Wave Accounting Reviews

Its free for small businesses that just need a good business accounting software! You can take ACH and CC payments if you want and turn them off on invoices you don't want it on. The rates are reasonable enough for using these services. The reports are easy enough for doing taxes. It's awesome and cheap for those that are one man shows or freelancers.

The thing that is the most annoying is when you want to do a recurring billing. It doesn't use something like Maintenance contract #1 then go to #2 or something like that it makes recurring billing invoice names that were the most recent of any invoices. Maybe I am not using it correctly, but each time I have to go and change invoice names then manually send it to the client.

I have been using Wave since around 2015 and my books were a mess when I first began because I was doing them (not my strength) and once I heard about Wave's bookkeeping services, I couldn't believe how affordable they were. It's super easy to set up and use, run reports and know about your financials. I tried switching to QB for about 1 month and hated it, so I switched back. Lesson learned and I'm sticking around!

One thing I had to get used to was because I had my bank account connected and until the month is reconciled, when a invoice is paid I mark it paid and then the 'payment' comes in again from banking. It was easy to catch and now my Wave bookkeeper keeps all that reconciled. Thank you!

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

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.

I like how easy it was to set-up--that process was straightforward and the interface initially was easy to understand. Unfortunately as we needed to do more after adding a full-time employee, it proved impossible to work with or use.

For payroll you have no options, and even when they recognize this, they don't provide a solution. A good example--we had an employee who had maxed out her vacation hours, but we agreed to let her take a few unpaid vacation days. There was no way for us to do this within Wave (you get paid vacation time or nothing). I chatted and even emailed with various representatives--all of which were super unhelpful, and we ended up wasting a lot of time before just being told this isn't an option. That's another huge con--there is virtually no support. The chat bot is not only unhelpful, but real agents are usually unavailable or there's a 20+ minute wait. The system is also not improving like I'd expect. I was notified today that my card declined for some reason so I followed the instructions that Wave emailed me to try to fix it, and it's like someone wrote them without looking at Wave's website because none of the instructions match. Not only is there not a change payment button but there's a Q/A at the end of the page where a user specifically asked this question, and there's no answer! I kick myself for picking this software, and we're in the process of moving to Gusto right now.

The best thing about WAVE is its ease of use. It was so easy to learn to use this. Additionally the invoices are really customizable. There is a huge amount you can do with just the free version but if you upgrade to the paid version you can access a lot more of the accounting features and payment features.

I like that for security reasons the software logs you out at the end of the day. The invoices look very professional and are downloadable and can be sent with a pdf attachment. When a partial payment is made you can send a receipt reflective of how much was paid, how, when and with how much balance left. The software will also alert me when a payment is overdue. You can also add tax and discounts to the invoices.

The only gripe I have is that when I made changes to the invoice parameters, I was unable to delete the old parameters because they had been used in previous invoices. It would be nice to be able to "inactivate" or send to "archive" these parameters.

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.

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.

It was free to use the accounting services
I was able to invoice customers using Stripe as a Payment Gateway which was great value
The Design and User Interface is very professional compared to others that I have seen
The Payment Gateway was also very professional when sent to customers, it added to the credibility of the business

My particular Bank would not allow me to sync my account with Wave, but that was a local issue not a general issue.
I was very very happy with the invoicing. but I always felt that the ledger views were not as robust.

Setting reminders to be sent to clients for payment is the most important feature from wave in my opinion. Also being able to create recurring invoices you you don't have to do the same thing every week or every month. My other favorite is customer statements. Pulling out customer statements and sending to your clients gives you points in terms of professionalism. I also appreciate that when Wave stopped operating in South Africa they recommended Zoho and gave us a year of free use of Zoho. Even though I did not like changing, this was a very thoughtful move by wave.

For some reason wave starting giving limited access to its South African customers and partnered with Zoho for customers to migrate. Even though the apps are similar, they're not the same and it took a little bit of time to now learn Zoho a new app.

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.

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.

Easy to use if it works but it does not work most of the time.

1) Customer service - lowest level we have ever experienced. The careless approach, lethargic service, bank connection issues and processing delays are beyond imagination in this digital age.
2) They have many exciting features at a lucrative price but the company is in a mess and nothing works.
3) No guarantee on Payroll deposit to your employee account and we have experienced that employees are not getting paid as promised. Yes - Correct. It is that bad.
4) Bank connection issues about 95% time with most of the bank.

At our CPA firm, we were recommending this software to clients. Not anymore. Stay away from this product.

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!

Wave Accounting is a great choice for small businesses looking for free, easy-to-use, and comprehensive accounting software. Here are some of its benefits:Free: Wave Accounting is free software, which is a big plus for small businesses looking to save money.Easy to use: the software is easy to use and does not require special accounting skills. The platform is user-friendly and intuitive, making it easy to manage your finances.Comprehensive: Wave Accounting offers a full suite of features for managing accounting, including invoicing, payroll, expense and income tracking, and detailed financial reporting.Accessible anywhere: Wave Accounting is a cloud-based solution, which means you can access it anywhere with an internet connection.Integration with third parties: The software is integrated with many third-party tools such as PayPal, Shoeboxed, Etsy and many more, which makes it easier to manage your business.All in all, Wave Accounting is a great choice for small businesses looking for free, easy-to-use, and comprehensive accounting software.

Although Wave Accounting is a good choice for small businesses, there are some points that can be problematic for some businesses. Here are some of its drawbacks:Limited customer support: Wave Accounting offers email-only customer support, which can be a problem for businesses that need immediate assistance.Limitations in payroll management: Payroll management in Wave Accounting is limited to certain regions, which may not be suitable for companies that have employees in different regions or countries.Limited customization: Invoices and quotes in Wave Accounting are not very customizable, which can be a problem for companies that want to customize their documents to make them look more professional.No automatic bank reconciliation: Wave Accounting does not allow automatic bank reconciliation, which can be a cumbersome task for companies that have many transactions to manage.Advertising in the software: Wave Accounting displays advertisements in the software, which can be a distraction for some users.In sum, although Wave Accounting is free and easy to use accounting software, it has some limitations that may not be suitable for all businesses, including limited customer support, limited payroll management, limited document customization , the absence of automatic bank reconciliation and the presence of advertisements in the software.

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.

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.