Wave Accounting Review 2025: Pros, Cons, Features

Capture and upload receipts instantly with our mobile app—simple, fast, and always on-hand. Scan unlimited receipts and bulk import up to 10 at once to save time. Scan or upload receipts from Wave’s mobile app, desktop, or email! With a Pro Plan subscription, you can connect your bank account with Wave and what is the journal entry to record the issuance of common stock automatically import your transactions.

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Get essential info and steps for setting up your business finances. You can also use Wise’s free invoice generator to create and send unlimited invoices. Wise is not a bank, but a Money Services Business (MSB) provider and a smart alternative to banks. Like Wave, you can add an unlimited number of users on any plan using Xero.

Is Wave’s software something I need to install?

Here’s a closer look at the key features and how they perform in practice. All details can be found on the “Subscriptions and Billing” page in your Apple account, or the “Find your purchases, reservations & subscription” page in your Google account. Both options come with unlimited receipt scans so you can effortlessly track expenses and cut down on manual data entry and bookkeeping. This lets you add and categorize income and expense transactions directly from your phone. With Wave, everything is organized and ready for tax prep when you need it. Wave is truly simple money management solutions for small business owners like you!

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• “Great app for writing estimates and invoices.
• You can choose between sending a list of their outstanding invoices or their complete account activity.
• Because Wave is free software, it does not offer the intricate capabilities of a paid platform.
• Our double-entry accounting software is trusted by over 2 million small business owners.With Wave, you’ll also have an entire suite of money management features at your fingertips, including invoicing, payroll, and online payment processing.

Give your clients the convenient option to pay you online by credit card or bank payments through privately held company vs public your Wave invoices. Fire off estimates and invoices, snap receipts, and track expenses—even on-the-go—with Wave’s simple money management solutions for contractors. We provide different levels of support, depending on the plan and/or the add-on features you choose. If you’re looking for an on-the-go solution, you can install our mobile app to help you manage invoices and payments. When it’s time to get an accounting professional to help, you’ll have a seamless transition.

• This lets you add and categorize income and expense transactions directly from your phone.
• I like that it feels approachable from the start with a clean layout, simple setup and no feature bloat.
• Whether you’re a volunteer, board member, accountant, or anyone in between, it’s easy to learn how to use Wave.
• You can also connect Wave with Google Sheets to generate key financial reports.

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Forward receipts to your Wave email, and we’ll take care of storing and sorting them for you. Upload and view receipts across all your devices—whether on your phone, desktop, or email. This power system analysis can help you save time and make financial decisions quickly.

Patriot Software (starting at $20 per month) is another low-cost accounting application that larger small businesses could consider. As mentioned, Wave’s free version, Wave Starter, is perfectly capable if you are self-employed and don’t need features such as digital receipt capture or online bank transaction imports. Moreover, Wave is exceptionally easy to use, features excellent invoice and transaction tools, and has great mobile apps. Wave used to have only a free tier, but the small business accounting service now offers a paid version as well. Wave is a strong fit for freelancers and small business owners who want reliable accounting software without paying subscription fees.

Quickly capture and categorize receipts

You can even set up recurring invoices for repeat clients! Once the deal is sealed, convert estimates into invoices in seconds. Learn more about changing subscription periods and plan types in our Help Center. Sign up for the Starter Plan to take the bookkeeping and invoicing basics for a spin. Download our mobile app on iOS and Android today!

Can I import my data from other accounting apps like Quickbooks?

We recommend Wave for small businesses, freelancers, and startups with less than ten employees. This change sparked frustration among some users, especially as features like automatic transaction imports were placed behind a paywall. Having shifted from an entirely free model to a tiered pricing structure, Wave now offers the free Starter plan and the paid Pro plan at $16/month. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is optional for the site and required for both bank connections through Plaid and payroll. Wave is also PCI Level-1 certified for handling credit card and bank account information. This worked fairly well in testing, although the app detects receipts and snaps photos so quickly that you don’t often get a chance to ensure proper framing.

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FreshBooks is an accounting software that allows you to invoice clients, track expenses, and accept payments. You can also get it as a mobile app to take pictures of receipts and upload them, send reminders for invoices you have out. New design is …very good… As a accounting professional… Some features still missing… But new start is very good… Most accounting solutions allow you to import transactions from your bank and credit card accounts.

Wave picked up the date, description, and type reliably, but it often missed the amount (this is dependent more so on the size and quality of the original receipt). Wave uses optical character recognition (OCR) technology to read the data from your receipt and turn it into a Wave transaction. The landing pages for invoices and estimates provide useful, detailed overviews of your activity, along with the status of your sales forms (such as Draft, Overdue, and Unpaid). New since our last review is the ability to manage the premade templates for the default message that accompanies invoices. Once you create an invoice, you can save it as a PDF file and view it as the customer would on both a desktop browser and a mobile screen. Wave offers to send invoice reminders a specified number of days before or after the due date.

Wave includes an integrated invoicing tool, allowing you to send customizable, unlimited invoices to your customers. The company’s software supports tax-exclusive pricing, such as U.S. sales tax, where taxes are added on top of prices quoted. In 2017, Wave signed an agreement to provide its platform on RBC’s online business banking site. Invoicing by Wave is an offshoot of the company’s earlier accounting tools. The company’s initial product, Accounting by Wave, is a double entry accounting tool. The new integration improved support for US employers by handling employer tax withholding and payments in all 50 US States.

Export profit/loss, sales tax, cash flow, comparative, and more reports with visual graphs that makes the information easy to comprehend. Log in anytime to get a big picture sense of your financial position. Whether you’re a volunteer, board member, accountant, or anyone in between, it’s easy to learn how to use Wave. Find the best returns management software to streamline your business operations. This guide offers localized steps for setting up your business finances efficiently. Your transactions can also be synced with Wave, FreshBooks, QuickBooks, or Xero easily, saving you time on manual entry.

Its intuitive interface, multicurrency capabilities, and high-quality mobile apps make it particularly appealing. The abbreviated dashboard appears to be effective, allowing you to create and view customer and product estimates, invoices, and records. Wave’s mobile apps don’t replicate absolutely everything from the desktop browser version, but they cover enough that you can get a lot of work done away from your computer. Wave generates 14 reports, some of which relate to Wave Payroll (the company supplies full-service payroll in all 50 states). Or you can upload a scanned receipt directly into Wave and attach it.

Though it offers accounting functionality at no cost, Wave isn’t for businesses requiring budgeting, time tracking, job management, and more industry-specific features. You won’t lose access to previously scanned receipts; they will continue to exist in your books as transactions and are accessible along with your saved accounting transactions when you sign in to waveapps.com. It supports 2 million small businesses, offering a suite of money management features beyond its simple accounting solution.¹ Zoho Books is an accounting software that is a popular alternative to QuickBooks, offering easy-to-use features. I use it for quotes and invoices and receipts and accounting, the end of year reports for my taxes. Both programs feature invoicing, banking, and accounting capabilities, but Wave charges fees for accepting credit card and bank payments from customers.

I could easily use the drag-and-drop tool to customize invoices with my logo and brand colors. The interface is clean and I could quickly add client details, save products or services and generate professional invoices in minutes. I like that it feels approachable from the start with a clean layout, simple setup and no feature bloat.

However, I do not like that users of the free plan do not have access to chat or email support. Employees get a basic portal where they have access to paystubs, W2s and vacation time. This helps me get paid without having to chase invoices.