Software review
Wave Accounting review: we ran a month of books on the free Starter plan
We may earn a referral fee if you sign up through our links. It does not change our test results.
This site compares software. It does not give tax, legal or accounting advice.
The short answer
We ran our made-up September on Wave's free Starter plan, which has no time limit. Wave's September profit and loss matched our answer key exactly, on cash and on accrual, from one switch. We did not test Wave Pro.
Wave Starter suits a freelancer who wants free books and is fine sending invoices from their own email. Starter cannot email invoices from Wave and has no reminders: both are listed as Pro features. Nothing was sent from Wave in our test. It also has no match suggestions for bank deposits, so every match is manual, and it has no invoice import, so we typed all 12 invoices by hand.
Task by task
We ran the same made-up month in Wave's free Starter plan; the method is at the end of this page.
| Task | Wave (Starter) |
|---|---|
| 1. Set up the business, add 5 clients | The business profile took a few steps to find (Settings, then Invoices and estimates, then "go to Profile"). Address, phone and email were all empty: none of the account owner's personal details were copied in. Customer import needs every one of Wave's headings, in Wave's order, with no column matching. Our two-column file was read by position: an email landed in "First Name" and the header row would have become a sixth customer. We caught it on the preview, cancelled and tried again with all eleven headings. The second import brought in 5 customers. |
| 2. Create 12 invoices | No invoice import. We typed all 12 by hand. The first item name we typed was saved as a product, and every later invoice came pre-filled with the first invoice's text and price, which we overwrote each time. Two stray keystrokes landed in the wrong box (the description, and a "Create a new tax" window); we fixed both before saving. Saved invoices are drafts and must be approved. Approving sent nothing. |
| 3. Record 20 expenses | Done from the bank statement upload. Wave ships with 31 expense categories, but the names differ from our kit and there was no "Supplies" or "Equipment". We used Wave's names for 9 of our 11 categories, used Computer – Hardware for Equipment, and added a "Supplies" category from the category box. All 28 lines were categorized. Per line: click the category, type part of the name, press Enter. No vendor needed. |
| 4. Import the bank statement, match it | CSV upload with no bank login. The upload form listed no bank account at first, so we added one under Chart of Accounts (type Cash and Bank, no account number asked). Wave detected the date, amount and description columns correctly. All 28 lines were booked at once as "Uncategorized Income" or "Uncategorized Expense", so until we matched and categorized them the profit and loss would have counted deposits as extra income. Wave made no match suggestions. For each deposit we chose "Payment Received for an Invoice in Wave" and searched for the invoice number. Typing an invoice number in the top-level category search found nothing; it worked only inside that submenu. All 8 deposits were linked. |
| The partial payment | We linked the $150 Bluefin Yoga payment to INV-1007 by searching its number. Wave applied $150 and left $150 due. With no suggestions, there was no wrong match to catch. |
| 5. Check a partial payment, send a reminder | The $150 balance showed correctly on INV-1007. No reminder was possible on Starter. The row menu has no reminder option, and automatic reminders (a settings block greyed out with "Upgrade now") are a Pro feature. Since Starter cannot email invoices from Wave, there was no Wave-sent invoice to remind about. A free-plan user would chase a client from their own email. |
| Sending invoices | Starter cannot email invoices from Wave. The Send invoice window offered Copy link, Download PDF, "Launch email" (which opens your own email program) and "Mark invoice as sent". Sending from Wave is shown beside them as a Pro feature. We cancelled the window. Nothing was sent and nothing was marked as sent. |
| 6. September profit and loss | Cash and accrual both matched the answer key exactly, under one report-type switch. Accrual: income $8,425.00, expenses $612.28, net profit $7,812.72. Cash: income $5,575.00, expenses $612.28, net profit $4,962.72. Export: CSV or PDF. The PDF downloaded directly. |
Task 5 and the sending row are not comparable with the tools that can email from the trial. On Starter we could not send an invoice or a reminder from Wave, so those results are about what the free plan does not include.
What Wave did well
- Free, with no time limit. The Starter plan has no trial clock. Wave's pricing page lists "unlimited estimates, invoices, bills, and bookkeeping records" on it.
- A chart of accounts ready for a freelancer. Wave came with 31 expense categories out of the box.
- Cash and accrual on one switch. Both profit and loss reports matched the answer key exactly.
- A preview before customer import. It showed the rows it would import and asked "Does your data look correct?". That preview is what caught our mismatched file.
- Bank statement upload without a bank login. A CSV statement came in with the columns detected for us.
- No personal details copied into the business profile, and no automatic emails on the free plan.
Where Wave tripped us up
- Customer import maps columns by position and needs Wave's exact headings. A wrong file imports wrong data unless you read the preview.
- No invoice import, and the saved product re-filled the first invoice's text and price on every new invoice.
- A "Create a new tax" window opened from a stray keystroke.
- Starter cannot email invoices from Wave and has no reminders.
- On Starter, a bank statement upload books every line as uncategorized income or expense at once. Income looks inflated until you link the deposits.
- On Starter, deposit matching is manual, and invoice search works only inside the payment submenu.
- Statement upload needed a bank account created first in the chart of accounts.
Price check
| Plan | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Wave Starter | $0 | The plan our test ran on. Card payments cost 2.9% + $0.60 each, per Wave's page |
| Wave Pro | $19 a month, or $190 a year | Not tested |
Prices are from Wave's own pricing page, read on October 22, 2026. The page showed no current offer when we read it. Prices change; check the pricing page before you sign up.
Wave's pricing page lists these as Pro features: auto-importing bank transactions, auto-merging and categorizing them, automated late payment reminders, and sending invoices automatically via Wave (Starter: "via links or PDFs"). We did not test Pro, so we cannot say how any of them works.
Who should pick Wave
- You want free books and can send invoices from your own email: Wave Starter fits. Plan to download the PDF or copy the link and email it yourself, and to chase late payers yourself.
- You are comfortable matching bank deposits by hand: Wave Starter makes no suggestions, so each match is yours. In our test that meant no wrong suggestions either.
- You need bank sync, reminders or invoices sent by the software: Wave lists these under Pro, which we did not test. Check them on Wave's pricing page, and see the comparisons below.
- You want to compare other free options: QuickBooks advertises a separate free plan, which we did not test.
Compare it
How we tested
We made up one month for a one-person web design business, Riley Park Design (September 2026): 5 clients, 12 invoices totaling $8,425, 20 expenses totaling $612.28, and a 28-line bank statement with one partial payment. We ran the same six tasks on Wave's free Starter plan and checked its profit and loss against an answer key worked out from the test files.
An AI assistant carried out the tasks in our own Wave account. A person did the sign-up and login and approved every email and download. So we report the steps and problems for each task, not minutes. No email was sent from Wave, and every client in the test is made up.
The test files are the same for every tool we compare, so results line up across pages. How we test lists every task and the answer key.
Tested October 21-22, 2026, on the free Starter plan. Wave Pro was not tested. Screenshots on file.
Try it: Wave