I'd like to add another vote for getting this functionality into Wave. I haven't been a user for a real long time, but this lack of being able to add a receipt to an existing transaction has been quite annoying. Anything you can do to speed up the delivery of this would be appreciated!
@Mani said:
Let's start with an admission: we know our system can be better with this workflow. The duplication is frustrating and the situation is actually common. The solution hasn't always been easy, but we're now actively working towards making improvements this year. Our intent is to first ensure that we do a better job detecting duplicates and merging them for you automatically. Thereafter, we're going to look at shifting towards an "attach receipt" model, and that will permeate throughout Wave. I know it doesn't solve your problems immediately, but know that we feel your pain.
This was from February 2018. It is August 2020 as I write this.
Wow
It's been 2.5 years and we're still not seeing ANY movement on this at all. When we started with Wave almost 2 years ago, we read this and were hopeful that the very structure of the workflow with Wave and receipts would be moving along to be a sustainable workflow. And here we are, years later, still with no good viable tools for sorting to be able to manually match duplicate transactions, let alone an option that would have the bots do the work of finding duplicates, the duplicates that are made at the very heart of the receipting tool workflow.
PLEASE do something about the receipting tool workflow options. Both options you mentioned two years ago are exactly what are needed.
Wow..... I joined Wave some time back now and I have a post on the 1st page of this thread, almost 2 years ago now, stating a need for this.
Kept using Wave for awhile after but then went away from using it as it was just too much work without having this feature, and now, out of interest I come back to see, and over this almost 2 year period since I originally posted, Wave have STILL not implemented this basic necessary functionality!
I'm aware that sometimes there may be some more pressing issues, such as the integration of the whole system into a new one, fair enough, but outside of that how many more important things can there possibly be then implementing something that should have been there since day dot!?
Wave are acting like it's an "enhancement" or a "nice to have" when it's nothing of the sort, tracking receipts is a critical part of accounting - yet they aren't treated as such! Why is this!? Why does so many other things seem so much more important than implementing something that is critical to basic accounting?
I'm sure there are many important things, but for whatever reason this doesn't appear to be one of them - really, I would like this question answered, why is this so less important then everything else that is been put ahead of it for the last 2+ years!?
I'm a developer myself, so I understand somewhat what the development procedure would be like for it - and whilst I'm not going to say it's an "easy job" like so many others have, seeing as I don't know what the inner workings are like on the backend, but on the surface it's certainly not something that should be highly complex to do either.
Whilst Wave have somewhat been in communication throughout this thread, it has been much the same and filled with broken promises or statements; and the last several updates have been very vague and missing any concrete statements.
We got told back in May of 2019 that:
is on the roadmap for one of our priority projects for this year
...and yet here we are over a year later and no semblance of it even being a priority!?
But then told July 2019 that:
it's just not a main focus for our software at the moment
and...
we just don't have this listed a top priority at the moment
Then in August 2019:
it's not something that we're preparing for in the immediate future, which means it's unlikely to be implemented any time soon. As Chelsea mentioned above, the feature will be a part of Wave's future, but that looks to be some time down the road.
After this there were a number of mentions of it being a "top priority" for early 2020 or "may" be in 2020, but here we are, almost the start of Q4 in 2020 and nothing.
It seems the last several "updates" have all been very vague that Wave are "aware" of how much the feature is wanted, but there is no ETA or updates at this time.
It'd be interesting to know what exactly are all these other new features that are so much more important than being able to attach a receipt to a transaction - being it has been over 2 years since the start of this thread it is pretty hard to fathom the vast amount of features that could possibly be more important than this.
Hi there @cyphix333 , thanks for taking the time to parse through this thread and share your perspectives with us. Thanks also for your understanding on the back end being more complex than it seems.
With that in mind, I can say that some of the other things which we've been focusing on include enhancing all of the products & services we offer, such as Payments onboarding, our new feature Money, and also pivoting to offer significant support and feature launches in response to COVID-19 (specifically around Payroll). As there is a workaround for this feature idea, which is to upload the receipt and then merge that created transaction with an existing one, we have been suggesting this in the meantime while our priorities have been on these and other feature developments. (Though we are working to improve the Accounting Transactions page as we speak.)
As our products and software have developed, so too has our road map/priorities, and so while this thread is two years old, the changes which have accumulated over that time have resulted in de-prioritization. I'm sorry if this change in focus has not been communicated clearly enough on this forum. Your feedback helps us know how to improve not only the software itself, but our communications surrounding it, and so I thank you for sharing this with us here. I've shared this with the team and we will be looking to continue to improve how these types of changes are addressed moving forward. Thanks for your understanding.
My interpretation of CallieP's latest post is that adding this basic functionality isn't being considered anymore.
To everyone new and old on this thread, please don't forget to [⬆ Vote Up] the first post (you must be logged in). Hopefully this helps Wave prioritize.
@gabgren Outstanding job on taking action and the Chrome Extension! (love La Grenade too, lol)
Nevermind, I saw after the fact that there are pages and pages regarding this issue but there seems to be no interest in addressing it. Can't figure out how to delete my post so I'm modifying it.
It is now September of 2020 and as far as I've been able to determine I still can't attach receipts to transactions. If there is a secret way to do this I would love to be enlightened.
I too vote for this feature. To know that it was bought yo so long ago and it hasn’t been implemented is a shame. Please let us know when this will be in production.
Hey there @MARIE0716 ! Thanks for expressing your interest in this feature. I completely understand how this feature will improve your Wave experience. At this time, there is no ETA available as to when or if this feature will be implemented.
I know this may not be what you wanted to hear but moving forward we plan on notifying the Wave Community when new major developments will be implemented.
You mentioned in your reply that there currently is a merging feature between transactions.
Quote "As there is a workaround for this feature idea, which is to upload the receipt and then merge that created transaction with an existing one, we have been suggesting this in the meantime while our priorities have been on these and other feature developments."
if you upload a receipt which happens to match your bank or CSV imported transaction, you should be able to select the two check boxes beside each transaction (as long as their dates, and amounts match perfectly) then select the merge button at the top. Let us know if you're able to do this.
Thanks for the explanation.
I did find the option to merge an uploaded receipt with its matching credit card transaction from the bank feed.
But this a cumbersome process that requires to adjust by hand the date of each scanned receipt to match the date of the credit card transaction (which is always reported few days after the receipt date)
I could see a few obvious improvements to that function that would make most of the participants in this thread happy.
match the vendor names of the receipt and credit card transaction rather than the date.
add an option to automatically merge those matched receipt & transactions
alternatively, you could let a third party receipts management service ( such as expensify.com) do that heavy lifting and enable to connect and sync with Wave.
I can't believe it's been years since I last posted and this still isn't added.
It's the most obvious feature you can imagine for ACCOUNTING SOFTWARE!
Look at the image of my face I attached to this basic comment software. Is this 1999 and image attachments are some groundbreaking feature of websites? I can't even imagine the product meetings at Wave. "Should we add this extremely useful and basic feature that everyone wants and is totally obvious? No... we should add yet another invoicing option that no one cares about! High fives all around!"
For anybody still getting frustrated by this issue:
TL;DR: If you are looking for well-designed bookkeeping software, don't expect Wave to improve user experience any time soon. Look elsewhere.
Wave Accounting developers started out as a pretty small team and they had trouble getting enough funding to devote to getting sufficient input from people who really do bookkeeping. The first official response to the original post acknowledges that the receipt workflow was poorly designed. You can't paint over that; you have to refactor major sections of backend code to make it work.
Somebody at Wave realized early on there weren't enough resources to change the software core significantly enough to make receipts and transactions work seamlessly within their business model. So they bridged between the two modules the best they could. This leaves users with a semi-automatic transaction-matching process and a very limited merge function that can only handle two transactions that are already sufficiently similar.
Since Wave never charged directly for their main service, they had to focus developer resources on enabling and sustaining backend revenue streams.
Then they got bought by H&R Block. H&R Block desperately needs to expand it's financial services business segment to stay competitive. One of the big pieces they need is banking. So now Wave developers are desperately trying to turn their simple accounting platform into a frontend for a virtual bank (Wave Money).
Until H&R Block gets their financial services needs fulfilled and Wave Money is reliably launched and proven to generate revenue, user workflow optimization on the scale needed to resolve this issue is simply not going to happen.
@ShemS said:
For anybody still getting frustrated by this issue:
TL;DR: If you are looking for well-designed bookkeeping software, don't expect Wave to improve user experience any time soon. Look elsewhere.
Wave Accounting developers started out as a pretty small team and they had trouble getting enough funding to devote to getting sufficient input from people who really do bookkeeping. The first official response to the original post acknowledges that the receipt workflow was poorly designed. You can't paint over that; you have to refactor major sections of backend code to make it work.
Somebody at Wave realized early on there weren't enough resources to change the software core significantly enough to make receipts and transactions work seamlessly within their business model. So they bridged between the two modules the best they could. This leaves users with a semi-automatic transaction-matching process and a very limited merge function that can only handle two transactions that are already sufficiently similar.
Since Wave never charged directly for their main service, they had to focus developer resources on enabling and sustaining backend revenue streams.
Then they got bought by H&R Block. H&R Block desperately needs to expand it's financial services business segment to stay competitive. One of the big pieces they need is banking. So now Wave developers are desperately trying to turn their simple accounting platform into a frontend for a virtual bank (Wave Money).
Until H&R Block gets their financial services needs fulfilled and Wave Money is reliably launched and proven to generate revenue, user workflow optimization on the scale needed to resolve this issue is simply not going to happen.
When you put it this way! It makes us understand this very clearly. Thank you!
Actually, you can merge a receipt with a bank transaction on the "Accounting > Reconciliation" page. Just check the box of your receipt and the one of your bank transaction and select "merge"
@ekami said:
Actually, you can merge a receipt with a bank transaction on the "Accounting > Reconciliation" page. Just check the box of your receipt and the one of your bank transaction and select "merge"
I don't see this on the reconciliation page. It just has my bank account and wants to reconcile it with a statement. I don't see my receipts on this page. ??
Hey @ahwdvm , I think ekami meant to say the Accounting > Transactions page. From the Transactions page you can follow the steps listed above (select both transactions and click merge) to merge them together.
This is what, my fourth time or so coming back to Wave over the past 5 years to experiment, and now my fourth time determining that Wave appears not meant to be seriously used. Lots has improved over the years and I was about to finally make the switch to Wave this time. But seriously, merge still??
Most transactions that I have are backed up with a document. Am I supposed to merge nearly every transaction? That would render the bank sync basically superfluous. How am I supposed to transfer my pre-existing transactions and receipts into Wave? CSV upload for the transactions, I get; but what then about the receipts? Send in a thousand jpgs, pdfs, docs, and hope for the best?
In my opinion, Wave's priorities are mixed up. Community, what's my next best alternative because Wave doesn't work. Kashoo maybe?
Update: Slept on it and I have come to the conclusion that not using Wave a receipt repository was probably the right approach all along. I think the receipts features in Wave are meant to simplify inputting new transactions, but it is poor practice to use a free tool like this as an official receipt vault anyway - that's what Sharepoint or other file managers are for. So I give Wave a pass on this, and will use a workaround with the notes field calling out the doc id of the receipt as stored in Sharepoint.
I am new to Wave, and it took me about 4 days to discover that this feature is missing. I am working through a "how to use Wave" guide (great instructions, by the way) and reached the spot about uploading receipts. Uploaded my first receipt, discovered that it wants to create a new transaction instead of linking it to the one that my bank account already synced. And here I am. With such great company as the rest of you. I have been looking to step up my business accounting from the Quicken management software that I have been using for years and would love a reason to ditch both Square (for credit card processing) and Patriot Payroll and Wave seems like it is close to being a great solution except for a few missing features like this.
Is there any update to this feature? I just joined Wave Apps after using QuickBooks Self Employed for a while and it's crazy to me that this feature isn't automatically available. I am grateful that a free service like Wave exists but I really wish this receipts feature was more intuitive.
Comments
I'd like to add another vote for getting this functionality into Wave. I haven't been a user for a real long time, but this lack of being able to add a receipt to an existing transaction has been quite annoying. Anything you can do to speed up the delivery of this would be appreciated!
Please add my vote to allow us to attach a receipt to an existing transaction. This would save me a lot of time and help keep me organized.
One more vote from me on this one! Almost two and a half years since this was originally requested. Let's make it happen!
I scan my receipts and save on my G Drive.
This was from February 2018. It is August 2020 as I write this.
Wow
It's been 2.5 years and we're still not seeing ANY movement on this at all. When we started with Wave almost 2 years ago, we read this and were hopeful that the very structure of the workflow with Wave and receipts would be moving along to be a sustainable workflow. And here we are, years later, still with no good viable tools for sorting to be able to manually match duplicate transactions, let alone an option that would have the bots do the work of finding duplicates, the duplicates that are made at the very heart of the receipting tool workflow.
PLEASE do something about the receipting tool workflow options. Both options you mentioned two years ago are exactly what are needed.
Wow..... I joined Wave some time back now and I have a post on the 1st page of this thread, almost 2 years ago now, stating a need for this.
Kept using Wave for awhile after but then went away from using it as it was just too much work without having this feature, and now, out of interest I come back to see, and over this almost 2 year period since I originally posted, Wave have STILL not implemented this basic necessary functionality!
I'm aware that sometimes there may be some more pressing issues, such as the integration of the whole system into a new one, fair enough, but outside of that how many more important things can there possibly be then implementing something that should have been there since day dot!?
Wave are acting like it's an "enhancement" or a "nice to have" when it's nothing of the sort, tracking receipts is a critical part of accounting - yet they aren't treated as such! Why is this!? Why does so many other things seem so much more important than implementing something that is critical to basic accounting?
I'm sure there are many important things, but for whatever reason this doesn't appear to be one of them - really, I would like this question answered, why is this so less important then everything else that is been put ahead of it for the last 2+ years!?
I'm a developer myself, so I understand somewhat what the development procedure would be like for it - and whilst I'm not going to say it's an "easy job" like so many others have, seeing as I don't know what the inner workings are like on the backend, but on the surface it's certainly not something that should be highly complex to do either.
Whilst Wave have somewhat been in communication throughout this thread, it has been much the same and filled with broken promises or statements; and the last several updates have been very vague and missing any concrete statements.
We got told back in May of 2019 that:
...and yet here we are over a year later and no semblance of it even being a priority!?
But then told July 2019 that:
and...
Then in August 2019:
After this there were a number of mentions of it being a "top priority" for early 2020 or "may" be in 2020, but here we are, almost the start of Q4 in 2020 and nothing.
It seems the last several "updates" have all been very vague that Wave are "aware" of how much the feature is wanted, but there is no ETA or updates at this time.
It'd be interesting to know what exactly are all these other new features that are so much more important than being able to attach a receipt to a transaction - being it has been over 2 years since the start of this thread it is pretty hard to fathom the vast amount of features that could possibly be more important than this.
double post...
Hi there @cyphix333 , thanks for taking the time to parse through this thread and share your perspectives with us. Thanks also for your understanding on the back end being more complex than it seems.
With that in mind, I can say that some of the other things which we've been focusing on include enhancing all of the products & services we offer, such as Payments onboarding, our new feature Money, and also pivoting to offer significant support and feature launches in response to COVID-19 (specifically around Payroll). As there is a workaround for this feature idea, which is to upload the receipt and then merge that created transaction with an existing one, we have been suggesting this in the meantime while our priorities have been on these and other feature developments. (Though we are working to improve the Accounting Transactions page as we speak.)
As our products and software have developed, so too has our road map/priorities, and so while this thread is two years old, the changes which have accumulated over that time have resulted in de-prioritization. I'm sorry if this change in focus has not been communicated clearly enough on this forum. Your feedback helps us know how to improve not only the software itself, but our communications surrounding it, and so I thank you for sharing this with us here. I've shared this with the team and we will be looking to continue to improve how these types of changes are addressed moving forward. Thanks for your understanding.
My interpretation of CallieP's latest post is that adding this basic functionality isn't being considered anymore.
To everyone new and old on this thread, please don't forget to [⬆ Vote Up] the first post (you must be logged in). Hopefully this helps Wave prioritize.
@gabgren Outstanding job on taking action and the Chrome Extension!
(love La Grenade too, lol)
Nevermind, I saw after the fact that there are pages and pages regarding this issue but there seems to be no interest in addressing it. Can't figure out how to delete my post so I'm modifying it.
It is now September of 2020 and as far as I've been able to determine I still can't attach receipts to transactions. If there is a secret way to do this I would love to be enlightened.
Hey there @MARIE0716 ! Thanks for expressing your interest in this feature. I completely understand how this feature will improve your Wave experience. At this time, there is no ETA available as to when or if this feature will be implemented.
I know this may not be what you wanted to hear but moving forward we plan on notifying the Wave Community when new major developments will be implemented.
Three years on...still waiting......
Can we all just band together, put our money towards hiring a developer to build a system that works like Wave and has this much needed feature?
Hi @CallieP,
You mentioned in your reply that there currently is a merging feature between transactions.
Quote "As there is a workaround for this feature idea, which is to upload the receipt and then merge that created transaction with an existing one, we have been suggesting this in the meantime while our priorities have been on these and other feature developments."
Could you walk us through that feature?
Hey there @ObliviousV
if you upload a receipt which happens to match your bank or CSV imported transaction, you should be able to select the two check boxes beside each transaction (as long as their dates, and amounts match perfectly) then select the merge button at the top. Let us know if you're able to do this.
Hi @Barsin,
Thanks for the explanation.
I did find the option to merge an uploaded receipt with its matching credit card transaction from the bank feed.
But this a cumbersome process that requires to adjust by hand the date of each scanned receipt to match the date of the credit card transaction (which is always reported few days after the receipt date)
I could see a few obvious improvements to that function that would make most of the participants in this thread happy.
alternatively, you could let a third party receipts management service ( such as expensify.com) do that heavy lifting and enable to connect and sync with Wave.
I can't believe it's been years since I last posted and this still isn't added.
It's the most obvious feature you can imagine for ACCOUNTING SOFTWARE!
Look at the image of my face I attached to this basic comment software. Is this 1999 and image attachments are some groundbreaking feature of websites? I can't even imagine the product meetings at Wave. "Should we add this extremely useful and basic feature that everyone wants and is totally obvious? No... we should add yet another invoicing option that no one cares about! High fives all around!"
I will beg and plead like a five year old for this functionality! Please let us attach receipts!!
Wow, I just started using Wave and tried to attach a receipt. Had to google it and found this. Wow. Yes, this is a MUST.
For anybody still getting frustrated by this issue:
TL;DR: If you are looking for well-designed bookkeeping software, don't expect Wave to improve user experience any time soon. Look elsewhere.
When you put it this way! It makes us understand this very clearly. Thank you!
3 Years and counting!!!! Looks like the Wave team is not interested in user feedback!!!
I can't believe this very basic feature is not implemented yet...
Actually, you can merge a receipt with a bank transaction on the "Accounting > Reconciliation" page. Just check the box of your receipt and the one of your bank transaction and select "merge"
I don't see this on the reconciliation page. It just has my bank account and wants to reconcile it with a statement. I don't see my receipts on this page. ??
Hey @ahwdvm , I think ekami meant to say the Accounting > Transactions page. From the Transactions page you can follow the steps listed above (select both transactions and click merge) to merge them together.
Dang it.
This is what, my fourth time or so coming back to Wave over the past 5 years to experiment, and now my fourth time determining that Wave appears not meant to be seriously used. Lots has improved over the years and I was about to finally make the switch to Wave this time. But seriously, merge still??
Most transactions that I have are backed up with a document. Am I supposed to merge nearly every transaction? That would render the bank sync basically superfluous. How am I supposed to transfer my pre-existing transactions and receipts into Wave? CSV upload for the transactions, I get; but what then about the receipts? Send in a thousand jpgs, pdfs, docs, and hope for the best?
In my opinion, Wave's priorities are mixed up. Community, what's my next best alternative because Wave doesn't work. Kashoo maybe?
Update: Slept on it and I have come to the conclusion that not using Wave a receipt repository was probably the right approach all along. I think the receipts features in Wave are meant to simplify inputting new transactions, but it is poor practice to use a free tool like this as an official receipt vault anyway - that's what Sharepoint or other file managers are for. So I give Wave a pass on this, and will use a workaround with the notes field calling out the doc id of the receipt as stored in Sharepoint.
I am new to Wave, and it took me about 4 days to discover that this feature is missing. I am working through a "how to use Wave" guide (great instructions, by the way) and reached the spot about uploading receipts. Uploaded my first receipt, discovered that it wants to create a new transaction instead of linking it to the one that my bank account already synced. And here I am. With such great company as the rest of you. I have been looking to step up my business accounting from the Quicken management software that I have been using for years and would love a reason to ditch both Square (for credit card processing) and Patriot Payroll and Wave seems like it is close to being a great solution except for a few missing features like this.
Is there any update to this feature? I just joined Wave Apps after using QuickBooks Self Employed for a while and it's crazy to me that this feature isn't automatically available. I am grateful that a free service like Wave exists but I really wish this receipts feature was more intuitive.