Wave Accounting Review - why 4.4 stars?

• Recurring Billing: This feature helps businesses save time with re-occurring billing and focus on what most important.
• Invoice & Invoicing Templates: This feature helps small businesses with less exciting administrative tasks.
• QuickBooks Alternative: The QuickBooks alternative for business accounting feature comes with many features to help businesses stay on track.

• Wave Accounting allows users to import credit cards and bank statements
• Users can categorize payments using the accounting software
• The software has no license fee
• Your data is secured as it offers 256-bit SSL encryption so you don’t have to worry about the privacy of your personal and financial information
• Wave accounting supports multi-currency allowing you to make transactions in various currencies aside from dollar

• It can be a nightmare for users to understand which features they need and how to use them
• Though it’s free, it comes with advertisements that could be a nuisance when using the application
• Invoice templates are limited so you only have few options when it comes to this area
• Contacts feature is very basic and doesn’t let you import your existing list
• Requires entering of e-mail message each time you send an invoice, as it doesn’t allow you to save one, which can be inconvenient if you just have to type the same message

• Functionality: Wave Accounting comes with basic features like recurring billing and invoicing, while compared with its close alternatives, ZarMoney has the features of Wave Accounting with additional features like Print Checks, Print Email Order, Order status, etc. QuickBooks Online has featured Wave Accounting features plus Track inventory, Manage budgets, Manage Employees, etc. Xero also has the features of Wave Accounting plus Capture Data, Bank Reconciliation, etc.
• Costumers/Industries: Wave Accounting and its close alternatives are designed for small businesses or bookkeepers and accountants who need automation systems to make their work easier.
• Cost: The Wave Accounting accounting team offers the software for free to small businesses. Compared to its alternatives, Xero has a license pricing starting from $22 per month, QuickBooks Online license plan starts from $8 per month, and ZarMoney license plan starts from $15 per user per month. According to expert cost research on Wave Accounting, the accounting software is cost-rated 2.8/5 compared to its alternatives. The rating systems consider accounting software rated 1-2.5 as low cost. 2.6 – 3.9 as average cost and 4-5 as high-cost, indicating that Wave Accounting is an average cost software compared to its alternatives.
• Cloud-based/On-premise: All accounting softwares mentioned in this brief review are cloud-based systems, though Quickbooks Online has an on-premise version.
• Popularity: Wave Accounting was founded in 2010 and currently has over 500,000 businesses using the software. Compared to its alternatives, ZarMoney was founded in 2006 and has thousands of customers all over the globe, and Xero was founded in 2006 and has more than 3 million users worldwide.
• Scalability: Wave Accounting and Xero are designed for small businesses, ZarMoney and QuickBooks Online are designed to scale small businesses to medium and large enterprises.
• Support: Wave Accounting has the following support channels Email/Help Desk, FAQs/Forum, Knowledge Base, and Chat, but missing 24/7 Live Rep and Phone support. Compared to its alternatives, Xero only misses Phone Support, while QuickBooks Online and ZarMoney are not missing any support channel.

What is the REAL total cost of implementation? on top of the total cost of licenses which is easy to calculate you need to add the cost of training, customization, data migration, and other "hidden cost". ITQlick pricing score is 5.6 out of 10 (10 is most expensive). You can fine here the REAL total cost breakdown for Wave Accounting. You can also find here pricing information from Wave Accounting's website.