Wave Erfahrungen

It was free to use the accounting services
I was able to invoice customers using Stripe as a Payment Gateway which was great value
The Design and User Interface is very professional compared to others that I have seen
The Payment Gateway was also very professional when sent to customers, it added to the credibility of the business

My particular Bank would not allow me to sync my account with Wave, but that was a local issue not a general issue.
I was very very happy with the invoicing. but I always felt that the ledger views were not as robust.

Wave is so user friendly, it's made all my bookkeeping seamless.

If I had to choose it would be simpler invoicing/receipt creation.

The only positive thing that I can say about them, is that after THREE years and having to lose the company that my cousins and I started together, we did finally get our money, or rather most of it.

I will just tell you our story with it. My 2 cousins and I decided to go into business together before COVID happened. We all have degrees in different categories and wanted to join forces. One had a degree in computer engineering, one in graphic design, and I had a business degree although at the time I had a huge following on social media and was working as an influencer. We wanted to help small businesses get their names out, and started a business advertising for them. I used my presence on social media to advertise by word of mouth, while my cousins would design web sites, and create custom logos and business cards for our clients. We began with just friends to test, so we didn't have a set price for anyone. It was also a side gig so we let people set their prices. Thankfully wave was not the only company that we used. I will describe our experience in the next question.

The first greatest thing about Wave is that is FREE!!! If you are just starting out, or a small business where overhead and expense need to be kept to a minimum, I recommend this app. It has all basic functions you need like, quotes, invoicing, statements, entering bills, receipts, reconciling bank statements, etc. All of these services including reporting are included in the free software! It has payroll functions for an additional charge, which we have opted out of for the time being. You can even link your bank account to it and it will import all the your debits and credits for reconciling.

Also, this software is super user friendly and you do not need to be a tech expert to understand it. It will set you up with preloaded items it thinks you need for your business and then you can change them or delete them. You can also add new ones super easy while doing this or after the fact. I really love that its cloud base and can be accessed anywhere. This makes it key for me when traveling for work.

Honestly Wave is pretty awesome that it was hard to find cons with it. The only drawback for me is the reporting. I wish I was able to customize them and select certain data to analyze. The reports are basic and standard, they just don't quite cover what I am looking for in my reporting.

It can do pretty much anything that QuickBooks can do, but it can be used for free! This was perfect for when I was setting up the back-end of my entrepreneurial business.

It required a bit of learning to use, I was used to QuickBooks, and some of the language, UI, and functions look or work differently. After this initial period it has become perfectly simple and useful.

As a SMB or sole-consultant Wave takes all the annoyances of invoicing and tracking payments in/out super simple.

I've honestly not run into an Cons while using Wave (formerly "Wave Accounting).

I love the simplicity. We are just a small business, so the primary purpose of using this app is to categorize all my expenses, so once tax time rolls around, I just have to send the tax lady a breakdown of my income and expenses. Once a week or so, I'll log in to check all the transactions it imported from my bank account. It auto categorizes most of them which is awesome, I just have to click the check mark button to verify it was categorized correctly. Then once tax season rolls around, I just run the income statement report and send it to the tax office. I even have created a review account for the tax lady to be able to log in and see my business finances. We are just a simple business so we probably don't use some of the more advanced features, but it does what I want and best of all, it's F-R-E-E. I do also like the payroll and invoicing options if we need that in the future, although that is unlikely for our business.

For some reason, they disabled the ability for deposits to be auto categorized. This is my most common type of bank transactions, since all credit card payments are deposited into my account a few days after they process, so I have tons of transactions I have to go manually mark as the 'Sales' category. I did talk to customer support over chat about this though, and the lady agreed this would be extremely useful so they are looking into this.

This is a very complete software that allows you to build quotes and convert them into invoices in a fraction of a second without much effort.

Wave is excellent especially when it comes to credit card processing which is done automatically with a very low 1% fee.

It is very easy to set up and use and the cost is low or even free. Personally, I recommend buying this package because it comes with support: from setting up your account to the specific categories for your company .

The other advantage of Wave is the presence of a number of applications to send invoices when you are away from your workplace.

So even when you're away from home you can download them. In this case, all you have to do is take the photo on the spot.

The problem on the Wave software is not so numerous, but we notice that it is impossible to close a period correctly.

All members who are able to make transactions have the possibility to change or add entries from the previous year.

For me an administrator must have the ability to close a period so that no changes are made. User growth is also very limited.

The lack of audit trails for transaction entries is also a case of imperfection at Wave . Admittedly, it is possible to generate transactions, then generate reports, then cancel the transactions, etc.

But there is no proof that these changes are made yes or no, because the software is unable to remember its categorizations.

The keyword search function is absent from Wave in the transactions section and sometimes it makes us lose a lot of time.

Wave is free, but it’s powerful. Wave is suitable for any small to medium business. Wave handles all our accounting needs.

Wave has two major areas of improvement. 1. Their customer service is difficult, especially if you have an urgent matter. Their chargeback dispute process is not easy and confusing. Again, customer support regarding chargebacks is difficult considering you have a few days to submit a dispute package.

It was wonderfully easy to use, the invoices looked professional and payment processing features were handy.

TLDR: Major syncing, reconciling and support issues

Two of my accounts synced twice (so I had four accounts in Wave where there should have been two) and they were unable to fix this. Their suggested fixes did not work. They have chat and email support but no phone support and even though they logged in as an admin they were unable to fix this problem.
A recent update to their system caused my entire past four years of records to be unreconciled, and the only fix was to go back to the beginning of time and compare each transaction ever made.
They offered me a bookkeeper to do this for me for $269/month for a minimum of 12 months, despite my being very diligent about keeping my account up to date for the past four years.

I have switched to another system now.

Easy to use if it works but it does not work most of the time.

1) Customer service - lowest level we have ever experienced. The careless approach, lethargic service, bank connection issues and processing delays are beyond imagination in this digital age.
2) They have many exciting features at a lucrative price but the company is in a mess and nothing works.
3) No guarantee on Payroll deposit to your employee account and we have experienced that employees are not getting paid as promised. Yes - Correct. It is that bad.
4) Bank connection issues about 95% time with most of the bank.

At our CPA firm, we were recommending this software to clients. Not anymore. Stay away from this product.

The cost is compelling -- free! -- but beyond that I find the software is advanced enough to do what I need without being utterly overwhelming like other options. I'm not accountant and there's only so much geeking out I want to do. I can send invoices, get paid, track all my expenses and payments, handle business AND personal finances from the same account, and it all works really well with my bank and integrates decently with Stripe via Zapier.

I'd love Wave Payments to allow for payments in more than one currency. I can invoice in USD and CAD (my main), but I can only accept online payments via Wave in CAD. No biggie.

On the positive side, this software's functionality is almost up to par with other options that cost a lot of money. Wave is free and for that price what they offer is unbeatable. It is a fully featured accouting software, as it is a web app, it means multiple people can use it simultaniously and it also works great for a virtual team. I like that it is made with non-accountants in mind. For example, when entering transactions there are "Accounts" - but these are only Accounts as a nun-accountant will understand: Cash, Bank, Owners Investment etc. - everything else is called "Categories". This makes it easier for someone not too versed in finances to understand - but behind the scenes Categories are Accounts, just like they always were (e.g. Office Supply Expense Account) - small and simple changes like this make it very easy to use even for a financial analphabet. Two mobile apps compliment the accounting software, one for writing invoices on the go, the other for scanning and (auto)recording expense receipts.

On the downside, and this can be a big one, you are not able to properly close a period. This means anyone with permission to enter transactions can go and change entries from last year, or add some. This can make things really messy and I hope they add a function where an administrator can close a period such as a month, so that no more changes can be made. Further, you can add other users, but the type of users are quite limited. I wish this could be controlled on a more granular level, e.g. there is the option to add a 'viewer' who cannot edit anything. The next level is somoene who can enter all types of transactions (you can turn of access to bank entries and writing invoices) but it would be nice if there was one where I can let someone add receipts with the mobile app but not do anything else.

Wave Apps software features not only very beautiful interfaces for their products' dashboard, but the platform is at once very feature-heavy and thoughtfully well designed. The aesthetically-pleasing graphics for content such as cash flow, profit and loss, and expense breakdowns on the primary dashboard are sharp and clean in addition to being so helpfully data-driven, and all that is just on the landing page. As you navigate through categories of sales, purchases, accounting, banking, you experience how well-constructions the pages are for options within each section including sales, purchases, accounting, etc. I love just how many of the feature-heavy options are completely *FREE.* Wave Apps offers select premium services, such as Wave Advisors and bookkeeping, even business insurance with "NEXT," while offering things such as accounting, invoicing , etc. free of charge. It's an excellent product for anyone looking for a beautiful interface, but also wanting lots of features without needing to immediately spend money for quality products.

So many elements within Wave are intuitively navigable and to use with simple data entry. One area that was a little more challenging for me to set up with the chart of accounts section in the accounting area of the interface. It's so nice that it's deeply customizable, but the challenge was that it took me a little extra time to understand and knowledgeably input the data of my assets, liabilities/credits, income, expenses, equity. This is something that would be challenging for anyone not familiar with basic accounting on any software, so I probably would've benefitted from a few "help" pop-ups/set-up assistance here than perhaps some other areas. Where my limitations with setup start is however where Wave's premium products with bookkeeping and accounting are so valuable to the user. There are many great pop-up notices throughout the platform that inform you about new features of ways to most effectively use Wave Apps features, which is great, and of course, they're complete with beautiful graphics.

It seems like it offers the ability to import credit card and bank statements, categorize expenses, and invoice people. Those are the features I want. But...

...I haven't been able to figure out how to smoothly and accurately use the features I want. This app is making my life harder than it was when I just manually typed in all my expenses into a Microsoft Word and added them up with a calculator.

Wave Accounting is a really great idea. Simple bookeeping for people that don't have "accountant-minds." It gets into a space where programs like Xero and Zoho Books are a little too complicated for non-accountants and creators.

It's got a fantastic UI.

Easy to use.

Fairly easy to setup.

Way more intuitive than competitors like Zoho Books and Xero Accounting.

Support is really slow. I get that it's a free service, and therefore you have paid support working for free customers. But support takes days to get back to you. So once you're setup, it's fine. But if you have a question or two doing setup, like I did, it takes an extraordinarily long time.

Granted, most people using this might not have to deal with multi-currency and Paypal in particular, but it's something to keep in mind.

Also, the bank connections sometimes fail. Although this is a problem with all of these services who use Plaid to get bank data.