Xero and Wave are two popular accounting softwares. While Xero is more popular and is a more established software application, Wave has gained popularity in recent years and has a strong following of personal finance enthusiasts as well.

Both are amazing accounting softwares and help bookkeepers and accountants to track transactions, do reconciliation and generate reports in real-time to present to clients.

Pros of both Xero & Wave

Pros of Xero

• Xero is widely used by accountants, bookkeepers and accounting firms all over the world. On the other hand, Wave is only popular in the USA and Canada. In fact, it recently announced that it would only accept new user sign-ups from the USA and Canada.
• Xero has more API integrations than Wave. For example, Xero has integrated its software with DBS to allow transactions to be automatically added once you’ve connected either your POSB or DBS account.
• Xero has a lot of foreign currency features. For example, Xero allows you to create journal entries in two currencies and allows you to set fixed currency exchange rates. On the other hand, Wave does not provide these features and have talked about how their software is not for large companies dealing with multiple currencies.

Pros of Wave

• Simple to use and perfect for small businesses. Wave’s user interface is much more friendly and it is easy to view transactions for each expense or income category.
• Wave provides a personal finance account that comes with every business account.
• Wave does not charge any monthly fees but rather charges when you use its payroll feature (only for USA and Canada).
• Wave has an amazing online community support and other enthusiasts who love Wave.
• Wave has a very easy to use reporting system which can show you your monthly cash flows in your dashboard or balance sheet segregated across sub-accounts.

Which should I choose?

This depends on a few things. Firstly, are you a small business owner? Are you an individual simply looking to track your personal finances? In that case, you might want to choose Wave.

But if you’re a professional accountant or bookkeeper for a large firm, you might want to go with Xero instead.