Wave

What it is

Wave is invoicing and bookkeeping for small businesses, with a free plan that is genuinely usable rather than a trial in disguise. On the free Starter plan you get unlimited estimates, invoices, bills and bookkeeping records, plus the mobile app. You send an invoice, the customer pays it, and the record sits in your books.

Wave makes its money elsewhere: on payment processing when a customer pays by card, on payroll, on receipt scanning, and on bookkeeping help from advisors. The software itself is not the product being sold to you.

Who it's for (and who it isn't)

It fits a solo business or a small company that needs to look professional and keep clean records without adding a monthly software bill. If you send a handful of invoices a month and your bookkeeping is currently a folder of PDFs, Wave replaces that at zero cost.

It is a weaker fit once your volume makes the transaction fee the dominant number. Free software with a per-payment percentage is cheap when you invoice a few thousand a month and expensive when you invoice a lot, so at that point compare the total against a paid tool with lower processing costs. It is also not a project or client management system: if you bill by tracked hours and want that path built in, FreshBooks is the closer fit.

Pricing

Wave is freemium. The Starter plan is free and includes unlimited estimates, invoices, bills and bookkeeping records. Pro is $19 per month or $190 per year, and adds automatic bank transaction import, auto-categorization, unlimited receipt capture, automated late payment reminders and branding options.

Payments are priced separately: 2.9% + $0.60 per credit card transaction, and on Pro 2.9% + $0 for the first 10 transactions each month. Payroll starts at $25 per month, receipt scanning is an add-on at $8 per month on Pro or $11 on Starter, and Wave Advisors bookkeeping support starts at $149 per month. Add the fees you will actually trigger before you compare Wave to a paid tool, because for most businesses the processing fee is the bigger line.

Set it up

Official guide: Create an invoice

1. Create a Wave account on the Starter plan, which is free and includes unlimited estimates, invoices, bills and bookkeeping records. Have your business name, currency and tax details ready. Enter them when Wave asks, and your business is now set up in Wave.
2. Turn on online payments, because Wave only sends invoices for you if you accept online payments, subscribe to Pro or use payroll. Wave charges 2.9% + $0.60 per card transaction. Click your business name at the top right, then "Business settings". Under "Sales & Payments", click "Payments" and switch on the payment types you accept. You now see them switched on.
3. In the left-side menu, click "Sales & Payments" > "Invoices", then "Create an invoice" at the top right. On your first invoice Wave asks you to create a template (the look of your invoices), which you can change later. You now see the invoice form.
4. Click "Add a customer", then pick one or choose "Create a new customer". Choose an invoice date and a payment due date. Your customer and both dates now show on the invoice.
5. Click "Add an item" and pick one, or choose "Create an item" and enter a name and description. Enter the quantity and the price. If you charge tax, choose it from the "Tax" dropdown. Click "Save and continue". Wave now saves your invoice as a draft, which changes nothing in your bookkeeping yet.
6. On the draft, click "Approve draft" to finalize the invoice. Your invoice is now approved and ready to send.
7. On the "Invoices" page click "Send" to the right of the invoice. This emails your real customer, so check the "To" field, the subject and the message first. Then click "Send". Your customer now gets an email with a "Review & Pay" button and can pay from the invoice.

When this works, your first invoice is with your customer, they can pay it by card or bank from the email, and the invoice sits in your Wave bookkeeping records.

On Pro ($19/mo or $190/year): you can send invoices through Wave without accepting online payments, and you can add tags (labels for sorting your invoices) and attachments to invoices.

Strengths and limitations

The strength is the honest free tier. Unlimited invoices and bookkeeping at no cost removes the most common reason small businesses run their billing out of a word processor. For a business that invoices occasionally, this is a complete answer rather than a starting point.

The limitations follow from the model. Automated late payment reminders and automatic bank import sit on the paid Pro plan, so the free tier still asks you to do the chasing. Card processing at 2.9% + $0.60 is the real price of the free software, and it scales with your revenue. And the feature set is deliberately small: no time tracking to invoice from, and no deep project accounting. See FreshBooks vs Wave if you are weighing those two directly.