Wave earned its reputation by making accounting free for small businesses, with invoicing as one module inside a broader suite that includes bookkeeping, receipts scanning and payments. If you want a free general ledger, Wave is a credible answer.
InvoiceZeo comes from the opposite direction: it is a billing tool, not an accounting suite. It goes deeper on the documents themselves — quotations that convert to invoices to receipts with lineage, template switching on finished documents, half-million-row imports — and stays out of bookkeeping entirely.
A note on fairness: the InvoiceZeo column below states shipping product facts. The Wave column describes its general positioning and commonly known behavior — specifics like prices and limits change, so verify current details on their site before deciding.
How InvoiceZeo and Wave differ
| Capability | InvoiceZeo | Wave |
|---|---|---|
| Product scope | Focused billing: Invoices, quotations and receipts in one editor, with one-click conversion and permanent lineage between them | Accounting suite — invoicing is one module alongside bookkeeping and payments |
| Try without an account | Full guest invoice editor with PDF download — try everything before creating an account | Signup required before creating documents |
| Recurring billing | Weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly schedules anchored to the issue date, with skip windows for pauses | Recurring invoices supported; scheduling options are simpler |
| Templates | 12 templates switchable on finished documents; A4 & US Letter; branding profiles with logo per identity | A small set of invoice styles with color customization |
| Bulk migration | CSV import up to 500,000 rows / 100 MB per file, run in the background — products, contacts and full multi-line documents | Customer/product imports; full historical document import is limited |
| Statuses & organization | Custom statuses with your names and colors, per document type, plus nested color-coded folders and tags | Fixed invoice statuses; no user-defined status pipelines |
| Teams & permissions | Isolated workspaces; roles with per-resource permissions enforced server-side; up to 10 members on Pro | Collaborator access geared to accountants and bookkeepers |
| Pricing model | Flat plans: Free forever, Pro $12/month. No percentage of your invoices, ever | Free software, monetized via payment processing and payroll fees |
Which should you choose?
- You want free double-entry bookkeeping and a general ledger in the same tool.
- You plan to run payroll or accept card payments through the same vendor.
- Your billing needs are simple and accounting is the harder problem.
- You want quotations, invoices and receipts as connected documents, not just invoices.
- You need deeper billing mechanics: custom statuses, folders/tags, template switching, skip-window recurring schedules.
- You are migrating years of history — InvoiceZeo imports complete documents with line items at 500k-row scale.
- You want to evaluate the real editor before signing up.
Moving from Wave to InvoiceZeo
Migration is CSV-shaped: export your customers, products and documents from Wave, map them to InvoiceZeo's provided import templates, and import — up to 500,000 rows per file, processed in the background with duplicate detection. Full documents come across with their line items, and referenced customers or products can be auto-created during the import. Read more about the import system, or test the destination first in the guest editor.