> @meme said: > I'm fairly new to Wave and LOVE it for the most part. As I started looking at the reports the end of last year to get everything ready for tax prep I came across the very same problem of needing to view my expenses by project or in my case rental properties. Today, finally, I figured out how to fix my issue!! > > For each project or property you need to create a "vendor" which is under the Purchases dropdown. Then you need to attached each expense transaction to the appropriate vender. By doing this you can then pull up the report called "Account Transactions" and change the "Contact" dropdown to the vendor (then update report, of course). This will then show all transactions with a total of each expense type. > > (I also created a vendor name labeled as my business name to see my expenses that can't be separated by property such as my cell phone bill, office supplies ...)
This sounds fine for your particular situation. In my case I have several clients that hire me often for different projects. If I created a new client for every project my client list would grow to be unmanageable. It would also create a new problem for tracking customer sales and sales reports.
The challenge that we face is our organisation runs functions, in which we incur some very common expenses (printing, postage, marketing, catering etc) and generate revenue for.
Accounting for these functions has become an absolutely nightmare. Previously it was two per year, now it has grown to one or two a month and has gotten to the point where Wave can't help us.
I've started reviewing other solutions, with some offering the functionality we need (none for free), so we would consider paying but that is not our desired outcome to move away from Wave. I love its interface, we have our full history here (3yrs+) and our team are used to the interface. If only we could have tags or projects to enable the gernation of a P&L per function my life would be so much easier
I've been happily using Wave for two years now, but unfortunately without the ability to track Income/Expense on a project basis we are at the point where Wave has become more of a hindrance than a help.
For our monthly and annual reporting I'm now having to keep two copies of transactions, one in excel to track the various projects, and one in Wave which is our official source of accounts.
We have been evaluating alternative solutions, but before we make the decision to move away from Wave (a platform that has served us so well) can we please get a firm Yes/No if Projects or Tags are in the roadmap of features, and if so what is the timeline for implementation?
I represent a USA based non profit, and tags/classes are a major need and every single scenario given above is a valid reason. I wanted to through in an additional scenario from my own perspective.
Much of our funding is receved via grants, and these grants are specific to one or multipe [rpgrams we provide. WIthout tags/classes there is no easy way to idenetify what item is used for what program and in turn what source of funds are used. When we receive funds they are deposited in to the master checking account with other funds, but when we run reports we have to know what was spent in what program.
There are two ways I have found around this, but they are extremely tedious.
First way was to create customer entry for each program/grant provider. This works only because we don't have "customers" that we sell to.
The other LONG method is to create a master COA and then duplicate it for each program. As you can imagine this is tedious, creating multiple fail points during audits and accounting, and I imagine this would create a tremendous amount of bloat on your own databases.
Wave Accounting is the closest to an easy to use and efficient accounting product I have found that does not cost an arm and a leg which is critical for a non profit. We are aware that Quickbooks has a tag/class method, but really do not have the funds to spend on such a specialized product. Doing so reduces the amount we can assist our clients.
One piece of suggestion while implementing the feature:
Assign the tag/class feature to an line, not an entire transaction.
For Example: we pay salaries out of program funds and admin funds depending on the job that is done. An individual person can work in multiple programs. Instead of printing indvidual checks for each program, we can split the check for each amount and assign a tag to that line. Example Transaction:
- Executive $ 150 from administration funds
- Driver $85 from client transport program
Total Check: $235
Hey @jpo - unfortunately we don't have a hard answer on yes or no, or a firm timeline at this time. Conversations are happening internally though; we've had a ton of feedback about the use cases for this, and how it would be beneficial for our customers and our product. Priorities are still being set (and shifted where need be), but the focus of our teams internally right now has been to bring everyone over to our newest platform. A major part of this has been building out and upgrading the current reconciliation feature as it stands, so that customers used to workflows in our older platform experience a smoother transition to updated workflows.
Another major project that has taken priority is updates to our system to remain tax compliant for our UK users. Once both of these projects have been fully realized, our teams will have more capacity for tackling other projects, including taking a better look at how we could implement tagging, if we are able to. We will also be in a better place then to give a firmer answer in terms of both certainty and timelines of such a project. Thank you for your feedback however, and I apologize that this current limitation is greatly effecting Wave's usability for you and your business.
Hi guys. I'm seeing a ton of +1s for this feature so thank you for the feedback. It also helps to have a use case for this so when discussing we have an idea as to how this really helps your contribute to your business.
@meme Glad to hear of your workaround and thanks for sharing it with everyone else. I can see how this would help a lot of people out who are dealing with similar circumstances.
Hey @jmiller_meaewellness, first off, thank you so much for taking the time to offer your workaround, I am sure that this will be really helpful to a lot of users in the meantime! Your post also provides us with really great context, which is something our Product Team loves!
This feature is something that is on the radar, I assure you and just as Charlotte said, we will update all communications once there is any movement! Thanks,
@Zoe_caff This is great...am very glad to hear a company acknowledgement that this essential feature is now on the radar. When eventually introduced this'll make Wave a way more useful business tool...I just hope the timescale is sooner rather than later?
I am adding my voice to the request for a tag/classes/categories feature. I represent an education support academy, and we have three main revenue streams. I would love to be able to class customers according to type so I can apply a filter to invoices.
I understand that we all benefit tremendously from Wave as a free service and cannot thank you guys enough for all the hard work and the great product you give us, but I will be waiting patiently for the feature to be added in the near future.
Can you confirm that the "tag" feature request is on the roadmap, and when will it be delivered?
Can users give their suggestions on how the tag feature should work and feel?
You can do it. Just that you need to create the chart of accounts codification. Add the codes and just never add transactions to the partent account, to get in context you would be able to add the sub accounts but at the level of reporting when you export to CSV and convert it to excel. email me if you want to know more about how to do it jcho@thinkersmakers.co
I use Quickbooks for our rental portfolio because Wave currently lacks classes. Why do we find classes to be a show-stopper?
We assign expenses related to a specific property to a class (ex: Morgan Duplex). When we run our P&L and Balance sheet at the end of a quarter and at year end, we ensure that there is a column for each class; the right-most column is for transactions where there is no class. That gives us an instant snapshot of each property's performance compared to the others and then our overhead (far-right column). This is very important as we make decisions and our accountant absolutely requires this ability so that they can work their magic at year end with depreciation and writeoffs.
We CAN make expense categories for each property but that is not reasonable and not the way banks want to see our reports generated. We have to speak the same language in our line of work.
Hi, I'd like to add my name to the list of people looking for this feature. As mentioned before, having an overarching account allows us to determine at a glance the totals for all subaccounts in our reports.
Times that we would use this:
Main account: meals & entertainment. Subaccounts: "work through meal" "meals with customers / vendors"
Main account: Security deposits. Subaccounts: "Morgan Unit 1 Security deposit", "Morgan Unit 2 Security deposit", etc.
Because of the benefit mentioned above (totals of subs), any workaround is not worth the extra effort associated with that workaround.
I know this has been discussed at length here, and to be honest we don't have any timelines on if/when this feature could be supported in Wave. I just wanted to mention (in case it hasn't been mentioned already) that you can work around this by opening multiple businesses (i.e. projects) within the same Wave account so you can switch between them with just a few clicks. You can learn about that process here You could then run reports for each business/project as needed and manually add the totals but again, Wave is not explicitly designed for this at this time.
Hey @socrates. Thanks for giving your +1 and the detail you've provided for the feature request.. this is really helpful in terms of what our future roadmap will look like when considering new features (such as potentially adding sub-accounts). When we have an idea of when or what this would look like for our users, we would definitely let everyone know!
+1 for this.
I've just been trialling Wave to see if it could manage our property rental business. However being able to generate a profit report per property is very important to us, and without tags or dimensions or similar reporting features this is not possible.
This really seems like the only negative about Wave, but its a big one for us.
I love Wave but this is the one feature that would be incrediably useful to me.
(1) To be able to assign income account transactions and expense account transactions to a particular category and be able to run a P&L report on them would be so useful.
OR
(2) To have sub-categories, with totals being reported, as @socrates suggests.
My use case: I manage finances for my local Scout Troop. We have our COA set up to track things like Campsite bookings, camp activities, camp food, etc. I'd use tagging to be able to get a view of a camp or activity overall, (eg how much did we spend for beach camp overall, and how much came in for that camp).
A critical feature would be the ability to report on the tags, essentially the general ledger with a consolidated list of transactions for the selected tag(s) across all income/expense accounts, as well as a breakdown by income/expense account.
Hey @philip456. Appreciate the feedback and giving us examples on how this could potentially improve your workflow in Wave (and what would be best for you in this particular situation). It's important to gather this type of information when we are handling these types of feature requests so when it comes to future planning we have more details from our users to go off of.
Hey @nick_pike. Thanks for giving us some insight on how your business operates/how this feature would be beneficial for you as well. Full transparency, this isn't something that's currently on our radar.. but when we have an idea of what this might look like in the future (or if we actually do start planning this).. we will let our users know!
Along with many others, I'm very surprised and disappointed that Wave has not implemented this most basic accounting feature. It's really important to know your profit or loss on each job. I love Wave but have been waiting patently for this feature, can't wait any longer, sorry but I'll be looking for other options.
We understand that Wave isn't the project-based accounting software that suits your businesses needs and the needs of some others in the thread. Of course this is something on our radar when looking to the future of Wave.
Wave suits the needs of many small business owners who operate in the knowledge, field work, or creative divisions. Consider Wave's current state like an intro to accounting 101 and we're very excited about our growth and trajectory. But with that being said it's obvious that your business requires a more robust software to help your business grow, which is of course an impressive sign for your businesses needs!
We're always learning and growing from the help of our users, so we appreciate all of your posts in regards to helping us develop.
I see your point but I think that nearly every business can benefit from being able to categorise some or all transactions.
For instance, at first glance, a hairdresser may appear to be single activity business,
However, they may easily earn some extra money on
Purchase and sales of shampoos and hairdressing products
A small side income from purchase and sales of unrelated products on eBay but using the business business account.
Or they might find it invaluable to be able to seperate out income & expenditure on hair colouring, to see if that side of the business could be developed or dropped.
I can't think of any business that would not benefit greatly from being able to categorise transactions, so that they can be easily see the profit/loss on certain aspects of their business.
I love Wave but this is one aspect where Quickbooks shines. For a simple use case, you don't need to waste time categorising every transaction. They allow you to only categorise the ones which you want to seperate out in reports.
@MitchellGillespie,
Thank you for your update mid-February. We are a small church also in need of tags to track gifts and expenses according to a project or class model. My only workaround at this time would be to document the tag in the comments and track on a spreadsheet (ugh!).
Thank you for keeping us informed and having it on the project roadmap. I appreciate your priority in helping fellow customers on the old system to get to the new system, but as you see this is a popular feature request
@philip456 You bring up a great point about the importance of being able to separate out income and expenditure on specific products and services. To use your example of a hair salon, which would want to know what they make on hair colouring specifically, well, this sort of thing can be tracked in Wave! All you would need to is create an income account for Hair Colouring and then categorize those transactions accordingly. When you add a Product or Service in Wave (under the Sales tab), you can also associate certain products and services with those specific income accounts. That way, when you go to create an invoice and receive payment for it, the income transaction is associated with your Hair Colouring income account. Then, you can go to your Reports > Account Transactions, select for your Hair Colouring Income Account and see all the transactions associated with it. You can also select for dates here so you can analyze how much you bring in for specific products or services for a specific time period.
I understand you're also interested in project based accounting though. It's true Wave is not really designed for this yet but like Ryan pointed out, you can create a separate business in Wave to track income and expenses for different projects.
As for subaccounts, we will be revisiting the priority of this feature in the second half of 2019,
Thank you. My initial need is to group liabilities, specifically within Liabilities to have an account of Sales Tax, and within that account have sub-accounts for the various jurisdictions.
Comments
> I'm fairly new to Wave and LOVE it for the most part. As I started looking at the reports the end of last year to get everything ready for tax prep I came across the very same problem of needing to view my expenses by project or in my case rental properties. Today, finally, I figured out how to fix my issue!!
>
> For each project or property you need to create a "vendor" which is under the Purchases dropdown. Then you need to attached each expense transaction to the appropriate vender. By doing this you can then pull up the report called "Account Transactions" and change the "Contact" dropdown to the vendor (then update report, of course). This will then show all transactions with a total of each expense type.
>
> (I also created a vendor name labeled as my business name to see my expenses that can't be separated by property such as my cell phone bill, office supplies ...)
This sounds fine for your particular situation. In my case I have several clients that hire me often for different projects. If I created a new client for every project my client list would grow to be unmanageable. It would also create a new problem for tracking customer sales and sales reports.
The challenge that we face is our organisation runs functions, in which we incur some very common expenses (printing, postage, marketing, catering etc) and generate revenue for.
Accounting for these functions has become an absolutely nightmare. Previously it was two per year, now it has grown to one or two a month and has gotten to the point where Wave can't help us.
I've started reviewing other solutions, with some offering the functionality we need (none for free), so we would consider paying but that is not our desired outcome to move away from Wave. I love its interface, we have our full history here (3yrs+) and our team are used to the interface. If only we could have tags or projects to enable the gernation of a P&L per function my life would be so much easier
Hi there,
I've been happily using Wave for two years now, but unfortunately without the ability to track Income/Expense on a project basis we are at the point where Wave has become more of a hindrance than a help.
For our monthly and annual reporting I'm now having to keep two copies of transactions, one in excel to track the various projects, and one in Wave which is our official source of accounts.
We have been evaluating alternative solutions, but before we make the decision to move away from Wave (a platform that has served us so well) can we please get a firm Yes/No if Projects or Tags are in the roadmap of features, and if so what is the timeline for implementation?
I represent a USA based non profit, and tags/classes are a major need and every single scenario given above is a valid reason. I wanted to through in an additional scenario from my own perspective.
Much of our funding is receved via grants, and these grants are specific to one or multipe [rpgrams we provide. WIthout tags/classes there is no easy way to idenetify what item is used for what program and in turn what source of funds are used. When we receive funds they are deposited in to the master checking account with other funds, but when we run reports we have to know what was spent in what program.
There are two ways I have found around this, but they are extremely tedious.
First way was to create customer entry for each program/grant provider. This works only because we don't have "customers" that we sell to.
The other LONG method is to create a master COA and then duplicate it for each program. As you can imagine this is tedious, creating multiple fail points during audits and accounting, and I imagine this would create a tremendous amount of bloat on your own databases.
Wave Accounting is the closest to an easy to use and efficient accounting product I have found that does not cost an arm and a leg which is critical for a non profit. We are aware that Quickbooks has a tag/class method, but really do not have the funds to spend on such a specialized product. Doing so reduces the amount we can assist our clients.
One piece of suggestion while implementing the feature:
Assign the tag/class feature to an line, not an entire transaction.
For Example: we pay salaries out of program funds and admin funds depending on the job that is done. An individual person can work in multiple programs. Instead of printing indvidual checks for each program, we can split the check for each amount and assign a tag to that line. Example Transaction:
- Executive $ 150 from administration funds
- Driver $85 from client transport program
Total Check: $235
Hey @jpo - unfortunately we don't have a hard answer on yes or no, or a firm timeline at this time. Conversations are happening internally though; we've had a ton of feedback about the use cases for this, and how it would be beneficial for our customers and our product. Priorities are still being set (and shifted where need be), but the focus of our teams internally right now has been to bring everyone over to our newest platform. A major part of this has been building out and upgrading the current reconciliation feature as it stands, so that customers used to workflows in our older platform experience a smoother transition to updated workflows.
Another major project that has taken priority is updates to our system to remain tax compliant for our UK users. Once both of these projects have been fully realized, our teams will have more capacity for tackling other projects, including taking a better look at how we could implement tagging, if we are able to. We will also be in a better place then to give a firmer answer in terms of both certainty and timelines of such a project. Thank you for your feedback however, and I apologize that this current limitation is greatly effecting Wave's usability for you and your business.
Hi guys. I'm seeing a ton of +1s for this feature so thank you for the feedback. It also helps to have a use case for this so when discussing we have an idea as to how this really helps your contribute to your business.
@meme Glad to hear of your workaround and thanks for sharing it with everyone else. I can see how this would help a lot of people out who are dealing with similar circumstances.
Hey @jmiller_meaewellness, first off, thank you so much for taking the time to offer your workaround, I am sure that this will be really helpful to a lot of users in the meantime! Your post also provides us with really great context, which is something our Product Team loves!
This feature is something that is on the radar, I assure you and just as Charlotte said, we will update all communications once there is any movement! Thanks,
@Zoe_caff This is great...am very glad to hear a company acknowledgement that this essential feature is now on the radar. When eventually introduced this'll make Wave a way more useful business tool...I just hope the timescale is sooner rather than later?
Hi Wave Team,
I am adding my voice to the request for a tag/classes/categories feature. I represent an education support academy, and we have three main revenue streams. I would love to be able to class customers according to type so I can apply a filter to invoices.
I understand that we all benefit tremendously from Wave as a free service and cannot thank you guys enough for all the hard work and the great product you give us, but I will be waiting patiently for the feature to be added in the near future.
Hi Wave Team,
Can you confirm that the "tag" feature request is on the roadmap, and when will it be delivered?
Can users give their suggestions on how the tag feature should work and feel?
EG: Options for Colour Coded Tags would be nice.
I’m shocked that after two years of promising and requests this feature hasn’t been added.
Is it even on the radar?
You can do it. Just that you need to create the chart of accounts codification. Add the codes and just never add transactions to the partent account, to get in context you would be able to add the sub accounts but at the level of reporting when you export to CSV and convert it to excel. email me if you want to know more about how to do it jcho@thinkersmakers.co
I use Quickbooks for our rental portfolio because Wave currently lacks classes. Why do we find classes to be a show-stopper?
We assign expenses related to a specific property to a class (ex: Morgan Duplex). When we run our P&L and Balance sheet at the end of a quarter and at year end, we ensure that there is a column for each class; the right-most column is for transactions where there is no class. That gives us an instant snapshot of each property's performance compared to the others and then our overhead (far-right column). This is very important as we make decisions and our accountant absolutely requires this ability so that they can work their magic at year end with depreciation and writeoffs.
We CAN make expense categories for each property but that is not reasonable and not the way banks want to see our reports generated. We have to speak the same language in our line of work.
Hi, I'd like to add my name to the list of people looking for this feature. As mentioned before, having an overarching account allows us to determine at a glance the totals for all subaccounts in our reports.
Times that we would use this:
Because of the benefit mentioned above (totals of subs), any workaround is not worth the extra effort associated with that workaround.
@Tree_Amigos thanks for chiming in!
I know this has been discussed at length here, and to be honest we don't have any timelines on if/when this feature could be supported in Wave. I just wanted to mention (in case it hasn't been mentioned already) that you can work around this by opening multiple businesses (i.e. projects) within the same Wave account so you can switch between them with just a few clicks. You can learn about that process here You could then run reports for each business/project as needed and manually add the totals but again, Wave is not explicitly designed for this at this time.
Hey @socrates. Thanks for giving your +1 and the detail you've provided for the feature request.. this is really helpful in terms of what our future roadmap will look like when considering new features (such as potentially adding sub-accounts). When we have an idea of when or what this would look like for our users, we would definitely let everyone know!
+1 for this.
I've just been trialling Wave to see if it could manage our property rental business. However being able to generate a profit report per property is very important to us, and without tags or dimensions or similar reporting features this is not possible.
This really seems like the only negative about Wave, but its a big one for us.
+1
+1000 - this is key for gig economy small business....time tracking as well (I will vote onth e other thread as well)
I love Wave but this is the one feature that would be incrediably useful to me.
(1) To be able to assign income account transactions and expense account transactions to a particular category and be able to run a P&L report on them would be so useful.
OR
(2) To have sub-categories, with totals being reported, as @socrates suggests.
I'd like to add my +1 for this as well.
My use case: I manage finances for my local Scout Troop. We have our COA set up to track things like Campsite bookings, camp activities, camp food, etc. I'd use tagging to be able to get a view of a camp or activity overall, (eg how much did we spend for beach camp overall, and how much came in for that camp).
A critical feature would be the ability to report on the tags, essentially the general ledger with a consolidated list of transactions for the selected tag(s) across all income/expense accounts, as well as a breakdown by income/expense account.
Hey @philip456. Appreciate the feedback and giving us examples on how this could potentially improve your workflow in Wave (and what would be best for you in this particular situation). It's important to gather this type of information when we are handling these types of feature requests so when it comes to future planning we have more details from our users to go off of.
Hey @nick_pike. Thanks for giving us some insight on how your business operates/how this feature would be beneficial for you as well. Full transparency, this isn't something that's currently on our radar.. but when we have an idea of what this might look like in the future (or if we actually do start planning this).. we will let our users know!
This would definitely benefit me as I run several projects a one time. This would help with the financial management of them.
Along with many others, I'm very surprised and disappointed that Wave has not implemented this most basic accounting feature. It's really important to know your profit or loss on each job. I love Wave but have been waiting patently for this feature, can't wait any longer, sorry but I'll be looking for other options.
Hi @Graham_L
We understand that Wave isn't the project-based accounting software that suits your businesses needs and the needs of some others in the thread. Of course this is something on our radar when looking to the future of Wave.
Wave suits the needs of many small business owners who operate in the knowledge, field work, or creative divisions. Consider Wave's current state like an intro to accounting 101 and we're very excited about our growth and trajectory. But with that being said it's obvious that your business requires a more robust software to help your business grow, which is of course an impressive sign for your businesses needs!
We're always learning and growing from the help of our users, so we appreciate all of your posts in regards to helping us develop.
Hi @Barsin
I see your point but I think that nearly every business can benefit from being able to categorise some or all transactions.
For instance, at first glance, a hairdresser may appear to be single activity business,
However, they may easily earn some extra money on
Or they might find it invaluable to be able to seperate out income & expenditure on hair colouring, to see if that side of the business could be developed or dropped.
I can't think of any business that would not benefit greatly from being able to categorise transactions, so that they can be easily see the profit/loss on certain aspects of their business.
I love Wave but this is one aspect where Quickbooks shines. For a simple use case, you don't need to waste time categorising every transaction. They allow you to only categorise the ones which you want to seperate out in reports.
@MitchellGillespie,
Thank you for your update mid-February. We are a small church also in need of tags to track gifts and expenses according to a project or class model. My only workaround at this time would be to document the tag in the comments and track on a spreadsheet (ugh!).
Thank you for keeping us informed and having it on the project roadmap. I appreciate your priority in helping fellow customers on the old system to get to the new system, but as you see this is a popular feature request
@philip456 You bring up a great point about the importance of being able to separate out income and expenditure on specific products and services. To use your example of a hair salon, which would want to know what they make on hair colouring specifically, well, this sort of thing can be tracked in Wave! All you would need to is create an income account for Hair Colouring and then categorize those transactions accordingly. When you add a Product or Service in Wave (under the Sales tab), you can also associate certain products and services with those specific income accounts. That way, when you go to create an invoice and receive payment for it, the income transaction is associated with your Hair Colouring income account. Then, you can go to your Reports > Account Transactions, select for your Hair Colouring Income Account and see all the transactions associated with it. You can also select for dates here so you can analyze how much you bring in for specific products or services for a specific time period.
I understand you're also interested in project based accounting though. It's true Wave is not really designed for this yet but like Ryan pointed out, you can create a separate business in Wave to track income and expenses for different projects.
Thank you. My initial need is to group liabilities, specifically within Liabilities to have an account of Sales Tax, and within that account have sub-accounts for the various jurisdictions.