Wave vs QuickBooks Online: Which Is Better in 2024?

Its suite of tools offers accounting, invoicing, expense tracking, time tracking, tax reporting, employee and contractor payroll and more. Wave is an up-and-coming contender in invoicing and payments software for small businesses. It’s primarily devoted to freelancers and small single-owner businesses, offering a single free plan that lets you send invoices, track expenses, receive online payments and run financial reports. Users like that QuickBooks Online has a comprehensive set of accounting features that can handle complex and diverse business needs. They also appreciate its user-friendly interface and guided setup process. They find its features, such as invoice automation, progress invoicing, inventory management, budgeting, cash flow forecasting, etc., to be powerful and efficient.

QuickBooks offers reasonable pricing for small business owners, but the abundance of features they offer that provide flexibility for growing businesses could overwhelm those just starting out. For larger businesses wanting a more robust invoicing solution, QuickBooks Online is the better choice. It provides how to enter expenses into quickbooks more customization options and the ability to automatically add billable labor and expenses to invoices. QuickBooks Desktop costs an up-front yearly charge, which can range anywhere from $349/99 to $1,340. Or, if you don’t need as many features as QuickBooks Online provides, there’s QuickBooks Self-Employed.

The Tech Troop likes the app and the many integrations QuickBooks online offers its customers. Since it’s cloud-based, customers loved being able to access their secured data from anywhere and do things like check inventory on the fly. When it’s tax time, this reporting feature has been huge for my business. With a few clicks, I send my accountant what he needs without sorting through receipts or crunching numbers.

Because it offers the functionality for both the small business owner sending out their first batch of invoices to the CFOs of larger businesses that rely on its advanced reporting features. QuickBooks has the upper hand here with in-depth reporting for all plans and levels. There are a lot of snapshot reports that are available with one click, and your dashboard homepage provides simple KPIs and metrics to give a quick view of account health.

• As such, you can create a digital hub from which you can conduct your business.
• Meanwhile, QuickBooks Online can reconcile items, including checks that aren’t yet processed by your bank.
• QuickBooks Online, meanwhile, caters to medium-sized businesses and large enterprises.
• However, both of these tools rank as one of the best payroll software currently available.
• Wave also has a payroll add-on, which is just a bit cheaper each month.

While good accounting software allows you to incorporate tracked time into invoices, it should also allow you to incorporate tracked expenses. Wave accounting says their business accounting software is simple, reliable, and secure and may be accessed online anytime. They offer free accounting and invoicing services and pay-per-use payment plans and subscriptions per month to payroll services. As a writer, I don’t have any inventory to track, no employees to manage, and my billing is straightforward, so the advanced features aren’t worth the additional cost. Overall, your choice depends on your needs, business size, and budget for such a program. Time-saving features like scheduled payment reminders and automatic credit card payments.

Monitor Income and Expenses

The dashboard interface is pleasing to the eye and easy to navigate, and includes the most important graphs and line items to track the state of your business financials. The top products based on usability and customer satisfaction, as rated by user reviews. To look at a variety of accounting software that will meet your business’s needs, check out our Accounting Software software category page. The last thing a small business owner needs to learn is how to be a professional bookkeeper on top of all the other small business priorities. To make up for this, small business accounting apps have to be designed for non-accountants. Many users find Wave to be more user-friendly and easier to use than QuickBooks Online due to its simplicity and lack of advanced features.

Our pick for the best small company accounting software is QuickBooks Online, which offers a more complete accounting solution than Wave. Advanced reporting, inventory management, and mileage monitoring are just a few of the new and improved capabilities. While Wave is designed for small enterprises, QuickBooks has no upper limit and scales with you as you grow and want more sophisticated capabilities.

Is it necessary for you to collect sales tax from your customers?

(You’ll probably need to use your laptop, since Wave doesn’t have an accounting app.) In contrast, QuickBooks Online’s all-in-one app lets you scan and upload receipts right from your phone. In contrast, QuickBooks Online has four plans to choose from—plus some versatile options for freelancers and desktop users. QuickBooks Online integrates with more than 750 third-party apps, and has multiple direct integrations with point-of-sale systems and payroll software.

If you’re sold on the first three features of Wave (accounting, invoicing, and payments), then you might want to continue riding the Wave with their Payroll and Receipt features. Wave offers customizable templates to create unlimited professional looking invoices, so you can add your logo and color scheme to reflect your brand. Now it makes sense; instead of offering free trial options or packages varied by price and feature, they hook you with accounting and invoicing free options to convince you to upgrade. The QuickBooks mobile card reader allows you to complete a sale anywhere, at any time.

Wave vs. QuickBooks: Which should you choose?

However, if your business plan includes growth, make sure you will have to figure out an application that can grow with your business. We compare Wave and QuickBooks in this post to help you spot important differences and figure out which accounting software is best for your company. This is backed up with an in-house case study that provides a precise comparison of Wave and QuickBooks Online. They say it’s easy to use, like that it’s cloud-based, and says the invoice templates are attractive. QuickBooks also offers “TurboTax bundle” which instantly exports your financial data to TurboTax for easy filing of state and federal taxes.

Wave vs. QuickBooks Online: Integration with other software

This makes Wave’s reconciliation feature essentially useless if you write many checks. Meanwhile, QuickBooks Online can reconcile items, including checks that aren’t yet processed by your bank. If your business pays bills with paper checks then QuickBooks Online is the much better choice.

Wave vs QuickBooks features

Wave only features a chatbot, in-product help manuals, and a searchable knowledge library with how-to articles and troubleshooting suggestions as customer support alternatives. QuickBooks Online has significantly superior customer service, including the ability to speak with a live representative. Wave may be linked to other applications you use on a daily basis to automate business procedures and expedite financial transactions.

Wave vs Quickbooks Comparison

It’s difficult to argue with free, and even tacking on the transaction fees, which you will pay in QuickBooks Online (or any comparable product), too, Wave still wins. While the amount of help and support resources Wave provides, particularly for a free application, is admirable, having live support is always better than not. Stuff happens, and when it does, you’ll be thankful for having that number to call.