Wave Accounting Review 2023: Features, Pricing & More

You can enjoy features such as unlimited income and expenses tracking, digital receipt upload and transaction management, and even access its invoice mobile app at no cost. Strong invoicing feature competes with that of paid products; app lets users send invoices on the go; offers significantly is wave accounting secure fewer reports than competitors; no inventory tracking. As mentioned earlier, Wave accounting features are free, but you’ll pay a fee if you use Wave Payments or Wave Payroll. Wave Payments lets your customers make a payment directly from their invoice, and accepts all major credit cards.

Quickbooks Optimize your accounting and invoicing management with ease. It’s difficult to create and send estimates from the mobile app. Overall, Wave gives you a robust set of simple tools to help you manage your finances, even if you’re not an accountant.

Customer sentiment

Whenever you enter a transaction with a sales tax, it records the amount automatically in the sales tax liability account. The banking feature lets you manage all of your connected accounts, add a new account, or verify your identity to increase payment time, which is done using Wave Payments. Wave has also added an insurance option, which allows you to obtain a quote for business insurance through Next Insurance.

Some very small businesses with employees might find it suitable, too. It’s an Editors’ Choice winner along with Patriot Software Accounting, which offers better payroll coverage and better mobile apps, albeit for a fee. It’s easy to sign up for Wave Accounting with an email address and password or with an existing Google account. After creating a Wave account, users can connect unlimited bank and credit card accounts within seconds. Once accounts are connected, all bank and credit card transactions automatically appear in a business’s bookkeeping in the app. Business owners can also choose to upload bank statements and enter manual transactions.

Working With Contact Records and Product Records

FreshBooks is a cloud based software, which means you can use it from anywhere. You can download iOS and Android apps that let you painlessly invoice your clients and track expenses wherever and whenever you need to. See how FreshBooks makes bookkeeping easy to use for business owners—even if you have no prior experience with accounting software. S billing, payment acceptance, and invoicing features all work together to ensure you get paid on time. In other words, Wave has many of the invoicing perks you get with invoice-heavy software like FreshBooks, but at no cost.

However, there are a few features the software is still lacking. There’s no project management and limited time tracking, which rules the software out for a lot of businesses. Hopefully, with Wave’s track record for updates, it will add these features soon and improve customer service response times.

Award-Winning Customer Support

Patriot Software Accounting is better than Wave at tucking away its features, but every screen in Wave still looks fine and is easy to understand. Wave adheres to double-entry accounting standards, but it does the grunt work in the background. Despite its advanced capabilities, it’s easy for non-accountants to learn how to use it and maintain their financial books. You can also set up Wave by visiting the website’s toolbar and Settings menu, but you’re less likely to miss something important if you use the dedicated setup feature.

Wave Payroll is available for a $40 per-month base fee, plus $6 per month for each employee or contractor if you are in one of the 14 states supported by automatic tax payments and filing . Wave’s free status is a strong selling point for freelancers and other very small businesses, for whom every dollar matters. Wave does not store users’ credit card numbers or information. This information is securely transmitted from the browser or app to Wave’s payment processor, and Wave receives only a secure token during transmission. The secure token code authorizes Wave to securely complete the transaction without storing any sensitive bank or credit card data. It’s difficult to beat free accounting software, mainly if you’re operating a small business on a shoestring budget.

It’s also great for Etsy shop owners and other eCommerce businesses using Wix, Squarespace, or WordPress. If Wave sounds like it might be a good fit for your business, give it a try! All the online accounting services I’ve tested offer a dashboard that displays similar types of information, but Wave’s is one of the best I’ve seen. The Cash Flow report appears at the top of the screen in graph form, followed by Profit & Loss. Below that is a list of outstanding invoices and bills—mini aging reports.

Xero has more advanced features, hundreds of integrations, and also supports unlimited users. However, Xero doesn’t have a free plan, with monthly subscriptions starting at $12. With limitations on Xero’s lowest-tier plans, users will have to upgrade to a more expensive option to take advantage of everything the software has to offer.

Wave At A Glance

Wave, in financial terms, refers to a short-term movement against a common trend. Credit card processing is 2.9% plus 60 cents per Visa, Mastercard and Discover card transaction, or 3.4% plus 60 cents per American Express transaction. ACH processing fees are 1% per transaction with a $1 minimum fee. GOBankingRates Best Banks 2023 scores and rankings are objectively determined by our research/editorial team. Our scoring formula weighs several factors that differ from category to category depending on what consumers want from varying products and banks. Shop Pay is an innovative payment solution developed by Shopify.

• Some very small businesses with employees might find it suitable, too.
• Not even mentioning that many business owners travel and need access from abroad, and there are plenty of foreigners who own businesses in the US.
• FreshBookscan be a good choice for micro businesses and solopreneurs.
• Each staff reviewer at Merchant Maverick is a subject matter expert with experience researching, testing, and evaluating small business software and services.