In the previous five posts covering small business tech, we’ve covered creating a custom domain emails, office management, and an intranet solution. In this post, we’ll cover one of the most important aspects of a small business (actually any business small or large) which is accounting. If you don’t keep track of your business accounting then you’re in deep trouble, well let me put it straight if you don’t keep track of accounting how would you know whether you’re profitable or not?
Keeping track of your accounting means keeping track of income, bills, invoices, payroll, receipts, tax and more important getting reports with all of that in a way that makes sense. I know that’s complicated and that’s not the core of your business and that’s not why you’ve started your business and finally, you can’t afford to pay for a professional accountant yet, well this post is here for the rescue.
This post will introduce you to Wave a web application that will allow you keep track of your accounting like a professional without a professional accountant, moreover, it’s a free application. Now, and without further ado let’s dive into the application and have an overview of the interface.
Creating an Account
Step One
We have to visit the Wave website to create an account, for this you can use your email or just login using your Google or Yahoo account. In this tutorial, I’ll be using my google account.
Step Two
In the second step of your registration process, you’re required to add your business name and type, then select the currency you’re using then click the continue tab.
Step Three
In the third and final step of creating the account you should enter your business’s address, that will be used for the invoices, and then click on the continue tab.
Now, you’ll be directed to the application main window which should look like the screenshot below, just click on the middle tab “Organize Your Finance”.
Wave Overview
After clicking “Organize your finance” you’ll be directed to your dashboard to manage your account. You can access any feature in the application using the side menu as we’ll see in details below.
Dashboard Overview
In the first menu, you can add a bank account to be attached to your account, that can be simply done by typing the bank website in the search field.
Transaction Overview
In the transaction tab, you can add income or add expense using the two tabs on the top (see the screenshot below). You can also search transactions, there are filters that can help you narrow down your search.
Invoices Overview
In the invoice tab, you can customize your invoices by adding a logo and editing your business information.
In the top menu, in the invoices section, there’s a “Recurring Tab” where you can schedule recurring invoices which are very handy.There’s “Estimates” where you can create cost.
In the “Estimates” section, you can create cost estimates, and statements which gives you an overview of your customer’s invoices and payments and that’s quite helpful. You can filter through statements by date or customer.
Bills Overview
In the bills section, you can create bills by simply clicking on the “Create Bill” on the top of the screen and you can search for existing bills, there are filters that would help you easily find the required bills.
Receipts Overview
In the receipts section, you can upload receipts by clicking the “Upload Receipt” tab or using their mobile app (available on Android and iOS) where you can scan receipts using your mobile phone and add them automatically which is very convenient.
Accounting Overview
The accounting tab has an overview of everything related to your account like; income, liability, expenses and many others.
There are other two tabs, journal transactions where you can add transactions using the “Add Transaction” tab that transaction can be an expense, income, liability etc. The final tab is “Account Balances’ which gives you access to your account balance “as the name implies”.
Reports Overview
Unlike the accounting section, the reports section gives you a simple overview of everything related to your accounting, like your balance sheet (assets, liabilities, etc.), income statement, Tax report which is huge during tax time. It gives you access to customers by income which gives you an overview of your most valuable customers and expenses by vendors.
Payroll Overview
The payroll section is only available in the USA and Canada and it’s supposed to make you manage your payroll (that section isn’t available for me, so I can’t give any specific details).
Bottom Line
From the above overview it can be clearly seen that Wave is a very useful web application for small businesses that allows you manage your accounting in a professional way without the overhead of a professional accountant that you might not be ready for, now you can actually focus on doing what you’ve actually started your business to do.