Otherwise, users must sync Wave with their favorite business management apps through Zapier, a third-party service. Wave Accounting does a lot for the price—but it can’t do everything. For instance, it doesn’t offer the same built-in time-tracking and project-tracking features you get with most other basic accounting software plans. Unlike with QuickBooks, you can’t manage 1099 contractors with Wave (which is one reason Wave’s better suited to 1099 contractors rather than those who employ them). If you’re a startup, micro-business or sole proprietor who doesn’t want to invest in accounting software but needs to keep track of your finances, Wave Accounting is a great option. As long as you’re content with basic features and don’t see yourself expanding in the foreseeable future, you’ll find this completely free, easy-to-use software particularly appealing.
Wave Accounting gives you free unlimited invoices, users, expense and income tracking, credit and bank account connections, and more. It also offers multi-business management for no additional fee. You don’t have to enter a credit card number when you sign up. However, like most products with free plans, Wave has its limitations, especially compared to more scalable small-business accounting software. Although Wave’s paid plan offers additional features, it’s still missing some more advanced capabilities, like built-in inventory tracking and audit trails, that growing businesses might need.
Is Wave Accounting safe?
Our partners cannot pay us to guarantee favorable reviews of their products or services. Yes, switching from other accounting apps or products to Wave is easy! See our step-by-step guide on how to import bookkeeping data into Wave here.
FreshBooks: Best for invoicing
Experienced and passionate about the unique challenges small business owners face, Wave Advisors can give you help and advice when you need it—during the year, when you’re closing year-end, or at tax time. Higher-tier QuickBooks Online plans common size balance sheet definition include bill tracking, project profitability data, inventory management, employee expense tracking and more. Most popular accounting tools have at least a handful of built-in app integrations that make connecting with third-party services as painless as possible. For instance, Xero and FreshBooks’ native Gusto integrations ensure the accounting and payroll software sync with each other problem-free.
Wave Accounting is an affordable expense definition bookkeeping and accounting software service that doesn’t sacrifice features for the sake of pricing. Its expense, income and cash-flow tracking features are perfectly suited to freelancers, solopreneurs and other self-employed individuals who want to keep their accounting software expenses low. You can’t pay bills through Wave as you can in Intuit QuickBooks Online, but you can record them, mark them as paid, and track the status of your payables. Wave now uses optical character recognition (OCR) technology to read photos of receipts taken with a smartphone and turn them into categorized transactions.
These ratings are meant to provide clarity in the decision-making process, but what’s best for your business will depend on its size, growth trajectory and which features you need most. We encourage you to research and compare multiple accounting software products before choosing one. NerdWallet’s accounting software ratings favor products that are easy to use, reasonably priced, have a robust feature set and can grow with your business. The best accounting software received top marks when evaluated across 10 categories and more than 30 subcategories. Learn more about how we rate small-business accounting software.
- In contrast, FreshBooks’ cheapest plan starts at $19 and limits you to billing just five clients a month.
- Our partners cannot pay us to guarantee favorable reviews of their products or services.
- Wave’s invoices are easy to customize with your business’s logo, colors and contact information.
- Are you a service-based freelancer in need of a basic, user-friendly way to track your finances without spending money on features you don’t need?
Accounting coaching
You can also customize your chart of accounts (CoA) to include only the accounts you need—useful for freelancers, who tend to have fewer expense and income categories on their books than bigger businesses. Wave also doesn’t have quite as many integrations as other paid (and more popular) accounting software options. Most importantly, it doesn’t sync with any third-party payroll providers.
Users can connect an unlimited number of bank accounts to Wave Accounting software, ensuring every transaction is accounted for and financial snapshots are up to date. While only Wave Pro users can access automated bank transactions and expense categorization, free users can manually categorize expenses by tax category to ensure their data is ready to go by tax time. Honestly, these features outpace those included with some paid accounting software. For instance, Xero only includes expense tracking with its priciest plan, which starts at $65 a month. QuickBooks Online limits user numbers by plan (its cheapest plan, QuickBooks Simple Start, includes just three users). And FreshBooks doesn’t limit your user number, but it does charge an extra $10 a month per user—which adds up fast.
After providing a few basic details about your business — name, type, currency you use, address — you’ll have instant access to your account. Allows an unlimited number of users in the Pro plan, but is not complex enough for businesses with more than a handful of employees; ideal for very small service-based businesses, freelancers or contractors. Transactions will appear in your bookkeeping automatically, and you’ll say goodbye to manual receipt entry. Create beautiful invoices, accept online payments, and make accounting easy—all in one place. Plus, thanks to its integration with the budget-friendly Wave Payroll solution, Wave Accounting can also work well for small businesses with employees. Since the paid version of the software allows for multiple users, it may also appeal to midsize and growing businesses where more than one person keeps an eye on company finances.
We believe everyone should be able to make financial decisions with confidence. The software setup wizard guides what is cash from operating activities you through four easy setup steps to generate an uncluttered, straightforward dashboard. The interface ensures a low learning curve with friendly graphics, an in-app help center, live chat, user-first design and an accessible app. Wave doesn’t offer any native integrations with third-party apps, though users can rely on Zapier to create their own custom integrations. In fact, the only app Wave Accounting does sync with is Wave Payroll.
