Wave Payroll Review: Cost, Features, Alternatives

One of the more convenient features available in Wave Payroll is the ability to create a payroll journal entry that will be automatically posted in Wave Accounting. Product Reviews Unbiased, expert reviews on the best software and banking products for your business. Business Checking Accounts BlueVine Business Checking The BlueVine Business Checking account is an innovative small business bank account that could be a great choice for today’s small businesses. Gusto’s payroll software offers small businesses features for managing employee pay and more.

Wave Accounting is free, but you will have to pay processing fees if you choose to accept invoice payments online. Wave also offers paid products for payroll, coaching and mobile receipt scanning. Wave’s invoicing is free and unlimited, with three customizable templates and a user-friendly interface, putting it on par with some of the best invoicing software solutions for small businesses. Other capabilities include recurring invoicing and the option to let repeat clients opt into automatic credit card billing. Wave Payroll is a good option for very businesses with simple payroll needs. It lets you run payroll in a matter of minutes and provides you with the information you need for filing taxes—or, if you are in one of the states it services, it files them for you.

Mobile receipts

Access to third-party integrations and basic HR tools like employee benefits and onboarding are also important. We even consider the feedback that actual users posted on popular user review sites. For some of its features, the software will walk you through the process (such as setting up your account). If you have trouble using it, you can check its how-to guides or consult the 24/7 chatbot, Mave. For live support, you can chat and send an email to its customer representatives on Mondays through Fridays from 9 a.m.

  • We chose it as one of the leading small business accounting software, specifically as the best free solution for tracking income and expenses.
  • It is most suitable for service-based, simple/no inventory companies with a low growth plan for the next 3 to 5 years.
  • Wave Accounting offers free software, meaning you won’t need to submit a credit card or payment information to use it.
  • You specify your pay schedule and enter information about your company signatory.
  • Below that is a list of outstanding invoices and bills—mini aging reports.
  • Robie Ann Ferrer is an HR expert writer at Fit Small Business, focusing on small business HR and payroll software content.

You can have multiple business accounts and toggle between them with a single Wave accounting login. Wave Invoicing can be accessed from the Wave Accounting dashboard, under Sales and Payments. To invoice a customer, you simply have to click on the “Create an Invoice” button on the upper right corner. If you’re a busy person, we recommend getting bookkeeping support. However, get the coaching package if you’re the kind of business owner who wants to do the bookkeeping yourself. You can’t count on Wave for managing fixed assets, which isn’t surprising for a free program.

User Reviews on Wave Accounting

(Neither does Wave Accounting, which you can use via a browser only.) Honestly, few payroll companies have solid employer-facing payroll apps — it’s just a shame Wave Payroll isn’t one of them. Designed to integrate with Wave Accounting, Wave Payroll offers good integration between applications for automatic recording of any payroll-related expenses. Yes, switching from other accounting apps or products to Wave is easy!

Best Small Business Accounting Software

It even has a simple employee database that contains your workers’ basic information, salary and tax details, PTO balances, and benefits deductions. You can also use its self-service payroll with do-it-yourself tax filings for unfiled tax return information only $20 plus $6 per worker monthly. Wave Payroll offers basic payroll processing capability and is best suited for smaller businesses with fewer than five employees who are currently using or planning to use Wave Accounting.

Self-service pay stubs and tax forms

She has over eight years of content writing experience, handling different topics. Robie also worked as an HR specialist for 10 years where she managed various facets of HR—from payroll and benefits to employee services and HR systems. Wave Payroll also has a dashboard where you can see important payroll and tax filing dates, including holidays.

Once you sign up online, you can start using Wave’s features right away. All you have to do is share your business name, type, address and the currency you use. There’s no live support unless you pay for it so you’ll have to dig for the answers to your questions in the help center or cross your fingers that the automated chatbot will help you out.

Wave Payroll offers a hybrid manual and automated payroll service. Among the few complaints are a step-heavy process to set up certain benefits, a long lead time to run payroll and difficulty running an extra payroll cycle. There are also a few complaints about inadequate customer service to resolve certain issues.

It is currently only available to single-owner businesses in the United States, and each Wave bank account can be linked to one business. When inviting users, you can give them roles to limit their ability to edit, create, or delete transactions or generate reports. To add more users, go to Settings and click Users under User Management.