Wave

Wave is accounting and invoicing software for very small businesses, built around a free tier that covers the basics of bookkeeping and getting paid. You send invoices, record income and expenses against double-entry books, and pull simple reports like profit and loss, without paying a subscription to do it. Wave makes its money on payment processing, payroll and a paid Pro tier that adds automation, so the “free” label describes the accounting ledger rather than the whole product.

What you can actually do with it

Wave covers the money-in and money-out cycle a freelancer or micro-business deals with each month.

• Send invoices and estimates. Build branded invoices, convert estimates into invoices, and set up recurring billing for retainer clients.
• Keep proper double-entry books. Income, expenses, bills and journal entries feed reports such as profit and loss and balance sheet, so your accountant gets something recognisable.
• Get paid online. Customers can pay an invoice by card or bank transfer, with the fee taken per transaction rather than as a subscription.
• Import and categorise bank activity. Connect your bank and credit card accounts so transactions flow in and can be matched against invoices and bills.
• Capture receipts. Photograph a receipt with the mobile app and attach it to the expense rather than keeping a shoebox.
• Run payroll. Wave offers payroll for employees and contractors as a paid add-on, with tax filing handled automatically in some jurisdictions and manually in others.
• Hand work to a bookkeeper. Wave Advisors is an in-house service if you would rather have someone else do the categorising and month-end.

Who it fits best

Wave is a strong fit for freelancers, consultants, sole traders and businesses with a handful of staff who mostly need to invoice clients, track expenses and hand tidy books to an accountant once a year. If your finances are simple and cash-based, the free tier genuinely does the job, which is rare in this category.

It fits worst at the other end: businesses tracking inventory, running job costing across projects, needing several people in the books at once, or operating outside North America where the payroll and payments pieces do not apply. If you can already see yourself outgrowing simple invoicing within a year or two, it may be cheaper in effort to start on something you will not have to migrate away from.

Things worth knowing before you commit

• Payroll and payments are region-limited. Payroll is a North American product, and online payment acceptance is not available everywhere, so check your own country before planning around either.
• Free has moved over time. Features that were once free, including some automation and extra collaborators, now sit on the paid tier. Assume the boundary can shift again.
• Integrations are thin. Compared with QuickBooks or Xero, there is a much smaller ecosystem of connected apps, so expect to bridge gaps with exports or Zapier-style middleware.
• Inventory and project accounting are not really there. If you need stock levels, job costing or detailed time-to-invoice workflows, Wave will frustrate you.
• Support is mostly self-serve on the free tier. Live help is generally tied to paid plans or the Advisors service, which matters if something goes wrong close to a tax deadline.

Alternatives to compare it against

The obvious comparison is full small-business accounting suites such as QuickBooks Online, Xero or FreshBooks, which cost money from day one but scale further, handle inventory and projects better, and connect to far more apps. If invoicing is really all you need, a dedicated invoicing tool or the billing feature inside your practice-management software may be simpler than a general ledger. And if you are outside North America, look first at whichever accounting package is well supported for your country’s tax filing, because local compliance matters more than the feature list.

Plans, feature boundaries, add-on costs and transaction fees change regularly. Check Wave’s own pricing page for the current position before committing.

Further reading

• Accounting App for Freelancers: Streamlining Finances — aimed at the sole traders and consultants Wave’s free tier is designed around.
• Best Accounting Software for SME: Cost-Effective Solutions — the paid packages to weigh against a free ledger with thin integrations.
• Choosing the Right Self Employed Invoice Generator — relevant if invoicing is all you need and a full general ledger is overkill.
• Growing Too Fast? 7 Financial Signs You Need Bookkeeping Support Now — the warning signs that you have outgrown a free tier and need real bookkeeping help.

Have you used Wave?

One sentence is enough. Would you pick it again, and why or why not? We publish the critical reviews too — that is the point.