QuickBooks Online vs. Wave Accounting

QuickBooks Online

Wave Accounting

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
QuickBooks Online	Score8.3 out of 10	N/A	QuickBooks Online is a SaaS version of the QuickBooks product. It contains all of the features found in the local version. Higher-priced plans include greater automation, payment management, inventory and time tracking, and analytics features.	$38 per month
Wave Accounting	Score8.3 out of 10	N/A	Wave Accounting is a free, cloud-based accounting platform exclusively for small businesses. It supports double-entry bookkeeping and permits unlimited user access, invoicing, and expense management. Wave Accounting integrates with Wave's invoicing, receipt scanning, payment processing and payroll apps.	$16 per month

Pricing

QuickBooks Online

Wave Accounting

Simple Start: $38
per month
Essentials: $75
per month
Plus: $115
per month
Advanced: $275
per month

Starter: $0
Pro: $16
per month
Pro - billed annually: $170
per year

Pricing Offerings
QuickBooks Online	Wave Accounting
Free Trial
Yes	No
Free/Freemium Version
No	Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes	No

No setup fee

—

Community Pulse
Key User Insights
	QuickBooks Online	Wave Accounting
Considered Both Products	Intuit Susan Hammiche Marketing and Operations Manager in Corporate at SYSUSA, Inc (Information Technology and Services, 11-50 employees) Chose QuickBooks Online Wave Accounting is a great free accounting software that small businesses can use at no monthly cost but it has its limitations. Quickbooks Online has many features that are beneficial to businesses even though there is a monthly cost to it. With Quickbooks Online I'm able to … Incentivized Helpful? Brady Phenicie Owner in Professional Services at Phenicie Business Management (Computer Network Security, 1-10 employees) Chose QuickBooks Online Its easer and works with other programs with built in apps. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose QuickBooks Online QuickBooks has the best reporting of most accounting software. While not 100% of the reports can be customized, you can create your own reports as well. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose QuickBooks Online Ultimately, QuickBooks/Intuit has the most market share when it comes to accounting software. The benefit of so many people using this software is that there's always an answer to a problem that you may be having when it comes to using the software. Intuit has provided a … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose QuickBooks Online QBO is much more robust than the other free programs. There is so much more you can do with it compared to the other programs. I had zero accounting experience and I'd say the other programs were a bit easier to learn, but overall QuickBooks has more features and capabilities … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose QuickBooks Online We liked the fresh approach and the clean aesthetics of Wave, Xero and ZipBooks. However they all lacked the ability to customize a invoice template, which is sad to say, but that was the #1 feature for us, since we had existing customers that we didn't want to disrupt; i.e., … Incentivized Helpful? Dylan DeClerck Founder and Executive Director in Corporate at Opportunity on Deck (Non-Profit Organization Management, 1-10 employees) Chose QuickBooks Online QuickBooks Online was much easier to use across a non-profit where we needed people in multiple locations working on different servers to access the financial data at once, it also allowed us to connect our bank accounts to the software which was a huge benefit of the program, … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose QuickBooks Online We decided to go with something familiar and more industry standard than alternative products. QuickBooks is simple to use, familiar with many. We received some great introductory pricing and will continue using it for the intermediate future. We wish there was more church … Incentivized Helpful? Lisa A Lewis Owner in Finance and Accounting at Money Matters Bookkeeping, LLC (Accounting, 1-10 employees) Chose QuickBooks Online I used to like the reconciliations, flow and visual appearance of QuickBooks Online much better than all others. The only issue with Intuit products was pricing. Intuit is far higher than others but I believe it does more and used to do it better than others. Incentivized Helpful?	Wave Vin Campbell President in Information Technology at Mystic Mojo, LLC (Information Technology & Services, 1-10 employees) Chose Wave Accounting Circling back to the "free" thing again. For a small business, I am getting for free what QuickBooks Online charges no less than $40/month. Moving away from "free," these other solutions I listed above do more, and these would be the right solutions for the right needs. All of … Incentivized Helpful? JaCoby Marston, CPA Chief Financial Officer » Finance Management \| Accounting \| Taxation \| Cost Controls in Finance and Accounting at Trust Brands (Computer Software, 11-50 employees) Chose Wave Accounting Wave Accounting is very similar to QuickBooks Online. The functions of Wave Accounting are very similar to QuickBooks Online. The major difference is that with the low pricing of Wave Accounting, it lacks all of the bells and whistles that QuickBooks Online has like … Incentivized Helpful? J.P. VanderLinden Owner in Corporate at EmberTribe (Marketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees) Chose Wave Accounting For the pricing arrangement, the ease of use and the user-friendliness of the app, Wave crushes QuickBooks Online and Zoho Books. FreshBooks was a little bit closer as the two are more of an apples-to-apples comparison, but FreshBooks doesn't offer a non-paid option and they … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Wave Accounting Wave is FREE for most functions. Payment processing costs no matter where you go (as does payroll or taxes). Wave rises above tools like QuickBooks Online because they know that for our small firm, being nimble is the name of the game. We don't need exhaustive reporting and … Incentivized Helpful? Daniel Jaworski Certified Public Accountant in Finance and Accounting at Deeagle Tax and Accounts Limited (Accounting, 1-10 employees) Chose Wave Accounting It is a useful solution but not designed for the UK market. For a businesses that want to see their debtors, creditors, profit and loss and balance sheet it is a great solution, however with those needing legal UK compliance the software will not work as well and the other free … Incentivized Helpful? Lisa A Lewis Owner in Finance and Accounting at Money Matters Bookkeeping, LLC (Accounting, 1-10 employees) Chose Wave Accounting Albeit Xero is much more robust and does require a monthly subscription payment. Wave Accounting is perfect for the very small client that does not have funds to pay for accounting subscriptions nor the high level of transactional/account management required of some clients. Incentivized Helpful? Allen Eshmoili President/CEO in Corporate at Premier Spine and Sport Rehabilitation & Wellbeing (Hospital & Health Care, 1-10 employees) Chose Wave Accounting quickbooks seems to be more feature rich and can connect to my POS. At some point i may witch over if my accounting becomes too complicated for Wave Accounting Incentivized Helpful? Tony Rayl Chief Executive Officer in Professional Services at Rhino consulting (Automotive, 1-10 employees) Chose Wave Accounting It doesn't in anyway due to the fraud that is inflicted on so many companies! Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Wave Accounting This was my first invoice company. I had seen Freshly before. Venmo is far less of an accounting tool. QuickBooks seems terrible with a monthly cost. Which is why I hadn't moved companies yet. But I just learned my Website host, Wix, offers it right through my site and Clients … Incentivized Helpful? Magdalene van der Walt Managing Director in Finance and Accounting at The Busy Bookkeeper (Pty) Ltd (Accounting, 1-10 employees) Chose Wave Accounting As I stated previously, Wave is a free system. It serve you well as non-resident of USA/Canada for your basic bookkeeping needs, as a micro-business. If you are a resident of those countries, you will benefit immensely from the payroll function as well. If you are looking for a … Incentivized Helpful? Stephanie Majeran Owner at WellRun Results, LLC (Accounting, 1-10 employees) Chose Wave Accounting I was not impressed with Xero or ZipBooks simply because they were expensive and still as, if not more, confusing than QuickBooks. QuickBooks is, unfortunately, the standard. I dislike it, and I think it is just a huge corporation trying to steal small businesses money, but … Incentivized Helpful? Ashley Mumm Owner at Ashley Mumm Marketing (Marketing & Advertising, 1-10 employees) Chose Wave Accounting Wave feels more geared toward a younger generation. QB feels very old and stuffy, though they're slowly coming around. QB feels much more powerful than Wave but Wave did what I needed it to do. My CPA had never heard of it before so I ended up needing to have both, but Wave … Incentivized Helpful? Andrea Mitchell, MSW, APSW Owner in Professional Services at EmployAbility: Employment and Housing Solutions, LLC (Mental Health Care, 1-10 employees) Chose Wave Accounting I chose to keep Wave first because it is free and easy to use but I also could not find anything else that allowed me to create customer categorizations at least not with a free account. There have been a lot of improvements to Wave over the years so the reasons I was looking … Incentivized Helpful? Marc Garcia President in Corporate at Nueva Vida Media LLC (Broadcast Media, 11-50 employees) Chose Wave Accounting Honestly, it stacks up pretty good except for the ACH transactions. With QuickBooks, ACH transactions were in my account in 2 business days at the 1% charge (that both companies charge). The support is similar on both sides. I spent 18 days trying to cancel my QuickBooks … Incentivized Helpful? Lukas Sundahl, MBA Co-Founder in Finance and Accounting at Solutions Through Innovative Technologies, Inc. (dba STI Technologies, Inc.) (Performing Arts, 1-10 employees) Chose Wave Accounting Wave stacks up well against QuickBooks especially from the price aspect. In addition the features within Wave are comparable to those found in QuickBooks. We selected Wave based on the reviews from other consumers and the ease of use with its web based application. Wave is so … Incentivized Helpful? Sanjit Mandal Digital Marketing Strategist, Founder in Marketing at California SEO Professionals (Marketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees) Chose Wave Accounting The interface is too complicated and not as user friendly. It was more costly. With online, we want fast, and QB online wasn't that snappy. However, their support was great. With Wave I didn't need support :) Incentivized Helpful? Matthew Gehrman Agency Principal in Sales at CityScape Insurance (Insurance, 1-10 employees) Chose Wave Accounting Across the board Wave takes the cake on price at $0/mo aside from payroll fees and credit card processing. That aside I'd say most accounting systems are fairly similar, however what I like about Wave is just how simple the interface is and the outstanding customer support from … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Wave Accounting I find that it is completely comparable, aside from the cost! Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Wave Accounting Free Incentivized Helpful? Al Wynant Co-Founder and CEO in Corporate at Eventinterface (Computer Software, 11-50 employees) Chose Wave Accounting We looked for an affordable, easy to understand solution to process invoices. Wave offered the best solution at the right price "free." We did not think this would be a long-term solution. Its robustness, ability to customize on the fly is one of the reasons we still use Wave … Incentivized Helpful? Melissa Whaley Owner in Corporate at Melissa Whaley Tax and Bookkeeping (Accounting, 1-10 employees) Chose Wave Accounting Wave's biggest selling point is by far it's price, because their base product for free. Most people sign-up because of that advantage. But here are my opinions of Wave Vs these three other programs I've worked in. Wave vs Freshbooks Helpful? Michele Craig CPA,CMA Founder and Owner in Finance and Accounting at BookSmarts (Accounting, 1-10 employees) Chose Wave Accounting Accounting by Wave has a similar target market to FreshBooks, however Accounting by Wave is a full GL solution whereas FreshBooks provides cash flow and receivables tracking. I would definitely recommend Accounting by Wave over FreshBooks for that reason. Also FreshBooks isn't … Helpful? Tory Norman, CPA Senior Small Business & Technology Advisor at Squire (Accounting, 51-200 employees) Chose Wave Accounting It is hard to compare Wave to many of the QuickBooks products because QuickBooks desktop products have a different feature set and client focus. Clients already using QuickBooks likely would not switch to Wave. Wave is designed as an entry-level accounting software for recent … Incentivized Helpful?
	Would buy again
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Delivers good value for the price
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Happy with the feature set
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Lived up to sales and marketing promises
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Implementation went as expected
No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic

Features

QuickBooks Online

Wave Accounting

Comparison of Payroll Management features of QuickBooks Online and Wave Accounting
Feature	QuickBooks Online 8.5 81 Ratings	Wave Accounting 6.2 24 Ratings
Pay calculation	7.872 Ratings	7.123 Ratings
Benefit plan administration	7.033 Ratings	7.54 Ratings
Direct deposit files	9.067 Ratings	1.220 Ratings
Salary revision and increment management	9.046 Ratings	7.712 Ratings
Reimbursement management	9.548 Ratings	7.48 Ratings

Comparison of Customization features of QuickBooks Online and Wave Accounting
Feature	QuickBooks Online 8.3 71 Ratings	Wave Accounting 8.5 13 Ratings
API for custom integration	8.757 Ratings	9.99 Ratings
Plug-ins	8.058 Ratings	7.011 Ratings

Comparison of Security features of QuickBooks Online and Wave Accounting
Feature	QuickBooks Online 9.7 112 Ratings	Wave Accounting 6.4 45 Ratings
Single sign-on capability	9.684 Ratings	6.432 Ratings
Role-based user permissions	9.7106 Ratings	6.436 Ratings

Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of QuickBooks Online and Wave Accounting
Feature	QuickBooks Online 8.1 136 Ratings	Wave Accounting 6.3 72 Ratings
Dashboards	8.6128 Ratings	6.070 Ratings
Standard reports	8.2132 Ratings	8.069 Ratings
Custom reports	7.5120 Ratings	5.036 Ratings

Comparison of General Ledger and Configurable Accounting features of QuickBooks Online and Wave Accounting
Feature	QuickBooks Online 8.5 147 Ratings	Wave Accounting 7.0 75 Ratings
Accounts payable	9.1125 Ratings	7.158 Ratings
Accounts receivable	9.4135 Ratings	7.169 Ratings
Cash management	8.7123 Ratings	8.561 Ratings
Bank reconciliation	9.1141 Ratings	8.565 Ratings
Expense management	8.7125 Ratings	7.563 Ratings
Time tracking	6.957 Ratings	9.811 Ratings
Fixed asset management	8.155 Ratings	9.812 Ratings
Multi-currency support	7.024 Ratings	10.019 Ratings
Multi-division support	9.245 Ratings	7.19 Ratings
Regulations compliance	9.241 Ratings	5.016 Ratings
Electronic tax filing	9.368 Ratings	5.914 Ratings
Self-service portal	8.869 Ratings	8.040 Ratings
Global Financial Support	8.118 Ratings	9.02 Ratings
Primary and Secondary Ledgers	8.737 Ratings	9.05 Ratings
Intercompany Accounting	8.731 Ratings	4.05 Ratings
Localizations	8.123 Ratings	5.23 Ratings
Journals and Reconciliations	9.376 Ratings	8.530 Ratings
Enterprise Accounting	8.127 Ratings	4.07 Ratings
Configurable Accounting	7.740 Ratings	5.017 Ratings
Centralized Rules Framework	8.426 Ratings	1.03 Ratings
Standardized Processes	8.552 Ratings	7.019 Ratings

Comparison of Inventory Management features of QuickBooks Online and Wave Accounting
Feature	QuickBooks Online 7.5 49 Ratings	Wave Accounting 8.1 11 Ratings
Inventory tracking	8.046 Ratings	5.68 Ratings
Automatic reordering	7.023 Ratings	9.95 Ratings
Location management	8.123 Ratings	8.12 Ratings
Manufacturing module	7.018 Ratings	9.01 Ratings

Comparison of Order Management features of QuickBooks Online and Wave Accounting
Feature	QuickBooks Online 8.4 90 Ratings	Wave Accounting 7.6 52 Ratings
Pricing	8.056 Ratings	9.926 Ratings
Order entry	8.054 Ratings	10.018 Ratings
Credit card processing	8.666 Ratings	2.345 Ratings
Cost of goods sold	9.370 Ratings	10.033 Ratings
Order Orchestration	8.022 Ratings	5.85 Ratings
End-to-end order visibility	9.021 Ratings	8.24 Ratings
Order exception Resolution	8.019 Ratings	7.02 Ratings

User Ratings
	QuickBooks Online	Wave Accounting
Likelihood to Recommend	8.8 (165 ratings)	6.0 (81 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	1.9 (24 ratings)	7.8 (3 ratings)
Usability	8.8 (80 ratings)	7.0 (16 ratings)
Availability	2.0 (5 ratings)	6.7 (4 ratings)
Performance	1.0 (4 ratings)	2.9 (2 ratings)
Support Rating	1.1 (68 ratings)	2.1 (12 ratings)
Online Training	- (0 ratings)	4.7 (3 ratings)
Implementation Rating	3.0 (6 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Configurability	10.0 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
CPA Rating	7.4 (18 ratings)	8.0 (8 ratings)
Ease of integration	1.3 (2 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Product Scalability	1.0 (2 ratings)	3.0 (2 ratings)
Vendor post-sale	1.0 (2 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale	1.0 (2 ratings)	- (0 ratings)

QuickBooks Online vs. Wave Accounting

QuickBooks Online

Wave Accounting

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