These ratings are meant to provide clarity in the decision-making process, but what’s best for your business will depend on its size, growth trajectory and which features you need most. We encourage you to research and compare multiple accounting software products before choosing one. NerdWallet’s accounting software ratings favor products that are easy to use, reasonably priced, have a robust feature set and can grow with your business. The best accounting software received top marks when evaluated across 10 categories and more than 30 subcategories. Learn more about how we rate small-business accounting software.

How Does Wave Handle Expenses and Bills?

For instance, Xero’s cheapest plan limits users to sending 20 invoices a month, while FreshBooks’ cheapest plan limits users to invoicing only five clients a month. With Wave, you can send an unlimited number of invoices to an unlimited number of clients each month. Wave’s other invoice automations include automatic user notifications when how to plan create budgets budget variance analysis steps a client views your invoice and pays their bill. You can also schedule automatic payment deadline reminders for clients.

Users can connect an unlimited number of bank accounts to Wave Accounting software, ensuring every transaction is accounted for and financial snapshots are up to date. While only Wave Pro users can access automated bank transactions and expense categorization, free users can manually categorize expenses by tax category to ensure their data is ready to go by tax time. Honestly, these features outpace those included with some paid accounting software. For instance, Xero only includes expense tracking with its priciest plan, which starts at $65 a month. QuickBooks Online limits user numbers by plan (its cheapest plan, balance sheet reserves QuickBooks Simple Start, includes just three users). And FreshBooks doesn’t limit your user number, but it does charge an extra $10 a month per user—which adds up fast.

QuickBooks Online: Best for comprehensive accounting features

You can also customize your chart of accounts (CoA) to include only the accounts you need—useful for freelancers, who tend to have fewer expense and income categories on their books than bigger businesses. Wave also doesn’t have quite as many integrations as other paid (and more popular) accounting software options. Most importantly, it doesn’t sync with any third-party payroll providers.

When you reconcile your books, you’ll navigate to the “Reconciliation” tab within the Accounting menu. If you need to manually edit, add or remove any transactions, you can do so on the Reconciliation or Transactions pages. Next, you can add sales tax (if necessary), create customer profiles and customize your invoice templates. Can manage multiple businesses for free under one account; lacks project tracking tools, industry-specific reports and transaction tracking tags.

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Experienced and passionate about the unique challenges small business owners face, Wave Advisors can give you help and advice when you need it—during the year, when you’re closing how to become a quickbooks proadvisor year-end, or at tax time. Higher-tier QuickBooks Online plans include bill tracking, project profitability data, inventory management, employee expense tracking and more. Most popular accounting tools have at least a handful of built-in app integrations that make connecting with third-party services as painless as possible. For instance, Xero and FreshBooks’ native Gusto integrations ensure the accounting and payroll software sync with each other problem-free.

Connecting your accounts

Wave Accounting gives you free unlimited invoices, users, expense and income tracking, credit and bank account connections, and more. It also offers multi-business management for no  additional fee. You don’t have to enter a credit card number when you sign up. However, like most products with free plans, Wave has its 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.

1. Wave’s stored bank data relies on 256-bit encryption, and Wave states that its servers are both physically and virtually secured.
2. This page displays cash flow, profit and loss, and expense charts.
3. Explore more details on the competition in our full roundup of the best accounting software for small businesses.
4. Create beautiful invoices, accept online payments, and make accounting easy—all in one place—with Wave’s suite of money management tools.

We believe everyone should be able to make financial decisions with confidence. The software setup wizard guides you through four easy setup steps to generate an uncluttered, straightforward dashboard. The interface ensures a low learning curve with friendly graphics, an in-app help center, live chat, user-first design and an accessible app. Wave doesn’t offer any native integrations with third-party apps, though users can rely on Zapier to create their own custom integrations. In fact, the only app Wave Accounting does sync with is Wave Payroll.

After providing a few basic details about your business — name, type, currency you use, address — you’ll have instant access to your account. Allows an unlimited number of users in the Pro plan, but is not complex enough for businesses with more than a handful of employees; ideal for very small service-based businesses, freelancers or contractors. Transactions will appear in your bookkeeping automatically, and you’ll say goodbye to manual receipt entry. Create beautiful invoices, accept online payments, and make accounting easy—all in one place. Plus, thanks to its integration with the budget-friendly Wave Payroll solution, Wave Accounting can also work well for small businesses with employees. Since the paid version of the software allows for multiple users, it may also appeal to midsize and growing businesses where more than one person keeps an eye on company finances.