Wave Review

Hailey By: Hailey | Last updated October 2, 2017

wave logo accounting software

8.8 / 10

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PROS:

  • Free
  • A lot of competitive features included
  • Unlimited invoicing, estimates and guest collaborators
  • Easy to use
  • The Lending feature

CONS:

  • Some advanced tools are missing: duplicate estimates, project tracking, time sheets
  • Servers are quite slow
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SUMMARY:

Wave’s biggest strength is of course the fact that it is free. Not only that, but for a free accounting program, it includes a lot of useful features that other providers charge you for. Wave is easy to use, customizable and doesn’t impose annoying limitations. Our only complaint would be the fact that they have slow servers, which could be frustrating, given that it is a web-based solution.  

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COMPLETE REVIEW

Wave is a free web-based accounting software tailored for small businesses. The company that developed it was founded in 2010 and it is based in Toronto, Canada. Wave offers several financial services and programs and has over 2.8 million customers worldwide.

Although this accounting software is free, Wave manages to make a good living through its other paid services and programs (lending, payments/credit card processing, payroll, etc).

In order to be able to use Wave, you have to create a free account. You have to enter an e-mail address and a password and that’s it. Alternatively, you can also sign up with your Google account.

One of the best things about Wave is that even though it’s free, it doesn’t have frustrating limitations. You get unlimited invoicing, estimates and bank and credit connections, unlimited guest collaborators, customizable sales taxes, automatically generated accounting reports, multi-currency, bank reconciliation, bill and invoice reminders and more.

If you want to add payroll, it will cost you $15/month + $4/month for each employee. There are some discounts available. For instance, if you have over 10 employees, the fee is only $2/month/employee.

If you also want to add Wave Payments to your package, you have to pay 2.9% +30c per transaction.

Wave has a very user-friendly interface. There are some starting guides and a video demo, but our guess is won’t need them, because everything looks clean and neatly organized.

The tabs will appear on the left, as it follows: Dashboard, Sales, Purchases, Accounting, Banking, Payroll, Reports. All these sections come with their own submenus.

The most important information will appear at the top of the dashboard, such as overdue invoices for example. There you will also have income and expense numbers, account balances and others.

Wave includes 3 invoicing templates, which is reasonable, given that it’s a free software. You can customize them in terms of logo, colors, creating notes, footers and so on. You can also create columns and customize them in terms of visibility and fields.

With Wave you can set bill and invoice reminders, create recurring invoices and send receipts. For example, you can set up an alert if a customer is late with his payment and he will receive a reminder.

You can easily set up bank feeds and create estimates (which also come in 3 templates). Estimates can be exported as PDFs. What is missing for now is a duplicate estimate feature.  

Wave now gives access to 12 reports, including general ledger, income by customer, account transactions, aged receivables and others.

This accounting software also supports multi-currencies.

One of their most special tools however is Lending. Wave collaborates with OnDeck and gives small loans to business owners. Those loans can easily be handled with Wave.

There aren’t too many integrations available with Wave, but on the other hand, the software does integrate with Zapier, which gives access to more than 500 third-party add-ons. Some of the integrations available with Wave are PayPal, Shoeboxed, Etsy.

Wave has mobile apps that are compatible with iOS and Android devices and that are constantly improved.

Help/Support

E-mail: [email protected]

Social media: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WaveHQ/

Wave offers free customer support via e-mail. You can also contact them through phone and live chat, but only for Payroll, Lending or Credit Card Processing issues.

Wave has a FAQ section, a ‘Find an Accountant’ feature, a blog, various articles and guides and the Wave University.

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Our editorial staff evaluates products and services independently, but Best Review Guide may earn money when you click on links. Read our advertising disclosure.

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