Update on changes coming to Wave Receipts
JCowan
Member Posts: 10 admin
We recently announced we’ll be retiring the Wave Receipts mobile app, and focusing our attention on delivering an optimized receipts experience in waveapps.com. We appreciate the input we received in response, and want to provide more detail on what this upcoming change means for our customers.
Our goal is to build one unified experience that both simplifies bookkeeping and ensures records are always accurate. This change, while difficult to make, is necessary to accomplish our goal.
The Receipts mobile app was built to reach as many people as possible. However, it no longer aligned with our vision of delivering a platform that simplifies bookkeeping while simultaneously maintaining complete and accurate records for tax purposes.
The new receipts experience addresses the overwhelming feedback that led us to make these improvements. This includes:
- Preventing duplicates.
- Eliminating the manual process of converting receipts images into new transactions.
- Enabling the ability to simply “attach” receipts to individual expense transactions, as well as the ability to attach documents to income and deposit transactions.
- Creating a single, unified experience for receipt management and overall transactions.
- Leveraging Wave’s new mobile optimizations for the Dashboard and Transactions page.
However, we do acknowledge this is not ideal for customers who:
- Only use the Receipts mobile app.
- Do not have a connected or eligible bank account.
- Capture and upload receipts at point of purchase.
- Rely on the app to add the receipt details to Wave (OCR).
While the new experience may function differently in these scenarios, it is still possible to accomplish many of the same tasks. We invite you to try it out, and hope you’ll see just how much more accurate it can be. You can even log in using the same username and password you already use for the Receipts mobile app.
For more in-depth details on how to use the new receipts experience, including how to upload a receipt when the corresponding expense transaction hasn’t been recorded yet in Wave, check out our Help Center article.
Comments
In other words, we merely "hear" you, will not listen to 80% of your client base and continue the course.
Your post is still not being transparent.
Why sunset a highly needed feature that is very popular among your competition?
Either H&R Block sees it as a money pit (resources, time, staffing) or a more important client is fueling the change.
There was never this big of a push on bettering taxes until H&R Block took over.
As I said before, the real reckoning will come when most of your clients leave, H&R Block cuts ties and sells Wave off and the new owner brings back a phone application with OCR.
By then, I will have been using Quickbooks Online (with their App and OCR) with the faint memory of how much of a nuisance Wave had been.
FYI, you will still end up with duplicate transactions. You have gained nothing.
So despite the overwhelming negative feedback, you're going to continue to alienate your customers. Got it.
They have made their choice.
Wow, found the app like a month ago, exactly what I was looking for. And now you close it up for what? I'm pretty sure nobody asked you to remove the app and the OCR function, but only to fix the duplicate issue.
I'll have to look somewhere else.
JCowan, thanks for nothing. Would have been nice if you made this change at the end of the year and not in the middle. I hope you realize how much extra bookkeeping work you put on our plates making this decision now. I'm really pissed off, and it's really hard to piss me off.
Foreceipt it is! Requesting if they can build something to extract data from your wave account so not everything has to be done manually.. I will keep you all up to date!
Waving Wave GOOOODBYEEE.
UPDATE 2
Dear Wavers,
I have been talking to Foreceipts. They are currently working on a seamless export-import experience from Wave into Foreceipts. They are changing a few key database entries, and are working on connecting the receipt files and csv file.
Keep you up to date!
Tim
UPDATE on Foreceipts data import
So the helpful dev team at Foreceipts has figured out a way to import all your Wave data into their database! (Yes they do listen to their customers....
)
If you go in Wave to Settings --> Data Export, export the CSV files and the ZIP with all your receipts. Your receipts have to be posted to your Wave account (otherwise they don't show up in the CSV export). I've tested it, and it works beautifully, so you don't have to redo your accounting from this year! Will be live by next week.
Also, Foreceipts will provide a substantial discount for all new users coming from Wave.
Cheers
Tim
Is this feature OCR enabled, or will I still need to manually enter the transaction? @JCowan
I am looking for clarification from a Wave employee, not just another user like myself.
This post does nothing to address the overwhelming objections of Wave's user base. I guess you don't care. I'll be looking for a new accounting platform.
I can't believe Wave/H&R Block made such a disruptive change, let alone in the middle of the year. Accounting is mission critical. This put a huge burden on small business with no-value work. Ironic that Wave says that they are behind small businesses: https://www.waveapps.com/about-us/about
This is not the first time I have been burned by a bait-and-switch by a SaaS company. I'm moving to an open source application (GnuCash) and added my own receipt OCR capability.
I'm also moving as many other applications to open source for the control and customization. You will never have control over a service someone else runs:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html
On another note I did notice that Shoeboxed shows that Wave is a partner if you want to research using it with Wave:
https://www.shoeboxed.com/partners/ for their receipt scanning and OCR.
I notice they don't use the words "receipt processing" in any of their documentation. They call it a "receipt experience". That's because there is no processing involved. Why don't they just call it what it is - the ability to add an image to an existing transaction.
Dear Wavers,
I have been talking to Foreceipts. They are currently working on a seamless export-import experience from Wave into Foreceipts. They are changing a few key database entries, and are working on connecting the receipts and data csv file.
Keep you up to date!
Tim
UPDATE on Foreceipts data import
So the helpful dev team at Foreceipts has figured out a way to import all your Wave data into their database! (Yes they do listen to their customers....
)
If you go in Wave to Settings --> Data Export, export the CSV files and the ZIP with all your receipts. Your receipts have to be posted to your Wave account (otherwise they don't show up in the CSV export). I've tested it, and it works beautifully, so you don't have to redo your accounting from this year! Will be live by next week.
Also, Foreceipts will provide a substantial discount for all new users coming from Wave.
Cheers
Tim
@ModernMilkmaid Thanks for your question. OCR will no longer be supported with the release of the new feature in June. If you were to upload a receipt from the Dashboard, you yourself would then add in the relevant purchase details to bookkeep the transaction.
So really, it's the same difference whether I enter the transaction first and attach the receipt, or upload the receipt and then enter the transaction. The receipt upload and OCR is my favourite feature, especially since Wave stopped importing transactions from my bank 6+ weeks ago.
I've been a loyal Wave user for the past 5 or so years, but I haven't found any of the recent updates particularly user-friendly, including the changes that were made to the Transactions page. Moving everything to a new bookkeeping software is a huge endeavour and not something I want to tackle mid-year so I'll give it a try and see if I can make it work, but I am actively looking at other bookkeeping programs that could be a good fit for my business.
Someone mentioned Foreceipt on here earlier. I've been using it for just over 2 weeks now and its OCR works well. There's a 2-week free trial for anyone wanting to try it, or if you want a 1-month free trial you can click here and we both get a month free.
This is brutal. I am running 3 businesses now through Wave Accounting and use the OCR receipts functionality extensively. If you want to make improvements great, but this is going backwards. You should have a new OCR experience in the main wave apps, plus I use mobile for most of my receipt experience. I will be looking to transition all my business to another accounting system as a result. You make things difficult and don't care to listen to your customers complaining. Leaving...
Well we fought the good fight here but sadly the motivation of keeping us as clients was obviously not compelling enough to Wave. We are now moving our whole company's books over to QuickBooks Online. It has an OCR feature and Wave is degrading features at a steady rate and it's impacting how I run my business negatively. That is not what I look for in an accounting application. The first straw was not allowing real time balances on accounts - now this cost cutting OCR nonsense. I have been here for 5 years also but just contacted my accountant and they are starting my data migration today.
I have to agree with the sentiment here, whereas I do like the idea of being able to directly attach a receipt to a transaction, removing the OCR/Email/Mobile app is a step backwards. Having to create a transaction before being able to upload a receipt makes zero sense. I've been a user of this system for 6 years and run 2 business with payroll through Wave....Please reconsider keeping the mobile and email OCR features.
We hear your feedback loud and clear and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause to your (little) business. At Wave, we are working very hard to bring you the revolutionary Saas product that you come to expect.
Since H&R Block's acquisition, we have shore up our financials and cut (unnecessary) expenses. You may currently using the amazing service for FREE, but OCR technology provided by the 3rd party does incur costs.
Perhaps, we could have kept the functionality as optional feature for our valued (but mostly not- paying) customers, but that defies the purpose of cutting 3rd party processing and maintenance costs.
This is a BIG step back, we know that already so no need to reminding anyone of that.
Nevertheless, we can spin this fact clear-as-mud for our nasty users by telling them we are bring them a revolutionary NEW feature. If there are a few clever ones who wouldn't keep their mouth closed, we will just close the old thread and start a new one thread till there are nothing but silence...
Sorry, this is just me joking. Now for real, listen up, Wave:
We love and care about your products, that's why we are here spending time commenting. Removing OCR is BAD move, here is why:
One of the best features of Wave, removed - without any consideration, or reevaluation. If, like mine, your Wave is not sync'd to your bank, then it is suddenly useless. I will note, they continue to advertise the Receipts functionality on their website.
On what date will this end, as I will need to find another solution - fast. Absolute disaster. I am stunned.
Update: Refugee here who is trying Foreceipt. So far, very impressed - Check them out as an alternative.
Very disappointed. For my small non-profit, Wave Receipts (despite it's lack of dedicated permissions) is a critical aspect of our accounting practice. It is used so users can submit expenses for processing and reimbursement. The OCR is critical because, as others have indicated, receipts are captured at the time of purchase - not at the time of bank transaction import (which doesn't work for our bank anyway). We were expanding usage of Receipts and about to have our first two employees hired and had been looking at Wave Payroll... no more. Waving goodbye to Wave... kinda sad, really... we loved it! But to see how they are treating their customers... it's sad.
I appreciate the recommendations to try Foreceipt. Our board will be taking a look at them this week.
Hi @lordmuggins, the current Receipts process and mobile app will be depreciated, and the new Receipts feature launched in mid-June.
So currently, my process is
The new process will be
What is this update accomplishing exactly, outside of removing the expense of paying for OCR?