What is Wave Accounting?

This is the first in the ongoing series on finance software. I really like Wave Accounting and feel that everyone should try it.

Wave accounting began in November of 2010, and has begun to grow since with thousands of new small businesses signing up monthly. If you are unfamiliar of exactly what wave accounting is and how it can be beneficial to your small business this article takes and in depth look into Wave Accounting.

So what is Wave Accounting?

Wave accounting is a free to use accounting application that was created specifically for the small business owner. When you are a small business owner it can be too expensive to hire an accountant to handle all the tedious tasks of paperwork and making sure everything is in order. However it can also seem difficult and time consuming for you to do it yourself. That is where the beauty of wave accounting comes into play. With wave accounting it handles all this work for you. Just think of no more entering data, no extra time used. All of your purchases and income can be tracked with the wave accounting application. Instead of typing everything into your account over and over again you can enter in the information once, and have the transactions imported into Wave accounting safely and automatically.  All your expenses are also categorized and itemized by wave accounting for you.

This is not to say that you can not use Wave for setting and maintaining a budget for individuals rather than businesses. It is robust enough for a  business, yet simple enough to personal finances.

What is the best benefit of Wave Accounting?

Wave accounting is absolutely free! All of this work done for you and free of charge, you cannot ask for anything better. You may wonder how wave accounting as great as a program it is can be absolutely free, well the secret is really no secret at all. Advertising is the key element in the free program. When you log into your wave account you will see special deals from many advertisers listed. These deals can help you save money when you may need to make a purchase with your business as well. So they not only help you to save money by supplying you with a free service to help with your accounting needs, but also help you to save money on many purchases you may make with your business anyways.

Now you may be wondering what the disadvantages to this program are.

There are no merchant accounts with this software, as well as any time tracking or time sheets available as well. Sometimes the categorizing of invoices can be difficult, as you cannot import your customer or vendor records into Wave Accounting.

Wave Accounting is a new company and new program. There are a lot of advantages to the software such as the free price tag, quick entry available, and double enter accounting. However remember with any new program it can only get better in the future when more issues are worked out, tweaked and fixed. Since wave accounting is free it definitely doesn’t hurt your wallet to give it a try and see how you like it. You may actually be surprised by the results.