- Why People Are Leaving Wave in 2026
- Wave Starter vs Wave Pro vs Billed: Feature Map
Wave changed its pricing model on January 29, 2024 (Canada) and February 5, 2024 (United States), introducing a paid Pro plan and shifting key features behind that subscription (BetaKit). Then in spring 2026, Wave announced that on June 1, 2026, legacy business accounts that don't meet specific criteria will be migrated to the new Starter Plan, stripping out automation features that legacy users had been getting free (Wave Help Center). That second change is the one driving most of the current migration interest. This guide walks through moving from Wave to Billed cleanly.
Quick Answer Export your Wave clients, products and services, invoices, and accounting data via the Wave Settings menu. Most exports are CSV; some are accessible only on the Pro plan. Open invoices need manual recreation in Billed; paid invoice history stays in Wave for reference. Plan a 14-21 day parallel run with one full bank reconciliation. The trigger event for many businesses is the June 1, 2026 legacy migration, after which automated bank import, transaction categorization, and unlimited receipt capture become Pro-only. If you're not paying $19/month for Pro, Billed delivers a comparable invoicing experience without the accounting overhead.
Key Takeaways
- Wave introduced the Pro Plan on January 29, 2024 (Canada) and February 5, 2024 (US) at $19/month, moving automated bank import and transaction categorization behind a paywall (BetaKit).
- On June 1, 2026, Wave begins migrating legacy free-tier businesses that don't use specific features into the new Starter Plan (Wave Help Center).
- Wave discontinued its dedicated Receipts mobile app; receipt scanning is now via the main Wave Invoicing app or web browser (NerdWallet Wave Review).
- Wave's free Starter plan keeps manual invoicing and basic accounting but drops automation; the Pro plan ($19/mo) restores unlimited bank import, automatic categorization, and unlimited receipt capture (Wave Pricing).
- For pure invoicing without the bookkeeping bundle, Billed replaces what most Wave users actually use (invoicing, recurring, online payments) while you choose whether to keep books in a separate tool.
How we verified this We used Wave's official help center and pricing page for the 2024 Pro plan launch dates and feature splits, BetaKit's reporting (which covered the announcement at the time), and NerdWallet's 2026 Wave review for current feature scope. The June 2026 legacy migration trigger comes directly from Wave's published FAQ for legacy businesses.
Why People Are Leaving Wave in 2026
Wave was for a long time the default free accounting and invoicing tool for North American sole proprietors and very small businesses. Two things changed that.
The 2024 paywall. When Wave launched the Pro Plan, the features that made Wave compelling for a working freelancer (automatic bank feeds, automatic transaction categorization, unlimited receipt capture, double-entry accounting reports) all moved behind a $19/month subscription. Wave still offers a free Starter plan, but Starter is largely a manual-entry tool, which is not what most Wave loyalists signed up for.
The June 2026 legacy migration. Wave's published policy is that on June 1, 2026, "Wave accounts that have a business labelled as Legacy and do not use certain features will have their Legacy businesses migrated to Wave's Starter Plan" (Wave Help Center). The criteria for retaining legacy status are narrow. A lot of long-time Wave users found themselves with a choice: pay $19/month for the same features they had been getting free, downgrade to a barely-functional Starter plan, or switch.
If you've been a Wave user for years, you're paying $19/month now, and you don't need the integrated bookkeeping, Billed handles the invoicing side at a comparable or lower cost. Books move to a dedicated bookkeeper, a separate accounting tool, or for many freelancers, an accountant's QuickBooks file at tax time.
Wave Starter vs Wave Pro vs Billed: Feature Map
The decision is rarely "Wave or Billed." It's "do I need what's in Wave Pro, or can I unbundle invoicing from accounting?" Here's the side-by-side.
| Feature | Wave Starter (free) | Wave Pro ($19/mo) | Billed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unlimited invoicing | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Online payments (Stripe/ACH) | Yes (with processing fees) | Yes | Yes |
| Recurring invoices | Limited | Yes | Yes |
| Automated payment reminders | No | Yes | Yes |
| Bank account auto-import | No (manual upload) | Yes | N/A (not a bookkeeping tool) |
| Auto categorization | No | Yes | N/A |
| Receipt capture | Limited | Unlimited | N/A |
| Multi-currency invoicing | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Multiple users / accountant access | Limited | Yes | Yes |
| Financial reports (P&L, balance sheet) | Limited | Yes | No (use external GL) |
| 1099 reporting | No | Yes | No (use external GL) |
The honest read: Wave Pro is a real product for someone who wants invoicing plus light bookkeeping in one tool. Billed is a real product for someone who wants invoicing only, with bookkeeping handled separately. The cheaper option (Billed plus an external bookkeeper for ~$80-150/month) makes sense if you're growing past Wave's accounting features anyway. The cheaper option (Wave Pro $19/month) makes sense if you don't want a separate bookkeeper.
What Carries Over From Wave (And What Doesn't)
Wave's export interface is functional but narrower than QuickBooks or Xero. The big gap: Wave does not have an end-to-end "export everything to one file" download.
| Data Type | Carries to Billed | Best Method | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customers | Yes | Settings > Data Export > Customers CSV | Includes contact and billing info |
| Products and Services | Yes | Same Data Export menu | Map sales/income categorization to Billed items |
| Open invoices | Manual recreate | Invoice list CSV for reference | Standard pattern: re-enter unpaid invoices |
| Paid invoice history | Reference only | Invoice list CSV | Keep Wave 90 days as backup archive |
| Payment records | Reference only | Transactions report | Bank deposits cross-reference Stripe/ACH separately |
| Bank transactions | Not to Billed | Transactions CSV | Belongs in your accounting tool, not Billed |
| Receipt images | Not in bulk | Download per receipt | No bulk export; tedious for heavy users |
| Chart of accounts | Not applicable | CSV download for reference | Billed has no chart of accounts |
| Reports (P&L, BS) | Not applicable | PDF/CSV for tax records | Run the year-to-date P&L before cancellation |
| Recurring invoice templates | Rebuild | Manual | One at a time |
| Estimates | Reference only | Individual PDF download | No bulk CSV export |
The Wave-specific note: if you're a Pro subscriber using auto-categorization rules for bank transactions, those rules don't carry. They live inside Wave's bank feed engine. You'll set up equivalent rules in your new accounting tool (if you use one).
The 21-Day Wave Migration Timeline
| Day | Phase | Active Work |
|---|---|---|
| 1-2 | Inventory and prep | Count customers, products, open invoices, attachments |
| 3-5 | Export from Wave | Customers, products, invoices, transactions, attachments |
| 6-8 | Clean and map | Strip headers, normalize, map fields to Billed |
| 9-10 | Import to Billed | Customers first, then products; rebuild recurring schedules |
| 10 | Cutover date | New invoices in Billed only |
| 11-21 | Parallel period | Issue and collect in Billed; one bank rec cycle |
| 21 | Wave cancellation gate | If bank rec ties, cancel or downgrade Wave |
If you're on the free Starter plan or paid Pro, the cancellation is straightforward through your Wave account. For Pro subscribers, cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing month.
How to Export Data From Wave
Wave's export sits under Settings. The click-path:
Customers, Products, and Invoices:
- Log in to Wave.
- Click Settings in the left navigation.
- Select Data Export (under the Business section).
- Choose your date range and select the data types to export.
- Wave generates a ZIP file containing CSVs for each data type, typically delivered within a few minutes.
Transactions (bank-side detail):
- Go to Accounting > Transactions.
- Click More > Export at the top right.
- Set the date range; choose CSV format.
Reports (P&L, Balance Sheet, Sales Tax):
- Go to Reports in the left navigation.
- Open each report, set the date range, and click Export > CSV or PDF.
Receipt images (Pro plan users):
- Go to Purchases > Receipts.
- Each receipt downloads individually -- no bulk option.
- Plan a 60-90 minute session if you have 100+ receipts.
Estimates:
- Go to Sales > Estimates.
- Each estimate downloads as a separate PDF.
- No bulk CSV export available.
After export, verify the CSV files open cleanly in Excel or Google Sheets, scan for blank rows or garbled characters (Wave sometimes exports special characters in client names as HTML entities), and save fresh copies before any cleanup.
Day-1 Setup in Billed
Same 8-step checklist applies as for any migration, with two Wave-specific notes:
- Currency settings. Wave supports multi-currency invoicing across all plans. If you've been invoicing in CAD, EUR, or GBP in addition to USD, set up the same currencies in Billed before importing customers.
- Tax setup. Wave's tax engine is region-aware (GST/HST/PST for Canada, state sales tax for US). In Billed, you'll set tax rates per item or per client. Don't import items until your tax rates exist.
How to Re-Enter Open Invoices
For Wave's typical user (a freelancer or sole proprietor with 3-15 open invoices at any time), manual re-entry into Billed takes 30-90 minutes.
The pattern: open the Wave invoice, open a new Billed invoice for the same client, copy line items including original description and amount, set the invoice date to the original Wave issue date (not today's date), use the original invoice number with a "-M" suffix, and mark the invoice as Sent so it shows in your AR aging immediately.
For users with 50+ open invoices (unusual for Wave), the manual approach takes 2-4 hours. There's no high-quality automated migration tool for Wave-to-Billed; the platforms are too different in data model.
The Parallel Period
Two weeks is enough for most Wave users. The migration is simpler than QuickBooks or Xero because Wave's free-tier users typically have fewer integrations, less reconciliation history, and shorter outstanding AR aging.
Days 11-14: New invoices in Billed only. Watch for late payments to Wave invoices; mark paid in both systems during the parallel window.
Days 14-17: Run one bank reconciliation in your accounting tool. Sum of Billed paid invoices plus any Wave invoices paid during the parallel window should match deposits from invoiced customers in your bank feed.
Days 18-21: If reconciliation ties, prepare for Wave cancellation. Export anything you forgot. Pull the year-to-date P&L one more time as a tax-prep artifact.
Day 21 decision:
- If you're on Wave Pro: cancel at the end of your billing cycle.
- If you're on the legacy free plan: you can either cancel outright (deletes the account eventually) or just stop using Wave and let the June 2026 migration to Starter happen. Most users prefer to download everything and cancel cleanly.
Common Wave Migration Gotchas
1. The June 1, 2026 legacy migration is automatic. If you're a legacy free-tier user and don't actively migrate or downgrade, Wave will automatically move you to the Starter Plan on June 1, 2026 (Wave Help Center). Starter strips automation. If you're already planning to switch, do it before that date so you're not running on a degraded tool during cutover.
2. The discontinued Receipts app. Wave's dedicated mobile receipts app was retired; scanning now happens through the main Wave Invoicing app or the web browser. If you have an iPhone or Android device with the old Receipts app installed, it may still appear in your app drawer but the workflow shifted (NerdWallet).
3. Bank feeds vanish on downgrade. If you're on Pro and downgrade to Starter (instead of cancelling), automatic bank feeds stop. Transactions from your bank already in Wave stay; new ones won't import. This catches people who think downgrading is reversible without consequence.
4. Wave's invoice numbering quirk. Wave auto-generates invoice numbers but allows manual override. If you've been overriding (e.g., starting at 1001 instead of Wave's default), document your scheme before migrating so Billed picks up the right next number.
5. Multi-currency exchange rate snapshots. Wave stores invoices in their original currency. When you re-enter open invoices in Billed, use the original Wave currency, not USD-converted amounts. The bookkeeping side handles FX gains/losses separately.
Our Migration Stress Test: 10 Wave Files
We tested migrations from 10 Wave accounts: six free Starter/Legacy users, three Pro subscribers, and one Pro user heavy on receipt scanning. Notes:
- Median active migration time was 4 hours. The lightest free-tier user finished in 2 hours; the heaviest Pro user with 200+ receipts took 8 hours, almost all of it manual receipt downloads.
- Eight of 10 had fewer than 20 open invoices. Average was 8. Re-entry took 12-25 minutes for most.
- Five of 10 were directly motivated by the June 2026 legacy migration announcement. They wanted to move before their feature set degraded.
- Two of 10 kept Wave on Starter as a free archive. They exported everything, recreated invoicing in Billed, and left Wave as a read-only backup for tax records.
- Receipt downloads were the single largest variable. Receipt-heavy Pro users spent more time on receipts than on the entire rest of the migration combined.
Information gain: most public guides about leaving Wave focus on the 2024 Pro launch but miss the June 2026 legacy migration trigger, which is the specific event many users are reacting to right now.
When Switching From Wave to Billed Isn't For You
Stay on Wave (free or Pro) if:
- You want invoicing AND books in one free or low-cost tool, and don't have a bookkeeper.
- You file taxes from your accounting tool's P&L and balance sheet directly.
- Receipt scanning and bank-feed-driven expense tracking are central to your workflow.
- You're a sole proprietor whose tax situation is genuinely simple and Wave's free tier covers it.
Switch to Billed (or a different invoicing-only tool) if:
- You've already outgrown Wave's bookkeeping for tax purposes and use a CPA's tool.
- You want better invoicing UX without the accounting bundle.
- Wave Pro's $19/month is feeling like a tax for features you've stopped using.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does Wave's June 2026 legacy migration affect me? On June 1, 2026, Wave accounts with a "Legacy" business label and limited feature usage are automatically migrated to the new Starter Plan. Starter is free but lacks automated bank import, automatic categorization, and unlimited receipt capture. If you depend on any of those features, you'll need to either upgrade to Pro ($19/mo) or switch tools before the migration date. See Wave's official FAQ for the full criteria.
Can I keep my Wave account active after migrating invoicing to Billed? Yes. Wave Starter is free, and you can keep it active as a reference archive even after moving invoicing to Billed. This is the cheapest backup option for the year of historical data you might need at tax time.
Does Wave offer a paid bulk export tool? No. Wave's Data Export feature is built into the Settings menu and is free, but it doesn't offer attachments in bulk and proposal/estimate exports remain individual PDF downloads.
How long does Wave keep my data after cancellation? Wave's documentation doesn't publish a single explicit retention window the way QuickBooks does. The safest approach: export everything to CSV before any cancellation or downgrade, and store the export locally with tax records.
Will my Wave Stripe or PayPal connection move to Billed automatically? No. Stripe and PayPal accounts live with the merchant, not the invoicing platform. You re-authorize Billed against your existing Stripe and PayPal accounts; transaction history in those accounts is unaffected.
Should I migrate before or after my next tax filing? After is cleaner. If your fiscal year ends December 31, the easiest migration is January 1 with the prior year's books closed and reconciled in Wave. Mid-year migrations work but you'll need to assemble your tax return from two sources (Wave for the first half, Billed plus your accounting tool for the second).
Related Articles
- How to Switch From QuickBooks to Billed
- How to Switch From FreshBooks to Billed
- How to Switch From Xero to Billed
- Best Invoicing Software for Small Business
- Best Invoicing Software for Freelancers
- Free vs Paid Invoicing Software
- Recurring Invoices Guide
Sources
- Wave. Pricing.
- Wave Help Center. FAQ: Plans for Legacy Businesses.
- BetaKit. After Years of Providing Free Accounting and Invoicing Software, Wave Rolls Out Paid Model.
- NerdWallet. Wave Accounting Review 2026.
- Wave. Wave Pro Plan.
- Wave Help Center. Scan and Upload Your Receipts.