I don’t appreciate this change. The receipts app is one of the BEST most efficient tools I use to have my accounting in order. And there’s no Waveapps App for my phone coming that will encompass the features and enhance the usability. I will need to transfer my business accounting elsewhere without that app. It literally means that I’ll have to sit at the computer and upload the data. Why would you think that’s a better way of doing this and you’re not providing a complete app that encompasses all the features. 🤦🏾♀️🤦🏾♀️
@Core said:
I think that most haters here do not understand the difference in an app on their phone and a responsive site which you are calling waveapp. I like that you are going with an all responsive site and skipping the app which had very limited usefulness. It is cleaner for you and us both. Thank you for making it simple to attach a receipt to an imported transaction. The OCR function just increased he chance of a miscode. These people saying that they will run over to QB are either jump from the pan into the fire or just slinging mud. Make sure it actually works well and is bug free when you throw the switch or you will get a legit explosion in your community. 🤗
I think there is a very valid concern about more than the responsiveness and the OCR. The transaction imports can take several days to show up in Wave. I am not a fan of having to merge the receipts with the original transaction, but at least it was possible to take a quick photo of the receipt, input details before you forget, and then deal with the rest digitally at some point in the future. Taking the photo from the app is more cumbersome than just opening the app, but it's the days of delay waiting for the bank transaction to report that really kills the entire feature. Wave could even just monetize this feature by making it like Expensify or others, but have it already integrated into the accounting. I'd pay Expensify-style pricing to keep the Receipts feature as-is but give it a better workflow for after the photo is taken, and also allow users to link a receipt/expense to a transaction for reimbursement (i.e. a reimbursement report).
I agree with most of the others....this is VERY disappointing! I have been with you for YEARS, mainly because of the ability to snap a pic and toss the receipt! It was recommended to me by my bookkeeper, and I've loved it. I'm sad I will have to leave WAVE and find a new app. I'm hoping others will share where they will be going...anyone know of another app that will serve the purpose we need?
I haven't seen any admins react to any posts here which are 99% not supportive of your announced changes to remove app functionality. Can you let us know what you are going to do with the clear feedback you have received? I need to confirm whether I continue using Wave or look for alternatives with OCR capability.
The receipt functionality that is being removed (OCR, ability to email in and the app) was one of my primary reasons for selecting and joining Wave years ago. This functionality is critical to me to ensure all receipts for transactions paid by credit card were accounted for without adding them manually since the "bank" transaction would only be the credit card statement balance payment.
I am also disappointed with the loss of the receipts app. I will regularly do small cash transactions for my business, and having the ability to capture the receipt and generate a transaction in one step has been very convenient. The idea of having to log into the website on my phone and create the transaction manually and then attach a photo of receipt sounds like much more work than just merging transactions later with two clicks of the mouse.
Happy about the new Functionality. The clicking around with duplicates and OCR mistakes was a pain in the ass. Thumbs up from me. I'm sorry to all you guys that are hurting from this though. It's definitely a big big change.
Wow, Wave can't catch a break here. The old functionality was precisely why I never bothered with Wave in the past. This is exactly what was needed for me. The old system would require about 1 minute to process a transaction including fixing the OCR and merging. This will cut it way way down.
Good work Wave - finally!
Will this work for all transactions or just expenses?
All they had to do was allow you to attach recipes or record receipt form the app. Not get rid of it and ocr, which was 99% accurate for me. This boggles my mind... why anyone thinks taking away abilities is anything other than backward is lost on me. There where other ways... as I just suggested.
@Adine said:
So how is the workflow when you make a purchase in a store or at a restaurant and have to wait a couple of days for the transaction to appear in Wave? Where will the picture of the receipt be stored in the meanwhile?
The extreme convenience of capturing your receipts on the go so that you won't have to save them and remember digging them out at a later time is one of the golden features of Wave. I sincerely hope you have a similar functionality in this new set up?
I couldn't agree more...
And it's even worse if you can't import transactions automagically and have to wait to download them from the bank website and then upload before you can process a receipt.
When coupled with the fact that your import functionality is flakey at best and you randomly stopped supporting the fourth largest bank in Alberta, this means many more manual transactions.
Old way: get receipt at merchant. Snap photo with phone. Deal with it using nice big comfy screen when doing monthly/weekly accounting. (One click to delete duplicates)
New way: get receipt, take photo with phone. Do all accounting on 3 inch screen with no keyboard. Or... move photos to PC. Find transaction. Manually enter and edit transaction. Upload photo manually. Manually verify and enter details (no useful Meta data attached to photo). Manually clean-up and delete photos from phone and wherever they were stored.
Terrible “improvement”.
Couldn't agree more... the old way was simple and worked for me
@ebjeebs_88 said:
I generate tons of receipts, and like the upload them immediately so I don’t have to keep track of them. The bank import takes a few days, meaning under the new system, I have to hold onto the receipts and then match them up myself? Deleting or merging duplicates was so easy, and the automatic reading of the receipt info was an absolute godsend when dealing with tons of them. I’m really disappointed by this change. Any way there could be an opt-in/opt-out or some kind of hybrid model? This really makes wave, especially for folks who generate lots of receipts in short time periods, extra cumbersome.
Yes Wave... how about keeping the receipts functionality open in parallel with the new feature in the transaction screens
@GeorgeP said:
If anyone finds an alternate to Wave that still has the OCR functionality, please post it. I don't link to my bank account so this is a major blow, and will add hours to my accounting.
Yes me too... I wasn't looking for a reason to leave Wave... now I am...
@cardsfan said:
99% of my receipts come by email to my mobile email app. All I did was take a screen shot and send it to wave by email. Than assign a payment account and expense category. This process took less than 15 seconds. Now it is not clear at all what I will do with my emailed receipts... but it will sounds like it will be less efficient. Wave should consider using the forum to make proposed changes and get feedback.
Yes... Wave how do we deal with all the receipts we get via Email - about 50% of mine come this way?
No obvious workflow now... other than saving each one of these emails locally and then trying to find them all to attach them to the transactions once they are reported! Yuck.
@Ayoung72 said:
Echoing the sentiments of many here. This literally "breaks" my accounting work flow now.
Existing:
1. Open Wave Receipts App.
2. Click Camera button
New:
1. Take photo with my camera.
2. Log into photo's on cloud and download image to drop box to be accessed outside of my phone.
3. Log into waveapps.com
4. Create a manual transaction (error prone) on waveapps.
5. Locate photo on drop box and attach to transaction.
6. Delete duplicate bank entry when it appears 72 hours later.
7. Get killed by my accountant for falling behind on receipts because it take 3 times longer to do now and making constant typos creating manual entries.
Thank you?
Couldn't agree more...the new workflow will be horrible... and for me won't remove the deduplication - I'll just be merging two transactions - one the import / upload the other the one I now have to manually create and attached the photo to!
Plus the de-duplication of the transactions was a control check for me... did I have a receipt for every imported transaction or not?
So why not just be honest about it and give those that use this feature - and by all accounts a fair percentage of your users - the option to pay a few bucks a month for the Receipts app will have less blowback than this feature removal will.
The reason people use your software isn't to save ~$100/yr from the alternatives but because it streamlines the workflow of small businesses that have people on the go.
Please reconsider and at least give us the option to pay a couple bucks a month so that we can save hours of our time for out business workflow.
I'll second this... a small monthly charge would be well worth it to keep this functionality.
@Core said:
... or you will get a legit explosion in your community. 🤗
Which of course would look totally different than 7 pages a day of negative comments.
Oh, and by the way, many of us know full well the difference between a "web page" (responsive or not) and a dedicated app that does one thing. The workflow is not at all the same.
@paulpat said:
Wow, Wave can't catch a break here. The old functionality was precisely why I never bothered with Wave in the past. This is exactly what was needed for me. The old system would require about 1 minute to process a transaction including fixing the OCR and merging. This will cut it way way down.
Good work Wave - finally!
Will this work for all transactions or just expenses?
What exactly was stopping you from having a folder of photos and manually entering receipts previously?
I am a bit disappointed with this move. All other software out there have this same ability to upload a receipt. I would really benefit of a receipt upload feature that OCRs a bit better (never picked up subtotal, tax or not, etc...) and capable to locate a transaction from the bank. All I would have to do is accept as is or modify and accept.
So I'm so upset about this I just invested the time to go thru 7 pages of almost all negative comments and upvote every single comment supporting the retention of the receipts app and OCR.
I also invested the time to post comments on four of five posts.
I only hope it makes a small difference
The best of both worlds is the solution I like best.
I literally have no idea what my workflow will look like now... but it will be a mess... perhaps I'll just stop putting receipts into wave... which was a brilliant audit trail feature... but why bother now.
Adding the ability to upload an attachment to a transaction is the best new feature you could have added it fills a huge hole that the receipts feature did not. the old way was double the work for me now I don't have to deal with merging 100's of transactions nor do I have to create receipts just to get an attachment to my transaction.
I do think that eliminating the mobile app is not a great idea, what you should be doing is expanding it to support more functions, that is one major issue using Waveapp mobile in a browser is less than ideal in a day where APPS power our world.
@Mindplay said:
What exactly was stopping you from having a folder of photos and manually entering receipts previously?
I don't understand your question. The previous functionality was stopping me. My desired outcome was to use banking information either download & upload with .qbo, or direct sync. That way I have missed no transactions. That being the case, if I wanted to use Wave to store receipts, which are important to have on hand to doublecheck tax etc, I had to use the upload, OCR, correct, merge workflow which was awful for me.
I appreciate that others had different workflows and this was apparently a useful feature to many. Maybe Wave can enable both methods. But to be clear - the old way was very very slow and error prone for me.
@paulpat said:
Maybe Wave can enable both methods.
100% yes! Why can't Wave improve the old system without completely eliminating a workflow that many businesses use (myself included, especially since Wave won't link to my bank or credit card company so that I can import transactions).
I sure hope Wave reads all of these comments. I too, primarily use Wave for the receipt app. As a mobile business I take photos of receipts immediately as a backup in case it gets lost. My Credit card is also not able to connect to Wave so I would be waiting much longer than a few days for a transaction to post, leaving me with a months worth of receipts to capture and file at a time. A step backwards for my business, and may stop my use of Wave all together.
Watch the video at https://www.waveapps.com/about-us/about and pulling the rug out from under small businesses goes against everything mentioned, not to mention MID-YEAR
Good because it means no duplicate transactions (although I didn't "post" the receipts to accounting to avoid those).
Bad because it means we have to wait for transactions to make it to our wave accounts before uploading receipts. My last sync was 14 hours ago with TD.
This may mean switching to back to Shoeboxed for my receipts. Still love Wave for payroll and other features.
Comments
Is it H&R Block, upper management, stockholders, appeasing the highest fee paying client...
I think there is a very valid concern about more than the responsiveness and the OCR. The transaction imports can take several days to show up in Wave. I am not a fan of having to merge the receipts with the original transaction, but at least it was possible to take a quick photo of the receipt, input details before you forget, and then deal with the rest digitally at some point in the future. Taking the photo from the app is more cumbersome than just opening the app, but it's the days of delay waiting for the bank transaction to report that really kills the entire feature. Wave could even just monetize this feature by making it like Expensify or others, but have it already integrated into the accounting. I'd pay Expensify-style pricing to keep the Receipts feature as-is but give it a better workflow for after the photo is taken, and also allow users to link a receipt/expense to a transaction for reimbursement (i.e. a reimbursement report).
I agree with most of the others....this is VERY disappointing! I have been with you for YEARS, mainly because of the ability to snap a pic and toss the receipt! It was recommended to me by my bookkeeper, and I've loved it. I'm sad I will have to leave WAVE and find a new app. I'm hoping others will share where they will be going...anyone know of another app that will serve the purpose we need?
I haven't seen any admins react to any posts here which are 99% not supportive of your announced changes to remove app functionality. Can you let us know what you are going to do with the clear feedback you have received? I need to confirm whether I continue using Wave or look for alternatives with OCR capability.
The receipt functionality that is being removed (OCR, ability to email in and the app) was one of my primary reasons for selecting and joining Wave years ago. This functionality is critical to me to ensure all receipts for transactions paid by credit card were accounted for without adding them manually since the "bank" transaction would only be the credit card statement balance payment.
I am also disappointed with the loss of the receipts app. I will regularly do small cash transactions for my business, and having the ability to capture the receipt and generate a transaction in one step has been very convenient. The idea of having to log into the website on my phone and create the transaction manually and then attach a photo of receipt sounds like much more work than just merging transactions later with two clicks of the mouse.
Happy about the new Functionality. The clicking around with duplicates and OCR mistakes was a pain in the ass. Thumbs up from me. I'm sorry to all you guys that are hurting from this though. It's definitely a big big change.
Wow, Wave can't catch a break here. The old functionality was precisely why I never bothered with Wave in the past. This is exactly what was needed for me. The old system would require about 1 minute to process a transaction including fixing the OCR and merging. This will cut it way way down.
Good work Wave - finally!
Will this work for all transactions or just expenses?
All they had to do was allow you to attach recipes or record receipt form the app. Not get rid of it and ocr, which was 99% accurate for me. This boggles my mind... why anyone thinks taking away abilities is anything other than backward is lost on me. There where other ways... as I just suggested.
Your technology “reversal” will not work if i am out of cell reception.
This will send me elsewhere...
So anyone recommending a new platform that allow convenience receipt uploading with OCR? I'll be leaving WAVE if a suitable alternative exists.
I will be looking into switching providers; I am not sure who you think you're fooling here. Removing an application is not an enhancement.
I couldn't agree more...
And it's even worse if you can't import transactions automagically and have to wait to download them from the bank website and then upload before you can process a receipt.
#BigStepBackwards #YouNeverAskedMe
Couldn't agree more... the old way was simple and worked for me
#BigStepBackward #YouDidn'tAskMe
Yes Wave... how about keeping the receipts functionality open in parallel with the new feature in the transaction screens
#BestOfBoth #BigStepBackwards #YouDidn'tAskMe
Yes me too... I wasn't looking for a reason to leave Wave... now I am...
#BigStepBackward #YouDidn'tAskMe
Yes... Wave how do we deal with all the receipts we get via Email - about 50% of mine come this way?
No obvious workflow now... other than saving each one of these emails locally and then trying to find them all to attach them to the transactions once they are reported! Yuck.
#BigStepBackwards #YouDidn'tAskMe
Couldn't agree more...the new workflow will be horrible... and for me won't remove the deduplication - I'll just be merging two transactions - one the import / upload the other the one I now have to manually create and attached the photo to!
Plus the de-duplication of the transactions was a control check for me... did I have a receipt for every imported transaction or not?
I'll second this... a small monthly charge would be well worth it to keep this functionality.
Which of course would look totally different than 7 pages a day of negative comments.
Oh, and by the way, many of us know full well the difference between a "web page" (responsive or not) and a dedicated app that does one thing. The workflow is not at all the same.
What exactly was stopping you from having a folder of photos and manually entering receipts previously?
I am a bit disappointed with this move. All other software out there have this same ability to upload a receipt. I would really benefit of a receipt upload feature that OCRs a bit better (never picked up subtotal, tax or not, etc...) and capable to locate a transaction from the bank. All I would have to do is accept as is or modify and accept.
So I'm so upset about this I just invested the time to go thru 7 pages of almost all negative comments and upvote every single comment supporting the retention of the receipts app and OCR.
I also invested the time to post comments on four of five posts.
I only hope it makes a small difference
The best of both worlds is the solution I like best.
I literally have no idea what my workflow will look like now... but it will be a mess... perhaps I'll just stop putting receipts into wave... which was a brilliant audit trail feature... but why bother now.
Adding the ability to upload an attachment to a transaction is the best new feature you could have added it fills a huge hole that the receipts feature did not. the old way was double the work for me now I don't have to deal with merging 100's of transactions nor do I have to create receipts just to get an attachment to my transaction.
I do think that eliminating the mobile app is not a great idea, what you should be doing is expanding it to support more functions, that is one major issue using Waveapp mobile in a browser is less than ideal in a day where APPS power our world.
I don't understand your question. The previous functionality was stopping me. My desired outcome was to use banking information either download & upload with .qbo, or direct sync. That way I have missed no transactions. That being the case, if I wanted to use Wave to store receipts, which are important to have on hand to doublecheck tax etc, I had to use the upload, OCR, correct, merge workflow which was awful for me.
I appreciate that others had different workflows and this was apparently a useful feature to many. Maybe Wave can enable both methods. But to be clear - the old way was very very slow and error prone for me.
100% yes! Why can't Wave improve the old system without completely eliminating a workflow that many businesses use (myself included, especially since Wave won't link to my bank or credit card company so that I can import transactions).
I sure hope Wave reads all of these comments. I too, primarily use Wave for the receipt app. As a mobile business I take photos of receipts immediately as a backup in case it gets lost. My Credit card is also not able to connect to Wave so I would be waiting much longer than a few days for a transaction to post, leaving me with a months worth of receipts to capture and file at a time. A step backwards for my business, and may stop my use of Wave all together.
Watch the video at https://www.waveapps.com/about-us/about and pulling the rug out from under small businesses goes against everything mentioned, not to mention MID-YEAR
Good because it means no duplicate transactions (although I didn't "post" the receipts to accounting to avoid those).
Bad because it means we have to wait for transactions to make it to our wave accounts before uploading receipts. My last sync was 14 hours ago with TD.
This may mean switching to back to Shoeboxed for my receipts. Still love Wave for payroll and other features.