Yes, your software is good, but it is not worth all the hassle if you do not implement this feature.
I read through all the comments since 2018, and while I understand that there are other issues to be solved, this is an easy fix. Like @Mani said, it's just a few lines of code, so why not implement it?
While you might think this issues may not be deal breaking (PS: it is!!), the lack of attention to the issue proves that, as a company, getting things done takes a while (over 2 years). That is the bigger issue here.
I've only just started using Wave, so I suppose this is something I can deal with for a bit longer. Like many others, I won't be here forever.
If you really cared about expanding, I expect this to be done.
I do not mean any disrespect. I know you are working hard on other projects.
Thanks for your community post! Though we can't give an ETA on whether this will be implemented soon, we know that our accounting team has been discussing this as a potential feature idea. We appreciate you reaching out about it!
when will you finally resolve this problem?? this discussion has been on for 2 years now. Your software would be great but this feature is a must. If you use a checking account and run a transaction that is connected to wave, the transaction automatically comes in the system. And then if you have the receipts, merging the duplicates is terrible. You must create finally a feature, when one can easily upload the receipt PDF or JPG to an already existing transaction. It is worth paying 25 bucks to Quickbooks, for this feature alone. When will you solve it???????????? you had TWO YEARS already " actively working on it"!!! WHAT IS THE REAL REASON FOR YOU NOT WILLING TO GIVE US THIS FEATURE??? For sure there is something in the background, for which you are purposefully not giving us this feature.
Hi, just to throw this out there as a major recommendation, there really should be a url link to the receipt image included in the csv/excel reports alongside the listed expenses. Everlance does this, so does Quickbooks, etc... and it would save a lot of time. In the event of getting audited, this would be huge. The IRS would be able to read through our expenses and verify each one immediately.
Here we are years later and we still can't add receipts to transactions. There doesn't even seem to be a plan to add such a simple essential feature. Statements from the Wave team are extremely vague and cannot be relied upon. Time to switch to a serious accounting software.
Can anyone recommend a good accounting software that does have this feature but similar to Wave? Ive been waiting 2 years for this, with the promise that "Its coming this year" and ive had enough!
@gabgren said:
Hi ! Just want to share my "workaround", while we wait for this important feature.
First, I go through my bank statements via transactions and reconciliation, making sure everything is in the right place and move them to the right account chart. I also often need to add taxes and sometimes split the bill between two accounts, when only a portion of the bill is taxed. The only thing I'm not doing yet is check the "review" status, since this is my check to know if I have the receipt or not.
Obviously, after all this work, I don't want to use the Merge feature since it will delete almost everything I've done with the account charts and taxes.
What I do is I then go to the Receipts page, and I review receipt by assigning a dummy account & account chart called "Receipts", then post it to the transactions. I do this in batch for a bunch of receipts
I go back to Transactions and scroll down in the list. I will quickly see two similar transactions, and I can look for "Receipts" in the Account column to quickly navigate through the transactions and I stop when I see a receipt "fake transaction". Next to it normally sits the original transaction. I check that the amount matches and I can then click on "Mark as reviewed" since I now know that I have this receipt.
I delete the "fake transaction" receipt, which I no longer need, to avoid duplicates. If later I need to find a receipt for a reviewed transaction, I know I'll be able to find it in the Receipts page in Wave. That's still not giving you a receipt linked to a transaction, but at least it gets my accounting straight, in my case.
Notes:
I use the receipts features only for physical receipts like restaurants. I don't collect all of my digital receipts/invoices in Wave since I can always search for them in my mails. I believe this workaround works if you have few receipts here and there and not on all of your transactions.
The only downside I can see is that WHEN Wave will implement a proper Merge or Link receipt to transaction, I might not be able to back-track with those receipts since they are marked as "done" and can no longer be moved to transactions.
Hope it helps someone
Side note for Wave team:
1. Your system already finds the date, amount and name of the transaction on scanned receipts
2. You already have the UI/UX workflow of linking matching transactions between accounts (which works awesome BTW)
3. The way I see it would be exactly the same: when you open a receipt you have a dropdown menu with a selected list of suggested transactions to link to, based on the date & amount
4. If you need help to speed up this implementation, I'll be happy to help
Gab
Why not, instead of deleting the "Fake receipt transaction", edit it to match the bank transaction, and then delete the latter? That way, we'd have all the details, and the receipt would still be attached to this transaction.
Also, after painfully reading this thread from start to finish, and, based on my experience and knowledge, and 100% agreeing with @topher217 's proposed solution (which indeed is simple and not as complicated as the @wave team would want us to believe), I am convinced the reason why this has not been implemented is completely unrelated to technical limitations or "priorities" (maybe they fear that if they make this so easily available, we'll use it quite a lot more and they'll be hit with much higher costs for AWS storage, in which case the solution proposed above -to add it to our Onedrive/Dropbox or similar- could be a good trade-off, albeit much more challenging to implement, though certainly not impossible).
@topher217@HolCar How about we create a chrome extension that adds this functionality by uploading the attachment to a user Dropbox or Google Drive and match it with a transaction ID retrieved in the DOM ?
First and foremost, welcome to Wave! I see you're a new user and I appreciate your recent comments in our Wave community. With regards to these technical limitations, we are a medium sized company and our team is completely aware of this. In an ideal world Wave could action every feature idea that would truly benefit the status quo immediately, however there are processes in place and priorities for us. For example our team is doing a major overhaul on the backend of the invoicing platform so we can continue to roll out new features for invoicing.
We totally understand how this would benefit everyone dramatically and understand that this hasn't been actioned for some time. As always, we welcome your comments and feedback and +1's in these thread so that our team will understand the desire for this feature. Thanks again.
First and foremost, welcome to Wave! I see you're a new user and I appreciate your recent comments in our Wave community. With regards to these technical limitations, we are a medium sized company and our team is completely aware of this. In an ideal world Wave could action every feature idea that would truly benefit the status quo immediately, however there are processes in place and priorities for us. For example our team is doing a major overhaul on the backend of the invoicing platform so we can continue to roll out new features for invoicing.
We totally understand how this would benefit everyone dramatically and understand that this hasn't been actioned for some time. As always, we welcome your comments and feedback and +1's in these thread so that our team will understand the desire for this feature. Thanks again.
Thanks for your reply @BarsinA . However, I stand by my previous statement. All we're getting is the runaround on this and it has been going on for +2 years.
Like others before me have said, and I know, because I've done similar work, this is NOT complicated. @topher217 even outlined it for you guys, spelled as if for pre-schoolers. Also, you already have this sort of implemented in reversed, so the hold up is due to something else.
In short, NOTHING stops you guys from using 2-3 hrs development time and implementing a variant of this workflow:
On the transaction page, while editing it, add a button to the bottom section (where we currently have Delete/Duplicate/Mark as Reviewed/Save) called: Upload
Then, when we upload a pdf, you save it (same place you're currently saving receipts)
Whether we'll run OCR or what not, that's a different story. But if we don't, at least there will be a record of the receipt saved and easily referenced.
This receipt uploaded will be thus attached to that transaction.
Sorry, but that's not rocket science. Maybe you guys in this department don't understand the workflow here, and that's ok, as you generally are meant to give support with the existing system. But the lack of attention from your product department is a disrespect to your users, whether the system is free or not (most all other areas work great, by the way).
And, I'm not trying to sound rude here, but there's no need to say for the umpteenth time that this is not on the roadmap -we know! Nor has it been for the +2 years when your users have been clamoring for it.
Anyways, thank you for the welcome! I always strive to be helpful whenever I can. I just wish you guys understood how this is not an enhancement, but a basic requirement for proper accounting.
@gabgren Even if you did manage to find a way to make it work well, you'd be reinventing the wheel. There are tons of other free accounting packages out there.
I am still subscribed to this thread for some reason, but have converted over to ******* well over a year ago because of this. I highly recommend it to those frustrated by the lack of support from Wave regarding basic things like this.
******* has a much steeper learning curve than Wave, but I appreciate the much deeper understanding of accounting practices it forced me to learn. In doing so I realize just how many issues there are in the Wave accounting system. A lack of receipt attachment is annoying and creates disorganization, but there are plenty of things about Wave accounting that can legitimately mess up your accounting, taxes, etc. Its a real legal liability and I recommend all those frusterated with the system bite the bullet and move to something else for your accounting needs.
All that being said, I still use Wave for payroll and invoicing, but my accounting books on Wave haven't balanced for yeeeears . I just ignore that part of the GUI. The support team for payroll has been quite good to me, so I would recommend it if you need payroll, but again, I'd avoid the accounting side at all costs.
With regards to these technical limitations, we are a medium sized company and our team is completely aware of this. In an ideal world Wave could action every feature idea that would truly benefit the status quo immediately, however there are processes in place and priorities for us.
I can appreciate that every company has its limits and priorities, but as I've asked years ago and hundreds of others before and after me...What can we as users do to make this a priority? This thread is pretty well populated, and I see no other avenue for users to make feature requests. Do you have a formal feature request or bug tracking system available to your users?
Also, because of the simplicity of implementing this, I can't appreciate this excuse in this context. I pay for several other software packages that are run by one or a couple of programmers. I send a message to the devs on github and within a day I receive a response asking for use-case details and plans for fixes. I've never waited more than a couple of weeks for a new version where my exact issue has been personally resolved by the devs. These are teams of one to two people. Having a "medium sized company" is no cop out for years of ignoring user requests. Thats just bad business.
P.S. I will be saving a copy of this message just in case it seems to be bad PR for Wave and they get ornery and delete it. But who knows, I recommended their paid services and bashed their free ones so...
It's a Chrome extension that adds functionality over the Transactions page in Wave by modifying the DOM. It lets you upload and list uploaded files according to the current transaction ID.
For the moment, I upload the files to my own server, but if someone wants to help me modify this so it uploads to a users Google Drive or Dropbox, we could release it as a public Chrome Extension.
Wave is still the only ones (with a great UI) that support more than 1 tax, as it is in Canada So I want to stick with it for a little.
Hey, @BarsinA -
I am yet another user requesting this, and surprised to see this taking so long.
Free is VERY good, that's why I'm with Wave, but I agree with other users that this is a super basic ask, and sounds like a lot lower-hanging fruit (i.e. better and more immediate ROI for dev hours) than any "major overhaul on the backend," especially since you have a Receipts app and clearly know the importance of receipts.
Implement this feature next!! Everything else works fine!!!
Don't really understand why, if you can implement a 'merge' option, why you can't just implement an 'add receipt' option to the transaction page. This seems a completely obvious alternative that would make your service 1000x more efficient and easier to use. Currently your users are forced to bounce between different pages making what should be a simple feature, long and complicated. This is further exacerbated by the requirement to have things recorded accurately.
Why not just add a simple button on the transaction page to add and merge a receipt transaction in one simple action.. and make everyone happy?
It's a Chrome extension that adds functionality over the Transactions page in Wave by modifying the DOM. It lets you upload and list uploaded files according to the current transaction ID.
For the moment, I upload the files to my own server, but if someone wants to help me modify this so it uploads to a users Google Drive or Dropbox, we could release it as a public Chrome Extension.
Wave is still the only ones (with a great UI) that support more than 1 tax, as it is in Canada So I want to stick with it for a little.
@gabgren
VERY impressive! Is your code available anywhere? I doubt I will come back to Wave Accounting, and I'm no javascript developer by any means, but I'm just curious how you implemented this so seamlessly! I thought it would have to be something you clicked up in a Chrome menubar icon or something more clunky.
Why not, instead of deleting the "Fake receipt transaction", edit it to match the bank transaction, and then delete the latter? That way, we'd have all the details, and the receipt would still be attached to this transaction.
Also, after painfully reading this thread from start to finish, and, based on my experience and knowledge, and 100% agreeing with @topher217 's proposed solution (which indeed is simple and not as complicated as the @wave team would want us to believe), I am convinced the reason why this has not been implemented is completely unrelated to technical limitations or "priorities" (maybe they fear that if they make this so easily available, we'll use it quite a lot more and they'll be hit with much higher costs for AWS storage, in which case the solution proposed above -to add it to our Onedrive/Dropbox or similar- could be a good trade-off, albeit much more challenging to implement, though certainly not impossible).
That's a fair theory, though I'm guessing it could be easily worked around by another paid plan for Wave (free receipt storage up to XXX Mb) or something like that. Can't imagine they'd avoid a valid business plan :P. Setting up such a system would likely be a bit more of an effort though...a bit .
Very basic, would need improvements but if it can help anyone... Or the @wave team @BarsinA
Very basic my a$$ XD. It's amazing! Concise, easy to read code, even for someone largely unfamiliar with javascript. And two initial commits with the rest README edits...come on you must have been working on this a while via some other local repo...Hats off! :clap: :clap: :clap:
I am very sorry I am not familiar enough with web development to help much, but am very impressed at your effort to improve, via open-source, a proprietary software. Hoping they don't modify their GUI too much in the future to throw all that hard work off. I'm watching your repo, so should you ever need people to test using their own Drive accounts, I'll be first in line for alpha/beta testing!
> @topher217 said: > (Quote) > Very basic my a$$ XD. It's amazing! Concise, easy to read code, even for someone largely unfamiliar with javascript. And two initial commits with the rest README edits...come on you must have been working on this a while via some other local repo...Hats off! :clap: :clap: :clap: > > I am very sorry I am not familiar enough with web development to help much, but am very impressed at your effort to improve, via open-source, a proprietary software. Hoping they don't modify their GUI too much in the future to throw all that hard work off. I'm watching your repo, so should you ever need people to test using their own Drive accounts, I'll be first in line for alpha/beta testing!
Cool! Thanks for the kind words and encouragement ;)
Let me start by saying I appreciate that you were able to use our public forum as a way to express your honest opinions. We appreciate that our community members are able to do this. I’d like to address your post in 3 separate parts.
We’ve had to edit out the name of any competing software in your original post as this does go against our community guidelines. Our forum is actually a space to discuss Wave’s products, bring up new feature ideas you’d love to see implemented in future updates, and help others out with any troubles they may be facing in Wave. This forum is not a space to discuss competing software and how they operate or function in comparison to Wave. I hope you understand that we have to abide by our guidelines and make these changes to your post and future posts like it, however we left everything else untouched to ensure that the rest of the users are receiving full transparency of your ask here.
In regards to the implementation of feature ideas in the Wave community forum; Wave was tasked with the monumental duty of migrating users over from our old accounting software to the new one over the last year. Because we reached our capacity to innovate further on our old platform, we decided that migration and other fundamental backend changes were necessary to allow us to make updates more efficiently. Now that migration on both the accounting side as well as invoicing are nearly completed, we will start to make new updates to our platform. You can already see these on the invoicing side! These are backend tasks that we don’t always share in the community, but I do feel is a reasonable explanation to your thorough post inquiring about why this change hasn’t been made yet.
Once migration is completed, we should be rolling out a lot of new changes. We’ve actually released some screenshots and updates of what they will look like HERE. While attaching images to a transaction is not in this update, we can inform you that our team is very much aware of this and are figuring out how we can implement it in future iterations.
Thanks again for your input and don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any other questions.
Hey @r0lliSl1fe@Billy123 , thanks for reaching out. Please refer to the most recent comment from Barsin above ^ for the most insight into our current progress on improving the transactions page & features.
@BarsinA said:
We’ve had to edit out the name of any competing software in your original post as this does go against our community guidelines. Our forum is actually a space to discuss Wave’s products, bring up new feature ideas you’d love to see implemented in future updates, and help others out with any troubles they may be facing in Wave. This forum is not a space to discuss competing software and how they operate or function in comparison to Wave. I hope you understand that we have to abide by our guidelines and make these changes to your post and future posts like it, however we left everything else untouched to ensure that the rest of the users are receiving full transparency of your ask here.
Well if it is in your guidelines, and I am using your service, then I should be all means abide by such regulations. That being said, you make the guidelines, so you have the ability to stop censorship, and instead inspire confidence in your user base by showing that you can do what the competitors have done for years. It does not inspire confidence to censor competition. Sounds pretty familiar to a certain Chinese Poo Bear rather than a Canadian based company. It was not my intention to try to advertise for a free open-source alternative. They have no need for advertising as there is no money involved. I was simply stating that a free alternative exists, and has existed for many years. People have been asking for this overly simple feature for several years. If you're not going to provide it, people will search elsewhere, as many have stated in this thread.
The only other alternative you have provided, is to hack your existing system. @gabgren has literally hacked your DOM to provide what your users have been asking for for years. That hacked code is comparable in word count to your post here. Without the need to hack the DOM, this could likely be 20-30 lines of code if not less. It bet it take you and the other admins here less time to censor us, than it would to just go write these 20-30 lines of code. If you can't be bothered to do that, then at least go copy/paste the relevant sections from github that gabgren has so generously provided you. Or even better, give @gabgren a job!
In regards to the implementation of feature ideas in the Wave community forum; Wave was tasked with the monumental duty of migrating users over from our old accounting software to the new one over the last year. Because we reached our capacity to innovate further on our old platform, we decided that migration and other fundamental backend changes were necessary to allow us to make updates more efficiently. Now that migration on both the accounting side as well as invoicing are nearly completed, we will start to make new updates to our platform. You can already see these on the invoicing side! These are backend tasks that we don’t always share in the community, but I do feel is a reasonable explanation to your thorough post inquiring about why this change hasn’t been made yet.
I am in no way trying to belittle or diminish the work being done at Wave. As I've stated before, I think the payroll service, and invoicing services are great, both technically and service-wise. The accounting system on the other hand, is fundamentally flawed in various ways that I did not realize until learning more about accounting myself, and the customer service, as evidenced by this thread, is atrocious. I also just want to add that I'm not here to just troll; I really hope Wave gets this done, and I would consider coming back to it for my accounting needs as well. Unfortunately it is not just this single feature though. As I've stated in several posts prior to this, Wave doesn't give the users and means of voting for new features, or provide any evidence as to what your to-do list looks like with regard to prioritizing things. This leaves us without any hope for change, regardless of the issue.
Several other software packages I use have such systems in place. Until such a system is in place at Wave, I will not have the confidence to return to it as an accounting tool, as I will have no hope that bugs/issues will be resolved in a timely manner. Even if you have a total code overhaul like you describe, and can't make any changes to the code until such overhaul is finished, having a ranking or user-vote controlled list of feature requests to come after such overhaul would inspire leaps and bounds of confidence in your users (myself included).
I started using Wave about a month ago, and I am really enjoying the platform. I am looking forward to new updates; any news on this particular one, Wave Admins? How can we help? Is it about money or time? It is an important tool we are asking for... perhaps, if you tell why you are not able to make the update, we could help you in finding solutions. Let us know!
I just took 30 minutes to read all 5 pages of this thread that began in 2018, and I am STUNNED by what I’ve read.
WAVE: YOU ARE LOSING CUSTOMERS EVERY DAY BECAUSE YOU AREN'T SIMPLY ADDING THE ABILITY TO UPLOAD AN ATTACHMENT TO A TRANSACTION.
Do you not understand that?
I really don’t want to be rude but this thread reads like a satire piece out of the Onion or something.... you literally have users explaining exactly how simple it is and even coding it for you because they are so frustrated. And all they are getting back are the canned replies and empty promises which still have not been fulfilled. Unfortunately this inspires no confidence in Wave if this thread going on nearly 3 years has not resulted in any change.
Unfortunately I will also be leaving wave for the very same reason. All I want to do is upload a supporting document to an expense transaction, literally the most basic function in an accounting program to keep receipts organized… Can someone escalate this to someone at wave who actually cares if they lose customers or not???
I promise you Wave, if you just take the time to fix this basic request, customers will flood back to you and your growth will exceed your wildest dreams… But to continue to ignore this I’m afraid could be your downfall.
JUST DO IT. THIS MONTH. JULY 2020. Clock is starting.... NOW! ;)
This is absolutely crazy. Are you trying to self-sabotage? You go from an SVP admitting there is a problem in 2018, to "we don't know if this is on the roadmap" in 2020. All the while, dozens of genuine users clamoring, begging for this. I, as many others, will be switching away from Wave, as I cannot have this level of friction, confusion and room for error in such a basic task. So sad.
Bump! Still super, super hoping this will happen! It's kinda wild that this is "accounting software" and it doesn't have this super simple and basic function, which is necessary for good accounting!
I just wanted to add to this thread and say that THIS is the reason I am leaving.
I just signed up for wave, I quickly became a big fan of the software after playing around with it for a bit, I have been reading your Fearless Accounting with Wave guide and LOVING it.
I was loving everything you have done from the software to the marketing. I was REALLY excited about using the software and recommending it to other people.
And then I tried to attach a receipt to one of my transactions and stumbled upon this. Honestly, it's absurd.
I want to stress, as others in this thread, it's not just that you don't have this very basic feature, but how you have handled this over the past two years.
It's unacceptable that you have been stringing people along saying "we don't know if or when this will be on the roadmap". Just be transparent and tell your users the reason why you have decided not to implement.
I was able to upload a receipt then adjust the OCR detected amounts to the same as the bank imported transaction, then merge the two. Seems to be the function I need... might get annoying with many transactions.
I guess implementing a UI feature which saves all the additional clicks would be nice for the user... but... software is complex... and when the fundamental concepts of a system are strictly defined (for good reason), it can perhaps make it tricky to implement surface level features which need to simultaneously touch many parts of a system. This software is essentially free... and the lack of this feature probably does not prevent adoption by new customers...
Perhaps someone could build a 3rd party app which performs the steps automatically by interacting with the wave receipt and transaction APIs in a smooth way...
1 more voice backing up the general impression on this thread.
Regardless of being free, Wave UI experience is excellent and beats the well established competition for my needs. That is until this deal breaker came to light. Like many others here, this is a complete head-scratcher as how you could develop such a well thought-through accounting software for small businesses and not equip it with the most crucial feature for small businesses - a reliable expenses management.
We have 3 accounts with payroll holding on this single feature to be implemented before switching to Wave app. In the meantime, we are getting used to the competition's software...
Comments
Again, someone else looking for this option.
Yes, your software is good, but it is not worth all the hassle if you do not implement this feature.
I read through all the comments since 2018, and while I understand that there are other issues to be solved, this is an easy fix. Like @Mani said, it's just a few lines of code, so why not implement it?
While you might think this issues may not be deal breaking (PS: it is!!), the lack of attention to the issue proves that, as a company, getting things done takes a while (over 2 years). That is the bigger issue here.
I've only just started using Wave, so I suppose this is something I can deal with for a bit longer. Like many others, I won't be here forever.
If you really cared about expanding, I expect this to be done.
I do not mean any disrespect. I know you are working hard on other projects.
Thank you.
Hey there @RenoNick @Mo_27
Thanks for your community post! Though we can't give an ETA on whether this will be implemented soon, we know that our accounting team has been discussing this as a potential feature idea. We appreciate you reaching out about it!
when will you finally resolve this problem?? this discussion has been on for 2 years now. Your software would be great but this feature is a must. If you use a checking account and run a transaction that is connected to wave, the transaction automatically comes in the system. And then if you have the receipts, merging the duplicates is terrible. You must create finally a feature, when one can easily upload the receipt PDF or JPG to an already existing transaction. It is worth paying 25 bucks to Quickbooks, for this feature alone. When will you solve it???????????? you had TWO YEARS already " actively working on it"!!! WHAT IS THE REAL REASON FOR YOU NOT WILLING TO GIVE US THIS FEATURE??? For sure there is something in the background, for which you are purposefully not giving us this feature.
Hi, just to throw this out there as a major recommendation, there really should be a url link to the receipt image included in the csv/excel reports alongside the listed expenses. Everlance does this, so does Quickbooks, etc... and it would save a lot of time. In the event of getting audited, this would be huge. The IRS would be able to read through our expenses and verify each one immediately.
Here we are years later and we still can't add receipts to transactions. There doesn't even seem to be a plan to add such a simple essential feature. Statements from the Wave team are extremely vague and cannot be relied upon. Time to switch to a serious accounting software.
Can anyone recommend a good accounting software that does have this feature but similar to Wave? Ive been waiting 2 years for this, with the promise that "Its coming this year" and ive had enough!
Why not, instead of deleting the "Fake receipt transaction", edit it to match the bank transaction, and then delete the latter? That way, we'd have all the details, and the receipt would still be attached to this transaction.
Also, after painfully reading this thread from start to finish, and, based on my experience and knowledge, and 100% agreeing with @topher217 's proposed solution (which indeed is simple and not as complicated as the @wave team would want us to believe), I am convinced the reason why this has not been implemented is completely unrelated to technical limitations or "priorities" (maybe they fear that if they make this so easily available, we'll use it quite a lot more and they'll be hit with much higher costs for AWS storage, in which case the solution proposed above -to add it to our Onedrive/Dropbox or similar- could be a good trade-off, albeit much more challenging to implement, though certainly not impossible).
@topher217 @HolCar How about we create a chrome extension that adds this functionality by uploading the attachment to a user Dropbox or Google Drive and match it with a transaction ID retrieved in the DOM ?
Hi again @HolCar
First and foremost, welcome to Wave! I see you're a new user and I appreciate your recent comments in our Wave community. With regards to these technical limitations, we are a medium sized company and our team is completely aware of this. In an ideal world Wave could action every feature idea that would truly benefit the status quo immediately, however there are processes in place and priorities for us. For example our team is doing a major overhaul on the backend of the invoicing platform so we can continue to roll out new features for invoicing.
We totally understand how this would benefit everyone dramatically and understand that this hasn't been actioned for some time. As always, we welcome your comments and feedback and +1's in these thread so that our team will understand the desire for this feature. Thanks again.
Thanks for your reply @BarsinA . However, I stand by my previous statement. All we're getting is the runaround on this and it has been going on for +2 years.
Like others before me have said, and I know, because I've done similar work, this is NOT complicated. @topher217 even outlined it for you guys, spelled as if for pre-schoolers. Also, you already have this sort of implemented in reversed, so the hold up is due to something else.
In short, NOTHING stops you guys from using 2-3 hrs development time and implementing a variant of this workflow:
Sorry, but that's not rocket science. Maybe you guys in this department don't understand the workflow here, and that's ok, as you generally are meant to give support with the existing system. But the lack of attention from your product department is a disrespect to your users, whether the system is free or not (most all other areas work great, by the way).
And, I'm not trying to sound rude here, but there's no need to say for the umpteenth time that this is not on the roadmap -we know! Nor has it been for the +2 years when your users have been clamoring for it.
Anyways, thank you for the welcome! I always strive to be helpful whenever I can. I just wish you guys understood how this is not an enhancement, but a basic requirement for proper accounting.
@gabgren Even if you did manage to find a way to make it work well, you'd be reinventing the wheel. There are tons of other free accounting packages out there.
I am still subscribed to this thread for some reason, but have converted over to ******* well over a year ago because of this. I highly recommend it to those frustrated by the lack of support from Wave regarding basic things like this.
******* has a much steeper learning curve than Wave, but I appreciate the much deeper understanding of accounting practices it forced me to learn. In doing so I realize just how many issues there are in the Wave accounting system. A lack of receipt attachment is annoying and creates disorganization, but there are plenty of things about Wave accounting that can legitimately mess up your accounting, taxes, etc. Its a real legal liability and I recommend all those frusterated with the system bite the bullet and move to something else for your accounting needs.
All that being said, I still use Wave for payroll and invoicing, but my accounting books on Wave haven't balanced for yeeeears
. I just ignore that part of the GUI. The support team for payroll has been quite good to me, so I would recommend it if you need payroll, but again, I'd avoid the accounting side at all costs.
I can appreciate that every company has its limits and priorities, but as I've asked years ago and hundreds of others before and after me...What can we as users do to make this a priority? This thread is pretty well populated, and I see no other avenue for users to make feature requests. Do you have a formal feature request or bug tracking system available to your users?
Also, because of the simplicity of implementing this, I can't appreciate this excuse in this context. I pay for several other software packages that are run by one or a couple of programmers. I send a message to the devs on github and within a day I receive a response asking for use-case details and plans for fixes. I've never waited more than a couple of weeks for a new version where my exact issue has been personally resolved by the devs. These are teams of one to two people. Having a "medium sized company" is no cop out for years of ignoring user requests. Thats just bad business.
P.S. I will be saving a copy of this message just in case it seems to be bad PR for Wave and they get ornery and delete it. But who knows, I recommended their paid services and bashed their free ones so...
@topher217 @HolCar
I came up with something that works for me:
https://imgur.com/a/9i6Eq2g
It's a Chrome extension that adds functionality over the Transactions page in Wave by modifying the DOM. It lets you upload and list uploaded files according to the current transaction ID.
For the moment, I upload the files to my own server, but if someone wants to help me modify this so it uploads to a users Google Drive or Dropbox, we could release it as a public Chrome Extension.
Wave is still the only ones (with a great UI) that support more than 1 tax, as it is in Canada
So I want to stick with it for a little.
Hey, @BarsinA -
I am yet another user requesting this, and surprised to see this taking so long.
Free is VERY good, that's why I'm with Wave, but I agree with other users that this is a super basic ask, and sounds like a lot lower-hanging fruit (i.e. better and more immediate ROI for dev hours) than any "major overhaul on the backend," especially since you have a Receipts app and clearly know the importance of receipts.
Implement this feature next!! Everything else works fine!!!
Thank you!
Don't really understand why, if you can implement a 'merge' option, why you can't just implement an 'add receipt' option to the transaction page. This seems a completely obvious alternative that would make your service 1000x more efficient and easier to use. Currently your users are forced to bounce between different pages making what should be a simple feature, long and complicated. This is further exacerbated by the requirement to have things recorded accurately.
Why not just add a simple button on the transaction page to add and merge a receipt transaction in one simple action.. and make everyone happy?
Why make people do in 10 clicks what they should be able to do in 2-3??
@gabgren
VERY impressive! Is your code available anywhere? I doubt I will come back to Wave Accounting, and I'm no javascript developer by any means, but I'm just curious how you implemented this so seamlessly! I thought it would have to be something you clicked up in a Chrome menubar icon or something more clunky.
https://github.com/gabgren/wave-documents-uploader
Very basic, would need improvements but if it can help anyone... Or the @wave team :wink: @BarsinA
That's a fair theory, though I'm guessing it could be easily worked around by another paid plan for Wave (free receipt storage up to XXX Mb) or something like that. Can't imagine they'd avoid a valid business plan :P. Setting up such a system would likely be a bit more of an effort though...a bit
.
Very basic my a$$ XD. It's amazing! Concise, easy to read code, even for someone largely unfamiliar with javascript. And two initial commits with the rest README edits...come on you must have been working on this a while via some other local repo...Hats off! :clap: :clap: :clap:
I am very sorry I am not familiar enough with web development to help much, but am very impressed at your effort to improve, via open-source, a proprietary software. Hoping they don't modify their GUI too much in the future to throw all that hard work off. I'm watching your repo, so should you ever need people to test using their own Drive accounts, I'll be first in line for alpha/beta testing!
> (Quote)
> Very basic my a$$ XD. It's amazing! Concise, easy to read code, even for someone largely unfamiliar with javascript. And two initial commits with the rest README edits...come on you must have been working on this a while via some other local repo...Hats off! :clap: :clap: :clap:
>
> I am very sorry I am not familiar enough with web development to help much, but am very impressed at your effort to improve, via open-source, a proprietary software. Hoping they don't modify their GUI too much in the future to throw all that hard work off. I'm watching your repo, so should you ever need people to test using their own Drive accounts, I'll be first in line for alpha/beta testing!
Cool!
Thanks for the kind words and encouragement ;)
Hey @topher217 ,
Let me start by saying I appreciate that you were able to use our public forum as a way to express your honest opinions. We appreciate that our community members are able to do this. I’d like to address your post in 3 separate parts.
We’ve had to edit out the name of any competing software in your original post as this does go against our community guidelines. Our forum is actually a space to discuss Wave’s products, bring up new feature ideas you’d love to see implemented in future updates, and help others out with any troubles they may be facing in Wave. This forum is not a space to discuss competing software and how they operate or function in comparison to Wave. I hope you understand that we have to abide by our guidelines and make these changes to your post and future posts like it, however we left everything else untouched to ensure that the rest of the users are receiving full transparency of your ask here.
In regards to the implementation of feature ideas in the Wave community forum; Wave was tasked with the monumental duty of migrating users over from our old accounting software to the new one over the last year. Because we reached our capacity to innovate further on our old platform, we decided that migration and other fundamental backend changes were necessary to allow us to make updates more efficiently. Now that migration on both the accounting side as well as invoicing are nearly completed, we will start to make new updates to our platform. You can already see these on the invoicing side! These are backend tasks that we don’t always share in the community, but I do feel is a reasonable explanation to your thorough post inquiring about why this change hasn’t been made yet.
Once migration is completed, we should be rolling out a lot of new changes. We’ve actually released some screenshots and updates of what they will look like HERE. While attaching images to a transaction is not in this update, we can inform you that our team is very much aware of this and are figuring out how we can implement it in future iterations.
Thanks again for your input and don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any other questions.
Hey @r0lliSl1fe @Billy123 , thanks for reaching out. Please refer to the most recent comment from Barsin above ^ for the most insight into our current progress on improving the transactions page & features.
Well if it is in your guidelines, and I am using your service, then I should be all means abide by such regulations. That being said, you make the guidelines, so you have the ability to stop censorship, and instead inspire confidence in your user base by showing that you can do what the competitors have done for years. It does not inspire confidence to censor competition. Sounds pretty familiar to a certain Chinese Poo Bear rather than a Canadian based company. It was not my intention to try to advertise for a free open-source alternative. They have no need for advertising as there is no money involved. I was simply stating that a free alternative exists, and has existed for many years. People have been asking for this overly simple feature for several years. If you're not going to provide it, people will search elsewhere, as many have stated in this thread.
The only other alternative you have provided, is to hack your existing system. @gabgren has literally hacked your DOM to provide what your users have been asking for for years. That hacked code is comparable in word count to your post here. Without the need to hack the DOM, this could likely be 20-30 lines of code if not less. It bet it take you and the other admins here less time to censor us, than it would to just go write these 20-30 lines of code. If you can't be bothered to do that, then at least go copy/paste the relevant sections from github that gabgren has so generously provided you. Or even better, give @gabgren a job!
I am in no way trying to belittle or diminish the work being done at Wave. As I've stated before, I think the payroll service, and invoicing services are great, both technically and service-wise. The accounting system on the other hand, is fundamentally flawed in various ways that I did not realize until learning more about accounting myself, and the customer service, as evidenced by this thread, is atrocious. I also just want to add that I'm not here to just troll; I really hope Wave gets this done, and I would consider coming back to it for my accounting needs as well. Unfortunately it is not just this single feature though. As I've stated in several posts prior to this, Wave doesn't give the users and means of voting for new features, or provide any evidence as to what your to-do list looks like with regard to prioritizing things. This leaves us without any hope for change, regardless of the issue.
Several other software packages I use have such systems in place. Until such a system is in place at Wave, I will not have the confidence to return to it as an accounting tool, as I will have no hope that bugs/issues will be resolved in a timely manner. Even if you have a total code overhaul like you describe, and can't make any changes to the code until such overhaul is finished, having a ranking or user-vote controlled list of feature requests to come after such overhaul would inspire leaps and bounds of confidence in your users (myself included).
I started using Wave about a month ago, and I am really enjoying the platform. I am looking forward to new updates; any news on this particular one, Wave Admins? How can we help? Is it about money or time? It is an important tool we are asking for... perhaps, if you tell why you are not able to make the update, we could help you in finding solutions. Let us know!
WAVE: YOU ARE LOSING CUSTOMERS EVERY DAY BECAUSE YOU AREN'T SIMPLY ADDING THE ABILITY TO UPLOAD AN ATTACHMENT TO A TRANSACTION.
Do you not understand that?
I really don’t want to be rude but this thread reads like a satire piece out of the Onion or something....
you literally have users explaining exactly how simple it is and even coding it for you because they are so frustrated. And all they are getting back are the canned replies and empty promises which still have not been fulfilled. Unfortunately this inspires no confidence in Wave if this thread going on nearly 3 years has not resulted in any change.
Unfortunately I will also be leaving wave for the very same reason. All I want to do is upload a supporting document to an expense transaction, literally the most basic function in an accounting program to keep receipts organized… Can someone escalate this to someone at wave who actually cares if they lose customers or not???
I promise you Wave, if you just take the time to fix this basic request, customers will flood back to you and your growth will exceed your wildest dreams… But to continue to ignore this I’m afraid could be your downfall.
JUST DO IT. THIS MONTH. JULY 2020. Clock is starting.... NOW! ;)
Thanks....
This is absolutely crazy. Are you trying to self-sabotage? You go from an SVP admitting there is a problem in 2018, to "we don't know if this is on the roadmap" in 2020. All the while, dozens of genuine users clamoring, begging for this. I, as many others, will be switching away from Wave, as I cannot have this level of friction, confusion and room for error in such a basic task. So sad.
Bump! Still super, super hoping this will happen! It's kinda wild that this is "accounting software" and it doesn't have this super simple and basic function, which is necessary for good accounting!
I just wanted to add to this thread and say that THIS is the reason I am leaving.
I just signed up for wave, I quickly became a big fan of the software after playing around with it for a bit, I have been reading your
Fearless Accounting with Waveguide and LOVING it.I was loving everything you have done from the software to the marketing. I was REALLY excited about using the software and recommending it to other people.
And then I tried to attach a receipt to one of my transactions and stumbled upon this. Honestly, it's absurd.
I want to stress, as others in this thread, it's not just that you don't have this very basic feature, but how you have handled this over the past two years.
It's unacceptable that you have been stringing people along saying "we don't know if or when this will be on the roadmap". Just be transparent and tell your users the reason why you have decided not to implement.
But don't string them along.
I was able to upload a receipt then adjust the OCR detected amounts to the same as the bank imported transaction, then merge the two. Seems to be the function I need... might get annoying with many transactions.
I guess implementing a UI feature which saves all the additional clicks would be nice for the user... but... software is complex... and when the fundamental concepts of a system are strictly defined (for good reason), it can perhaps make it tricky to implement surface level features which need to simultaneously touch many parts of a system. This software is essentially free... and the lack of this feature probably does not prevent adoption by new customers...
Perhaps someone could build a 3rd party app which performs the steps automatically by interacting with the wave receipt and transaction APIs in a smooth way...
1 more voice backing up the general impression on this thread.
Regardless of being free, Wave UI experience is excellent and beats the well established competition for my needs. That is until this deal breaker came to light. Like many others here, this is a complete head-scratcher as how you could develop such a well thought-through accounting software for small businesses and not equip it with the most crucial feature for small businesses - a reliable expenses management.
We have 3 accounts with payroll holding on this single feature to be implemented before switching to Wave app. In the meantime, we are getting used to the competition's software...