Sage 500 ERP vs. Wave Accounting

Sage is wonderful for payroll and employee management. Although it has the capabilities to be a one-stop-shop program, it seriously lacks the interface necessary for wide use. I've had to consult Sage professionals on numerous occasions to explain and walk me through the program as there are so many redundancies. This program has wonderful potential, but they need to update the software and user interface before I can recommend it to any colleague.

Incentivized

Wave is free to use, and they have some premium features you can pay for. For someone just starting out as a small business, freelancer or independent contractor, this is a Godsend. You can look professional, have something easy to manage, and yet also have excellent records come the end of the year. You won't spend a bunch of time having to learn the program, it's very intuitive and you get a host of great features that will make getting paid easy.

Incentivized

• Payables and receivables handled beautifully
• Projects has the reporting capabilities we need
• Cash management is easy to do

Incentivized

• The dashboard provides instant views of month-by month income & expenses for the past 12-24 months, a breakdown of current year expense by category, and net income for the past year and year-to-date.
• Invoicing has easy templated set up has lots of per invoice options such as single/recurring payment options, due dates.
• Year end reports are easy to generate in either pdf or csv format.

Incentivized

• The application is very functional, but the interface is a little "stale" compared to more modern applications.
• The underlying client software is written in an old version of Microsoft Visual Basic. I suppose SOME DAY, Microsoft will be discontinuing, although Microsoft has its own ERP software written in that same code.

Incentivized

• One area of improvement for Wave would be combining the various mobile applications into one app.
• Another room for improvement would be on the dashboard level. It would be great if they could use more bar graphs and get away from pie charts for things like expenses.
• Some of the other areas from improvement have been addressed by recent updates so I am excited to see what else Wave brings out.

Incentivized

We will renew our investment in Sage 500, mostly because the competition is very expensive and are bloated with options that are not needed.

Incentivized

Easy to use for clients with no accounting background and the price is right.

I have been using Intacct for almost 10 years in 2 different companies and I just simply love it. I tried SAP (GUI) and Netsuite and they dont come close to what Ive seen.

Incentivized

Wave [Accounting] is very simple and easy to use. Minimal training was required for all our users as the interface is very user-friendly, especially for small businesses looking to use something to track their financial data, Invoice and make payments. I loved using Wave [Accounting]. It lookes professional and [has] all the features we were looking for.

WAVE is always available when we need it ! Peter

Wave does tend to slow down when filtering your transactions screen especially by date. This is more of an issue when trying to trouble shoot certain transactions or clean-up a set of books.

I've only had to reach out to support once and they were quick to respond and offered valuable insight to resolve my issue quickly. The team is knowledgeable and if the person you're dealing with doesn't have an answer for you, they get back to you quickly with an answer. It was clear that the support team is genuinely concerned about users making the most of the software.

Incentivized

The online training courses are not up to date. We experienced technical issues with two of the classes.

Incentivized

easy to use and east to train on ! Our WAVE clients enjoy the ease of use

Keep your database and application in different servers.
Install Microsoft Office on your application server so you can use some of the data analysis tools in Sage.

Incentivized

500 seems much smoother at handling some of the basic accounting tasks, for example both issuing and later reconciling checks in Dynamics AX seems a little tedious.

Incentivized

Wave's price point was in line with what my company needed to manage basic accounting (payable and receivable accounts). It made it easy for me to issue monthly invoices to clients and track when invoices were paid. The software makes these tasks easy to manage and inputting data for accurate accounting and invoicing is a breeze. It really offers a lot of flexibility, so you can use the software the way you need it.

Incentivized

Once they out grow what is ability to move up to a more robust system?

• Efficiency - enhanced automation
• Cost reduction - simple workspace is enough

Incentivized

• Wave has enabled our accounts payable to maintain a 99% closure rate by leveraging auto reminders through the email system.
• Our quote to invoice process is a single click, saving time and effort. Even minor changes during that transition occur simply and easily.
• Aside from payments, Wave has been free for our usage. Our bottom line is better because we're not investing in software but instead embracing an entire ecosystem.

Incentivized