Bookkeeping Showdown: Wave vs Xero
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Recent accounting discussions have abounded and the two big SaaS winners seem to be Wave Accounting and Xero. Was wondering of people with experience with both, which one do you like and why? Obviously, Wave being free and Xero being paid are major factors.
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Wave is an Invoicing Program:
You can accept credit cards
You can connect to your bank account and do basic expense tracking
Recurring Invoices
Automatic Payments (this was just released)
You can do payroll as well however you have to do your taxes etc. -
Xero is a full accounting program:
anything you can do with any major accounting program you can do with this including printing checks and deposit slips etc.You also have the options of 1000's of add ons so that it will connect with an ERP or CRM or Inventory tracking just to mention a few.
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I think Wave is for the person that has a side business and wants to kick out invoices and accept credit cards.
Real accounting stuff like being able to take a receipt and split it between tax deductible stuff and personal stuff isn't possible with Wave. Another major issue is that there are no backups of your data - nor is it possible for you to make one. I had an invoice just go missing out of wave. Fortunately I had an email correspondence with a client about the invoice, so I knew the invoice date and the invoice number. Even with all that information Wave told me there was no way to get it back and they don't have backups of their system.
For the positive side of Wave, it's free, they allow you to take credit cards, and they have OCR for receipts, so all you have to do is confirm that Wave read it correctly and it will automatically find the date and total.
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@mike-davis said in Bookkeeping Showdown: Wave vs Xero:
I think Wave is for the person that has a side business and wants to kick out invoices and accept credit cards.
Real accounting stuff like being able to take a receipt and split it between tax deductible stuff and personal stuff isn't possible with Wave. Another major issue is that there are no backups of your data - nor is it possible for you to make one. I had an invoice just go missing out of wave. Fortunately I had an email correspondence with a client about the invoice, so I knew the invoice date and the invoice number. Even with all that information Wave told me there was no way to get it back and they don't have backups of their system.
For the positive side of Wave, it's free, they allow you to take credit cards, and they have OCR for receipts, so all you have to do is confirm that Wave read it correctly and it will automatically find the date and total.
Oh yeah, iOS App for Receipts, that's nice.
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@scottalanmiller said in Bookkeeping Showdown: Wave vs Xero:
Oh yeah, iOS App for Receipts, that's nice.
But at the end of the day, I don't think anyone with any more than a hobby business should consider it since you can't back it up.
Why is it Xero vs Wave and not Xero vs FreshDesk?
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@mike-davis said in Bookkeeping Showdown: Wave vs Xero:
@scottalanmiller said in Bookkeeping Showdown: Wave vs Xero:
Oh yeah, iOS App for Receipts, that's nice.
But at the end of the day, I don't think anyone with any more than a hobby business should consider it since you can't back it up.
Why is it Xero vs Wave and not Xero vs FreshDesk?
Well Wave is free, so that's a big deal. And Xero comes recommended by the bookkeepers that we work with a lot. So they make a lot of sense. FreshDesk .... any compelling features compared to the other two?
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I think what was meant possibly was "FreshBooks". More similar in functionality to Wave.
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Is there any premise based software that is equivalent to Xero or QB, or is there only Cloud now?
I'm looking at helping someone migrate to Xero, but they also may do an RDSH install. So having an app and is data in that install wouldn't be bad. He uses Qb now.
Just surprised there is no viable option for hosting your own data and accounting package.
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@bigbear said in Bookkeeping Showdown: Wave vs Xero:
Is there any premise based software that is equivalent to Xero or QB, or is there only Cloud now?
I'm looking at helping someone migrate to Xero, but they also may do an RDSH install. So having an app and is data in that install wouldn't be bad. He uses Qb now.
Just surprised there is no viable option for hosting your own data and accounting package.
Just seems odd that someone would want to for me.
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@coliver said in Bookkeeping Showdown: Wave vs Xero:
@bigbear said in Bookkeeping Showdown: Wave vs Xero:
Is there any premise based software that is equivalent to Xero or QB, or is there only Cloud now?
I'm looking at helping someone migrate to Xero, but they also may do an RDSH install. So having an app and is data in that install wouldn't be bad. He uses Qb now.
Just surprised there is no viable option for hosting your own data and accounting package.
Just seems odd that someone would want to for me
No different than hosting your own Nextdrive server vs using Dropbox is it?
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@bigbear also, where have all the terminal windows, AS/400 based accounting apps gone. The auto dealers still all run this way.
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A big downside to Wave is you can’t print checks. No experience with Xero but I assume you can with them.
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@bigbear said in Bookkeeping Showdown: Wave vs Xero:
@bigbear also, where have all the terminal windows, AS/400 based accounting apps gone. The auto dealers still all run this way.
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@travisdh1 said in Bookkeeping Showdown: Wave vs Xero:
@bigbear said in Bookkeeping Showdown: Wave vs Xero:
@bigbear also, where have all the terminal windows, AS/400 based accounting apps gone. The auto dealers still all run this way.
And Domino/Websphere. What superior technology honestly replaced Notes? When I was in my early 20's I spent a lot of time getting certified.
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@bigbear said in Bookkeeping Showdown: Wave vs Xero:
@travisdh1 said in Bookkeeping Showdown: Wave vs Xero:
@bigbear said in Bookkeeping Showdown: Wave vs Xero:
@bigbear also, where have all the terminal windows, AS/400 based accounting apps gone. The auto dealers still all run this way.
And Domino/Websphere. What superior technology honestly replaced Notes? When I was in my early 20's I spent a lot of time getting certified.
I spent a lot of time getting certified on Novell Netware 4.11 at the time... guess how much good that did me, even at the time.
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@travisdh1 said in Bookkeeping Showdown: Wave vs Xero:
@bigbear said in Bookkeeping Showdown: Wave vs Xero:
@travisdh1 said in Bookkeeping Showdown: Wave vs Xero:
@bigbear said in Bookkeeping Showdown: Wave vs Xero:
@bigbear also, where have all the terminal windows, AS/400 based accounting apps gone. The auto dealers still all run this way.
And Domino/Websphere. What superior technology honestly replaced Notes? When I was in my early 20's I spent a lot of time getting certified.
I spent a lot of time getting certified on Novell Netware 4.11 at the time... guess how much good that did me, even at the time.
I guess I think of all the things we did with it, with 30,000 employees around the world, and what replaced it. We even had SAP and still regularly rolled Domino apps and databases for department needs.
We also were Netware, used it to control Active Directory. I remember decommissioning a netware server that hadn't been rebooted for over 5 years. Took a pic of it. LOL
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@bigbear said in Bookkeeping Showdown: Wave vs Xero:
@travisdh1 said in Bookkeeping Showdown: Wave vs Xero:
@bigbear said in Bookkeeping Showdown: Wave vs Xero:
@travisdh1 said in Bookkeeping Showdown: Wave vs Xero:
@bigbear said in Bookkeeping Showdown: Wave vs Xero:
@bigbear also, where have all the terminal windows, AS/400 based accounting apps gone. The auto dealers still all run this way.
And Domino/Websphere. What superior technology honestly replaced Notes? When I was in my early 20's I spent a lot of time getting certified.
I spent a lot of time getting certified on Novell Netware 4.11 at the time... guess how much good that did me, even at the time.
I guess I think of all the things we did with it, with 30,000 employees around the world, and what replaced it. We even had SAP and still regularly rolled Domino apps and databases for department needs.
We also were Netware, used it to control Active Directory. I remember decommissioning a netware server that hadn't been rebooted for over 5 years. Took a pic of it. LOL
Those apps changed to web apps, get out from under the IBM/Domino licensing.
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The vendor trend is moving to SAAS, however, there are still some clients who do not/or cannot trust SAAS providers for whatever reason. Maybe they prefer air-gaped systems.
Sage still has some on premise solutions, like the re-branded MAS line-up like Sage 50. A lesser known on premise solution worth considering could be PostBooks - https://xtuple.com/products/postbooks/get-started-with-postbooks
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I went ahead and recommended Xero after reviewing new features. Now the fun part will be migrating Quicbooks history.
Anyone done this yet?
