QuickBooks Desktop costs an up-front yearly charge, which can range anywhere from $349/99 to $1,340. Or, if you don’t need as many features as QuickBooks Online provides, there’s QuickBooks Self-Employed. Its simple $15-a-month plan lets you send simple invoices, track mileage, and get quarterly tax estimates to make end-of-year tax payments easier. QuickBooks Online provides robust invoicing functionality with customizable templates that cater to various business needs. You can create professional invoices with personalized branding, and the platform supports features like recurring invoicing and automatic payment reminders.
QuickBooks Online’s capabilities scale up with each plan tier, and its highest-tier plan’s 25-user limit should be sufficient for most small businesses. Its Plus plan is the most popular among small businesses and includes the ability to sync with all online sales channels, manage inventory and track project profitability. Wave is an up-and-coming What is a sales invoice Complete guide on how to create one contender in invoicing and payments software for small businesses. It’s primarily devoted to freelancers and small single-owner businesses, offering a single free plan that lets you send invoices, track expenses, receive online payments and run financial reports. Yes, Wave’s accounting, invoice, and receipt-scanning features are completely free.
The platform also includes receipt capture and mileage tracking, so you can automatically gather all the information you need to claim expenses for tax purposes in one place. Wave doesn’t include a time-tracking feature, so you’ll have to track hours separately and enter them manually for hourly work. The majority of accounting applications on the market today are created to be so easy to use, which needs little training or support for users. Nevertheless, as it is easier, it doesn’t mean we don’t care about product support. However, there is no replacement for live product support, here we go for it. In QuickBooks Online, the Sales feature also provides some incredible functions, such as solid customer management capability and good invoice creation and management capability.
Who is QuickBooks Online for?
Wave includes complete invoice customization capability, as seen above, so you can add your logo as well as your company’s accent color to any invoice you create. Wave also includes a variety of templates you can use, or take a few minutes to create a new, custom template. Get paid faster by setting up an online payment option for your customers, including the link when you email the invoice. NetSuite cloud financials and accounting software helps finance leaders design, transform and streamline their processes and operations. NetSuite seamlessly couples core finance and accounting functions, which improves business performance while reducing back-office costs. With real-time access to live financial data, you can quickly drill into details to quickly resolve delays and generate statements and disclosures that comply multiple regulatory financial compliance requirements.
Invoicing is totally free for both systems, but they both charge to be your third-party payment processor for credit cards. Both Wave and QuickBooks are set up for professional-grade accounting with double-entry ledgers, connections to your bank and credit card accounts, and the ability to build budgets. They also both offer support for multi-currency accounts, so local businesses with complicated currency situations or online shops can still use the tools. This article will break down the major differences for Wave vs. QuickBooks small business accounting software.
What features should I look for in accounting software?
All the small business owner has to do is give them access to an Accountant’s Copy of their ledger. This copy of the business records lets both the client and accountant work on managing the account at the same time. There are restrictions to the Accountant’s Copy to keep data from being duplicated or overwritten.
4.4 out of 5 stars based on user reviews collected by G2Crowd as of Spring 2022. When he’s not at his desk, you’ll find him at a music festival, thrifting, or spending time with his friends and family. You can also add discounts with a toggle for dollars or percentage, which would have made easy math for my “spring thaw” special back in the day (especially since I hadn’t learned how to calculate percentages yet). Kelly is an SMB Editor specializing in starting and marketing new ventures. Before joining the team, she was a Content Producer at Fit Small Business where she served as an editor and strategist covering small business marketing content.
The main menu is organized logically, with options for invoices, expenses, payments, and reports clearly labeled and easily accessible. QuickBooks has some relatively pricey fees per month, with up to $150 for all of the features, but they support up to 25 users at a time to compensate, along with other features. However, that does mean you won’t gain access to many of QuickBook’s handy tools unless you have money to spare. Compared to Wave’s “free” price model, QuickBooks is pretty expensive, especially if you want to gain access to all of the service’s features. However, even the cheapest of plans come with essentially zero-charge payment accepting, so if you have a lot of customers, then you may end up saving more than you would with Wave. Zoho Books is great if you’re looking for an all-inclusive tool to handle everything from invoicing to bill pay.
Customer support
The availability of live chat and phone support is crucial if you encounter issues that need immediate assistance. The top products based on usability and customer satisfaction, as rated by user reviews. You can just create your free Wave account, set up your business in minutes and see for yourself. QuickBooks Online offers more than 50 standard reports that can be customized within the application, exported to Microsoft Excel for further customization, or saved as a PDF.
Both programs offer an easy way to record a bill and track outstanding bills, but QuickBooks Online has some features that Wave doesn’t. It lets you create POs and convert them into bills and enter a vendor credit and apply it when you pay the bill. If you want a more solid solution to manage your unpaid bills, then choose QuickBooks Online. Just because Wave is free doesn’t mean you won’t get access to powerful, professional software. Unlike other tiered accounting software options, every feature is available from the minute you create your free account. Wave’s accounting features are completely free, but if you want to use Wave Payments (or another payment system) to get paid online, you’ll have to pay 2.9% plus $0.30 for each transaction.
- Other features you may want to consider include whether the software has a mobile app, how good its customer service is and how well it does with accounts receivable (A/R) and financial reporting.
- I’m an owner as well, and I was once just like you—doing my homework to make sure I make the best choice for my bottom line.
- You can get paid in as little as two business days, with fees as low as 1% of the transaction.
- Compared to Wave’s “free” price model, QuickBooks is pretty expensive, especially if you want to gain access to all of the service’s features.
- That said, collaborators can see the whole set of accounting tools for every account you add them on, so be sure that you’re ok with them having view access.
QuickBooks Online is the more comprehensive of the two solutions as it offers more features. For example, it allows users to manage their business inventory, and carry out job costing, whereas Wave doesn’t. QuickBooks has a robust history in the world of accounting software, and many companies turn to it for its reliability and functionality. The software doesn’t generally change much outside of patches or scheduled updates, and many small business owners like knowing exactly what they’re going to get. Because of their level of experience, QuickBooks can offer a level of service and expertise that many small businesses need. QuickBooks has a whole special software designed just for accountants to manage multiple client accounts all from a single dashboard.
User-Interface: The Simple User Interface of Wave
And then when it did load my location’s sales tax requirements, it didn’t automatically apply that to my invoice or even let me override whatever was going on to manually apply the rate. With QuickBooks, you can enter your location, and QuickBooks will figure out the requirements for your area. But when I went to configure it, the app booted me out of my invoice draft and I lost all my work. The extra cash you shell out for QuickBooks translates into a whole gamut of extra features. So not only do you get your money’s worth, but these features also help support the complex needs of larger businesses.
You can pay your vendors with a check in QuickBooks Online, something you can’t do in Wave. Additionally, QuickBooks Online integrates with more payroll providers than its own in-house payroll software. For instance, you can integrate your QuickBooks accounting software with Gusto, even though QuickBooks Payroll and Gusto are direct competitors. Although you can use Zapier to integrate Wave with other products, Wave Payroll is the only payroll software Wave directly, seamlessly syncs with. Crucially, Wave also lacks a mobile payroll app for both employees and employers.
If you have between one and five employees, Wave Payroll’s full-service plan is cheaper per month than QuickBooks Payroll. However, thanks to QuickBooks Payroll’s lower per-employee fee, you’ll save more with QuickBooks than Wave as you add more employees. But just as with their browser-based interfaces, QuickBooks’ features outnumber Wave’s on mobile as well. Only QuickBooks Online lets freelancers track mileage, convert estimates to invoices and scan and upload receipts. If Wave has everything your small business needs, it’s hard to beat free. If you need software that’s more robust but less expensive than QuickBooks Online, consider Xero, which starts at $13 per month, or Zoho Books, which has a free plan plus paid plans starting at $20 per month.
QuickBooks Online is just like Wave by having a vertical menu bar to the left of the screen that provides you with access to all system functions. The clear difference in QuickBooks Online comparing to Wave is that it has a category that will take you to the main page of that category rather than to the feature. As far as small-business financial management tools go, Wave and QuickBooks both have their strengths and weaknesses. It’s hard to say which one is better—but we can help you decide which one is better for you.