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How to remove Wave logo from invoices and change sender's address?
Oleksiy
Member Posts: 1
How to remove a Wave logo that we have in invoices?
Currently, we are evaluating Wave invoicing app at Rioks, and wonder if we can possibly use it for the future clients' billing.
The problem is - having an extra branding inside of the email and sender's email to belong to waveapps.com will not build our image of a professional company.
Any solution so far? White-labeling or deactivating logos?
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Thanks for your question. Over the years, we've had this question come up every once in a while. At this time, we do not provide our users any white labeling or removal of our logo, as it's not part of our ethos or business model.
We care deeply about elevating the professionalism of your brand. We deliver millions of invoices for hundreds of thousands of businesses across the world every month. We've always done this absolutely free as it's core to our mission to help brave entrepreneurs succeed and minimize their operating overhead. We have many users routinely telling us that our minimal brand presence has been positive to their experience of looking professional and is reassuring for their customers when paying online.
If you're willing to share, I'd love to hear about why you believe Wave's branding will lower your image as a professional company?
In the future, we may consider different options to allow the removal of the logo as part of a paid offering, but we have no timeline on that today.
Hello Mani
I came across this post after searching for the same subject. I don't think that the OP was suggesting that Waves branding would devalue their business. Their concern is perhaps similar to mine in that invoice that are emailed via the Wave service appear much more heavily branded as Waves than the actual company sending the invoice. This can give a misleading impression to the recipient about the relationship of the 2 companies. It almost looks as though the client company is a subsidiary of Waves.
Secondly, the emails look very similar to the plethora of scam emails doing the rounds, trying to get the recipient to click illicit links. The option to differentiate from this would be a positive step.
However, what you are offering is a fantastic service and you deserve much credit for this. My suggestion would be that you do adopt a model of charges. I realise that your USP is not to do so, especially since so many competitors do precisely this, but I'm sure that there's an approach that you can adopt that still differentiates Waves.
As a sole trader who oddly has a group of businesses within a limited company, your service looks like the next step for me, moving from an ageing desktop solution. My turnover is modest but I'd happily pay a fee for something more personalised but would not expect to remove Waves branding completely - just redress the balance. The £10-£25 ($15-$35) monthly fees charged by your competitors is too rich, so finding the sweet spot is essential. Perhaps £5 ($7.50) is a good price point that small businesses can upgrade to once they're able to, and established small businesses can benefit from immediately.
Keep up the great work.
I think wave offering a wave branding removal option, even if its a paid option, would make a whole lot of sense for both wave users and wave profits.
@Mani Here's my 0.02c
Your USP has always been that it is 100% free. In such a noisy market, i can see the temptation to not touch this. I do agree with you that if you start to fork into a basic and premium product then the distinct USP of the same product for everyone and 100% free is lost.
But I do beleive that you can solve this with creative and transparent marketing.
"Co-branded" and "Business class"
This would give you another legitimate revenue line that I think you would be surprised how many people would pay for. Most people don't go with Quickbooks not because they cannot afford $5 per month but because it is hard to see what you are buying before you commit and with Wave there is no friction to test it out. Once you realise how awesome Wave is, why move?
I do think it is imperative that there is not two classes of product (the payroll and payment service is genuinely differnt i think). This same product for everyone at one zero price is a clear differentiation for you. But allowing people to pay to remove the branding is different. That's just business class vs coach. You still get the same flight, same arrival time, same safety - but your seat is bit more comfy and you queue less.
In the "Business Class" edition, I think you can add some extra services for instance removal of the Wave branding and PLEASE
the removal of the constant nagging to use the credit card payment service. (If we needed it, we would use it just to help fund the community, but our customers pay by bank transfer.)
I would suggest a very modest $2 per month. All features in Business Class would be related to the way something looks/works rather than it being there or not.
I second this. I have some clients who are not tech savvy and many older clients who often contact me that they don't know if they can trust the invoice as they don't know who Wave are. Perhaps if you're not keen on offering the option of de-branding the experience you could work to make it clearer to recipients of invoices (who have no relationship or knowledge of wave) what the relationship is?. It actually made me switch to a different invoicing system for the project where I was working with many elderly people as they were getting actually distressed by it.
This is a bit different, but I agree with the above requests. Having the Wave Logos be a smaller part of the email would make the emails look better.
Back to my original reason for posting. When you add CC/ACH option, this takes up way to much room on an invoice. It makes the majority of the invoices being sent out by me two pages, even with only one or two line items. Removing the current images from the bottom of the invoice and having the CC logos be smaller and at the top, with the 'Pay Securely online' link would make the invoices look cleaner and more professional.
This goes back to branding and how Wave is positioning itself on the invoices/emails
We appreciate all the feedback to date. As of now, we have decided to stick with our 100% free software model and monetization through the financial services we offer on a transactional basis. We understand the root of your suggestions and the desire to pay directly to not be reminded of the benefits of online payments, or to remove Wave's brand from your customer's experience. Your ideas are well thought out and we recognize that you feel that your brand must be in your control in every interaction. We've found that most users benefit from having their customers see that they use a professional system to manage their business, and at this time, we have no plans to move away from this.
That said, we would appreciate hearing more about the branding that you're collectively finding to be confusing or obtrusive so that we can have another look at the matter. Here are two examples of an invoice generated under a business I named after myself with a generic logo and accent color: an email and an online view of an invoice using the Modern template that does not have online payment processing enabled. Please let us know if your experience is different than this and where it can be improved.
Email:
Online invoice:
Hi everyone!
I appreciate the feedback shared here in this thread and I do very much agree that it's about finding a balance between recognizing the great service that Wave offers (for free!), by allowing there to be a Wave logo somewhere, and then not confusing clients about exactly who they are receiving an invoice from (obviously, that's super important!)...
That said, I just want to add, that I think it's even more important that Wave sticks to their promise of being 100% free. I've seen other similar services making this promise and then started charging for 'extras' anyway, which then, gradually, ended up comprising the expected standard features of those services. This very compromised offer is then often packed into a 'free' plan, which is basically a completely useless and very limited service that basically works more as a teaser to the paid plan... All I am saying is that it's a slippery slope when businesses like Wave start offering 'extras' and I would hate to see Wave go down that route!
Fair enough that Wave charges for financial services – that's a deal that I am happy to agree to and Wave has to be a sustainable and growing business (that benefits us all!), but if I suddenly felt that my free accounting software simply became transformed into a 'free' plan of a chargeable service, then I'd quickly start looking elsewhere for an accounting solution. The Wave USP really and truly is that it is free. The moment you go away from that you'll immediately lose a lot of businesses.
Personally, I would actually be happy to pay for a white-label version of Wave, but it would have to be limited to only that and I am afraid that if you start going down the path of offering paid for extras, then when does it stop? Someone else might think that something else is worth paying for and then suddenly it's not free at all anymore! But again, white-labeling is actually something that I would pay for
-so I completely see where you guys are coming from!
Anyway, thank you Wave for not having gone down the path of ZipBooks and the likes! I really appreciate that your business model is as it is and that you are not planning on going away from that. Keep up the good work!
I would definitely like to see this white label option become available. Check out tawk.to for a similar option. You keep the service free for users who don't care and let those users pay that care.. .If users now really care, they will use a workaround anyway in which they don't use the email feature, but save the pdf invoices and send it through their own mail... Which makes them much less satisfied with the product they would happily be paying for.
Could the logo in the emails at least be consistent? You have two logos, one that is a circular design, and another which is your default logo. Could you guys at least keep it to one logo?
Also could there be an option to choose a different logo for emails to our invoice logo? And an option to preview the email logo, and how large it will appear within the email? It also be great if we could attach an email signature to our invoices. At least then the invoice will truly reflect our organisation while still reflecting yours.
Hey @Una
Thanks for your feedback. There are some good ideas here. Can you elaborate on what you mean by having two logos, one circular?
A lot of companies do have different logos depending on the formatting of a document being sent. Sometimes the logo may be spread horizontally, and sometimes contained in a circular logo.
If you could elaborate that would be great for additional context. Thanks so much!
If it doesn’t bother you guys which logo appears here - since you don’t use your default logo, it be a nice option for users to have our own logo in here.
One more critique, the “paid” email is not consistent in presentation to the “invoice” email; it be nice if they were consistent in design overall, otherwise I usually just choose not to use it, just doesn’t look professional.
Thank you!
Hi @Una , once again, we appreciate the given feedback and thank you for clarifying. We'll ensure that your ideas get to the right team.
I would also like the ability to remove your logo. You place it so close to our logo that it can confuse clients. Also, your copyright is out of date which looks bad too.