Know when an invoice is viewed, becomes due, or gets paid, so you can stay on top of your cash flow better than ever. See how Revenue Cloud goes from quote to cash on one platform, giving sales and finance one customer view. You can invite your accountants, bookkeepers or other business partners to Wave via email and designate their user roles. They can receive “editor permissions” and access accounting and reports as well as purchases easily. Track every dime that goes out of your business’s pockets, get reimbursed by your customers for billable expenses, and generate insightful reports.
Connecting your accounts
8 See EY Global Tax Alert, Saudi Arabia announces eighth wave of Phase 2 e-invoicing integration, dated 24 August 2023. 7 See EY Global Tax Alert, Saudi Arabia announces seventh wave of Phase 2 e-invoicing integration, dated 31 July 2023. 6 See EY Global Tax Alert, Saudi Arabia announces sixth wave of Phase 2 e-invoicing integration, dated 20 June 2023.
It’s also intuitive so you don’t need to be an accountant to use it successfully. Businesses generally receive their funds within two business days if a customer pays by credit card. ACH bank payments can take from two to seven days for funds to reach a business’s bank account. The platform offers accounting and expense management as well, letting you manage your finances within the platform.
Secure online payments
Moreover, you can integrate QuickBooks with hundreds of third-party tools available in the app marketplace. There are also add-on Intuit services like QuickBooks Payroll or QuickBooks Time. Make bookkeeping and tax time easy with solutions that are affordable, small biz friendly, and—dare we say—fun to use. Once you’ve created an invoice with our invoice generator, you’ll be able to download a PDF copy of the invoice or get the PDF emailed to you directly. Customize your invoices by choosing from a variety of templates.
Get your money faster with online payments
If you’re a startup, micro-business or sole proprietor who doesn’t want to invest in accounting software but needs to keep track of your finances, Wave Accounting is a great option. As long as you’re content with basic features and don’t see yourself expanding in the foreseeable future, you’ll find this completely free, easy-to-use software particularly appealing. Since you don’t have to pay anything to get started, it’s certainly worth trying out.
Automatic payment reminders
- Unlike a majority of its competitors, Wave does not have a comprehensive mobile app.
- FreshBooks has an excellent mobile app that allows you snap photos of receipts, send invoices and track mileage.
- From the dashboard (or the Banking menu on the left-hand side), you’ll be able to connect your bank and credit card accounts to automatically download and categorize your transactions if you opted for the paid Pro plan.
- Compared with free software like Wave, QuickBooks plans are expensive.
A salesperson’s job is momentarily done at the end of each month when deals are closed and paperwork is submitted to the finance team. Given the effort it can take to land new customers, the worst outcome is for an unreliable order-to-cash process to create problems. This can cause significant delays in payments and cash collection, which can sour new business partnerships and create revenue leakage. Wave’s software is simpler—designed for easy use for freelancers and small businesses—while QuickBooks’ platform is designed to cover complex business needs and grow as your business grows.
What are the benefits of digital invoicing?
It lacks some of the useful features you may find in other accounting software, such as project management, time tracking and inventory management. While Wave provides unlimited invoices, it might be best to look elsewhere if you are looking for more robust account software. Both QuickBooks and Invoice2go offer more comprehensive features like time tracking to easily record billable hours and export them into an invoice. For businesses that carry inventory, QuickBooks Online offers strong inventory tracking that alerts users when the inventory gets low. While Wave offers a basic inventory feature, it does not track stock within the software. Wave also offers a free app to help you manage your invoices on the go.
Users can create reports to show month-to-month or year-to-year comparisons to easily identify cash flow trends. You can also receive unlimited income and expense tracking data, instant updates for invoicing, payroll and payments data and profit/loss reports. It’s hard to beat free accounting software, especially if you’re running a small business on a budget.
When you adopt a platform approach to invoice management software, you can automate invoicing for recurring business and build better customer relationships because your CRM and invoice management tools are connected. This becomes increasingly relevant as companies leverage sales analytics software and AI for sales to better target and accelerate sales processes. With invoice and billing software, your business can streamline processes with automated invoicing, automatic payment reminders, customizable invoices, and integrations with payment tracking software or payment gateways. This saves valuable time, improves your company’s cash flow, and keeps your hard-won customers happy. That’s not invoice wave the case with Wave—it provides one plan with an unlimited number of users, invoices, credit card connections and reports for free.
- Customize your invoices by choosing from a variety of templates.
- Service-based businesses that need to accept payments online can significantly benefit from invoicing solutions that easily process digital payments.
- Check out more of our invoicing tools that can help you run your business more efficiently.
This is particularly true if you don’t have much accounting experience and would like an easy-to-use, fully functional tool. It’s one of the only truly free options on the market and can allow you to manage your accounting processes in one convenient place. While the invoicing platform is not easy to integrate with popular third-party payroll apps like Gusto or OnPay, Wave does have its own payroll software. Small businesses that plan to hire employees at some point might need to change accounting software systems in the future or upgrade to Wave Payroll. Wave Payments also connects with Wave Accounting for reporting features.
It also integrates with other Wave software to create a solid product for businesses that are looking for a simple way to invoice customers and get paid. One of Wave’s most popular invoicing features is the ability to create user-friendly customizable templates. Not only can you customize the invoices to fit your brand, but you can also set up recurring invoices and automate credit card payments for repeat customers. Once invoices have been sent, you can easily track the status of each invoice to see if they are viewed, unpaid or Overdue.
Customers may have different renewal dates, billing types, or charge types. Although the shift toward automation across various functions may feel overwhelming, it offers a competitive edge. Customers now expect easy, fast, and secure billing and payment experiences regardless of transaction size. The good news is that providing these experiences also benefits businesses. This is likely why the global e-invoicing market is expected to reach $60.9 billion by 2032, up from $13.5 billion in 2023, representing a 17.7% growth rate, according to IMARC Group.
We rank Wave third in our guide to the best small business accounting softwave, below only QuickBooks and Xero. 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. FreshBooks has an excellent mobile app that allows you snap photos of receipts, send invoices and track mileage. For example, QuickBooks Online doesn’t have a free plan, but offers four paid plans, each with additional features, making it a great choice for scalability. With the higher-tier QuickBooks plans, you have access to inventory management, billable expenses and project profitability tools, none of which are offered with Wave.
Wave’s free plan offers a decent number of features, like unlimited invoices, that are not always included with other free accounting software options, let alone paid accounting software plans. It also complies with accounting standards and uses double-entry accounting, which can help ensure accuracy. 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. Your customers can pay the invoices you send them instantly by credit card, secure bank payment (ACH/EFT), or Apple Pay.
Built for small business owners like you
20 See EY Global Tax Alert, Saudi Arabia announces 20th wave of Phase 2 e-invoicing integration, dated 5 February 2025. 19 See EY Global Tax Alert, Saudi Arabia announces 19th wave of Phase 2 e-invoicing integration, dated 2 January 2025. 18 See EY Global Tax Alert, Saudi Arabia announces 18th wave of Phase 2 e-invoicing integration, dated 3 December 2024. 17 See EY Global Tax Alert, Saudi Arabia announces 17th wave of Phase 2 e-invoicing integration, dated 4 November 2024. 16 See EY Global Tax Alert, Saudi Arabia announces 16th wave of Phase 2 e-invoicing integration, dated 30 September 2024. 15 See EY Global Tax Alert, Saudi Arabia announces 15th wave of Phase 2 e-invoicing integration, dated 3 September 2024.
This includes ensuring their systems can generate, store, and exchange electronic invoices that comply with the specified standards. Once you sign up online, you can start using Wave’s features right away. All you have to do is share your business name, type, address and the currency you use. There’s no live support unless you pay for it so you’ll have to dig for the answers to your questions in the help center or cross your fingers that the automated chatbot will help you out.
Easily create, customize, and send professional invoices while on-the-go. Today’s leading accounting platforms offer standard security features, such as data encryption, secure credential tokenization and more. While human error will always play some role in security breaches, you can be confident in your accounting platform when it comes to keeping your information safe. Explore more details on the competition in our full roundup of the best accounting software for small businesses. Unlike a majority of its competitors, Wave does not have a comprehensive mobile app. While it does offer a free iOS and Android app, the app is limited in the number of features and functions.
