When you’re looking for easy-to-use accounting software that can grow with your business, it’s difficult to know what to choose. Akaunting is free and open-source, with lots of great features, making it ideal for small to medium enterprises.
Let’s look at why Akaunting is a great alternative as the software used by thousands of people all over the world.
About Akaunting
Because it’s open-source new features are added regularly and any bugs fixed quickly, thanks to the worldwide developer community. Not only that, but it’s available in multiple languages and currencies, allowing you to easily stay on top of your cash flow wherever you are in the world.
By choosing Akaunting, you’ll be able to create custom invoices and manage transactions from numerous companies, all from a single admin panel. You can even give your clients direct access to their invoices, estimates, or projects.
Akaunting works with PC, Mac, tablet, or your mobile phone.
- Easy to use
- Multi-device interface
- Multilingual, multi-currency
- Created with the small business in mind
- Free lifetime updates
- The basic package is entirely free, with no hidden charges, setup fees, or limited versions
- Grows with your business
- Cloud-based or downloadable
Should you need more accounting power as your business develops, you can easily go to the Akaunting app store and get exactly what you need. There are over 80 apps available, either free or at affordable prices, to integrate seamlessly into your Akaunting suite.
For example, if you have a WooCommerce online store, you can connect it with our app so your products, orders, and customers, automatically appear in Akaunting. Or, you may want to offer a convenient payment gateway such as PayPal or Stripe.
Akaunting/Wave Comparison
There are a number of reasons why Akaunting is the best alternative, as Wave Accounting has ceased operations such as payroll and accepting payments outside of the US and Canada. With the following topics, we can compare the Akaunting and Wave Accounting features as follows:
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|---|---|---|
| Dashboard | ||
| Item/ Products & Services | ||
| Sales | ||
| Purchases | ||
| Banking/Accounting | ||
| Reports | ||
| Settings | ||
| AppsS/Integrations | ||
| Overall |
Dashboard
When you open Akaunting or Wave, you land on the Dashboard.
Akaunting – From the dashboard, you can change the date ranges to view a visual of your total income, expenses, and profit within a given period. This is then shown again in a different graphical format.
As you scroll down the page, you can view income and then expenses by category, your account balances, latest income, and expenses. You can choose to edit or delete any of the records within the dashboard and set them up to your liking.
Wave - By comparison, the Wave dashboard allows you to add a customer or vendor, customize invoices, invite guests or collaborators, view your cash flow as a graph, view reports of your choosing, see your profit and loss as a graph, look at who owes you money and who you own money to, look at your net income for the past and present year and view the breakdown of your expenses. Many of the functions within the Wave dashboard are found in the Settings tab in Akaunting.
Item/ Products & Services
Akaunting
Items are like Products and Services in Wave. You can add new products or services then easily include them in your invoices, saving you time and effort.
Wave
Products and Services come under the Sales tab and work in much the same way as Akaunting.
Sales
The Sales tab opens a drop-down menu that includes:
Akaunting
Invoices - You can view all of your invoices and recurring invoices and check the payment status of each, create, edit or delete them.
Revenues - You can view your income, the category, and account it is linked to.
Customers - You can view, update, or add your client's details, including their name, email address and see any unpaid invoices at a glance.
Wave
Lets you view, edit, or create:
- Estimates
- Invoices
- Recurring invoices
- Set up credit card payments (US & Canada only).
- View customer statements and view or edit records.
Purchases
In the purchases drop-down menu, you can:
Akaunting
Bills – View or create bills, both one-time or recurring. You can set the vendor, dates, items in seconds.
Payments – View a list of your expenses and create payments or set up recurring payments.
Vendors – See the details of your vendors and create new ones.
Wave
Bills – You can see the date, vendor name, the amount due, and payment status.
Receipts – Maintain digital copies of your receipts to save time when completing tax returns.
Vendors – Look up your vendor's details and balances they are owed.
Banking/Accounting
From the drop-down menu:
Akaunting
Accounts – view the name, number, and balance on individual bank accounts or add the details of new ones.
Transfers – This allows you to transfer money between different accounts.
Reconciliations – Here, you can reconcile all of your account balances and ensure the information you have entered into Akaunting matches that on your actual bank statements.
Wave
Transactions – View the date, description, account name, category, and amount in individual accounts.
Reconciliation – This helps you to compare your Wave records with your real-world bank statements.
Chart of Accounts – Here, you can view Assets, Liabilities, Credit cards, Income, Expenses, and Equity.
Reports
Akaunting
This shows a list of all the different types of reports you can generate to quickly review your financial situation and make comparisons.
Wave
This function is found in the Dashboard within Wave. Similarly, Akaunting allows you to review different financial reports.
Settings
Akaunting
All your foundation data is stored here. Including:
- Company info
- Languages
- Categories of income and expenditure
- Time zone
- Date functions
- Fiscal Year setup
- Currencies used
- Taxes
- Offline payment types
- Invoice personalization
- Scheduling
Wave
You can edit various basic settings from here:
- Users
- Customized Invoices, Payments, and Receipts
- Fiscal Year setup
- Currency
- Sales taxes
- Data Export
- Credit card setup (US & Canada only)
APPS/Integrations
Akaunting
The Akaunting app store lets you access over 80 apps to personalize your Akaunting suite. It includes apps that can help with all kinds of business, from services to those with a large inventory or sole traders to those with a large staff. Thanks to its large community, the app store offers more and more options every day.
Areas covered include:
- Double entry
- Inventory
- Estimates
- Analytics
- CRM
- eCommerce
- Help desk
- HR
- Import/Export
- Notification
- Operations
- Payment Methods
- Point of Sale
- Project Management
- Regulations
- Reports
- Time Tracking
- Widgets
and many more.
Wave
Wave doesn’t develop their own apps the way Akaunting App Store offers, but you do have the option to integrate a small number of apps using Zapier. These include the following areas:
- Google Sheets
- Partner Apps
- Ecommerce
- Payment Gateways
- Appointment Scheduling
- CRM
- Email Marketing
- Business Management
Both Akaunting and Wave offer their users similar options within the basic free package. However, Wave lags far behind when it comes to bolt-on apps you can integrate seamlessly with the standard product. It, therefore, doesn’t have the same versatility to grow with your business or provide the same level of flexibility and control.
Another plus point for Akaunting is the ability for the user to either use the online cloud based version, or download it directly onto their device. Many people feel more comfortable having this ability rather than using a purely online service which is all that Wave offers.
Akaunting is also open to any suggestions to help the continual development and improvement of it.
Migrating from Wave Accounting to Akaunting
Akaunting offers a free Wave app to integrate your account and data to Akaunting with the easiest process. It comes with a free one-year Double Entry subscription.