Etsy + Wave = Accounting made easy!

Etsy, along with Wave, recently held an Accounting for small business workshop here in Toronto. Kate from Nail Kandy attended and wrote up a summary for all those who couldn't make it {Thanks Kate!} 

Wave accounting sofware - waveapps.com
On Wednesday I attended Wave's accounting software workshop. It was a free seminar, for free software and they had free beer!

• Wave is a 100% free accounting software for small businesses. (Typically for businesses for 0-9 employees, but mostly sole proprietors), and it is cloud based, so you can access your data anywhere you are.
• Wave has been in business for just over 2 years and has over 35,000 customers signing up every month. They are now at over 500,000 customers worldwide.
• There are 4 product categories - invoicing, accounting, payroll, and personal finance tools. All of their services are 100% free, except the payroll software, which they use to fund all of their other services with the addition of relevant ads placed tastefully throughout the site.
• Wave has integrated with Etsy, so if you have a shop on Etsy you can integrate your shop with their accounting software directly. Wave will pull together your Etsy transaction info and PayPal income and do your bookkeeping for you, and you can set up more than 1 business (or shop) under the same account & login, including your personal finances.
• You can compare income vs. expenses, payable & owing. You can import your online banking data and credit card transactions into wave though a secure connection that is read-only. Once it is set up, it will automatically update transactions (this is good if you have a separate account/ credit card for your business and you will see all your transactions). You can connect multiple accounts and credit cards.
• If you have one bank or credit account that mixes personal + business transactions together, you can separate them and move expenses into different categories in Wave. You can also split transactions into multiple categories (for example if you have one receipt with both personal and business items on it, you can split them up). You can also separate HST and file it on its own.
• Wave is intelligent and will learn to recognize your frequent categories and will sometimes sort out your transactions for you.
• Soon you will be able to scan your receipts using your smartphone and import them into Wave. It is in Beta testing right now but should be available in the next few weeks.
• For any cash transactions, you can add them manually as you receive them (say you are at a craft show and taking cash payments on the spot, you will be able to enter them into Wave). And then when you deposit the cash into your bank account, you can merge the two so that you don't have duplicates.
• You can create invoices for your customers, and they can include embedded credit card processing functions as well (for a fee).
• Wave has its own credit card processing software offered by a company called Stripe, for 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction and funds are deposited into your bank account in 7 days. (Stripe is on its way to becoming the next Square, in Wave's opinion).
• You can import old bank statements into Wave and enter past transaction data. (Say for example you join today, but you want to have your accounting there from the past year, you can import it all). Just because you start now, doesn't mean you have to start from scratch.
• You can run reports using all the data you have imported. (Income statement, account transactions, income by customer, expenses, foreign currency, sales tax... etc).
• Payroll is a big feature offered by Wave and it is incredibly competitive - $5 per employee per month. This includes direct deposit, T4 and ROE forms. After 6 employees it's $2/month per employee, and so on.
• Just for reference, to compare Wave to the competition, Freshbooks is just invoicing software, not full accounting software.
• If you work with a bookkeeper or an accountant, you can invite your accountant to view your Wave reports. They would need to create their own account, and they can log in and you can allow them to either view only or have full access to the software and sort your data and create reports for you.
• Their fourth service is personal accounting. You can set up a personal budget for all of your expenses. When you flag transactions as "personal"  they will transfer over. You can also track your investments with a real time feed of your invested stocks.
• Free e-mail support is offered Mon-Fri 9-5, and Wave is 100% committed to having a free product. (except for their paid services).

If you are interested in using Wave you can start right away. Signing up is quick and easy, and once you are signed up you can add your banking information.
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Written by Kate Bland from Nail Kandy.