Wave Payroll Review: Is It the Right Payroll Software for Your Business?

While Wave Payroll has an “Add contractor” option, its system will automatically guide you to its Purchases module to set up vendor profiles for your independent contractors. Mary Girsch-Bock is a former accountant and non-profit development specialist who began her freelance career reviewing software and never stopped.

Having access to a ledger report is important, so you can see all your finances and know how payroll affects your bottom line. You’ll have to rely on accounting software integrations with Wave Payroll and OnPay to see your general ledger. In OnPay’s case, you can connect to some of the top accounting solutions such as QuickBooks and Xero. If you use Wave Payroll, you can only connect to Wave Accounting for ledger reports. You can try Wave Payroll for 30 days before paying anything. If you like it, you provide your payment info then and you’ll pay monthly to use the software. Be sure to test out all the features from the company and employee side to make sure it’s a good system for your business.

How to Process Contractor Payroll in 6 Steps

The company does offer support six days a week, Monday to Friday from 7 a.m. Elisabeth Christopherson is an accounting professional, fact-checker, and researcher who brings years of experience to her fact-checking role at The Balance. Elisabeth has reviewed many accounting, business, and economic publications, and was an expert reviewer for Study.com. We take our research process seriously and want to make sure we are presenting our readers with the very best solutions in a given software category. Check out this guide to learn how we evaluate vendors before featuring them in our buyer guides.

Businesses can customize invoices to their preference with company logos. Along with invoicing capabilities, Wave offers estimates, recurring invoices, customer statements, and your list of products and services. To further work on your payroll run, you must click Review this Payroll in the upper-right corner. You then see a list of employees along with any pay you’ve already documented; click Details to see a list of withholding items for that employee. At the bottom of the page is a section called Pay Statements. Here, finally, you’ll see a list of employees with the hours worked that have already been entered. Click Edit Hours if you need to add or change any time entries you’ve already created and Add Pay if you haven’t yet entered additional pay items.

Payroll that pays off

You click “Deduct from Pay” to add standard before-tax deductions. Your only options here are health insurance or a 401 plan; QuickBooks Payroll offers more. Unlike all other competitors, Wave doesn’t let you enter employer contributions or deduct a percentage of employee pay for a retirement plan.

The base rate is higher in tax service states because Wave automatically transfers tax payments and files the necessary paperwork with your state tax office and or IRS. Wave Payroll supports paying both employees and independent contractors when you run payroll.

Wave help resources

Since Wave only offers email customer service, this may be a more functional short-term option if you aren’t particularly savvy with account setup & syncing. Wave Invoicing is free, but works especially well with their paid feature—Payments by Wave (customers click “pay now” on your invoice and you can accept faster online payments). Wave Invoicing also syncs automatically with Wave Accounting once you’ve downloaded the app and linked accounts. Wave Accounting is the completely free software platform, but two of Wave’s offerings can make a big difference for freelancers and contractors who want affordable finance technology.

SurePayroll is great for small to medium businesses that need a simple but powerful software solution. This payroll software lets you automate payroll processing and also deals with taxes and tax forms.

Payroll Tax Management

When evaluating offers, please review the financial institution’s Terms and Conditions. If you find discrepancies with your credit score or information from your credit report, please contact TransUnion® directly. Wave Payroll is easy to use and files payroll taxes in 14 states, but it has limited features and services. Upon processing your first payroll, you can use Wave Payroll for up to 30 days, commitment-free.

Merchant Maverick’s ratings are editorial in nature, and are not aggregated from user reviews. Each staff reviewer at Merchant Maverick is a subject matter expert with experience researching, testing, and evaluating small business software and services. Merchant Maverick’s ratings are not influenced by affiliate partnerships. Check out our Gusto review or SurePayroll review for comparable options with stronger payroll features and HR support. Each of these https://wave-accounting.net/ alternatives offers more support and operates in more states than Wave.

However you must manually apply the tax for every transaction as they come in, there is no way to automate it. In 2017, Wave signed an agreement to provide its platform on RBC’s online business banking site. As far as a refund policy goes, Wave Payroll’s is a little fuzzy.

• Automatic tax filing options are also limited as Payroll by Wave offers this service for 14 states only.
• You specify your pay schedule and enter information about your company signatory.
• When not working on the next article or review, Mary spends time working on her first novel in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, where she lives with her family, two dogs, and two birds.
• Information provided on Forbes Advisor is for educational purposes only.
• There is a live chat widget with a chatbot within each account, which can be helpful for basic questions.
• It doesn’t cost a lot more than Wave Payroll, but it offers many more features including employee benefits management, and integrations with a range of apps.