Wave

Pros

I have only used the invoicing part of this software. I love it for the most part. I =t is missing a feature or two

Cons

I found that I could not let my clients submit partial payments, or it wasn't clear on how to do it. Multiple payments was not flexible enough for my needs. I would have liked to be able to schedule the payments by specific date rather than genericall as ay, week, month, etc

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.

Pros

It's everything I need in one place. As a small business, Wave is the best solution for me. I can invoice my clients for free, and easily keep my finances up-to-date making tax season worry free.

Cons

Wave no longer integrates with CapitalOne Spark Business accounts, so I have to manually upload two bank statements every month into Wave; One for my checking and one for my savings account, both of which are Spark.

Pros

The software at it's core is very easy to use. The reliability is however a complete failure.

Cons

Throughout the past 3 years, Wave has been a game of 'make sure my bank works.' First, I closed incompatible credit card accounts in order to open accounts that were listed as compatible. A year later, Wave lost the connection with all of capital one due to an issue with switching data providers (from Plaid).

Next, Chase bank cards also disappeared. When finally reconnecting, weeks worth of transactions were intermittently missing. For a software company who's core goal is to reduce manual data entry, this platform is a nightmare. Stay away.

Pros

I use Wave for bookkeeping for our retail business as well as for consulting projects. It's easy to set up and is intuitive to use. Transactions are automatically imported and can be easily categorized. I also use Wave for our payroll (which is a paid service) - this was also easy to set up and Wave can manage sending in your employer taxes. Since I do not have a background in accounting, I also paid for a one-time session with a Wave accountant - this session was extremely helpful in ensuring I had my books set up correctly as we walked through my books in real-time and were able to identify necessary changes. I have never used another bookkeeping software, but I find that Wave meets all of our daily needs.

Cons

Because I use Wave for two different arms of my business, I do wish you could automatically move them between the businesses. Instead, you have to manually enter charges. For example, if I have a charge auto-import from my business card I have to create a few transactions to get them assigned to the correct business because I want P&L tracked separately.