Wave gives away genuine double entry accounting with unlimited invoicing and no time limit. People assume there is a catch. There is not one, exactly: Wave makes money on payment processing and payroll, and the ledger is the hook. That is an honest business model and the product is honestly good.
The useful question is not whether it is really free. It is when you outgrow it.
The four walls
You hit one of these, and you move:
- You start carrying stock. There is no inventory. Not thin, absent.
- You bill in another currency. There is no multi currency.
- You need project profitability. Not there either.
- Reconciliation becomes load bearing. Bank feeds drop more often than on paid products, and sometimes fail quietly. At five transactions a week you notice. At two hundred you do not, and that is a real problem.
The payroll asterisk
Wave is a Canadian company and it shows. Canadian payroll is properly full service: T4s, ROEs, CPP, EI, automatic remittance to CRA in supported provinces. It is genuinely good and priced well below the big providers.
US payroll is a different story. Wave only files on your behalf in a limited set of states. Everywhere else it calculates and hands the numbers to you. That is not what most people mean by full service, and it is the most common unpleasant surprise in our Wave reviews. Check your state before you pay for anything.
Who should use it
A sole proprietor or a business under roughly ten transactions a week, with no stock and one currency. For that business Wave is not a compromise, it is the right answer, and paying 38 dollars a month for QuickBooks instead is money set on fire.
Everyone else should treat it as a good place to start and plan the exit. You will know the day.