Wave Accounting

I last reviewed Wave Accounting in December 2010, a month after it launched, and I gave it two stars, not surprising for a brand-new release. Web-based financial solutions often begin their lives with bare-bones frameworks because of their critical content. Lose a document in a word processor? You can rewrite it. But lose a day's worth of sales orders with no backup documentation, and your revenue and customer relations will suffer. Two years later, however, Wave hasn't visibly grown very much. The company did release an integrated payroll solution, Wave Payroll, but it's currently only available in Canada (the U.S. version was expected mid-2012). The main application remains free of charge, in part because of its "Business Savings" feature, a page full of special offers for Wave Accounting users.

Wave Accounting does offer functionality that's unusual in a free financial website. It follows double-entry accounting protocol, so you can modify the Chart of Accounts provided and create Journal entries (activities which are not recommended unless you're an accounting professional) and run standard business reports. You can create and assign multiple sales tax levels and work in multiple currencies, two features that are normally found in more sophisticated applications that levy a subscription fee. While the site offers a lot, gratis, the lack of development since 2010 is troubling.

Reducing Manual Data Entry
Wave Accounting does a little of almost everything that the best accounting programs and websites do, but doesn't excel at anything others don't. What does set it apart from the other online sites I reviewed here is its ability to connect to financial institutions like bank and credit card companies to download recent transactions (Xero?lets you download bank statements, not current data). You just supply your sign-on credentials for each institution, and your transactions quickly appear in a list.

Once you've downloaded your transactions, you have several options. You can calculate sales taxes, split transactions, designate them as transfers from one account to another and match them to existing records. You can also categorize them to help track your spending. The site learns from your actions and duplicates the categorization the next time it sees a matching source. Wave Accounting also lets you bring in bank statements themselves.

This downloading capability can be a real time-saver. You don't have to enter a transaction every time you use a credit card or write a check or otherwise authorize withdrawals from your accounts. And it minimizes the need to enter the same transaction twice.

Jack of All Trades...
You do have the option, though, of manually entering invoices and expenses. You'll create records for customers and vendors using boilerplate forms that collect an adequate amount of contact information, but nothing exceptional. Same goes for the items and services you sell. The site doesn't offer true inventory-tracking, but you can enter a name, description, price, account and tax rate for each product, and you can indicate whether you buy or sell the item (or both). Wave Accounting also doesn't offer true time billing, something competitors do.

Those records will be available in drop-down lists when you create invoices or enter bills/expenses. The forms you'll use for those transactions cover the basics required and really nothing more. The site does employ a helpful convention for fund exchanges that don't require an official form. For example, if someone uses the company credit card to buy printer paper at Copy City, or a customer comes in and gives you money for something they bought off a shelf, you can click the "Quick Entry" button and create an abbreviated record (there's a box where you can enter a description).

Wave Accounting provides access to better tools than it offers internally via a slim stable of add-ons. You can integrate data with sites like FreshBooks, PayPal and Shoeboxed, but then you have to learn another program and pay additional fees. It's fine to provide integrated add-ons ? in fact, it's the direction that accounting is going ? but it would be nice if there'd been more effort made to flesh out Wave's own capabilities. Reporting, too, is surprisingly lightweight. 10 standard financial report templates are available, fewer than what competitors provide. They offer very minimal customization, but can be exported to email, PDF and Excel format.

Needs Navigational Improvement
It's not terribly difficult to get where you're going, since Wave Accounting employs a horizontal toolbar similar to those on competing sites. Work screens are also easy to navigate, and the site uses standard web/Windows conventions (drop-down lists, buttons, etc.) for data entry. It's not the most attractive site in the bunch, but it's fairly intuitive.

My problem with the user interface lies in two areas. First, the "offers." Links to some of the Business Savings that the site suggests appear at the top of the screen, just below the toolbar. I'm used to seeing ads on web sites and in software, but they're generally positioned off to the side. These feel intrusive, and you don't need any distraction when you're working with your finances.

Second, the Dashboard, which you cannot modify, doesn't make good use of screen space, and it displays some critical links below the fold. The Imported Transaction box gets top billing, and an income/expense graphs lies to the right. You have to scroll to see tables and a graph containing key financial information?and to see the link to your settings (add customers and vendors, etc.). You can get there by clicking the "Account" menu in the upper right corner?if that occurs to you ? but a link to your customization options and record-building screen should be front and center. The site doesn't offer any new user aids to get you started ? it just kind of plops you right in the middle of it. The help files I accessed were clear and easily understood, though.

Difficult to Recommend
I can't think of another web-based financial solution that doesn't automatically log you off after a certain length of inactivity. This safety feature is missing in Wave Accounting.

Wave Accounting is an odd collection of tools and functionality. Software and sites that employ double-entry bookkeeping, with all of the "background" work that that implies, are usually more complex. They offer more reports, better customization, account registers, payroll and more capable inventory tracking, time billing, etc.

Given its capable competitors, it's hard to suggest that businesses sign up for this site. If you must have downloadable recent transactions, I'd recommend QuickBooks Online (not reviewed here). The Simple Start version (free) lets you connect to one account, but for $26.95 per month, you get unlimited access and a whole lot of functionality that Wave doesn't offer. Your best, most robust small business accounting software is still the desktop version of QuickBooks Premier Edition 2013. It's our Editor's Choice again this year because of its robust feature set, usability and support.

More Accouting & Tax Software Reviews:
??? Wave Accounting
??? FreshBooks
??? Xero
??? SurePayroll
??? Onpay
?? more

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