Wave vs TradesTimer

What Wave is

An accounting and invoicing platform for small businesses to manage books, payments, and payroll.

Best for: Small business owners who need to send professional invoices, manage bookkeeping, and process client payments through a unified system.

Pricing at a glance

Where Wave is strong

• Integrated invoicing and bookkeeping
• Built-in payment and payroll processing

Where Wave falls short for trades

• The user must manually enter hours worked to generate an invoice
• The user must manually record trip distances for tax purposes

Why I built a Wave alternative

Wave answered 'why pay for accounting?' for a lot of small operators. TradesTimer asks the same question about time tracking. The two are natural partners, honestly — Wave doesn't track your hours at all, and we don't do your books.

What I learned running invoices for an electrical contractor is that the invoice is downstream of the timesheet: garbage hours in, disputed invoice out. Free books deserve honest hours. Track the day automatically, read off the per-job totals, and bill them through Wave.

— Ryder, founder of TradesTimer. Years on the tools across framing, fencing, roofing, concrete, drywall, and painting, plus the back office of an electrical contractor — orders, invoices, and yes, the time tracking.

What TradesTimer does differently

• The app automatically reconstructs workdays and trips using background GPS
• The user never has to manually start or stop a timer

The verdict

Wave is a robust accounting tool for managing finances and invoicing, whereas TradesTimer is a utility for solo tradespeople to automate the capture of billable hours and mileage. Wave handles the books, but you'll still need a separate way to track your movement and time.

Page last verified 2026-06-08. If Wave has changed pricing or features since then and this page is stale, email support@tradestimer.com and we'll fix it.