Wave

Wave (Wave Financial) sells web-based financial management software aimed at small business owners and solopreneurs rather than professional accountants. The platform combines bookkeeping and accounting, invoicing and estimates, online payment acceptance, and payroll in a single system, with the stated goal of giving owners a single source of truth for business finances and keeping them prepared for tax time.

Core accounting features include unlimited bank and credit card connections (facilitated through Plaid), automatic transaction import, auto-merging and categorization, receipt capture with OCR (including bulk upload of up to 10 receipts), dashboards covering income, expenses, payments and invoices, and instant reports such as profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow. Invoicing features include customizable invoice and estimate templates with logos and brand colors, reusable email message templates, multi-currency invoicing, automatic sales tax calculation, automated late payment reminders, deposits collected through estimates, and notifications when an invoice is viewed, due or paid. Payments can be taken by credit card, bank transfer or Apple Pay. A mobile app for iOS and Android acts as a companion to the desktop product, supporting invoice and estimate creation, payment tracking and dashboard access. Wave also offers Wave Advisors, a human service tier providing a dedicated bookkeeper, monthly prepared financial statements, bookkeeping support, migration onboarding from other software such as FreshBooks, and optional one-on-one accounting coaching. Users can grant access to third parties including accountants, payroll managers and Block Advisors tax pros.

Wave states that its servers are protected physically and electronically, that connections between users, their bank accounts and Wave use 256-bit SSL encryption, and that it is a PCI-DSS Level 1 Service Provider.

Business model

Wave operates a freemium software-as-a-service model: a free Starter plan provides core invoicing and bookkeeping, a paid Pro subscription adds automation and branding features, and additional revenue comes from per-transaction payment processing fees and a higher-priced human bookkeeping service (Wave Advisors).

Subscription pricing for the Pro plan is $19 USD/month billed monthly or $190 USD/year billed annually ($25 CAD/month or $250 CAD/year), with a promotional rate of $9.50 USD/month for the first three months. The Starter plan is $0. Online payments are charged per use: 2.9% + $0.60 per credit card transaction and 3.4% + $0.60 per Amex transaction on Starter, with the fixed fee waived for Pro subscribers on the first 10 transactions per month. Wave Advisors bookkeeping service starts at $149/month (also listed at $199/month).

Traction

The company's website states that over 350,000 small businesses use Wave (an older on-page figure cites over 300,000), and reports internal customer survey results of 9 out of 10 Wave small business owners saying Wave is easier than QuickBooks and 92% of those who switched from QuickBooks agreeing Wave offers more value.