When I first started freelancing, I used a PDF invoice template so I didn’t have to spend money on software. I quickly outgrew the template and signed up for FreshBooks in 2018. At the time it was $270/year.
Fast forward to 2026, and it’s $435.02/year for the Plus plan – a pretty big increase for not a ton of new features.
- 2018 – $270.00
- 2019-2022 – $286.20
- 2023-2024 – $343.44
- 2025 – $377.78
- 2026 – $410.40 + $24.62 tax = $435.02
Recently, I asked around and heard good things about Wave, so I took a look for myself and decided to switch to Wave Pro at $190/year.
Here’s a recap of features and how I switched.
Clients
Just a note that people are called Clients in FreshBooks and Customers in Wave!
I was on the FreshBooks plan that only allowed 50 clients, so over time I had to delete clients. I could undelete them as needed, but it was still a pain.
The export from FreshBooks and import to Wave didn’t work particularly well for me, so I ended up adding all of my clients to Wave manually. So far I’ve only added clients who have current, regular billing, and I’ll add additional clients later as needed. (Also, you can only export current clients from FreshBooks, so I couldn’t get the deleted ones anyway.)
I spent some extra time getting current addresses and phone numbers for my clients, which I hadn’t done previously. So now I have good contact information for all of my clients!
Wave Pro allows an unlimited number of clients/customers, so I don’t have to worry about deleting and undeleteing in the future.
Billing
To allow clients to pay invoices online, FreshBooks integrated with Stripe. Wave doesn’t have that additional step – I get paid directly from Wave.
Fees are very similar as well.
Wave
- 2.9% + $0 for Visa, Mastercard, Discover and 3.4% + $0 for American Express
- Per transaction for the first ten cumulative transactions in a monthly subscription period
- Then 2.9% + $0.60 for Visa, Mastercard, Discover and 3.4% + $0.60 for American Express per transaction thereafter
- 1% for bank transfers (ACH)
FreshBooks
- 2.9% + $0.30 for Visa, Mastercard and others
- 3.5% + $0.30 for premium cards and American Express
- 1% for bank transfers (ACH)
I have several clients who pay with American Express and about 25-30 invoices a month, so the fees are probably a wash overall.
I do like that Wave asks, When offering both payment methods to your customers, how would you prefer to be paid? I chose ACH, and when the client clicks Pay, they are presented with the ACH option first.
Invoices
The next thing I set up were recurring invoices. Everything was very easy and I like the invoice design much better than the FreshBooks design. I can also customize the email templates, which I couldn’t do on my FreshBooks plan.
I made a note of the last invoice number used in FreshBooks, skipped a few, and then set the starting invoice number in Wave.
Like with FreshBooks, I connected Wave to Zapier and when an invoice is sent out, it’s recorded in a Google Sheet. (But looking more closely, I see a Wave Integration where you can add to Google Sheets!)
At the end of the month I implement the Profit First principles:
- Mark the paid invoices
- Total the invoices
- Divide the total into chunks for taxes, owner pay, expenses and profit (based on my personal percentages)
- Move the money to the various accounts
If you want to learn more about Profit First, see this blog post and presentation.
Estimates/Proposals
I missed the boat on proposal software with AppSumo. So many of my colleagues have a lifetime deal on beautiful proposal software that allows for open/click views and esignatures.
I have a custom area on my website where I create and share proposals. When a client would say they wanted to move forward, I created a FreshBooks proposal and attached a contract for esignature. Once signed, I sent the invoice for the deposit.
Wave does not have the ability to allow customers to esign. They can click a checkbox to accept an estimate, but I really wanted some kind of signature, so I had to improvise.
I have Dropbox Essentials which includes unlimited signature requests per month. (There is also a free plan of Dropbox Sign that includes 3 free signatures per month.) I put the contract and proposal together in one document and send that to the client to sign. I don’t love that this is outside of Wave, but it will do until I find something better!
Time Tracking
One other feature that I was sporadically using in FreshBooks was time tracking. I have a few clients who I bill hourly, so I would track my time and then automatically generate an invoice at the end of the month.
Instead, I made a pinned note with details (date, client, time, tasks) and I create an invoice at the end of the month. Because I only track time for one or two clients at most, this isn’t a big deal.
Wave does have some partner integrations – Driversnote for mileage tracking, MinuteDock for time tracking and billing, and two CRMs – Capsule and BlueCamroo. I’m not in the market for any additional software right now, but it’s good to know in case I want to use one of those in the future.
Accounting
Tracking expenses is different in Wave because it uses traditional double-entry accounting.
First I connected the accounts that were supported by Wave – my Chase credit card and my Ally profit account. Transactions import automatically and I review and categorize when they come in.
My other three accounts (expenses, owner pay and taxes) are at PSECU, and I’m not able to connect those automatically.
Here’s how I got started!
- Created three new Asset accounts in the Chart of Accounts
- Entered starting balances for each account as of January 1
- Exported transactions from my bank for each account
- Imported transactions for each account
- Reconciled the accounts
- (I’ll repeat steps 3-5 every few weeks or monthly)
This was a little bit challenging, but once I got the hang of it, I really liked it! It reminds me of using YNAB, and I wonder if I’ll still need to use YNAB for my business now that I’m using Wave.
I don’t scan receipts, so I don’t need to worry about this feature. And I have not yet added my accountant to Wave, but from what I’ve read, this won’t be a problem. (I will probably have her review everything in the summer so she can flag anything that I might need to adjust before the end of the year.)
Exporting Data from FreshBooks
Here’s what I exported from FreshBooks:
- Clients, More Actions, Export Clients
- Estimates, Select All, Bulk Actions, Download PDF (detailed PDF for each estimate)
- Reports, Expense Report
- I broke this into two reports, a few years at a time
- Reports, Time Entry Details
- Reports, Invoice Details
- I started to download the PDFs of each invoice, but there were too many!
- Reports, Revenue by Client
- Reports, Payments Collected
- Reports, Profit and Loss
- By year – I downloaded a CSV and also did a screenshot of the actual report
I did not get a good export of retainers, but I’m not concerned as the last retainer I had was several years ago. I also didn’t download the balance sheet, general ledger, etc. because I had never turned on Advanced Accounting.
Timeline
Here’s the timeline I used for the switch:
- Signed up for Wave Pro (monthly) in late November to check out all the features
- When I decided I would move forward, I turned off my recurring invoices in FreshBooks after the last ones were sent in December
- Emailed my clients to alert them of the upcoming change (they would have to enter their billing information again in Wave)
- Stopped using FreshBooks on December 31
- Started using Wave on January 1
- Sent out new invoices
- Connected and created accounts
- Asked my accountant to get everything she needed for 2025 from FreshBooks before I cancelled
- Exported all of my data from FreshBooks in mid-January
- Cancelled my FreshBooks account before it renewed at the end of January (this was a bit nerve-wracking)
- Switched my Wave subscription from monthly to annual in mid-January
Final Thoughts
There are other features, like payroll, that I don’t have a need for. I used to use Projects in FreshBooks, but haven’t in years.
I’ve reached out to support a few times, and their bot has actually been helpful.
If you want to learn more, here’s the official comparison of the two from Wave. (FreshBooks doesn’t have a comparison page for Wave at this time.)
So far, I am happy with my choice to switch, but I don’t know that I would recommend it to everyone – primarily due to the double-entry accounting and expense tracking.
What about you? What invoice and accounting software do you use? Do you like it?
