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Is Wave the right choice for me?

VonGVonG Member Posts: 7

Hi to all. I keep the books for a small family run Non-profit ministry. Our accounting is really simple. I have used Quickbooks Desktop for twenty years, but Inuit has really abandoned the program because it is trying to force all of the Desktop users to switch to Quickbooks online. I was recently forced to upgrade to the 2020 version of Quickbooks because of Inuit's "Sunset" feature which turns off the features I use the most after three years of use. The new program does not work and cannot open my company file. I have been working for days with tech support without finding a solution to the problem.

Last night, a friend told me about Wave Accounting, so I am here looking to see if Wave may be the solution I have been looking for for years. Bear with me, please, as I am an old dog, that knows one trick, and slow to learn. Thanks in advance.

Let me give you a glossery of what I am used to doing and maybe you can tell me if Wave can or cannot do what I need it to do.

As I said before, our accounting method is extremely simple. I literally only use two or maybe three functions in Quickbooks. I use Quickbooks to record donations received to our ministry and to record and track expenses. Of course, Quickbooks cannot even do this right, because it sees donors as Customers and donations as Sales.

So here is what I need and what I am wondering if Wave can do. I have a lot of data in QuickBooks. 20 years worth, in fact. All of our Donors, Names, Addresses, and Phone numbers. I also have a large chart of expense accounts to track where the money is spent.

Now I have to enter all donations manually because 99% of our donations come via a physical check our bank does not list data (donors name, check number, date the check was written, etc.) in association with checks in their online reporting. But I do download the QBO web connect file to import debit transactions into Quickbooks so I don't have to enter all that data manually. I just have to go through and make sure that each transaction was correctly associated with the right merchant and expense account. Quickbooks has a matching feature that remembers where debits to certain merchants went before and automatically allocates new transactions to those accounts. This saves a lot of work and time.

Now my bank does not provide direct web services, but it does provide OBO, QIF downloadable files that I can import into Quickbooks.

At the end of each year, I have to send out donation receipts to everyone that has donated to our ministry. Quickbooks cannot do this, but I have purchased an excel plugin tool that extracts the data from Quickbooks and automatically creates a nice donation receipt.

I know that Wave can record income (hopefully as a Donation, and not as a Sales receipt), and I know that it can track expenses. My questions are these.

  1. Can I import transactions into wave via a downloaded bank file (QBO, QIF, QXF), and does Wave have automatic matching features that can automatically allocate debits to the right expense account (called Matching in quickbooks), without me having to do each one individually every single time?

  2. Can I import my existing company data (i.e. Customer profiles, merchant profiles, chart of expenses account, etc. ) from Quickbooks, or will I have to recreate all of this data from scratch?

  3. Does Wave have a way to create end of year donation receipts for non-profits?

edited March 31, 2021 in Using Wave

Comments

  • VonGVonG Member Posts: 7

    So I have been doing some testing and I have found that Wave does have a way import a QBO file and to list transactions from donors. I have a question though.

    My banks list every single check received as: REMOTE ONLINE DEPOSIT # - 1. The only data included is the deposit date and the amount. Now I have gone through and mark several deposits as "Direct Public Support -Individual Contributions", but the program is not offering to MATCH or Remember this selection for this transaction type.

    Now in Quickbooks, If I entered the data about donations before importing the QBO file, it would see the deposit date and the amount, and use that information to match the transaction with the existing transaction that contained the proper donor information. I am just wondering if Wave will do this, or if i will have to manually go through and associate the transaction with the proper income account and manually select the customer for that deposit?

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