Wave is free accounting software for very small businesses. QuickBooks is paid. The interesting question is not which costs less, but at what point free becomes expensive.
Wave’s core accounting, invoicing and receipt capture have long been free, with revenue coming from payments processing and payroll. For a sole trader or a business with a handful of monthly transactions that is a genuinely good deal, and we would not talk anyone out of it.
The question is what happens as the business grows.
| Wave | QuickBooks | |
|---|---|---|
| Core accounting cost | Free tier available | Paid subscription |
| Best for | Sole traders, micro-businesses | Small to mid-sized businesses |
| Double-entry accounting | Yes | Yes |
| Inventory | None | Yes, from Plus upward |
| Payroll | Paid add-on, limited state coverage | Native add-on, full coverage |
| Users | Limited | Scales by plan |
| Reporting | Basic | Extensive |
| Classes and locations | No | Yes |
| Project or job costing | No | Yes |
| Integrations | Very few | Several hundred |
| Accountant access | Limited | Live and standard |
The honest calculation: if Wave costs nothing but your accountant charges more, your bookkeeper takes longer, and you maintain a spreadsheet alongside it, free was never the actual price.
We will say this plainly because it is often the right answer. If you are a single-person service business, invoice a handful of clients a month, hold no stock, employ nobody, and your accountant is content — stay on Wave. Moving to QuickBooks would add cost and complexity for no benefit, and we will tell you so rather than sell you a conversion.
| Data | What to expect |
|---|---|
| Customers and vendors | Convert cleanly |
| Invoices and bills | Convert with payment history |
| Open AR and AP | Convert invoice by invoice |
| Chart of accounts | Converts, usually with deliberate expansion — Wave’s is minimal |
| Bank transactions | Convert; reconciliation history does not |
| Receipts and attachments | Generally need re-attaching |
| Payroll history | Depends on whether Wave Payroll was used, and for how long |
| Recurring invoices | Rebuilt |
| Reports | Rebuilt |
Wave files are usually smaller and simpler than Sage or NetSuite files, so these conversions move quickly. The real work is designing a chart of accounts that will still serve you in three years, rather than copying a minimal one across.
Most businesses leaving Wave land on QuickBooks Online Simple Start or Essentials. If inventory is the reason you are moving, you need Plus — Simple Start and Essentials do not include it, and discovering that after migrating is an avoidable annoyance.
Is Wave really free? The core accounting and invoicing, yes. Payments processing and payroll are paid, and that is how Wave earns.
Is QuickBooks better than Wave? More capable, certainly. Better depends on whether you need the capability — for a micro-business, no.
When should I switch? When you take on stock, hire employees, need reporting by class or project, or your accountant asks you to.
Can I keep my Wave data? Yes. Customers, vendors, invoices, bills, open items and transaction history all convert.
Is it worth paying for a conversion on a small file? Often not. If the file is genuinely small we will tell you it is a job you can do yourself, and point you at how.
Wave costs nothing for core accounting. Whether that saves you money depends on four things nobody puts on the pricing page.
| Hidden cost | What happens |
|---|---|
| Accountant premium | Some US firms charge more to work in unfamiliar software, or ask you to export everything to a spreadsheet first |
| Bookkeeper hours | Workarounds take time. Time is billed |
| The parallel spreadsheet | Inventory, job costing and any reporting Wave cannot do ends up in Excel, maintained by hand and reconciled by nobody |
| A second payroll system | Where Wave payroll is not supported, you run payroll elsewhere and journal it in manually every period |
| Migration later | Moving a file with three years of accumulated workarounds costs more than moving a clean one |
For a genuinely small business, none of these bite and Wave is excellent value. For a growing one, they compound quietly.
The side business. Freelance income, a dozen invoices a year, no employees. Wave, comfortably. Paying for QuickBooks here would be waste.
The growing service business. Two employees, thirty clients, still no stock. Borderline. The deciding factor is usually payroll and whether your accountant is happy. Ask them before you decide.
The business that started selling products. Move now. Wave has no inventory at all. Every month you wait adds another month of stock data that lives outside the accounts and will have to be reconstructed.
Scoping. We look at the file, agree how far back to bring history, and design a chart of accounts with room to grow — Wave’s is deliberately minimal and copying it across defeats the purpose of moving.
The build. Customers, vendors, invoices, bills, payments and bank transactions come across as real transactions.
Verification. Every bank and credit-card account reconciled to the cent, AR and AP matched invoice by invoice, and the balance sheet and P&L tied back to Wave at the cut-over date.
Go-live. You keep working in Wave until the numbers are verified.
If your Wave file is small and simple, a conversion is not worth paying anyone for. We will say so, and point you at how to do it yourself. We would rather turn down a small job and be the people you call when the business is bigger.
Weighing up the alternatives