Wave Accounting Review: Is It Right for Your Business?

Accounting is simple, so when it’s tax filing time, all accounting data is in its proper place. Wave’s wave financial reviews dashboard smartly organizes business expenses, income, invoices and payments — all for free.

Be aware that Wave doesn’t track or calculate a business’s unit value of inventory, only the monetary value. Monthly payroll fees are different for tax service states and self-service tax states. For tax service states, Wave charges a $35 monthly base fee. Additionally, businesses pay $6 for each active employee and independent contractor. In self-service states, the monthly base fee is $20 a month with an additional $6 for each employee and contractor. 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 Review (Formerly Wave Accounting)

A Preview option lets you see what the invoice will look like before you actually save and send it. If your Wave account is connected to a payment processor, customers receive information on the invoice about how to pay via credit card or e-check. You can choose from three different templates and add a logo and accent color.

Financial statements, a sales tax report, customer report, and an aged receivables report are also available, as is an aged payables report and account balances report. You can manage customers in Wave, but there is limited opportunity to add additional information such as credit limits or appropriate tax rates. Wave has also stated that customer statements will soon be added to a future Wave release, which will allow you to automatically remind your customers when their payment is late.

How does Wave Accounting work?

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 come across. 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. You can click on any of them to view the underlying transactions. The dashboard also displays account balances and income/expense numbers and charts, as well as links to common activities like adding customers and customizing your invoices.

Hopefully, with Wave’s track record for updates, it will add these features soon and improve customer service response times. In the meantime, though, check out these top Wave alternatives to fully explore your accounting software options. With Wave, you have access to expense tracking, bank reconciliation, and reporting to help you manage your finances. Wave also has some of the most appealing invoices on the market.

Does Wave Accounting Charge Fees?

Our goal is to be objective, simple and your first stop when researching for a new service to help you grow your business. We will help you find alternatives and reviews of the products you already use. FreshBooks- The ideal accounting software for small business owners. Unlike Xero, Wave doesn’t have a bank rule feature to automatically match your transactions. https://online-accounting.net/ You have to do everything manually, including matching transactions for each separate account, as well as adding and deleting transactions if you put them in the wrong account. When you reconcile an account, you can find a calculation at the top of the window to help you keep track of the differences between your Wave and bank account balances.

Just as with invoices, you can add items from your “services and products” list or create a new item. When you’re done, click the “save” button and you’ll go back to the “bills” page. Creating bills is much simpler than creating invoices, as you don’t have to send them to your vendors. To add an invoice item, click on the “new item” button to pick one from your “products and services” list.

Businesses

However, Wave does contain some features like connecting to your bank account and creating transactions from uploaded receipts. As of November 30, 2020, Wave Accounting software, including email support, had its availability limited to business customers in the U.S. and Canada. On June 30, 2021, Wave Accounting discontinued its Wave Stripe connection for users outside the U.S. and Canada. These users are no longer able to send invoices using Stripe-enabled payment services. FreshBooks business accounting software offers users an impressive array of business accounting resources and support. Customer support is big, with support staff available to assist customers via email and over the phone Monday through Friday from 8 a.m.

• Some other inconveniences we found include the inability to use account numbers in your chart of accounts, import bank balances, and import your chart of accounts.
• Unlike most free plans, Wave doesn’t limit you to a certain number of invoices, customers, or transactions, making it one of the best free options out there — plus, there are no pesky ads.
• These customers have access to all of Wave’s self-serve support options.
• You can create and send these to remind customers of past due payments or simply to provide them with a record of their account activity for their records.
• They both offer unique blends of features, flexibility, and usability.