QuickBooks Online vs. Wave Accounting

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
QuickBooks Online
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
QuickBooks Online is a SaaS version of the QuickBooks product. It contains all of the features found in the local version. Higher-priced plans include greater automation, payment management, inventory and time tracking, and analytics features.
$38
per month
Wave Accounting
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Wave Accounting is a free, cloud-based accounting platform exclusively for small businesses. It supports double-entry bookkeeping and permits unlimited user access, invoicing, and expense management. Wave Accounting integrates with Wave's invoicing, receipt scanning, payment processing and payroll apps.
$0
Pricing
QuickBooks OnlineWave Accounting
Editions & Modules
Simple Start
$38
per month
Essentials
$75
per month
Plus
$115
per month
Advanced
$275
per month
Starter
$0
Pro
$16
per month
Pro - billed annually
$170
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
QuickBooks OnlineWave Accounting
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
QuickBooks OnlineWave Accounting
Features
QuickBooks OnlineWave Accounting
Payroll Management
Comparison of Payroll Management features of Product A and Product B
QuickBooks Online
8.4
Ratings
8% above category average
Wave Accounting
6.2
Ratings
22% below category average
Pay calculation7.70 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Benefit plan administration7.00 Ratings7.50 Ratings
Direct deposit files9.00 Ratings1.20 Ratings
Salary revision and increment management9.00 Ratings7.70 Ratings
Reimbursement management9.50 Ratings7.40 Ratings
Customization
Comparison of Customization features of Product A and Product B
QuickBooks Online
8.3
Ratings
8% above category average
Wave Accounting
8.5
Ratings
11% above category average
API for custom integration8.70 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Plug-ins8.00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Security
Comparison of Security features of Product A and Product B
QuickBooks Online
9.7
Ratings
15% above category average
Wave Accounting
6.4
Ratings
26% below category average
Single sign-on capability9.60 Ratings6.40 Ratings
Role-based user permissions9.70 Ratings6.40 Ratings
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
QuickBooks Online
8.1
Ratings
3% above category average
Wave Accounting
6.3
Ratings
22% below category average
Dashboards8.60 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Standard reports8.20 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Custom reports7.50 Ratings5.00 Ratings
General Ledger and Configurable Accounting
Comparison of General Ledger and Configurable Accounting features of Product A and Product B
QuickBooks Online
8.5
Ratings
9% above category average
Wave Accounting
7.0
Ratings
11% below category average
Accounts payable9.20 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Accounts receivable9.40 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Cash management8.70 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Bank reconciliation9.10 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Expense management8.70 Ratings7.50 Ratings
Time tracking6.90 Ratings9.80 Ratings
Fixed asset management8.10 Ratings9.80 Ratings
Multi-currency support7.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Multi-division support9.20 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Regulations compliance9.20 Ratings5.00 Ratings
Electronic tax filing9.30 Ratings5.90 Ratings
Self-service portal8.80 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Global Financial Support8.10 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Primary and Secondary Ledgers8.70 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Intercompany Accounting8.70 Ratings4.00 Ratings
Localizations8.10 Ratings5.20 Ratings
Journals and Reconciliations9.30 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Enterprise Accounting8.10 Ratings4.00 Ratings
Configurable Accounting7.70 Ratings5.00 Ratings
Centralized Rules Framework8.40 Ratings1.00 Ratings
Standardized Processes8.50 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Inventory Management
Comparison of Inventory Management features of Product A and Product B
QuickBooks Online
7.5
Ratings
2% above category average
Wave Accounting
8.1
Ratings
10% above category average
Inventory tracking8.00 Ratings5.60 Ratings
Automatic reordering7.00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Location management8.10 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Manufacturing module7.00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Order Management
Comparison of Order Management features of Product A and Product B
QuickBooks Online
8.4
Ratings
8% above category average
Wave Accounting
7.6
Ratings
2% below category average
Pricing8.00 Ratings9.90 Ratings
Order entry8.00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Credit card processing8.60 Ratings2.30 Ratings
Cost of goods sold9.30 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Order Orchestration8.00 Ratings5.80 Ratings
End-to-end order visibility9.00 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Order exception Resolution8.00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
QuickBooks OnlineWave Accounting
Small Businesses
QuickBooks Self-Employed (discontinued)
QuickBooks Self-Employed (discontinued)
Score 8.9 out of 10
QuickBooks Self-Employed (discontinued)
QuickBooks Self-Employed (discontinued)
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Zoho Books
Zoho Books
Score 9.0 out of 10
Zoho Books
Zoho Books
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP S/4HANA Cloud
SAP S/4HANA Cloud
Score 8.6 out of 10
SAP S/4HANA Cloud
SAP S/4HANA Cloud
Score 8.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
QuickBooks OnlineWave Accounting
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(0 ratings)
6.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
1.9
(0 ratings)
7.8
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.8
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
2.0
(0 ratings)
6.7
(0 ratings)
Performance
1.0
(0 ratings)
2.9
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
1.1
(0 ratings)
2.1
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
4.7
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
3.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
1.3
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
1.0
(0 ratings)
3.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
1.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
1.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
QuickBooks OnlineWave Accounting
Likelihood to Recommend
I appreciate the ability to auto-generate invoices for recurring transactions, which saves time, as well as the option to set up auto-generated transactions. The report option is super helpful when reviewing information, as you can click to view the details in the report without having to go back and forth.
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Wave is free to use, and they have some premium features you can pay for. For someone just starting out as a small business, freelancer or independent contractor, this is a Godsend. You can look professional, have something easy to manage, and yet also have excellent records come the end of the year. You won't spend a bunch of time having to learn the program, it's very intuitive and you get a host of great features that will make getting paid easy.
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Pros
  • It enables me to do a P&L for each specific program as requested by the county for the grant money that they give us.
  • It enables me to do [an] organizational budget as well as a budget for each specific program
  • It enables the accountant and the auditor access at any time for transparency
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  • The dashboard provides instant views of month-by month income & expenses for the past 12-24 months, a breakdown of current year expense by category, and net income for the past year and year-to-date.
  • Invoicing has easy templated set up has lots of per invoice options such as single/recurring payment options, due dates.
  • Year end reports are easy to generate in either pdf or csv format.
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Cons
  • Purchase Orders cannot be linked to multiple bill payments which makes tracking purchase orders in QuickBooks Online obsolete. Without the function we have to track this within a different more manual spreadsheet.
  • Would be helpful if you could "split" bank transactions directly from the "review" downloads from the bank. Currently, to split transactions to multiple accounts we need to first categorize, then review after assigning to 1 account.
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  • One area of improvement for Wave would be combining the various mobile applications into one app.
  • Another room for improvement would be on the dashboard level. It would be great if they could use more bar graphs and get away from pie charts for things like expenses.
  • Some of the other areas from improvement have been addressed by recent updates so I am excited to see what else Wave brings out.
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Likelihood to Renew
QBO needs better integration with non-Intuit products and developers need to use Intuit's open API to develop better add-ons. Clients are having a great deal of problems with their data importing from the bank and this takes time away from better revenue producing activities. Although the efficiencies are there, they are outweighted by the shortcomings of the product. When we ran a parallel of QBO versus other cloud accounting products, we had more issues with the QBO product than any other
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Easy to use for clients with no accounting background and the price is right.
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Usability
I had very little trouble setting up the program and migrating from our old accounting system. The daily usage is also very intuitive and easy. Anytime we run into minor trouble with the program, there are always tons of help available on YouTube, so we don't even look up the online manual anymore.
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Wave [Accounting] is very simple and easy to use. Minimal training was required for all our users as the interface is very user-friendly, especially for small businesses looking to use something to track their financial data, Invoice and make payments. I loved using Wave [Accounting]. It lookes professional and [has] all the features we were looking for.
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Reliability and Availability
We have rarely had outages in the last 10 years. I can only recall 2 times in the last 10 years where we were not able to access our client files.
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WAVE is always available when we need it ! Peter
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Performance
Everything process has its bugs lately with the new interface. Nothing has worked smoothly since this all began last month.
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Wave does tend to slow down when filtering your transactions screen especially by date. This is more of an issue when trying to trouble shoot certain transactions or clean-up a set of books.
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Support Rating
In my experience, most representatives keep me on the phone for hours, literally, for a single issue and then usually cannot resolve it satisfactorily. I have 10 open cases that need resolution and, in my experience, there has been NO follow-up communication on any of them.
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I've only had to reach out to support once and they were quick to respond and offered valuable insight to resolve my issue quickly. The team is knowledgeable and if the person you're dealing with doesn't have an answer for you, they get back to you quickly with an answer. It was clear that the support team is genuinely concerned about users making the most of the software.
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Online Training
No answers on this topic
easy to use and east to train on ! Our WAVE clients enjoy the ease of use
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Implementation Rating
The person in charge of QB needs to be very accurate with record keeping and is recommended to stay on top of tasks. The biggest issue we have is reconciliation, and those issues occur only when too much time has occurred between reconciliations
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No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
QuickBooks Online is an accounting software package that allows companies to use a cost-effective and efficient software package. QuickBooks Online allows companies to prepare their balance sheets and income statements. It connects with a variety of other applications, which allows you to be efficient. We are very pleased with QuickBooks Online, and we would highly recommend it.
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Wave's price point was in line with what my company needed to manage basic accounting (payable and receivable accounts). It made it easy for me to issue monthly invoices to clients and track when invoices were paid. The software makes these tasks easy to manage and inputting data for accurate accounting and invoicing is a breeze. It really offers a lot of flexibility, so you can use the software the way you need it.
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Scalability
As we have grown along our professional path, we have also expanded our use of QB. The scalability is easy and features seem to be waiting for you until you need them. We have increased profits by over 10x from our first year in business to the current and have yet to find a reason to look elsewhere
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Once they out grow what is ability to move up to a more robust system?
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Return on Investment
  • I think the help function is cumbersome and hard to use. When I go to refresh myself on a function, say quarterly, I feel like I have to cast about just looking for it.
  • The account reconciliation works, but in this place that could benefit from messaging, there are no easy helping functions flagging things like amounts that fit the discrepancy.
  • Even styling invoices and documents is more cumbersome than it should be.
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  • Wave has enabled our accounts payable to maintain a 99% closure rate by leveraging auto reminders through the email system.
  • Our quote to invoice process is a single click, saving time and effort. Even minor changes during that transition occur simply and easily.
  • Aside from payments, Wave has been free for our usage. Our bottom line is better because we're not investing in software but instead embracing an entire ecosystem.
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ScreenShots

QuickBooks Online Screenshots

Screenshot of the accounting and bank transactions interfaceScreenshot of an overview of the accounting inventoryScreenshot of book marksScreenshot of the business tax overviewScreenshot of the customer hubScreenshot of the dashboard