This may influ­ence which products we review and write about account­ing invoice tem­plate (and where those products appear on the site), but it in no way affects our recom­mend­a­tions or advice, which are groun­ded in thou­sands of hours of research. Our part­ners can­not pay us to guar­an­tee favor­able reviews of their products or ser­vices. With a Pro Plan sub­scrip­tion, you can con­nect your bank account with Wave and auto­mat­ic­ally import your trans­ac­tions. Give your cus­tom­ers the option of pay­ing with one click using a cred­it card, bank trans­fer, or Apple Pay. Finally, the choice is depend­ing on you for choos­ing Quick­books Online or Wave.

Detailed features to your needs

In case you are a one-man or one-woman show, you don’t really have to con­sider scalab­il­ity. How­ever, if your busi­ness plan includes growth, make sure you will have to fig­ure out an applic­a­tion that can grow with your busi­ness. Wave offers accru­al-basis account­ing only, not cash-basis account­ing. Once you sign up online, you can start using Wave’s fea­tures right away. All you have to do is share your busi­ness name, type, address and the cur­rency you use. There’s no live sup­port unless you pay for it so you’ll have to dig for the answers to your ques­tions in the help cen­ter or cross your fin­gers that the auto­mated chat­bot will help you out.

These factors con­trib­uted to our rat­ing account­ant for star­tups of 4.4÷5 for Wave’s pri­cing and fees. Speak­ing about fea­tures, Wave offers a wide range of fea­tures such as account­ing, payroll, invoicing, pay­ments and receipts. Mean­while, Quick­Books Online provid­ing quite the same amount but with a few addi­tion­al ones includ­ing easy bill pay­ment and full-ser­vice payroll. Nev­er­the­less, if you have so many bills to pay, Wave lacks bill pay­ment might be a prob­lem for you.

PC & Mobile

Wave Account­ing is the best free account­ing soft­ware solu­tion for freel­an­cers, solo­pren­eurs, and small-busi­ness own­ers alike. While it doesn’t have as many fea­tures as paid com­pet­it­ors like Quick­Books Online, Wave’s unlim­ited expense track­ing, free invoicing, and basic report­ing make it an ideal solu­tion for many freel­an­cers. Wave has recently updated its pri­cing mod­el to now include a paid plan. Now, many stand­ard fea­tures (such as auto­mat­ic import­ing of bank trans­ac­tions) are only avail­able if you pur­chase a monthly or annu­al plan. Addi­tion­ally, your cost may rise with add-ons like payroll, pay­ment pro­cessing, or pro­fes­sion­al book­keep­ing ser­vices. Wave Accounting’s Starter plan is free and its Pro plan, which includes more fea­tures, is $16 per month.

Payments

We also ensure that the soft­ware offers most stand­ard account­ing fea­tures and reports, award­ing high­er rank­ings to those that provide advanced ser­vices, like tax fil­ing. Like Wave, Quick­Books Online is easy-to-use, cloud-based account­ing soft­ware. Quick­Books Online boasts a robust set of fea­tures, includ­ing advanced options like pro­ject man­age­ment and invent­ory fea­tures you won’t find with Wave. Quick­Books Online also has hun­dreds of integ­ra­tions, con­nect­ing your account­ing solu­tion with oth­er small busi­ness soft­ware and apps. In addi­tion, Wave’s mobile app lets you send invoices and track pay­ments on the go.

How­ever, like most products with free plans, Wave has its what the cost prin­ciple is and why you need to know it lim­it­a­tions, espe­cially com­pared to more scal­able small-busi­ness account­ing soft­ware. Although Wave’s paid plan offers addi­tion­al fea­tures, it’s still miss­ing some more advanced cap­ab­il­it­ies, like built-in invent­ory track­ing and audit trails, that grow­ing busi­nesses might need. You can con­nect your bank account or cred­it card to track busi­ness trans­ac­tions eas­ily. You can also cus­tom­ize your dash­board from a range of options, includ­ing trans­ac­tions, estim­ates, invoices, recur­ring invoices, bills, cus­tom­ers, vendors, products, or services.

Wave is PCI Level‑1 cer­ti­fied for hand­ling cred­it card and bank account inform­a­tion. We built our payroll tool for small busi­ness own­ers, so it’s easy to use AND teaches you as you go. The best fea­ture in Wave might be its invoicing cap­ab­il­ity, espe­cially its cus­tom invoices. With Wace, users are able to cus­tom­ize their invoicing exper­i­ence by using its intu­it­ive design fea­tures. In the end, both Wave and Quick­Books Online provide easy setup and sys­tem nav­ig­a­tion; they both have a mobile app for iOS and Android smartphones.

In oth­er words, Wave has many of the invoicing perks you get with invoice-heavy soft­ware like Fresh­Books, but at no cost. Unlike oth­er cloud account­ing soft­ware like Quick­books, Wave Account­ing is a free online account­ing soft­ware best for small busi­nesses and freel­an­cers. Now, Wave account­ing will be gen­er­at­ing auto­mat­ic pay­ments by send­ing a cred­it card pre-author­iz­a­tion request to the cus­tom­er. Before you com­mit to account­ing soft­ware, it’s in your best interest to shop around and com­pare all your options. Unlike Quick­Books and Fresh­Books, Wave Account­ing is com­pletely free to use. It can allow you to man­age all your account­ing pro­cesses without pay­ing a dime.

1. Unfor­tu­nately, Wave does not offer a pro­ject man­age­ment feature.
2. Most import­antly, it doesn’t sync with any third-party payroll providers.
3. If Wave isn’t a good fit for you, read through our art­icle on the year’s best free account­ing software.

Many, or all, of the products fea­tured on this page are from our advert­ising part­ners who com­pensate us when you take cer­tain actions on our web­site or click to take an action on their web­site. Here is a list of our part­ners and here’s how we make money. Wave has helped over 2 mil­lion North Amer­ic­an small busi­ness own­ers take con­trol of their finances.

 Email This Post