@Arushi said:
This is terrible! As a one-person company, this feature helped me so much - and I can't believe that they've alienated everyone outside the USA and Canada by this decision. Does anyone have suggestions for an alternative platform to use?
@brena said:
Can the Wave team please confirm that the client bank account credentials held by the third party bank processing service will be securely deleted before disconnection or should we do that ourselves somehow? Thanks.
Yes, @brena. I can confirm that all details of the connection will be deleted.
I'd like to hear from someone here about Bullet too. The Bullet copywriting and design of the site does not give me confidence, it really feels like a one - maybe two - person startup. There's even a conflict on the Wave Alternative page "For every 1 wave invoice you’ll have 2 completed in Bullet." then later "Create 8 Bullet invoices in the time it takes you to create 1 Wave invoice.". If the site is this unpolished, I hate to think what holes there might be in the accounting.
And nothing is 100% free. They have to pay their employees and cover costs. Someone, somehow is (or will be) paying for this.
Funny you say that Elise. I felt the same way. Didn't like the LOOK of it at all. Looked very cheap. You get what you don't pay for I guess. Yes they make their money in the same way Wave does I'm pretty sure. It's on their FAQ part of their site. I don't do invoicing so that sales pitch didnt grab me, but after checking out Bullet and starting an account, I got them to delete it a day later after I realised that my bank accounts and Credit Card weren't included in the bank feed list. I'm with ING. Kinda thought that would be included. Anyhow, just went to Rounded and am stupidly impressed to pay for it. 1/3 of the price of Xero too. Just got off the phone with the owner of Rounded for 45min helping me set it up!
That thing where Bullet spend a lot of their energy slamming any competition that they feel threatened by is a concern. I can't help but think it's shouting loud and proud about how their business culture is toxic to the core. If I ever have a problem as a customer, will I too end up getting slammed...
As a passionate user of Wave, we successfully use it for 4 companies, and with the Wave support for Bank connections being depreciated 31 December 2019 outside North America, autofile.ML has a developed a module to fetch an emailed bank statement store it in your Google Drive and feed the transactions into Wave. https://www.autofile.ml
I'm using Bullet for 1 month already and I like it in general.
Yes, it seems like there are not a lot of people in the team and I see some mistakes on the marketing site but the software itself is very easy in usage and perfect for small businesses. Everything works really quick and had no bugs or misunderstandings, support calls are answered straight forward.
The only thing that they did not have live bank feeds but they have added them for Ireland, US and Canada if I'm not mistaken and they planning to add all the other countries the next 2 months.
Alternative some FREE and FEE accounting software.
Bullet - works well, however, NO bank feeds
Akaunting - no bank feeds
SlickPie - very clunky accessing multiple bank accounts in same bank - bank balances not accurate
FreshBooks - currently trialing, has everything except bank balances not avail to view
ZipBooks -
Pandle
Gnucash - not cloud based - unable to connect bank accounts
CloudBooks
Sunrise
No biggie. I don't use bank feeds anyway and don't use banking apps on my mobile or garmin watch. Too big a security risk for such a small time saver. It takes less than 5 minutes to download data by date range for 3 bank accounts and then upload them to Wave. Much more secure and easy peasy.
I'm with the group of people leaving Wave. Open Banking is designed to make it easier for us to transfer our financial information and history to the parties that we trust - not sure why you chose that as your excuse to shut down such a core feature for your service. Maybe it requires a software rewrite that you don't want to commit to? Who knows.
Hopefully the hundreds of users openly discussing and suggesting alternates to your platform in this very comment section encourages you to pull your head out and reinstate automatic imports. Let me know if you do.
@HGI said:
All I can say is Wave is a great app..particullarly as it is FREE!
All you "Entitled Wingers " need to get a grip. Find the workaround and move on!
It costs $$ to provide services that you don't pay for but you expect a free ride.. Gimme a break
Yes its free and yes it is great. Many of us would be happy to pay a fee for this feature as apposed to removing it altogether but this was not offered to us so it's understandable that people are upset.
@HGI said:
All I can say is Wave is a great app..particullarly as it is FREE!
All you "Entitled Wingers " need to get a grip. Find the workaround and move on!
It costs $$ to provide services that you don't pay for but you expect a free ride.. Gimme a break
Nothing is free. WAVE at a minimum snip credit card transactions (as they should do). Times that by thousands of world users per day and it'll be a pretty reasonable income. People have expressed they'd be willing to pay for the bank connection so these "entitled wingers" are just calling out for some fairness - will those in the US/Canada loose or be paying for the bank connection? No.
All that Corporate H&R have proved to myself is you are better off paying for a service that is stable. So I'm not moving on to a "free" accounting system, it's just too much risk as WAVE has proven. And yep, I would have paid for the WAVE service if it was an option.
Given the booming US economy, WAVE must be bleeding because this is a time of expansion not consolidation.
I have tried most of the other free and paid cloud accounting platforms since Wave mentioned they will be removing bank feeds... and I can say Wave is by far the easiest and cleanest platform around.
I too would be willing to pay for the bank feed application should Wave reconsider.
Bullet - works well, however, NO bank feeds
Akaunting - no bank feeds
SlickPie - very clunky accessing multiple bank accounts in same bank - bank balances not accurate
FreshBooks - currently trialing, has everything except bank balances not avail to view
ZOHO Books - works well, has bank feeds and shows bank balances
ZipBooks -
Pandle
Gnucash - not cloud based - unable to connect bank accounts
CloudBooks
Sunrise
I would be willing to pay a fee for bank connections to continue after 31 December 2019. Opposition services to Wave charge a fee and they are not as good as Wave so I am sure a lot of other non-US and Non-Canadian businesses would be willing to pay a fee for bank connections to continue..
Wow, this is disappointing. A fee for the bank connection would solve this. Your marketing people may need to re-think. Why are we in other parts of the world discriminated against?
Aussies - share your thoughts about this decision with H and R Block Australia - The more feedback they get, who knows, may help change their minds. hrblock@hrblock.com.au or https://www.hrblock.com.au/contact-us#email
Can't believe you're cutting this off! This was a fantastic feature, and it will be a bit more harder to use now without this automatic ability... Such a shame!
@Milly If you are having issues uploading a statement into Wave, we can definitely see what we can do to help. Can you take a look at this article to start, and if you continue to face challenges, you can reply directly on the discussion there? We are happy to help once you have tried the initial troubleshooting steps.
So you had what was possibly the best feature of wave, and now you have decided to stop? Really?
Do you think someone who has used wave since its inception in 2009 has a right to know why you are stopping this feature?
I don't see why we should pay a fee when all long you said "Wave is FREE FOREVER". Reinstall this feature. Please. I have been your client for almost 10 years. What made you stop allowing banking connections?????
Please re-consider this. This feature is extremely important to save us valuable time. We've been using Wave for quite a while now. We would be happy to pay a fee for your service that comes with the bank connection. Thank you.
Auto bank import is critical to the usability of accounting software. If you dont have it, you will lose customers fast. Consider charging a small fee for this service, its worth it.
I've tested several 'free' services (all listed by others on this thread) and reviewed or trialled the top 4 paid services. So perhaps you'll find this useful...
The number 1 criteria for Australian SME's is the service must allow for CASH Accounting - you certainly don't want Accrual! And of course it must allow for bank connections...
Free Services
None of the free services were really 100% suitable or had some form of 'catch'. But let's face it – neither is WAVE as it was not written to facilitate AU accounting/BAS rules along with some other quirks that need a work around.
Paid Services
Out of all of the paid versions I reviewed (XERO etc.), only Reckon & Quickbooks had an offering that met my base requirements and that I considered to be a fair price (e.g. under $20.00 per month).
Reckon One - $13.00 p/m or $18 p/m with Payroll
Good price and does it all well, not the best GUI (no biggie) but has one major flaw (for my business anyway). You cannot add a contact name to a company (supplier or customer). So even emails sent from the system can only say 'Dear Company Name' and of course if someone in your organisation was unfamiliar with the business in question, they can't make a direct enquiry to the person it relates too. Nor could you sort/search invoices by a persons name. To me this was just a dumb omission by Reckon (I discussed this with their support) and one that could make your organisation look less than professional. The features were basic but as expected.
Quickbooks $15.00 p/m includes Payroll for 4 employees but not *billing
For a little more, Quickbooks (QB) has a cleaner/more intuitive GUI and a few more features. The only failure I found was that even if you do not accept credit cards / PayPal through their gateway, the 'Review & Pay Now' buttons remain on emailed invoices. If the customer clicks on these it opens a page that just tells them to check with your business on payment options. Ok so this seems just as dumb as Reckon but at least there's a work around. I spoke with QB (got a call back within 5 mins of request – wow!) and asked them to put in a request to have these buttons removed – they agreed it would be a good thing but who knows if they'll action it? I'm sure it's just there to force you to use their gateway for additional income (commissions). To the work around – as you can add notes etc. to the invoice I simply added a disclaimer that the buttons don't work and QB is working on removing them. Yep blame was hand balled - so now my business doesn't look like we've not set things up correctly and have laid the issue purely at the feet of QB.
Aside from this, the flexibility of QB in terms of customisation and ease of use was by far the best (even compared to the free ones) and more than worth the extra $2 per month when compared to Reckon. Banking connections are a breeze – I loved the fact that you can choose to import from just 1 day and beyond. So once WAVE dies on the 31st, I'll only import transactions from Jan 1st this way I don't have to sort through & allocate any previous transactions for the past quarter. So I can close WAVE with the Oct – Dec quarter and begin 100% fresh Jan 1 for a clean BAS period. Which reminds me, QB has another advantage – you can also connect your account directly to the ATO for automated BAS reporting.
*No Billing?
I pay upon invoice for every service/product so this didn't effect me. In other words, if you pay a supplier when they invoice you – no problem. Just allocate the payment when you review your bank statement or add the payment manually if paid by cash/cheque. Bills are there if you have trading accounts (e.g. Due in 30 days or need to manage Purchase Orders) – QB will keep track with scheduled payments, recurring billing etc. Not something for me now but I'm sure it'll be worth it in the future if I grow to that level - it costs an additional $15 p/m but also adds more features like more employees, multiple currencies etc.
Conclusion
I've now come to realise, that the number one reason to use a paid service is that these have been developed to work with your local conditions/requirements. WAVE was and is brilliant to start a business with, but for those that are successful after the start up period, you must at some stage come to the realisation that for the sake of efficiency and accuracy (you don't want those ATO fines), you've got to move on to a professional system that conforms to your tax system.
I would have been happy to pay around $10 p/m for WAVE to include the bank connection – but for just a little more I now have a localised system that will support our business 100% without the little quirks of WAVE. And most importantly this will be for the life of the business as any business or tax rule changes are added to comply automatically and there's very little chance of them closing the doors or downgrading any service they offer. It's just piece of mind and a whole lot less hassle for a few bucks a month.
And lastly - do your own research & evaluation! What's suits my business is not necessarily right for yours and there's little time left before WAVE is nuked so get onto it fast!
Comments
Does bullethq automatically sync bank account statements?
Yes, @brena. I can confirm that all details of the connection will be deleted.
I'd like to hear from someone here about Bullet too. The Bullet copywriting and design of the site does not give me confidence, it really feels like a one - maybe two - person startup. There's even a conflict on the Wave Alternative page "For every 1 wave invoice you’ll have 2 completed in Bullet." then later "Create 8 Bullet invoices in the time it takes you to create 1 Wave invoice.". If the site is this unpolished, I hate to think what holes there might be in the accounting.
And nothing is 100% free. They have to pay their employees and cover costs. Someone, somehow is (or will be) paying for this.
Funny you say that Elise. I felt the same way. Didn't like the LOOK of it at all. Looked very cheap. You get what you don't pay for I guess. Yes they make their money in the same way Wave does I'm pretty sure. It's on their FAQ part of their site. I don't do invoicing so that sales pitch didnt grab me, but after checking out Bullet and starting an account, I got them to delete it a day later after I realised that my bank accounts and Credit Card weren't included in the bank feed list. I'm with ING. Kinda thought that would be included. Anyhow, just went to Rounded and am stupidly impressed to pay for it. 1/3 of the price of Xero too. Just got off the phone with the owner of Rounded for 45min helping me set it up!
That thing where Bullet spend a lot of their energy slamming any competition that they feel threatened by is a concern. I can't help but think it's shouting loud and proud about how their business culture is toxic to the core. If I ever have a problem as a customer, will I too end up getting slammed...
Reckon looks pretty good @ $13/ month
https://www.reckon.com/au/
As a passionate user of Wave, we successfully use it for 4 companies, and with the Wave support for Bank connections being depreciated 31 December 2019 outside North America, autofile.ML has a developed a module to fetch an emailed bank statement store it in your Google Drive and feed the transactions into Wave. https://www.autofile.ml
Hey @castawave, @elisemartinson,
I'm using Bullet for 1 month already and I like it in general.
Yes, it seems like there are not a lot of people in the team and I see some mistakes on the marketing site but the software itself is very easy in usage and perfect for small businesses. Everything works really quick and had no bugs or misunderstandings, support calls are answered straight forward.
The only thing that they did not have live bank feeds but they have added them for Ireland, US and Canada if I'm not mistaken and they planning to add all the other countries the next 2 months.
That's my impression:)
Alternative some FREE and FEE accounting software.
Bullet - works well, however, NO bank feeds
Akaunting - no bank feeds
SlickPie - very clunky accessing multiple bank accounts in same bank - bank balances not accurate
FreshBooks - currently trialing, has everything except bank balances not avail to view
ZipBooks -
Pandle
Gnucash - not cloud based - unable to connect bank accounts
CloudBooks
Sunrise
Well this is sad
Yep, very disappointed, I'll be leaving. It was great while it lasted.
No biggie. I don't use bank feeds anyway and don't use banking apps on my mobile or garmin watch. Too big a security risk for such a small time saver. It takes less than 5 minutes to download data by date range for 3 bank accounts and then upload them to Wave. Much more secure and easy peasy.
Really Poor effort, dumping your main feature. Very disappointing.
I'm with the group of people leaving Wave. Open Banking is designed to make it easier for us to transfer our financial information and history to the parties that we trust - not sure why you chose that as your excuse to shut down such a core feature for your service. Maybe it requires a software rewrite that you don't want to commit to? Who knows.
Hopefully the hundreds of users openly discussing and suggesting alternates to your platform in this very comment section encourages you to pull your head out and reinstate automatic imports. Let me know if you do.
All I can say is Wave is a great app..particullarly as it is FREE!
All you "Entitled Wingers " need to get a grip. Find the workaround and move on!
It costs $$ to provide services that you don't pay for but you expect a free ride.. Gimme a break
Yes its free and yes it is great. Many of us would be happy to pay a fee for this feature as apposed to removing it altogether but this was not offered to us so it's understandable that people are upset.
Nothing is free. WAVE at a minimum snip credit card transactions (as they should do). Times that by thousands of world users per day and it'll be a pretty reasonable income. People have expressed they'd be willing to pay for the bank connection so these "entitled wingers" are just calling out for some fairness - will those in the US/Canada loose or be paying for the bank connection? No.
All that Corporate H&R have proved to myself is you are better off paying for a service that is stable. So I'm not moving on to a "free" accounting system, it's just too much risk as WAVE has proven. And yep, I would have paid for the WAVE service if it was an option.
Given the booming US economy, WAVE must be bleeding because this is a time of expansion not consolidation.
I have tried most of the other free and paid cloud accounting platforms since Wave mentioned they will be removing bank feeds... and I can say Wave is by far the easiest and cleanest platform around.
I too would be willing to pay for the bank feed application should Wave reconsider.
Bullet - works well, however, NO bank feeds
Akaunting - no bank feeds
SlickPie - very clunky accessing multiple bank accounts in same bank - bank balances not accurate
FreshBooks - currently trialing, has everything except bank balances not avail to view
ZOHO Books - works well, has bank feeds and shows bank balances
ZipBooks -
Pandle
Gnucash - not cloud based - unable to connect bank accounts
CloudBooks
Sunrise
I tried switching to other platforms, wave is by far the easiest platform to use. I just hope the team decides to revert back this decision
I would be willing to pay a fee for bank connections to continue after 31 December 2019. Opposition services to Wave charge a fee and they are not as good as Wave so I am sure a lot of other non-US and Non-Canadian businesses would be willing to pay a fee for bank connections to continue..
Wow, this is disappointing. A fee for the bank connection would solve this. Your marketing people may need to re-think. Why are we in other parts of the world discriminated against?
I am having trouble uploading bank statements for my credit card - any tips?
Aussies - share your thoughts about this decision with H and R Block Australia - The more feedback they get, who knows, may help change their minds. hrblock@hrblock.com.au or https://www.hrblock.com.au/contact-us#email
Can't believe you're cutting this off! This was a fantastic feature, and it will be a bit more harder to use now without this automatic ability... Such a shame!
@Milly If you are having issues uploading a statement into Wave, we can definitely see what we can do to help. Can you take a look at this article to start, and if you continue to face challenges, you can reply directly on the discussion there? We are happy to help once you have tried the initial troubleshooting steps.
https://support.waveapps.com/hc/en-us/articles/208622596-What-to-do-if-Wave-can-t-read-your-statement-in-CSV-format
So you had what was possibly the best feature of wave, and now you have decided to stop? Really?
Do you think someone who has used wave since its inception in 2009 has a right to know why you are stopping this feature?
I don't see why we should pay a fee when all long you said "Wave is FREE FOREVER". Reinstall this feature. Please. I have been your client for almost 10 years. What made you stop allowing banking connections?????
Please re-consider this. This feature is extremely important to save us valuable time. We've been using Wave for quite a while now. We would be happy to pay a fee for your service that comes with the bank connection. Thank you.
Auto bank import is critical to the usability of accounting software. If you dont have it, you will lose customers fast. Consider charging a small fee for this service, its worth it.
AU Businesses - Please Read
I've tested several 'free' services (all listed by others on this thread) and reviewed or trialled the top 4 paid services. So perhaps you'll find this useful...
The number 1 criteria for Australian SME's is the service must allow for CASH Accounting - you certainly don't want Accrual! And of course it must allow for bank connections...
Free Services
None of the free services were really 100% suitable or had some form of 'catch'. But let's face it – neither is WAVE as it was not written to facilitate AU accounting/BAS rules along with some other quirks that need a work around.
Paid Services
Out of all of the paid versions I reviewed (XERO etc.), only Reckon & Quickbooks had an offering that met my base requirements and that I considered to be a fair price (e.g. under $20.00 per month).
Reckon One - $13.00 p/m or $18 p/m with Payroll
Good price and does it all well, not the best GUI (no biggie) but has one major flaw (for my business anyway). You cannot add a contact name to a company (supplier or customer). So even emails sent from the system can only say 'Dear Company Name' and of course if someone in your organisation was unfamiliar with the business in question, they can't make a direct enquiry to the person it relates too. Nor could you sort/search invoices by a persons name. To me this was just a dumb omission by Reckon (I discussed this with their support) and one that could make your organisation look less than professional. The features were basic but as expected.
Quickbooks $15.00 p/m includes Payroll for 4 employees but not *billing
For a little more, Quickbooks (QB) has a cleaner/more intuitive GUI and a few more features. The only failure I found was that even if you do not accept credit cards / PayPal through their gateway, the 'Review & Pay Now' buttons remain on emailed invoices. If the customer clicks on these it opens a page that just tells them to check with your business on payment options. Ok so this seems just as dumb as Reckon but at least there's a work around. I spoke with QB (got a call back within 5 mins of request – wow!) and asked them to put in a request to have these buttons removed – they agreed it would be a good thing but who knows if they'll action it? I'm sure it's just there to force you to use their gateway for additional income (commissions). To the work around – as you can add notes etc. to the invoice I simply added a disclaimer that the buttons don't work and QB is working on removing them. Yep blame was hand balled - so now my business doesn't look like we've not set things up correctly and have laid the issue purely at the feet of QB.
Aside from this, the flexibility of QB in terms of customisation and ease of use was by far the best (even compared to the free ones) and more than worth the extra $2 per month when compared to Reckon. Banking connections are a breeze – I loved the fact that you can choose to import from just 1 day and beyond. So once WAVE dies on the 31st, I'll only import transactions from Jan 1st this way I don't have to sort through & allocate any previous transactions for the past quarter. So I can close WAVE with the Oct – Dec quarter and begin 100% fresh Jan 1 for a clean BAS period. Which reminds me, QB has another advantage – you can also connect your account directly to the ATO for automated BAS reporting.
*No Billing?
I pay upon invoice for every service/product so this didn't effect me. In other words, if you pay a supplier when they invoice you – no problem. Just allocate the payment when you review your bank statement or add the payment manually if paid by cash/cheque. Bills are there if you have trading accounts (e.g. Due in 30 days or need to manage Purchase Orders) – QB will keep track with scheduled payments, recurring billing etc. Not something for me now but I'm sure it'll be worth it in the future if I grow to that level - it costs an additional $15 p/m but also adds more features like more employees, multiple currencies etc.
Conclusion
I've now come to realise, that the number one reason to use a paid service is that these have been developed to work with your local conditions/requirements. WAVE was and is brilliant to start a business with, but for those that are successful after the start up period, you must at some stage come to the realisation that for the sake of efficiency and accuracy (you don't want those ATO fines), you've got to move on to a professional system that conforms to your tax system.
I would have been happy to pay around $10 p/m for WAVE to include the bank connection – but for just a little more I now have a localised system that will support our business 100% without the little quirks of WAVE. And most importantly this will be for the life of the business as any business or tax rule changes are added to comply automatically and there's very little chance of them closing the doors or downgrading any service they offer. It's just piece of mind and a whole lot less hassle for a few bucks a month.
And lastly - do your own research & evaluation! What's suits my business is not necessarily right for yours and there's little time left before WAVE is nuked so get onto it fast!