Is anyone using Wave or Freshbooks instead of Quickbooks?

[lifejoy]

I'm starting a small jewelry business, sole proprietorship, I'm the only employee. Main functionality I need is to create invoices and to receive payment, and to have good enough accounting that my taxes are going to be fine to handle at the end of the year.

Thanks in advance for chiming in!

[FindingFI]

My husband and I are in the same boat trying to select an accounting system. We are also the only employees and are looking for the same features. Sadly, I don't have any advice to contribute, but hopefully someone else will!

[oldtoyota]

I use Freshbooks and it's perfect for what I need. I can track profit and loss and quickly provide the reports my accountant needs to tell me how much to save in my 401K, etc.

[Richie Poor]

I use Wave for my S-corp. I'm a contractor/consultant so my needs are extremely basic. It has suited me well and saved the added expense of quickbooks online. I printed out balance sheets and profit/loss statements at the end of the year for my CPA and they didn't seem to mind.

[oldtoyota]

I thought of something to add about Freshbooks.

I have loved it and recommended it a lot over the years. Well, my business is shifting a bit, and I may eventually move away from Freshbooks.

Why?

It's focused on invoicing one client at a time. If you teach group classes or have other income sources, you can only enter them if you create a "client."

I bet other systems would allow more flexibility in this area.

[August26th]

My husband has a small handyman business, and he uses the free version of Wave. He only creates estimates and sends invoices through the software, and he also accepts credit card payments through it. He’s a one man show and it’s all he needs.

[BruceWayne]

I use Wave.  It’s perfect for my simple needs.  I use it to track and categorize transactions and send invoices.  I do not collect payments through it, however.

[lifejoy]

Interesting. Maybe I will try Wave. My bank has partnered with Wave.

[ElleFiji]

I used fresh books briefly, but their pricing structure didn't make sense for my business. They were very easy to use.

Also they billed USD, but had only a Canadian office listed and I could easily walk to it. And they didn't specify USD at checkout or anywhere else. Which is fine if it's a US company. But bs if they are Canadian.

[walkingmiller]

We used Wave for a couple of years, and I think it can work great if you don't have any employees. Once you hire employees, Quickbooks just makes payroll and taxes so much easier. Granted, it has been a few years since we used it, so they may have figured out the whole payroll and taxes part of things.

[Paul der Krake]

I use wave too for simple invoicing. You have to tell it regularly you're not interested in getting paid through them, but aside from that annoying bit it works well.

[nkt0]

I have used Wave for 8 years and i love it. Lots of great features!

[SeattleCPA]

Any of these will work. The key thing is to use one (the right way).

BTW, I'm the author of QuickBooks for Dummies... FWIW...

[Michael in ABQ]

I use Xero which is similar to QuickBooks Online. It's fairly widely used in ecommerce and I'm dealing with cost of goods sold and importing transactions from sales on Amazon. It's taken me a while to learn it but I'm pretty happy with it now. I don't invoice clients so those features aren't really meaningful to me. It links up with a lot of other online tools and lets me make manual adjustments if needed to deal with more complex situations. It starts at $9 a month but I use the Profit First accounting system where I break up my bi-weekly income into several sub-accounts so I had to upgrade to the $30 a month plan to reconcile unlimited bank transactions.

[rocketpj]

I use Wave for invoicing and billing.  The rest of my accounting I just use Excel because Wave had a few hiccups a couple years ago that caused me some issues.  My accounting isn't particularly difficult however.