only interested in one aspect of the site.

Executive Director

We can't even look at the payroll summary to see what we owe employees so we can write them a check. And there's no way to get in touch with customer support and now we're scrambling to figure out another payroll service to figure this out.

Property Management, Development and Investment

Love the UI and wanted it to be a viable alternative to the other players in the bookkeeping/accounting market but it fell far short and failed in it’s current itteration.

Coach and Consultant

I'm not clear on whether it's my bank or Wave that's the issue, but a couple of times, the integration stopped working then started working again, and this resulted in some duplicate entries that had to be cleared out.

Co-Owner

I have been using Wave for our small business bookkeeping for the past five or six years and love the ability to connect my bank accounts and credit cards and run weekly, monthly, and yearly reports.

For a small business needing invoice generation and payment tracking, Wave works really well.

For small business owners, freelancers, or entrepreneurs, this means you can manage your accounting, invoicing, and expense tracking without a subscription fee.

The only export remaining is a summarized P&L, which is not a substitute for transaction detail in many cases.

Administrative Consultant

Even though the version I had was free, I didn’t like that I couldn’t take off their logo on my invoices without paying for a higher tier plan.

Wave removed transaction level CSV export from free accounts and did not disclose the change.

Logistic manager

I used it for more than 5 years and it help me a lot for my daily tasks as invoice customers , purchase in and accounting  accounting tax statement

Graphic Designer

Even if you don’t have an accounting background, it’s relatively easy to connect bank accounts, categorize expenses, and generate reports.

Owner

For us, we had issues with how Wave was filing our taxes, and now Wave is adding non-removeable journal entries that are corrupting our income statement and balance sheet.

Owner Operator

I switched to Jobber and it handles my appointments as well as my invoices.

I left Wave because of the payroll feature, and I maintain it simply for invoice generation.

The lack of communication, inability to even contact anyone except an AI chat bot, and lack or response to tickets is asinine.  

Principal Recruiter

Love the fact that you can do payroll, invoicing, payment by credit card and taxes all in 1 solution for small business

Owner - Manager

For a small business having a payroll program that's affordable and manageable while they take care of remittances and off boarding.

I bookkeep for two small businesses and the fact that is free is my favorite feature.

Everything is bogged down and takes even longer to load. When I logged in to run our payroll, I was prompted to update tax info for all our employees.

Massage Therapist

The auto upload of transactions by connecting a bank account did not work for me, so I had to manually upload statements which was time consuming.

Dentist Owner

However since 2025, PDF version of reports were disabled, employees' pay dropped without any indication why, tax liability didn't  pay.

Engineer

It makes professional invoicing and bookkeeping stress-free.

Small Business Cash Flow Strategist

It's a great accounting system for those on a low cost budget who don't have many needs for customization or high level tracking.

One of the biggest advantages of Wave is that the core accounting features are free.

co-founder

Wave messed up my June 1–15 payroll, failing to issue direct deposits to my employees — but they did pull the taxes.

Finance Officer

With Wave, I am able to automate complex accounting tasks such as billing and invoicing.

I use it for pretty basic invoices since I have a small business and its just what I need.

I realize every business needs to make money - the latest update which now makes you download the invoice to send as opposed to being able to send from within Wave is nothing more than a small extra step.

Account Executive

With Wave accounting is made easier because it keeps all the history concerning all transactions and all activities done, this reduces on manual error.

Author

As a very small start-up business, I liked being able to have a straightforward software that handled all of my financial needs in one place.

Accounting clerk

The design and graphics are very attractive which provides polished outputs be it invoicing or reporting.

By the time the system finally worked again, they charged me for July — and said I couldn’t cancel because the charge had already gone through, even though support had been nonexistent the entire week before.

Expense tracking was unnecessarily complex.

owner

I can design and customize my invoices which helps my business stand out from the rest.

owner and principal linguist

It even lets me do foreign currency invoices, something that I don't find in other free accounting systems.

Business Development Manager

Some advanced reporting tools are missing such as time and project-level accounting.

Software Engineer

The accounting features cover essential needs like invoicing and expense tracking.

Site Director

They keep track of invoices due dates and send reminders when payments are due.

It's not very customizable. If filing 1099s, it only will do specific States.

Financial tracking for profit and loss reports is extremely helpful as well.

Association Manager

Because of the low cost and simplicity, I feel it lacks certain features that would be helpful for business owners at any level.

It has many features that I don't take advantage of, but likely would if I had a larger business.

What I liked the most about Wave is that it offers a comprehensive set of accounting tools at an affordable price.

Marketing director

I wanted something I could use easily, have a record for tax time, and something that was customizable without being charged an arm and a leg with fees.

Invoicing

Bookkeeping

Payroll

Small Business Use

Reviewers indicate Wave's expense tracking is helpful for organizing receipts, categorizing expenses, and syncing with bank accounts. Users report they can attach receipts, assign categories, and monitor spending for tax and budgeting purposes. They find the process easy and accessible on the go, though some mention issues with bank integrations and missing capabilities like auto-importing receipts. Users appreciate the ability to generate expense reports and link expenses to clients. Of the 50 Wave users who gave detailed accounts of their use of Expense Tracking, 86% rated this feature as important or highly important.

Wave vs Payroll Mate Comparison (2026)

Wave

Payroll Mate

Overview

Video & Screenshots

Pricing

User reviews

Key features

Integrations

Alternatives