18 years helping Irish businesses
choose better software
What Is Wave?
With Wave’s small business software, users can automate bookkeeping tasks, create invoices and simplify tax preparation. It offers bookkeeping tools from within a unified platform. The platform streamlines decision-making through financial reports. Users can track payments, view customer information, and manage cash flow with the dashboard and mobile application.
Who Uses Wave?
Wave helps small business owners, freelancers, solopreneurs, and consultants in the US and Canada manage accounting, payroll, invoicing, estimating and other processes.
Not sure about Wave?
Compare with a popular alternative

Wave
Reviews of Wave

Wave Review
Comments: Wave is a program that is intended and implemented for helping businesses streamline processes.
Pros:
Bank account management : with Wave you can manage all your bank account.
Cons:
The program helps you through all its indicators to make business decisions.
Alternatives Considered:
Great option for free bookkeeping software
Comments: Wave provides fantastic value given its price point.
Pros:
Wave has a free, entry-level accounting software option that makes it a no-brainer for new small business. I'm able to use their free tier to reconcile my accounts, automatically import transactions, send professional invoices, and produce financial reports without increasing my overhead. The value provided by Wave given the $0 price tag is huge.
Cons:
I have encountered two notable bugs within their software. First, despite efforts to fix it, the Sales Discount account is backwards (it records as a revenue account rather than a contra-revenue account). Second, I've encountered a rounding error within bills that has resulted in my Accounts Payable account being a few cents off even after all bills are paid. There are workarounds that I use weekly to overcome these errors, but Wave has not fixed the errors nor published a timeline for their resolution for months. Finally, most accountants and bookkeepers use QuickBooks and aren't familiar with Wave, so I don't recommend Wave for anyone with an outsourced bookkeeper or complicated tax situation.
Alternatives Considered:
Payouts on hold. Terrible support.
Comments: Maybe you should try Quickbooks instead.
Pros:
App is great for basic accounting and bookkeeping.
Cons:
Terrible support. We use their invoicing system and our payouts are on hold for weeks and all we here is we must wait. We already provided all documents of identification etc, but no solution was given
Alternatives Considered:
Great product for small business
Pros:
Ease of invoicing makes them simple to create and simple for my customers to access and understand
Cons:
Fees for payments received via debit card
Alternatives Considered:
Great for small businesses
Pros:
Wave is very intuitive and easy to use for small businesses. There is a free plan for recording income, expenses and simple reporting.
Cons:
A lot of more enhanced features now require a paid plan starting in 2024. In the past, most of these now paid features were free.
Great experience with great features - for free
Comments: My overall experience with Wave has been very positive. Everything works seamlessly, from invoicing to expense tracking, and the interface is intuitive and user-friendly. It’s a reliable platform that makes managing finances straightforward and stress-free. The only small inconvenience is that the business selection doesn’t stay permanent. After logging in, I have to manually switch to the correct business every time, which adds an unnecessary step to the process. Aside from this, Wave has been an excellent tool for managing my business finances.
Pros:
One of Wave’s standout advantages is that its core accounting features are entirely free. For small business owners, freelancers, or entrepreneurs, this means you can manage your accounting, invoicing, and expense tracking without a subscription fee. Unlike many competitors, Wave offers a robust and user-friendly platform at no cost, making it an excellent choice for budget-conscious users who need reliable financial tools without hidden expenses.
Cons:
Actually not much comes into my mind. They changed their free basic plan that you cannot send emails now - invoices or reminders. But that seems totally fair.
Wave: Robustious AP, AR & GL Automation GURU
Pros:
With Wave, I am able to automate complex accounting tasks such as billing and invoicing.
Cons:
I do not experience challenges with Wave when running accounting projects.
Easy free invoice automation
Pros:
Generous free starter plan with everything needed for a startup. Invoice automation and automated followups to get invoices paid. All super easy to set up.
Cons:
There are a few accounting limitations that were only available on paid plans but I guess at that points it'd be worth upgrading.
Wave reviews
Comments: Data can easily exported via PDF, CSV and shared.
Pros:
With Wave accounting is made easier because it keeps all the history concerning all transactions and all activities done, this reduces on manual error.
Cons:
Wave is too realistic and provides requires data in real time
Inexpensive accounting tool
Comments: Wave is a great inexpensive accounting tool which is cloud based so access to the software is easy. Great for Basic accounting but for more complex accounting the reporting falls a little flat.
Pros:
- Low cost or free accounting tool that provides above average capabilities - Cloud based so its convenient to login from anywhere - easy to link up external accounts into the software
Cons:
- Lacks add on features for more complex situations - reporting features could be improved.
Alternatives Considered:
Great accounting & invoicing tools for small businesses
Comments: positive! I've been using them for 5 years and have needed to reach out for personal help a couple of times. They are attentive and thorough even if you have to wait a little bit. The chat function is pretty thorough & helpful too.
Pros:
User friendly, pretty easy to figure out how to do things, simple interface, the free plan offers a lot of tools
Cons:
The process for automatically categorizing payments and income doesn't work as smoothly as it could. Their AI tool is alright but makes mistakes. When you use their native Checkouts tool for collecting payments, they are categorized in a way that you cannot fully edit.
Alternatives Considered:
Accounting without a Cost
Comments: I loved this software/app so much that I actually decided to open a personal account and use it for mine and my husbands personal finances! I had been using the good ole trusty excel for this. But this makes everything so much nicer. It imports all my husbands charges and then I can code them and see just where our money is going. Not to mention, it has help the business I work for be more successful in bringing in a bigger profit! If you are trying to decided between software's and don't know where to start, try Wave for your business accounting needs.
Pros:
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.
Cons:
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.
Alternatives Considered:
Bookkeeping made simple
Comments: My accountant recommended Wave as an upgrade from using Excel to document my income/expenses and it has made my life so much easier, my accounting/bookkeeping takes half the time and my reports are ready in an instant. It has been easy to help me keep track of any expenses I may have missed throughout the year as well.
Pros:
Wave is so user friendly, it's made all my bookkeeping seamless.
Cons:
If I had to choose it would be simpler invoicing/receipt creation.
Alternatives Considered:
Love the Starter Version of Wave
Comments: I've used Wave for quite a while now & Love it. I will eventually move up to one of the paid subscriptions as this program has enabled me to be more professional with invoicing.
Pros:
Having a free version for small business owners is truly amazing. The fact that it works so well and is very easy to setup & use is a blessing
Cons:
I realize every business needs to make money - the latest update which now makes you download the invoice to send as opposed to being able to send from within Wave is nothing more than a small extra step.
The Best Cost Efficient Accounting Software
Comments: It was an excellent experience in all aspects, particularly when it came to creating the relevant financial reports
Pros:
The software was a savior for our organization, as we needed something easy to understand, practical, and to be able to access and management from an online system. Wave accounting was above and beyond the best accounting software we had used to date. My absolute favorite accounting software!
Cons:
Setting up the account initially was a challenging process, as the navigation was a bit difficult.
Alternatives Considered:
One Stop Money Management Platform
Comments: My overall experience has been outstanding. The business has used Wave for nearly 6 years.
Pros:
I like the ease of use and the ability to create both individual invoices and recurring invoices. I also like the ability to take a range of payments from card to direct deposit (ACH). Finally, the ease of managing transactions makes my life easier as a small business owner.
Cons:
The recent price increase, while understandable, is never fun.
Alternatives Considered:
Definitely the best invoicing app I've ever used!
Comments: My favorite invoicing app, hands down.The invoices that are generated are super professional and detailed, the reminders are very helpful, and it is a sharp looking app with an amazing interface, just hoping for the ability to use our swipe keyboard and predictive texts in the fields that it's most useful, such as item descriptions and such.. For the first few years that I used this app on my android, it was no problem, and we were able to use Swype keyboard, predictive text and speech to text in all fields, and in one of the recent updates, this feature was removed, making it a painstaking process to have to hammer out every single character one at a time, but myself and all the other business owners that use and love this app are holding out hope that this changes like very soon! Hopefully on one of these next updates somebody cares about our feedback!
Pros:
The phone app is so amazing to use, so easy and so complete..It's very easily customizable with your logo and information, and the invoices look sharp, clean & professional, with multiple options to send the invoices- PDF, links, etc.This app has become absolutely indispensable to my business.
Cons:
The ONLY thing (but a major thing) that I've seen that's frustrated not only myself, but many many others that are part of a small business owner's forum, is the following-and I hope someone does something about it ASAP-In the phone app, we used to be able to use the Swype keyboard, speech to text & predictive text, making it a breeze to fill out or alter item descriptions and such.After one of these recent updates a few months ago, this capability was removed from those fields, obligating us to type one character at a time.This really killed the ease of use of this app, and while I still give it a glowing review, the truth is that if this doesn't get resolved in the near future, by next year I'll have to move on to an app that allows me to use my keyboard & speech to text to fill out these item descriptions.The only reason myself and many others have not switched is bc we've complained about it and we are all really hoping that the development team takes the 5 minutes it would take to switch this back to the way it was, and because of the fact that we all have developed a thorough item list that would be hard to start from scratch, but we are holding out hope bc it's our favorite!Please, Wave Dev team, please revert this function to it's original capabilities!
Alternatives Considered:
Excellent Free Software for Small Businesses
Comments: Extremely easy to use and a perfect first software for service based businesses that don't want to pay for Quickbooks yet.
Pros:
- Free - Cloud based - Easily customizable/brandable invoicing and reports
Cons:
It does not do costing per order or inventory management as far as I'm aware.
Alternatives Considered:
Wave is a simple accounting and payment collections app
Pros:
I like the simplicity of the app and the ability to keep track of finances as well as accept ACH payments.
Cons:
It’s a little limited to function capabilities compared to its competitors such as bill and quickbooks.
What I am Experiencing with Wave
Pros:
Wave automates over 86% of manual repetitive accounting tasks such as invoicing and billing.
Cons:
I slightly dislike that Wave lack capabilities for global enterprise organizations but it has a robust backend integration capability.
How I Pave Accounting Way with Wave
Pros:
I use Wave as QB alternative on my end. I like that it automates repetitive accounting tasks such as AP, GL, financial management and payment matching.
Cons:
However, Wave lack offline access and accounting capabilities for global enterprises.
Alternatives Considered:
Wave works well for the Sole Proprietor
Comments: Overall, my experience has been mostly positive.
Pros:
As a sole proprietor, I do like that it has a free option to keep my overhead costs manageable.
Cons:
There are some reports that are a bit more challenging to put together
Great! Easy and Convenient!!!
Pros:
It is easy to use. It is very inexpensive too... Most features are for free...
Cons:
Maybe it needs more customization and a wider span of features and invoicing for AR and AP.
Love Wave !
Comments: Very good program and you can use with minimal Instruction.
Pros:
User friendly and very good record keeping analytics
Cons:
The cost could be a bit lower for the subscription.
Best free invoicing service
Comments: Overall great experience super user friendly for me and those i send invoices too.
Pros:
For a free service it can't be beat - the invoicing is super user friendly.
Cons:
No huge complaints - a little more difficult to integrate with shopify but again for a free service I highly recommend this invoicing service.