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Project based accounting

ChayilChayil Member Posts: 1

Hello, I'm new to wave and i'm trying to set up an account for a non profit org. I want to find out if there's a way of adding projects/programs, whose costs and revenues can be reported separately, like how you can pull up customer and vendor accounts to see the ins and outs.

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    ConnorMConnorM Member Posts: 1,229 ✭✭✭

    Hey @Chayil! I'm thinking you might want to just track those with separate businesses within one Wave Account! That might be your best bet :) Check this out! https://support.waveapps.com/hc/en-us/articles/208624306-How-to-add-a-new-business-to-your-Wave-account

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    MichaelGMichaelG Member Posts: 5

    I'd like to add to this discussion.
    As a small architecture firm, I'd like to be able to invoice to a contracted sum.
    For example, if I have contracted with a client for $40,000 and they put down an initial deposit of $4,000, I would like to be able to see the contracted amount, then the amount billed, and the amount remaining.

    Is this possible?

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    JordanDJordanD Member Posts: 515 ✭✭✭

    Hi @MichaelG and Welcome to Wave's Community Forum! At the moment, the type of granularity that you are explaining in terms of seeing the deposit total as a line under the subtotals and remaining amount is not currently available in Wave. are you able to explain if this is considered an industry standard or if this is the way that your business typically creates invoices for the ease of your customer to understand?

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    MichaelGMichaelG Member Posts: 5

    Hi Jordan. Thanks!
    Yes, this is AEC industry standard, at least in the US. As of late the AEC industry has been flooded with various softwares that have this feature, but they are typically geared to larger firms. Small firms have a hard time paying the fees associated with these products for features that are beyond what we need or we don't meet the minimum threshold of users. On top of that, many don't have the ability to directly link and send invoices. We would need to then link in paypal or stripe in most instances to be able to accept online payments.
    As a small firm, I love the ease of use with the Wave system of apps and accounting and I'm looking at Wave for payroll. This feature would be another check on the list of great things about Wave.

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    JamieDJamieD Administrator Posts: 1,156 admin

    @MichaelG Awesome feedback and level of detail in your post. While I can't set expectations that this will be available in our software any time soon, I can see that giving us more insight into your business and how you operate helps when it comes to decision making regarding feature requests/product implementation.

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    Michael12433Michael12433 Member Posts: 1

    I am a freelancer and also looking to organize my books by project, so I can invoice my clients. This is a standard feature on Quickbooks and most online accounting software. Would be a great feature to add.

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    DamyanDamyan Member Posts: 4

    I would love a project accounting feature as well. I run a property development and letting business and need to track and assess the costs and revenue associated with each of my properties. The only way I'm currently able to do that is by creating separate account codes for each property which can end up very messy and difficult to manage or do it outside of Wave on excel (which is also far from ideal).

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    emmamhemmamh Member Posts: 3

    Video producer here - DEFINITELY need to be able to track by project (both income and expenses). And then in the reports to see what the profit was of that project. Right now, I'm basically making each project a client but that's an annoying workaround because I can't see lifetime client revenue without having to add it up across projects. Also, even though you can attribute an expense to a customer, you can't see the expenses by customer matched to the income by customer, which also makes that workaround not the most helpful. This is a feature Wave should be prioritizing to the very top of their list.

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    Small_bizSmall_biz Member Posts: 3

    Agree with all the comments on here - there are many small businesses from architects, surveyors, small distributors, freelancers, printers, artists - the list goes on... All of them need the ability to track by project. It's really a basic feature for any accounting software to be viable.
    Just very simple functionality:
    1. Job w/ name and ID# that can be assigned to PO's and Customer Invoices.
    2. Cost Categories that can be assigned to lines in a PO and Customer Invoice.
    3. Report that can show a Job, and lists out the categories and the associated PO's and Revenue.
    If Wave would add this they would be the hands-down winner!
    Wave - how soon can you make this happen?

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    MaccaMacca Member Posts: 2

    I'm glad I didn't get too invested in this app before realizing that there's no way to incorporate projects so as to show the P+L, even a bird's eye view of it, by job. Damn! It looks like such a nice product -- and Canadian <3

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    JulianPJulianP Member Posts: 1,002 ✭✭✭

    Hey there @Small_biz and @Macca ! Thank you for sharing your feedback with us, we really appreciate your insight. To be completely transparent, implementing this feature is not currently on our product road map. With that being said, I want to mention that we are not dismissing your input as this may be reevaluated down the line. I apologize for the inconvenience, and once again, we appreciate your feedback!

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    ContractorContractor Member Posts: 3

    I honestly do not understand why Wave has not implemented a project feature. As a contractor it is essential to run a profit loss statement per project and by not having it, Wave misses out on a large amount of potential clients. I really hope Wave implements this ASAP! I am highly disappointed that I spent time setting up my Wave account before realizing that Wave does not have this feature. I thought it was an industry standard to offer a project feature.

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    ContractorContractor Member Posts: 3

    @JulianP said:
    Hey there @Small_biz and @Macca ! Thank you for sharing your feedback with us, we really appreciate your insight. To be completely transparent, implementing this feature is not currently on our product road map. With that being said, I want to mention that we are not dismissing your input as this may be reevaluated down the line. I apologize for the inconvenience, and once again, we appreciate your feedback!

    Highly disappointed! I had big hopes for Wave.

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    MaccaMacca Member Posts: 2

    I had another look at it and, at the end of the day, it wasn't a deal breaker for me to have the project function. Mind you, I've only had projects with less than half a dozen dependencies in the time I've been using it. I just slammed them in a spreadsheet so I wouldn't lose track of them. So far I like everything about this package, and did I mention it's Canadian :-) <3

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    paulpatpaulpat Member Posts: 19

    Project-based accounting is essential for any cost-plus or reimbursement-based contract. Not having a work-around seems to be show stopper, or at least a major pain. However, question to everyone: what if the Vendor tag was repurposed as a Project tag? Then it should be possible to run project reports while keeping the chart of accounts as originally intended. Of course you lose the functionality of running reports by vendor, but I never really saw a lot of use for that. Will this work? Any comment?

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    DamyanDamyan Member Posts: 4

    @paulpat said:
    Project-based accounting is essential for any cost-plus or reimbursement-based contract. Not having a work-around seems to be show stopper, or at least a major pain. However, question to everyone: what if the Vendor tag was repurposed as a Project tag? Then it should be possible to run project reports while keeping the chart of accounts as originally intended. Of course you lose the functionality of running reports by vendor, but I never really saw a lot of use for that. Will this work? Any comment?

    I'm going to give that a go and feed back - I'm getting close to moving elsewhere because of the lack of project accounting.

    I was on a call with a couple of hundred property investors in the UK last night talking about making tax digital and accounting software was discussed a lot. Every time Wave was mentioned it was slammed down for not having a project accounting feature.

    I really feel they're missing out with this. There are so many applications - anyone working on projects of any kind plus any businesses with multiple sites such as coffee shops, hairdressers, cupcake stores and so on

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    SivaSiva Member Posts: 3

    @ConnorM said:
    Hey @Chayil! I'm thinking you might want to just track those with separate businesses within one Wave Account! That might be your best bet :) Check this out! https://support.waveapps.com/hc/en-us/articles/208624306-How-to-add-a-new-business-to-your-Wave-account

    Mr Connor, your reply is disingenuous, at least Jordan D was honest in accepting that such feature does not exist in wave (as of date). But then totally blindsiding the OP and instead offering something totally absurd is like walking into a restaurant, ordering the New york Strip loin, but the waiter says "Maybe you want to try the Chicken Parmesan, after all, it is meat too, eh?"

    We understand that wave is free, and thankful for that, we also know that it may not be FF (Free Forever). There is no free lunch, and if it is free, then it is certain to have limitations, I understand that too, However you guys can do better, unless you are limited by your intention.

    Thanks,
    Siva

    edited May 24, 2021
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    TiVTiV Member Posts: 4
    @damyan did you test the use of the vendor list for projects? Great idea, so I’m wondering if you ran into issues in reporting and such? I’m guessing the reports that qualify by customer don’t necessarily offer the vendor filter.
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    Renz_ConsultantsRenz_Consultants Member Posts: 4
    Yes I am also looking for a simple solution like Wave that can separate the costs on a project by project basis. Has anyone tried Zip Books?. It claims to have the project cost accounting feature. I don't feel like switching only to find out it lacks in some other feature of simplicity that Wave does so well with.
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    HereForQuestionsHereForQuestions Member Posts: 2
    Any updates on this? Is there a way to tie invoices and expenses to specific projects? This is super important to my business.
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    Orange24Orange24 Member Posts: 1

    I have a gardening and digital transformation business, so I use the chart of accounts to create an expense project account and an income project account with the same name(and or date/length) for different projects. I retrieve the detailed report under account balances and after that produce the cost accounting features I need to make decisions.

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