Switching to Wave from Quickbooks or other accounting software

Get your Wave account set up the way you like it.

If you have not already done so, complete the steps in Setting up your Wave account before switching.

Create any outstanding (unpaid) invoices and/or bills.

Outstanding invoices and bills will affect your account balances. To ensure that you don't end up double counting balances later, you need to first recreate outstanding invoices and bills in Wave.

• How to create an invoice
• How to create a bill

When you create these invoices and bills, create your customers, vendors, and products as you go.

Learn how to set up Wave Payments to offer customers payment directly through an invoice.

Get your account balances.

Run a Trial Balance report in Quickbooks.  This trial balance should cover your entire fiscal year (or for as long as you've had your business). Save this report.

Note that this report will include outstanding invoices and bills. This step is crucial to ensuring your balances are correct later.

Delete these outstanding invoices and bills from Quickbooks.

This is so your new trial balance (which you will generate in step 5) will not include outstanding invoices and bills that you just entered into Wave in Step 2.

Get your account balances again.

In Quickbooks, run another Trial Balance report.  This report will look different now that you do not have outstanding invoices and bills. 

Enter your account balances in Wave.

Under Accounting click the Transactions page. From here click the More button, then click on Add Journal Transaction.With your trial balance from your old accounting application in front of you, copy the amounts from the old trial balance into the journal entry.

Your debits should equal your credits. If you are having problems saving, check the balances at the bottom of the entry to make sure they equal!

Since Wave will not have specific Quickbooks transaction history, only balances, make sure you keep a copy of your old accounting information for your records! 

Compare trial balances

To make sure you're all set up with the correct balances, run a Trial Balance in Wave (under the Reports section).  Then, compare Wave's trial balance with the balance from Quickbooks in Step 3.

Continue on!

Learn more with Tips to stay on top of your accounting.