[Dec. 1] Changes to Wave for users outside of the United States and Canada
AlexL
Member Posts: 2,869 ✭✭✭
Wave’s primary purpose is to support small business owners, and we believe transparency in what we do and how we communicate with our customers is central to that mission.
As Wave has expanded the products and features we build and maintain, it’s become increasingly clear that we need to adapt our approach to keep delivering software and experiences that meet our standards. This means increasing our focus on certain areas of the business and pulling back from other areas.
To support this new approach, we are re-centering focus on our local market, and making some changes for users outside of the United States and Canada:
As of November 30, 2020, new Wave account sign-ups are limited to US and Canadian business owners only.
Wave’s Stripe connection will end on June 30, 2021, for users outside the US and Canada. After March 31, 2021, Wave Payments users located outside the US and Canada will no longer be able to send Stripe payment-enabled invoices, including auto-payment enabled recurring invoices. Stripe payments for invoices created before March 31 can be accepted until the Stripe connection closes on June 30.
Also as of November 30, 2020, we are closing email support for users in all regions outside the US and Canada. Wave Payments customers who currently process payments via Wave’s connection with Stripe will retain access to email support for payments issues until the Stripe connection ends on June 30, 2021.
After hearing from customers like you in the Community, we know how popular Wave has been outside of the United States and Canada. However, we understand that as a result of these changes, you will likely begin looking for an accounting and invoicing platform better suited to your needs and location. Although we are no longer allowing new sign ups outside of our home markets, we will ensure that existing customers can continue to use Wave in the near term without interruption.
With this in mind, Wave has partnered with Zoho to secure a special offer from Zoho Books for Wave Users outside of North America. Zoho Books is a cloud-based accounting, invoicing, and payments processing software. We are actively working with the Zoho team to ensure that we can provide the easiest path for you to transfer your data and get set up with Zoho Books, and will provide you with more details shortly. In the meantime, we encourage you to check out what Zoho has to offer while you continue to use Wave.
Changes like this are challenging because we know these decisions don’t just impact Wave, they also impact you. This decision was thoughtfully weighed, and not one we made lightly. The whole Wave team is sincerely grateful to small business owners from all over the world, like you, for choosing to let Wave be a part of your journey.
How do I know if this applies to my business?
If your business is outside of the United States and Canada, you’ll see a message about these changes in your Wave account. Additionally, if you’ve signed in to your Wave account in the last year and have one or more businesses located outside the US and Canada, we sent you an email detailing these changes.
If you don’t have businesses located outside the US and Canada and didn’t receive an email or see messages in your Wave account, this change does not apply to you.
What happens to my existing Wave account?
As a current Wave user, your existing account will remain active and you will retain access to the current versions of Wave’s free Accounting and Invoicing software.
Wave has no current plans to close or restrict access to existing accounts for customers outside the US and Canada. However, this may change in the future. Future decisions about Wave’s availability in your country may be affected by new legislation that regulates customer data or product updates that change Wave’s software requirements.
Why is Wave ending support for markets other than the United States and Canada?
Wave has always focused primarily on our local markets of the United States and Canada. As we continue to build financial products and services, we will continue to prioritize our local markets. This new approach allows us to allocate resources and attention appropriately to support Wave’s growing functionality.
In addition, new local legislation, such as Open Banking in the EU and UK, make it infeasible for Wave to offer full services in these markets, which has required us to limit Wave’s functionality for those customers.
Can I still use Wave reports to file my taxes?
Regional compliance is the responsibility of the business owner, as agreed to under Wave’s Terms of Service. Wave does not guarantee that Wave Accounting or the reports it generates meet your country’s compliance or regulatory requirements for tax filing, financial reporting, or record keeping. As part of Wave’s commitment to transparency and the financial well-being of our customers’ businesses, we strongly recommend exploring other accounting software options that may be better suited to your needs.
How can I get help with my Wave account?
To get the fastest answers, click the Help button at the bottom of any page to speak with Mave, Wave’s chatbot. Mave has information about how to do most tasks and actions in Wave. If you get stuck, Mave can connect you with Help Center resources or link you to the Wave Community where you can get help from other Wave Business Owners or our Support Team.
Why can’t I download the Wave Invoice app or Wave Receipts app?
As of November 30, 2020, the Wave Invoice and Wave Receipts apps are only available to users in the United States and Canada.
What happens to my Stripe account after June 30, 2021?
Your Stripe account and your Wave account are two separate accounts. Wave facilitated a connection between your Stripe account and your Wave account, and this connection will end on June 30, 2021.
After June 30, you will no longer see the Credit Card Payments page in your Wave account, and Wave is obligated to remove any Stripe data saved to your Wave account. This includes saved customer payment details, like credit cards, used to apply payment directly to a Wave invoice. If you wish to retain these details to use with Stripe in the future, you will need to re-collect payment information from your customers.
Your accounting and invoice records in Wave will not be affected, and your Stripe account remains active and can be connected to other third-party services.
I use Wave Payments with Stripe, but my business is in the United States or Canada. Do the Stripe changes apply to me?
No, if you use Stripe to process USD for a Canadian-based business, these Stripe changes do not apply to you. See “How do I know if this applies to my business?”
Comments
All I have to say is...
Kirk Simpson's email just now was the most polite email I have ever got, telling me to go away! Wave are perfectly entitled to make whatever business decisions they feel is in their best interests. Once bitten, twice shy, I won't be using a US / Canadian cloud provider again and stick with EU ones. I will close my Wave account in the next couple of weeks when I have found an EU alternative.
Why **on Earth** are we being aware of this?
Sad news although I could sense this was coming - it seems counterproductive to shrink a user base but as others have said a business decision is a business decision.
I have always enjoyed the clean aesthetic of wave and that is what kept me here long after the initial abandonment of UK users.
I remember being frustrated and surprised at that move at the time as Open Banking would emerge in the US too at some point in the near future so it seemed like a short term solution to a long term problem.
Once annoyance is that the app is no longer available for ios and I bought a new phone - it would have been polite at least to allow the app to be downloaded for a period AFTER making this announcement.
Oddly I looked at Zoho a couple of weeks ago - and decided I would make the move soon but now my hand has been pushed - it's not quite as neat and tidy as Wave but does have many more features and a much easier to access support structure. I would urge other users to take a look at the Zoho one subscription as you get access to everything Zoho makes for a fairly modest amount rather than just the books option.
Please keep this service open to EU members even if you stop support new features but this app is way to incredible and easy to use that I cannot image my life without it. I use it every day and I would gladly support all the work you're doing. I do use any banking services with wave only the invoicing and reports system so maybe you can add some advertisements for free users and some sort of premium membership for those who do not want to see any adverts... this way you will keep everyone happy whilst making some small profits from small struggling businesses that used wave almost on a daily basis to keep track of invoicing!
HUGE THANK YOU for all the awesome work the whole team is doing!
Why not just charge a monthly fee? Many users including ourselves would gladly pay.
As the saying goes if its too good to be true....
There is also no such thing as a free lunch so I new it was a question of time before Wave asked for a fee or withdrew their offer. I would have been happy to pay a small annual fee as I think most users would have, so Wave is simply throwing money away. How dumb is that?
This is such a pity as I really liked Wave and paid an accountant to set it up professionally for me.
Wow !!!
what a way to get ride of your unwanted Customers….
I feel very lucky that I don't actively rely on Wave for my accounting needs, and I feel for all the businesses who do ! Sorry, I mean " did !"
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With such a short notice, I wish them all the best of luck to find their next accounting software, and get it set up before the start of the new fiscal year, which in many countries is on the 1st of January!! That gives them 30 days to get ready, minus of course the holiday period….
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While I could understand your strategic choice to abandon a market sector, I think the way you decided to implement your new strategy tells a lot about how little you care.
You might as well have sent a simple email to all your non-US/Canada Customers saying "we don't want to deal with you, so just go away. Now!" (and I remain polite compared to how it really feels…)
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Anyway, as I said, I wish all the best to all impacted businesses!
Very disappointed that I will have to leave Wave.
However I appreciate the years of free service you offered me, so thank you for that.
Now just to figure out how I move all my data & receipts etc...
Wave has no current plans to close or restrict access to existing accounts for customers outside the US and Canada. However, this may change in the future
**Please just give us a heads up if you restrict access for users outside the US & Canada.**We can still use the service so I'm appreciative of that, it has helped my small business tremendously - it has made accounting a simple painless process I can do myself.
I personally helped a-lot of fellow South Africans move over to Wave because it really was doing something good for me as a Soloprenuer and in our struggling community saving $90 per year on Zoho does make a difference.
Thank you for the work you have done, I could get angry at corporate greed but I'm getting older.
If we choose to switch to Zoho book. Can we transfer all the previous transactions to Zoho books?
Comments seem to think you have removed the service for existing customers outside the US & Canada? Please just give us a heads up if you decide to remove us.
Wave has no current plans to close or restrict access to existing accounts for customers outside the US and Canada. However, this may change in the future. Future decisions about Wave’s availability in your country may be affected by new legislation that regulates customer data or product updates that change Wave’s software requirements.
Thanks for providing long term free services
Someone somewhere said it right "If you are not paying for it then YOU are the product"
Thank you for the free service you have provided.
I'm absolutely disappointed of course. I have just moved over to wave and have been raving about it! I'm mostly disappointed because now I have to introduce my customers to yet another platform (way to make me look unprofessional!!) and I'll probably have to waste yet another day migrating to a new system.
Is there a particular reason why Stripe payments won't be accepted through you anymore? I thought that Stripe was a completely separate service anyways.
I would be absolutely happy to pay a reasonable monthly fee to keep this service going on and from what I understand, so do many here.
But you guys choose a different direction. Abandoning your user is an absurd idea while other business is hungry for expansion.
Thanks for helping my small business accounting anyway. Time to jump to another ship.
Please clarify if Puerto Rico businesses will still have full support from Wave. I received the email, but do not see any notification in my account. Puerto Rico is a US territory with US banking regulations. Gracias.
Given that Wave has allowed until March for non-US/Canada users to continue getting paid via Stripe we need migration plans for Zoho as soon as possible.
I've explored this route previously used the manual data export/import route and it was not straightforward and did not include recurring invoices - a huge part of part of our business which would take weeks to replicate manually.
I'm in Europe and, after spending the weekend trying out QuickBooks Online, Xero, and FreeAgent, literally created a Wave account and spent hours updating all of my invoices ...
yesterday.
The very last day it was possible to create a non-US account.
I have the worst timing in the entire world.
Thanks for the sentiments @Dedric which I share.
It will be interesting to see how committed they are to assisting us non-EU users find a new home.
soooo, which alternative are you people going to go for?
Man! this sucks, been using wave for a long time. Yet another reminder that pretty much all the applications I have come across don't care much about third world countries. Thanks for being there all these years! Good luck guys!
It's not a question of fees; it's about the Open Banking regulation in the UK (known as PSD2 in Europe). Regulations are quite different in the US vs. other places, unfortunately, and this affects companies' ability to operate. US regulations are a lot looser. (I just finished a course on fintech that talked about this a bit.) I'm a fan of regulation — it's just that right now technology and regulation keep outstripping each other.
Being pragmatic, now that the axe has fallen, what are the reasonable options for customers outside North America and what are the steps Wave are taking to minimise the fallout?
I have seen that there is a 1-year free account transfer to Zoho Books, but no detailed information appears to be available about that yet. For example, how long can my Wave account stay alive before I am obliged to transfer the data off the Wave system? What is the likely cost of Zoho after year 1? How much reconfiguration work will be needed to get my data into Zoho's system and what help facilities will be available? Are these services priced?
So if Waves closes for me (I am in the Caribbean) how can I get my data to be able to transport it to a 3rd party?
That is a shame! It's hard to make a transition after such a long time... Zoho isn't user friendly. Surely it would have been better to charge a fee to your users and have a team manage banking regulations? How many users does wave have now?
Looking at how they ditched us, I wouldn't expect much support from Wave.
But maybe we'll get some answers to @Duntelchaig 's questions that will be helpful.
Wow - don't do this to us - charge a monthly fee - I am sure a lot of us would gladly pay.
Can we continue to use the wave receipt app in UK if we have already have it installed as we have been using it for the past 3 months. Thanks
Absolutely gutted. this is the second time this has happened to me in 3 months (1st with Crunch UK based) and have spent the last 2 months uploading and reconciling all of my past data. I could throw my laptop out of the window.