Looking for wave or quickbooks? Read on.
Wave vs. QuickBooks: Which Is Right for Your Business?
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QuickBooks is a much stronger accounting software than Wave, offering a great set of core accounting features, helpful tools to boost your overall operational efficiency, and unmatched help and support.
However, if you’re just after a simple bookkeeping tool to manage your finances, Wave will do more than meet your needs. It’s fuss-free, easy to use, and it’s completely free – unlike QuickBooks, which has an entry price of $20 per month. This makes Wave an ideal tool for managing the finances of small businesses.
Both QuickBooks and Wave excel in different areas, so scroll down to find out how the two solutions compare when it comes to accounting features, advanced capabilities, affordability, and support.
- QuickBooks is the better overall accounting tool with robust core features, customizable reporting, and 800+ third-party integrations.
- Wave is completely free to use, making it a better value for freelancers and small businesses with tight budgets.
- Compared to Wave, QuickBooks offers the best invoice customization options, allowing users to modify layout, fonts, colors, and fields.
- QuickBooks provides dedicated customer support across all plans, outperforming Wave’s limited chatbot.
- Zoho Books is the best accounting platform alternative, offering strong automation, intuitive billing tools, and a generous free plan
Wave or QuickBooks: At a Glance
After putting the software through its paces, I found **QuickBooks was the better accountancy tool overall, while Wave was the more wallet-friendly. Check out the table below for a quick at-a-glance rundown of how these two providers stack up.
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Starting price
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Free trial
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Best for
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Core Benefit
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Pros
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Cons
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Try now
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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QuickBooks |
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30 days |
It’s free, no trial needed |
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Businesses needing advanced financial insights and customization |
Overall |
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Excellent help and support features, including dedicated on all plans and 24/7 support and training on Advanced plan |
Basic accounting functionality for free |
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| Try QuickBooks | Try Wave Starter |
When to Choose Wave vs. QuickBooks
Choose Wave if you are a freelancer or small business on a tight budget needing zero-cost basic bookkeeping; when deciding between Wave or QuickBooks, choose QuickBooks if you are a growing or larger business requiring inventory tracking, customizable reporting, and advanced cash flow forecasting.
Who should choose Wave?
- Small businesses
- Budget-conscious businesses
- Budget-conscious businesses
- Freelancers
- Businesses with low turnovers
Who should choose QuickBooks?
- Larger businesses
- Businesses that manage stock (retail, food businesses)
- Businesses looking for budget planning and cash flow projection
- Businesses with mid-to-high turnovers
- Businesses that would benefit from custom reports
Best for Core Accounting: QuickBooks
QuickBooks outperforms Wave in core accounting by providing native estimate-to-invoice conversion and automated payment reminders within its ‘Overdue’ dashboard. This made it easy for me to quickly get on top of income and outgoings.
I also found it very simple to edit and send invoices. The interface is clearly laid out, with a combination of drop-down boxes and sections for free typing. You’re able to set up invoices manually, set up recurring invoices, and even set up automatic invoice sending.
QuickBooks’ tax readiness tools let users share their books directly with their accountant, as well as organize their income and expenses into tax categories. What’s more, the platform will automatically sort your business expenses into the appropriate tax categories, so that you keep as much of what you owe as possible. This will be warmly received by businesses that cater to a lot of clients, such as an investment bank.
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With QuickBooks, you can get paid directly from within your invoice with a selection of different payment processors available. Source: Tech.co testing
While Wave offers unlimited estimates, invoices, bills, and bookkeeping records, this is only available as an add-on on the free plan.
If you opt for the paid plan ($19 per month), you’ll unlock the ability to connect to bank accounts for importing transactions, digitally capture receipts, track expenses, and automate late payment reminders. It’s all perfectly serviceable, but it doesn’t improve on QuickBooks.
Best Value: Wave
Wave provides superior financial value over QuickBooks by offering a 100% free core plan with no contracts or hidden fees, whereas QuickBooks starts at $20 per month, although this is currently discounted to $10 per month for the first three months.
In fact, QuickBooks offers five software packages, with the most expensive plan costing $340 per month (currently discounted to $170 per month for the first three months). It doesn’t offer a free plan, although users can get a 30-day free trial on any of its plans (you will have to waive this if you want to take advantage of the current promotional offer).
While QuickBooks may be pricier than Wave, all of its tiers include stand-out features, including project accounting and budgeting tools, which provide a decent return on investment to businesses with advanced accounting needs.
Wave plans
- Wave Starter – Free
- Wave Pro – $19 per month (or $190 per year billed annually)
QuickBooks plans
- QuickBooks Solopreneur – $20 per month (currently discounted to $2 per month for the first three months)
- QuickBooks Simple Start – $38 per month (currently discounted to $19 per month for the first three months)
- QuickBooks Essentials – $85 per month (currently discounted to $42.50 per month for the first three months)
- QuickBooks Plus – $140 per month (currently discounted to $70 per month for the first three months)
- QuickBooks Advanced – $340 per month (currently discounted to $170 per month for the first three months)
You can learn more about the software’s pricing structure in our QuickBooks Online pricing review.
Best for Operational Efficiency: QuickBooks
QuickBooks enhances operational efficiency by offering over 800 third-party app integrations and fully customizable invoicing templates.
Highlights include a series of digital document management apps, such as Clio, Client Hub, and DocuSend, which make it easy for users to digitize, edit, and manage their important documents. Integrated HR and payroll teams will find this particularly useful, because it means you can handle all of your business operations from within one program.
QuickBooks is also one of the more customizable platforms on the accounting market. Users can create personalized invoices, estimates, and sales receipts, with the ability to change display fields, table contents, colors, fonts, and layouts. You can also add your company logo and contact information to make your forms, making it a neat way of building trust with your clients.
QuickBooks Online offers a library of integrations, so users can connect with useful third-party tools. Source: Tech.co testing
On the other hand, Wave places a much smaller emphasis on value-add features. There are no built-in third-party integrations, with any available integrations only accessible by connecting with Zapier. While you can add your logo and brand colors to invoices on the free plan, you’ll have to pay for the Pro Plan in order to remove Wave branding from invoice footers.
Best for Help & Support: QuickBooks
QuickBooks beats Wave for help and support, offering support via phone, email, and even live chat. Its Enterprise users even benefit from 24/7 assistance. Conversely, Wave has a Help Center and chatbot called Mave that are available 24/7.
However, Mave’s capabilities are limited. While you have the option to connect to a human support agent, you’ll often find yourself waiting in a long line.
What are the best alternatives to QuickBooks and Wave?
While QuickBooks and Wave fundamentally appeal to different demographics, they still won’t meet the needs of every business. If you manage a hospitality business, for instance, I would recommend using Xero because of its handy budget creator tool and slick POS integrations.
During the latest round of testing, I found Zoho Books to be the best accounting platform currently on the market. Not only is it a great low-cost tool for billing clients thanks to its generous invoice limits, but it has the best set of core accounting features out of all the providers that I tested.
I was particularly impressed with the invoicing system, which I found to be well-designed and a pleasure to use. I also found the platform to be intuitive and easy to use in general, with logical signposting and site-mapping. What’s more, the dashboard surfaces key insights and an at-a-glance overview of your income and expenses, so that you get a picture of your business finances quickly.
Zoho Books is a great option, but I understand that your business is your business, and therefore, your needs may vary. That’s why we’ve broken down some of QuickBooks and Wave’s biggest competitors in the table below. If you’re still weighing up Wave or QuickBooks against the field, make sure to check out our full guide to the best QuickBooks alternatives for more information.
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Starting price
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Free trial
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Core Benefit
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Try now
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QuickBooks |
Xero |
Zoho Books |
FreshBooks |
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Free |
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30 days |
It’s free, no trial needed |
30 days |
14 days |
30 days |
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Excellent help and support features, including dedicated on all plans and 24/7 support and training on Advanced plan |
Basic accounting functionality for free |
Online integrations |
Strong automation features |
Inventory tools at a low price, plus a great 60% discount for the first 6 months |
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| Try QuickBooks | Try Wave Starter | Try Xero now | Try Zoho Books | Try FreshBooks |
Our Research and Testing: How We Scored Wave & QuickBooks
At Tech.co, we take our impartial research and analysis seriously, so you can have complete confidence that we’re giving you the clearest, most useful recommendations.
After conducting an initial investigation to identify the most relevant, popular, and established accounting tools in the market, we conducted further research, including testing six major accounting software platforms.
Based on years of market and user needs research, we’ve established an accounting software testing methodology that scores these platforms against six main categories, and 25 subcategories — with a total of 1,512 areas of investigation being considered overall.
We also put the platforms through their paces with hands-on testing to gain a deeper grasp of their average user experience. We dedicated 57 hours to carrying out 37 user tests, with a total of 555 tasks being completed in total.
Our main testing categories for accounting software are:
- Core accounting features: We check how adept a platform will be at managing accounting tasks, focusing on key bookkeeping features like invoicing, tax preparation, journal entry, time tracking, financial transactions, and payment support.
- Operational efficiency: We determine how capable a system is at ensuring day-to-day processes run seamlessly, paying close attention to third-party integrations, collaboration tools, AI automation, and customization options.
- Financial planning: We assess how capable a system will be at measuring income, profits, and losses. Specifically, we check for the presence and quality of forecasting and budgeting, inventory management, reporting, and compliance tools.
- Help and support: We assess how useful and reliable a platform’s support system is, focusing on support options, whether it’s 24/7 support or knowledge center accuracy, as well as cloud backup, and security safeguards.
- Pricing: We compare the overall cost of each platform, taking factors like monthly costs, set-up fees, hidden fees, and free plans into account. We also measure how strict contracts are, and how much it would cost for a business to terminate them early.
- User experience: An overall judgment of how easily users can interact with the platform. We tested each accounting platform and got our team to report how easy they were to use, how they felt when they were using them, and how likely they were to recommend the platform to another business.
When it comes to calculating a product’s final score, not all testing areas are weighted evenly, with factors like “core accounting features” and “operational efficiency” being prioritized for small businesses, while sector-specific features are valued more highly for businesses across different industries.
We understand that accounting software is always evolving. That’s why at Tech.co, we have full-time product researchers to re-run this testing process regularly. It’s the only way to ensure our results remain reflective of the present day.
Learn more about our research.
QuickBooks is a better, more versatile accounting tool than Wave, boasting a robust core feature set, a good range of tools to boost your overall operational efficiency, and significantly better help and support options. While QuickBooks will undoubtedly prove an excellent choice for a number of different business use cases, Wave shouldn’t be discounted entirely.
While QuickBooks can cost as much as $340 per month for its Advanced Plan, Wave is completely free to use, making it perfect for smaller businesses looking to keep expenses low. And while it doesn’t offer much in the way of advanced accounting features, it has everything you need to manage basic bookkeeping, including quality invoicing integrations.
But QuickBooks and Wave aren’t the only options available. If you’re still open to other solutions, our comparison table will help you whittle down the competition in minutes. And, just like Wave, it’s completely free to use.
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FAQs
Yes, but it’s not an automatic process. Wave doesn’t offer a direct one-click export tool to QuickBooks, meaning you have to export your accounting data (like transaction histories, vendor lists, customer info, and invoices) as CSV files from Wave and import them into QuickBooks Online.
Alternatively, you can use third-party migration tools or consult an accountant to ensure your historical records transfer accurately.
QuickBooks offers built-in inventory tracking, which lets you monitor stock levels, set up reorder points, and track product sales across higher-tier plans like Plus and Advanced.
Wave, on the other hand, does not include native inventory management features. Therefore, you’ll have to manage stock manually or connect external inventory integrations.
Yes, both QuickBooks and Wave use standard double-entry accounting. Double-entry accounting ensures that every transaction has equal debit and credit entries, keeping your balance sheet balanced and making end-of-year tax filing easier for accountants.
Yes. Both Wave and QuickBooks offer payroll services, but they come at an extra cost.
QuickBooks Payroll is available as a paid add-on to any QuickBooks Online subscription, providing automatic tax filing, direct deposits, and integration with benefits.
****Wave Payroll is available as an add-on service for users in all 50 US states (and Canada), offering full-service payroll with automatic tax filing in all states.
Yes. QuickBooks offers comprehensive iOS and Android apps for mobile accounting, mileage tracking, receipt snapping, and sending invoices on the go.
While Wave offers a dedicated app for invoicing and payments – allowing you to send invoices and accept online payments from mobile devices – full accountancy management and bank reconciliation are better accessed through its desktop browser interface.
