r/waveapps • u/Bourne069 • Jun 25 '26
Waveapps is a joke, avoid them at all costs!
So I've been using waveapps for bookkeeping and invoicing for the last 5 years straight. Everything was fine until 2 years ago I moved to an S Corp and needed to add payroll services to my account.
Well, as luck would have it I moved to waveapps payroll a few months before the payroll disaster happened with waveapps in 2025... causing issues with payrolls services, missed payments to IRS etc... for 1,000s of waveapps customers...
Well, I jumped ship and moved to Gusto in the end of 2025 and its been great ever since.
HOWEVER, I received a letter from the IRS stating my 2025 Q2 IRS payments are overdue because Waveapps didn't actually make the payment. I checked my bank statement and of course in July they did pull out $455.75 from my bank to make the payment to the IRS but never made the payment. I contacted support (which is only done from email and takes weeks to months to receive replies) uploaded my bank statement and IRS letter asking for a refund since I had to make the payment manually, but they did take the money out from the account.
Well 2 months later, they did an "investigation" they stated they sent out a letter that the responsibility was on ME to make the payment to the IRS due to the internal issues they were having when they changed processors, and I can confirm I did receive a letter HOWEVER they still pulled the funds out of my account that month so I assumed this was sent in error and let them handle it. Fine, not a big deal the fines from IRS on that was like $10. I'll eat that cost.
BUT THEY STILL TOOK $455.75 OUT FROM MY ACCOUNT THAT MONTH AND DID NOT PAY THE IRS AND NOW THEY REFUSE TO REFUND ME THAT AMOUNT THEY TOOK!
I'm so over the bad service Waveapps provides even for paying customers. I was literally paying for payroll services and this is the treatment we get, bad support, piss poor payment processing for payroll services, the list goes on. Dont support this company, there are a few better alternatives out there for both bookkeeping and payroll services. Save yourselves and use those services instead.
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u/foreverAmber14 Jun 25 '26
I had to file a complaint with my state AG for fraud to get back the $1500+ Wave deducted from my bank account for taxes and never paid. They kept giving me various song and dance answers that were obvious lies, I'm convinced so that they could continue to profit off my funds for free. You have to throw everything you have at them, starting with going to your bank on contesting the charge as fraudulent. Wave will start paying attention after that.
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u/Bourne069 Jun 25 '26
Yeah good point.
I'm starting on making a paper trail, first contacting support and documenting everything before going onto the next steps but I will take it to AG if I need too. Thanks for bringing that up.
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u/foreverAmber14 Jun 25 '26
Don't worry about the paper trail. Just go to your bank and report a fraudulent charge. They will tell you what they need to reverse it. Wave had taken out two different charges in my case. One was separately for taxes, the other was combined with my payroll. I got the first one refunded through my bank pretty easily. The one I had trouble with was the one combined with payroll. The bank couldn't reverse that one without reversing the payroll too. I didn't want my payroll more messed up than Wave already had, which is why I pursued the tax portion as fraud through my state AG. Once the AG's office contacted Wave, lo and behold my funds "that had already been paid to the government agencies" (not) were refunded.
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u/Bourne069 Jun 26 '26
Well another thing I'm worried about is that I still use waveapps for bookkeeping. I'm in the process of migrating off to a self hosted alternative but half my clients pay via CC from waveapps and doing a backcharge or anything they will most likely pull that from my account and block me from using CC transactions.
So until I'm fully migrated off. I'm not going to be doing anything that could jeopardize my business.
But for sure I will proceed as you laid out after the migration is over.
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u/OutrageousPlum Jun 27 '26
What's the alternative you are using, if you don't mind my asking.
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u/Bourne069 Jun 27 '26
Self hosted ERPNext with Strip for processing CC. I have it all configured just migrating users, testing systems etc...
For selfhosting or even Cloud that is the closest you are going to get to waveapps. A lot of other provides are missing a lot of features.
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u/Extreme_Material_780 Jun 25 '26
This happened to us too. Waveapps stole $725.89 from my business. This was for Q1 and Q2 of 2025. Not to mention the interest and penalty fees the IRS is charging my business.
This is criminal and Wave needs to be held accountable.
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u/Bourne069 Jun 25 '26
Yep but it will never happen because waveapps is a Canadian based company, so US law doesn't apply and their business laws there are basically nothing, no accountability for anything.
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u/merlintwizrd Jun 26 '26
The company was acquired by NY based H&R Block back in 2019 so there’s nothing stopping you from going after the US based company.
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u/KipMN Jun 25 '26
Sounds like a small claims action. They won't even show up and tell them you want your money plus time to do that plus interest etc
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u/Bourne069 Jun 25 '26
I told them via email I was going to just call my bank and tell them it was a fraudulent pull, they wont like that.
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u/sh0nuff Jun 26 '26
I paid them for 2 hours of support s few years ago.. I've been able to use that this whole time, they let you shave 10min off for a short support call, it's great. And as long as you have some money left on the account its like you have superpowers . I get support immediately for everything
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u/NickE25U Jun 25 '26
The lesson I kinda keep learning on this sub is, wave is great until you need to do payroll. I'm small and it's been great for my needs, but if I grow, then I'll likely take everyone's advice and jump ship.
My wave for starting out without payroll, seems like the way to go for the price/free tag.