{"id":11395,"date":"2012-12-16T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-12-17T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diversity.net.nz\/?p=11395"},"modified":"2012-12-16T21:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-12-17T05:00:00","slug":"wave-updates-ui-rolls-out-broad-smb-financial-portfolio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.diversity.net.nz\/wave-updates-ui-rolls-out-broad-smb-financial-portfolio\/2012\/12\/16\/","title":{"rendered":"Wave Updates UI, Rolls out Broad SMB Financial Portfolio"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been following<\/a> Wave<\/a> since its founding back in November 2010. The company has an interesting approach to the traditionally conservative accounting software space \u2013 it\u2019s product is provided to the user at no cost who, in return, receive personalized \u201cBusiness Savings\u201d, or special deals offered by businesses that pay Wave Accounting<\/a> revenue each time a user signs up for an offer. In the two years since it was founded, Wave has found some real traction as evidenced by the fact that they\u2019ve signed up nearly a half million customers worldwide, raised more than $19 million in funding and grown from seven employees in 2010 to nearly 80 employees today.<\/p>\n

Wave is continuing that velocity with the announcement today of WaveApps, a combined portfolio of applications that now constitutes a single integrated solution covering invoicing, accounting, payroll, payments, receipt management and other financial application requirements SMBs have. Wave is pushing the story that this centralization and integration of the different applications makes it easier for SMBs to runt heir businesses. Now I\u2019m all for integrated applications, but it has to be pointed out that the different functional areas that Wave is integrating (and calling revolutionary) are functional areas that most accounting products include within their single solution \u2013 payroll perhaps not but the others are generally offered within one product \u2013 so the lofty claim by Wave is perhaps a little disingenuous.<\/p>\n

In messaging this release, founder of Wave Kirk Simpson<\/a> is looking to differentiate himself from other cloud accounting vendors who serve slightly larger organizations, as he points out:<\/p>\n

There is a world of difference between the needs of a five-person company and a 55-person company.When we say \u2018made for small business,\u2019 we mean Wave is really built to work the way a small business owner wants their tools to work. This includes the one-person shops and \u2018solopreneurs\u2019 that make up more than half of small businesses in North America<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This would appear to assert the fact that for these smallest of businesses, a rich ecosystem of applications is less compelling than is a tightly integrated solution \u2013 even if it is, by nature, somewhat less broad than a pick of best-of-breed solutions. They\u2019re also strongly differentiating themselves from the freemium versions of their paid competitors\u2019 products \u2013 Wave has free online accounting and free invoicing and receipt management \u2013 regardless of the number of invoices\/receipts a business may generate.<\/p>\n

With this release Wave is also announcing an upcoming mobile receipt scanning application that automatically converts scanned receipts into digital transactions within the accounting platform \u2013 this product will be free, but will come with a paid option for those who want manual checking of the digitization.<\/p>\n

One of the paid services that Wave includes is payroll \u2013 for $5 per employee per month, Wave provides full payroll functionality, including direct deposit services. This is a strong differentiator from the front runner in the cloud accounting space, Xero<\/a>, who only has US payroll via an integration with ADP<\/a> \u2013 a service that works fine, but doesn\u2019t have the design aesthetic of more modern products. it looks fairly probably that Xero will extend payroll to the US via it\u2019s recently acquisition of Australian payroll vendor PayCycle<\/a> but in the meant time, this is one drum that Wave will continue to beat. A mobile app for Wave Payroll will also be available early in 2013.<\/p>\n

Wave is also introducing an interesting credit card payment facility that should simplify the acceptance of credit cards, along with clarifying the fee structure, for SMBs. Wave customers have a \u201cpay now\u201d option on their invoices which will let customer pay by major credit card. As expected a payment will be automatically reflected in the accounts receivable section of the ledger.<\/p>\n

Finally Wave is delivering on the reality for most SMBs of a blurred distinction between business and personal finance. They are integrating personal financial tools that can be used as a budgeting and reporting aid on both personal and business accounts.<\/p>\n

All these different product changes called for a rethink of UI and Wave is rolling out its new UI today as well \u2013 the UI looks really good and, I have to say, is very reminiscent of the Xero experience. No one denies that Xero really leads the space in terms of a friendly and intuitive UI, in taking guidance from Xero, Wave have done the logical thing.<\/p>\n

\"WaveApps<\/a><\/p>\n

Wave is a really interesting company \u2013 while some question the willingness of SMBs to use a free product and potentially let themselves in for advertising spam, the reality is that a significant part of the SMB community will be attracted to a product that is free. While other cloud accounting products might be beautiful, that beauty comes at a not-negligible cost for businesses. Wave is right to bank on a significant proportion of SMBs out there being willing to put up with a bit of advertising in return for getting free software.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been following Wave since its founding back in November 2010. The company has an interesting approach to the traditionally conservative accounting software space \u2013 it\u2019s product is provided to the user at no cost who, in return, receive…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[5],"tags":[2387,2386,1510,3484,1629,485,996,49],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Z7WC-2XN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diversity.net.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11395"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diversity.net.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diversity.net.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diversity.net.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diversity.net.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diversity.net.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diversity.net.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diversity.net.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diversity.net.nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}