The Wave accounting system comes with a wide range of features, such as invoicing, expense tracking, and bookkeeping. With Wave, you can also accept payments, run payroll, and get access to advisors. Today’s Wave Accounting offers robust invoicing, accounting, and receipt tracking functionality. It’s a good option to think about if you’re a small business owner looking for free cloud-based accounting software. Indeed, it’s earned a place on our accounting software for small business best of list. Wave is a double-entry accounting website designed for freelancers, self-employed contractors, and small businesses.
And in the rapidly evolving digital age, a suitable accounting program isn’t only beneficial but essential. Sign up for a free Wave account and send your first invoice right away—it only takes a few minutes! You can also set up recurring payments, auto-reminders, and deposit requests to make sure you always get paid on time. Know when an invoice is viewed, becomes due, or gets paid, so you can take the right actions to manage your cash flow. Set up invoice reminders to automatically email your customers when payment is due. Safely hand off your books to your accountant by adding them as a limited user.
- Also, Wave Accounting only offers self-serve customer support.
- Yes, most cloud accounting software allows for multi-user access, which is ideal for collaborative financial management within a team or organization.
- Wave Accounting can be a great option if you run a very small service-based business or don’t need more advanced features that alternatives might offer.
The size of your business, the number of people who will be accessing the software, the specific financial operations you’ll be dealing with, and any industry-related features should be top of mind. Don’t forget to consider potential integrations with other key business software to ensure smooth operations. Intuitive, easy-to-use free accounting software designed to save you time. Wave supports double-entry accounting, which makes accountants happy. Among other things, this means that Wave has a chart of accounts and deals with debits and credits in the background so that you don’t have to. All your invoicing and payment information automatically syncs with the free Wave Accounting software included with your account.
How Does Wave Handle Expenses and Bills?
Wave payment processing feature allows users to accept credit card and ACH payments. Wave users can accept all types of payments including via bank deposit, credit card, and Apple Pay. You can mark invoices paid on the spot, so your records are instantly up to date. Accept payments through credit cards and bank payments to get paid even faster, for a low, pay-per-use fee. Add credit cards and bank payments to get paid even faster, for a low, pay-per-use fee.
Any connections between you, your bank accounts, and Wave are protected by 256-bit SSL encryption. That seemed to be a euphemism for the sluggish demand that much of the electric vehicle (EV) industry is experiencing right now for reasons that aren’t fully clear. Tesla bottom line CEO Elon Musk has blamed higher interest rates and consumers’ increased price sensitivity. Others have theorized that early adopters have already purchased an EV, and the next wave of customers will be harder to convince to switch from gasoline vehicles to electric.
Crunching Numbers in the Cloud: The Future of Business Finance
And further to that point, it’s hard to beat free accounting software with plenty of features, and Wave offers an excellent range of them for freelancers, contractors, and small businesses. Get support from Wave’s team of bookkeeping, accounting, and payroll experts. This feature is perfect for those who are just getting started with accounting.
Recurring billing for repeat customers
Includes tools that help automate the reconciliation process; auto-categorizes transactions for you, but you can’t set up your own bank rules; no global search function. Our partners cannot pay us to guarantee favorable reviews of their products or services. Powerful and 100% free accounting software that has everything you need to confidently run your own business. Today’s leading accounting platforms offer standard security features, such as data encryption, secure credential tokenization and more. While human error will always play some role in security breaches, you can be confident in your accounting platform when it comes to keeping your information safe. You can invite your accountants, bookkeepers or other business partners to Wave via email and designate their user roles.
To download the app:
We’ll show how the app keeps track of your cash flow, and go over the most important app features, pricing, and pros and cons. Your complete invoicing and billing process is now on your phone. Our (non-judgmental) team of bookkeeping, accounting, and payroll experts is standing by to coach you—or do the work for you.
Protect your money
Founded in 1993, The Motley Fool is a financial services company dedicated to making the world smarter, happier, and richer. We’ve rounded up the most useful apps for small businesses and arranged them by category, making it easier for you to choose the tools you need most. Choosing the right software requires a well-thought-out approach. By assessing your needs, defining a budget, researching your options, and evaluating functionality, you’ll be poised to make an informed decision that propels your business to financial proficiency. Part of the larger Zoho suite, Zoho Books shines when businesses require a multitude of integrated solutions. Its versatility extends beyond just accounting, making it an all-encompassing tool for various business operations.
However, some users complain that the customer support team is not always able to solve more complex issues. For customers who only use our free Wave Accounting or Invoicing products, support is self-service with assistance available in the Help Center and through the chatbot, Mave. For example, if we compare Wave vs FreshBooks, the latter provides a four-tiered subscription schedule. For example, Bookkeeping support costs $149 per month, which can be a lot for small businesses. Wave invoicing offers customizable invoices and allows you to add your branding to invoices. If that’s not something you are interested in, you can always use the premade invoice templates and look professional.
Accounting apps like Wave wouldn’t be useful if they didn’t allow you to import transactions from your bank and credit card accounts. All that’s needed to set up these connections is your login credentials from your online accounts and occasionally answers to additional security questions, depending on the financial institution. Once logged in, your main dashboard will show your cash flow, profit and loss, invoices, bills and other financial insights. From the dashboard (or the Banking menu on the left-hand side), you’ll be able to connect your bank and credit card accounts to automatically download and categorize your transactions. Strong invoicing feature competes with that of paid products; app lets users send invoices on the go; offers significantly fewer reports than competitors; no inventory tracking. You can add features as you need them, such as bank account connections and real-time transaction updates, and you can easily make changes if your accounting or business requirements change.
Our Wave accounting review finds the best things the app has going for it are its excellent features and the fact the basic software’s completely free. Named as TechRadar’s best online payments app, PayPal is like a trusted friend when it comes to making and receiving electronic payments. It’s free to open a business account, but this accessible platform also offers paid features when your business is ready to grow, making it one of the top options for startups.
Its suite of features, combined with a user-friendly interface, makes financial management accessible without the hefty price tag. Wave has moved more features—most notably, estimates—but the apps could still use improvement. A better dashboard and access to transactions would be a good start, though you can work with invoices, estimates, payments, customer and product records, and receipts. I encountered occasional text degradation on both an iPhone 13 Mini and a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, making some pages look sloppy, though usually readable. And there’s a navigation button for a Banking feature that doesn’t exist yet. NerdWallet’s accounting software ratings favor products that are easy to use, have a robust feature set and can grow with your business.
If you’re a freelancer with multiple clients but only require basic invoicing features, Wave’s free tier is a great fit. The mobile app also offers optional paid features like payroll software and personalized guidance from in-house advisors when you’re ready to level up. Electronic invoices are created with online invoicing software or other cloud-based services, which makes it easy to automate the invoicing process. Electronic invoices also provide small business owners with professional-looking digital invoices that their customers can pay easily online through a system like Wave’s online payments. To recap, Wave can manage invoicing, track expenses, and do bookkeeping.