Wave Financial Review

Why Wave Financial Is Best for Payroll & Accounting Software

Wave Financial’s free accounting software package is well-suited for service-based businesses that are just starting out or plan to remain small. Specifically, it’s an ideal fit for the self-employed — solopreneurs, freelancers and consultants — and very small businesses (10 or fewer employees) that have limited or no inventory but are looking for affordable accounting software with payroll features. That’s because with the vendor’s no-cost Starter accounting plan, businesses can add on payroll processing services without putting unnecessary stress on their budget.

For a monthly base price of just $40 and $6 per active employee or paid contractor per month, you’ll get a two-in-one solution for paying your workforce and managing your books. Compare this price point to QuickBooks Online, which charges $35 per month for its entry-level accounting plan, plus another $50 per month and $6 per employee for payroll, and it’s easy to see why Wave Financial is the best budget-friendly option for businesses seeking payroll and accounting tools in one platform.

What’s more, fundamental yet powerful invoicing and reporting features are part and parcel of the free Wave experience. We were happy to find that creating, sending and tracking invoices was such an easy experience in a fully free platform. We also loved how deftly we could create reports in Wave; plus, given that there’s no charge for the Starter plans we were impressed by which reports were available, too. For accounting fundamentals at no cost, plus reasonably priced payroll services, we recommend Wave, especially for small service providers.

This screenshot shows how users immediately see their overdue and soon-to-be due invoice amounts on the “Invoices” dashboard. Source: Wave Financial

Usability

Wave offers a highly user-friendly experience, which is what we would expect of a primarily free platform. After all, free apps typically include fewer features than paid ones, so there are fewer tools within them, inherently leading to less clutter and a less confusing user interface. This is exactly what we experienced when exploring Wave.

We love that the platform’s modules are all reachable via the left-side navigation bar. We also appreciate that each module includes a drop-down menu from which you can quickly access key features. For example, the “Sales & Payments” drop-down leads you directly to screens for “Estimates” and “Invoices.” We found this arrangement highly intuitive to navigate, and we had no trouble finding the functions we needed.

Each main module in Wave doubles as a drop-down menu through which you can instantly access key features. Source: Wave Financial

The tools themselves were also straightforward to use. Even when we followed the manual-entry route when testing the program, the interface for adding information was uncrowded and hassle-free. Between these features’ actual functionality and their appearance, we found them exceptionally user-friendly. While they weren’t quite as easy to use as the similarly low-feature platform Melio, we were still more than happy with the Wave user experience.

Wave Financial Features

The main thing small business owners look for in accounting software is features that save them time. Wave provides several streamlined features that fulfill this requirement for both accounting and payroll responsibilities, all at an attractive cost.

Payroll Processing

It takes only minutes to pay employees, contractors and — importantly — yourself using Wave’s payroll tools. Like all the best payroll programs, you can choose the pay schedule that works for your business and pay your workers via direct deposit. We love that Wave has a 100-percent accuracy guarantee, giving peace of mind that you won’t be held responsible for any mistakes, which is especially important when using an automated payroll tax payment and filing service.

You can use Wave to generate W-2 and 1009 forms, track payroll expenses, and monitor leave time and accruals. We think employees will like the self-service portal, through which they can access their pay stubs and tax forms, as well as update their personal and banking information as needed. Since the payroll module is fully integrated with the rest of the accounting software, you’ll also find that it’s especially easy to manage your payroll journal entries with the rest of your bookkeeping records.

Invoicing

We found Wave’s invoicing suite to be among the easiest to use across all accounting platforms. No, it wasn’t quite as user-friendly as the invoicing suite in our review of FreshBooks, but it was crisp, clean and easy to use (and customize with our branding), leaving us overall impressed. Plus, we faced no limits on the number of invoices we could create per month, which isn’t always the case with accounting software — especially on free plans.

It took only two clicks for us to convert the estimates we’d previously sent to customers into invoices, and we liked how much time this saved us on reentering and copying data. We also loved that we could set up automatic payment reminders to encourage customers to pay their bills on time. Additionally, we were pleased that all Wave users on the Starter tier can send overdue payments for online invoices three, seven and 14 days after the due date.

At the same time, for free users, the Wave invoicing suite is a bit basic. Only users on the paid Pro plan can schedule and automatically send invoices to customers via recurring billing, such as for regularly scheduled services or subscriptions. On the plus side, regardless of your service level, you can invoice your customers on the go via Wave’s mobile app. We found it just as easy to create, customize and send invoices on mobile as on desktop.

Bookkeeping

Wave’s free plan includes basic bookkeeping tools that we found to be clean, clear and well organized. In particular, we found it simpler to manually add income and expenses through Wave than with most other accounting software we tested. There weren’t a ton of fields to fill out, and we could easily connect transactions to invoices. This was basically manual bank reconciliation, which is an automated feature in most accounting platforms. However, given that Wave is free, we were happy with the unexpectedly user-friendly manual bookkeeping tools.

There’s no clutter when you manually add transactions to your books in Wave, and there are only a handful of fields to complete. Many of these fields have helpful drop-down categories as well. Source: Wave Financial

Reporting

Wave can easily and quickly create accurate financial reports such as balance sheets, sales tax reports, profit and loss statements, a general ledger, and aged receivables. There are also cash flow statements and aged payables reports. When we tested the reporting suite, we liked how simple it was to set a date range and report type. We also appreciated that seeing the results simply required us to scroll down. This ease of use paralleled what we found in our Sage 50 review.

We were also impressed with how many reports Wave makes available. Given the no-cost usage, we expected very few reports on the Starter level, but with 14 reports total, we were happy. Sure, this quantity is nowhere close to what you get with Sage 50 or QuickBooks Online, but when you remember that Wave won’t cost you anything, this number of reports is respectable.

Integrations

Wave integrates with Shopify, though you must connect the platforms through your Shopify account and pay extra for this integration. Wave also connects to Zapier — which you can use to integrate Wave with hundreds of apps — and provides several “Zaps” on the “Integration” tab of your account that make it easy to connect with other business software.

We greatly appreciated how many options Wave’s Zapier integration gave us for syncing services. It’s a step up from the integrations that come with paid platforms that are narrowly dedicated to one accounting need. For example, as detailed in our Neat review, this platform has under a dozen integrations but costs at least $16.66 per month. To get access to hundreds of integrations through Zapier while using Wave’s fully free accounting platform surprised and excited us.

Payment Options

In addition to accepting credit card and ACH payments online for invoices, Wave also supports Apple Pay. This is a useful feature for businesses that require payment upfront. Plus, you can embed these payment options right into your invoices.

Although payment processing isn’t itself free with Wave — it never is with any vendor — we appreciate the convenient options that Wave offers your customers for paying you. In fact, we felt that this convenience increases the likelihood of you receiving payments on time. And if you’re willing to pay for Wave’s still-affordable Pro plan, your payment processing rates will be discounted.

Multi-Business Support

You can set up multiple companies under your Wave account and switch between them for convenient financial management. You can’t move transactions between businesses, however; there isn’t a platform that allows you to monitor multiple enterprises at once, though you may want to check out our roundup of the best accounting software for multiple businesses. Nevertheless, we were happy to see multi-business support in Wave because this feature is standard across accounting platforms. Moreover, since Wave is free, you’re fully empowered to manage your finances across several businesses for no cost other than that of payment processing and payroll, both of which are optional.

Wave Financial Costs

Wave used to offer all of its accounting features for free, but it now relegates some — including many important ones — to its paid plan. Source: Wave Financial

Wave’s pricing has changed substantially over our years of reporting on the financial solution. Yes, it’s still our top choice for free accounting software with budget-friendly payroll processing costs, but many features that were once free now require payment to use. Whereas Wave used to offer all its accounting features for free and only charge payroll users, there’s now a free and a paid Wave plan. We’re disappointed that this pricing change has relegated some previously free tools, such as bank transaction auto-import, to paid status. However, it’s worth noting that the Pro price is still extremely affordable compared to many competitors in this space.

Here is a breakdown of the two plans, as well as the cost of the payroll add-on.

Additionally, even with Wave’s Starter plan, it costs extra to accept online payments, though doing so is optional. Here is a breakdown of the payment processing fees.

These fees are similar to the typical transaction rate across the best credit card processors, but it does technically mean Wave isn’t free if you want to use it to process payments. Additionally, bank payments you receive through Wave incur a 1% transaction fee, with a minimum of $1.00. Also, while unlimited digital receipt capture is included in the Pro plan, it’s an $8/month add-on for Starter users. Interestingly, this is a few dollars cheaper than in years past.

There are no implementation costs for Wave, nor are there additional costs to add more users. The lack of implementation costs is standard in accounting software, and additional per-user costs are rare, but we’re pleased that Wave doesn’t charge per-user fees, unlike FreshBooks.

Wave Financial Setup

Based on our experience trying a number of accounting software and payroll solutions, we can confidently say Wave is among the easiest platforms to set up. Once you create an account using your email address and password, you’ll enter your first and last name, business name, industry and legal structure. You’ll then add your starting year, approximate number of customers and whether you accept online payments.

From there, you’ll let Wave know what you need from the platform, such as invoicing and bookkeeping. You can also indicate that you don’t quite yet know what you need from Wave. Thereafter, you can choose the Starter plan to avoid paying for the accounting service, and you’ll add your phone number. Next, simply link your bank account to power your bookkeeping and, if applicable, online payments. The whole process took us about five minutes and was much simpler than what we went through for most other platforms.

Wave Financial Customer Service

Wave’s customer service deeply left us wanting for more. We should’ve expected this from a largely free platform, but we were still disappointed. There is no phone support for any user, regardless of subscription level, and only those with the Pro plan, online payments, or the payroll or receipts add-ons have access to email and live chat support. It should also be noted that a high number of users have complained on the Better Business Bureau website and third-party customer review platforms about the quality of customer service and the difficulty getting help.

All users, however, can take advantage of an online self-help center and “Mave,” Wave’s automated chatbot, which is always visible at the bottom-right corner of the app. We liked that Mave greeted us with a handful of easy-click buttons, such as “set up invoicing,” to begin our accounting journey. This streamlined our already simple Wave implementation. We also appreciated that everyone, even non-subscribers, has access to the vendor’s payroll education center and a few payroll tools, namely a payroll tax calculator, time clock calculator and pay stub generator. Anyone can also use Wave’s accounting calculators, estimate maker, invoice generator and receipt generator.

Pull up Mave, Wave’s automated support chatbot, at the bottom-right, and you’ll see quick help prompts to start getting the answers you need. Source: Wave Financial

Of course, none of these perks make up for Wave’s lack of comprehensive support. Even those who qualify for email and live chat support might be frustrated by the limited hours of availability — 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. ET on weekdays. For these reasons, Wave ranks poorly for us in the customer servicecdepartment. Even Xero’s support ticketing system, which we found to introduce needless obstacles, is better than Wave’s support.

Wave Financial Drawbacks

Wave is excellent free accounting and payroll software for small businesses — especially new, service-based businesses with very tight budgets — and has a good selection of features. But it’s missing a few functions that some businesses may consider necessities. Before signing up with Wave, consider:

• It doesn’t track billable hours, and the ability to track expenses via receipts is a paid add-on. You may want to take a look at our roundup of the best receipt-tracking apps for alternative options.
• It doesn’t track inventory or create purchase orders, which is inconvenient for companies that carry more than just a few products.
• It’s missing fixed asset management tools, which may be problematic if you need to calculate depreciation on computers, equipment and office furniture for taxes.

You should also keep in mind the poor customer support discussed above. Wave does offer professional bookkeeping help and financial coaching for both accounting and payroll, but at a starting cost of $149 per month, it undermines one of the most appealing aspects of Wave: its affordability. While the lack of advanced features and support is a drawback, it’s important to remember this is a largely free financial management solution. For no-cost accounting software, you can’t get much better than Wave.

Methodology

When we searched for the best accounting software for businesses looking for a platform that can also competently handle payroll, we searched for solutions that were well-integrated and made it easy to manage payroll records alongside traditional accounting records. We also sought a program that, while serving as an all-in-one option for accounting and payroll, wouldn’t be financially prohibitive for solopreneurs and small business owners. During our evaluation process, we spent hours using Wave, studying its platform and website, and comparing it to other top accounting software platforms. We also looked into user testimonials to see how their experiences compared to ours.

After much testing, research and analysis of competitors like Zoho Books (which offers free plans for microbusinesses), we found Wave to be best for payroll in the accounting software market.

Overall Value

We recommend Wave Financial for…

• Solopreneurs and small business owners seeking affordable accounting and payroll software in one platform.
• Small companies on a tight budget in need of free invoicing, bookkeeping and reporting software.
• Service-oriented businesses that live and die by invoices for managing accounts receivable.

We don’t recommend Wave Financial for…

• Small businesses in need of comprehensive accounting software features.
• Business owners who want phone-based customer support as part of their accounting software package.
• Companies that claim depreciation as a tax-deductible expense every year.