WAVE ACCOUNTING OVERVIEW, REVIEW & ALTERNATIVES 2014

JOHN lASTER FOR TECHIEAPPS.COM WRITES: 

OVERVIEW

Wave is compatible with cloud, and designed to bring the amalgamation of speed and accuracy in the accounting of small/medium businesses. It is compatible with Mac, Windows and Linux, and we also got some positive results while testing it on various latest browsers including IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc. One of the reasons of its popularity, is its futuristic mobile application. It has an option to view simple cash flow analysis along with a notification center to keep the user updated with all the happenings in his/her business. The software has been used by more than 1.5 million users, and has won awards too.

FEATURES OF WAVE

Navigation and Setup: Unlike other similar software, Wave seems to be too quick, if it is about setup. Right after providing the basic information about your organization, you are all set to view its “Get Started” page. You can also get to see a tutorial video that appears on the start up page, which helps you understand its basic features. The software seems to be extremely easy to use, as it has quick tabs to navigate to the dashboard, payroll, accounting reports and accounting etc. We tried importing CSV files in it, and did that within no time by following its step by step instructions. Overall, the applications performs well, but we faced a little bit of problem while adding sales tax, right after downloading it on our iPhone.

Reports and Charts: Wave is majorly developed for management of accounts payable and receivable and banking transactions. The payment methods can also be activated on this software, which let your customers to make payments through all the major credit cards. If you are looking for an overview of your organization’s accounting or journal entries, then it lets you view the graphical charts for the same. Its “Pro Services” option impressed us too much, as it was really helpful to locate all the accounting professionals in our area.

Double Entry Mechanism and Banking: The double entry mechanism of this software has been created magnificently. It helped us easily add double entry transactions, which are not possible to add in the conventional income and expense tools. In order to access general ledger or general entry function, you can navigate to Journal transactions option, mentioned under the “Settings” tab. Wave helps you stay connected with your bank, and can save tons of your precious time. In other words, it imports your organization’s financial transactions from your bank a on daily basis, which is too convenient for expense management.

PRICING

Wave is an easy to afford software, and can be purchased within a total of $9/month. It has a base fee of $4, and you need to pay $4 more for the first 10 employees of your organization. But, if the number of employees is more than 10, then it requires you to pay an additional fee of $1.

ALTERNATIVES OF WAVE

FEATURED LISTING

FEATURED LISTING

FRESHBOOKS

In the first glance, the Freshbooks interface turns out to be clean and tidy. The user can easily navigate to various features through tabs. The new design of FreshBooks helps you quickly perform all of your accounting tasks, and also lets you switch to classic view, if required. This app is smart enough to save your client’s generic information such as currency, language preference, and quickly calculates taxes and discounts etc. FreshBooks app can be used by iOS as well as Android users.

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FEATURED LISTING

QUICKBOOKS

Quickbooks is an accounting software better suited for double entry and developed for small businesses as well as accountants to let them organize business finances with ease. Some of its newly added features facilitate the user to simplify their accounting related tasks such as sales receipts, inventory records and tax forms etc. QuickBooks is a fairly easy to use software and one can easily learn the features as well.

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XERO

Xero, an accounting based software designed for small to medium sized organizations, has been under limelight in the financial market since a couple of years. It is majorly used for expense reporting, payroll management and other tasks pertaining to billing and invoicing. Xero is observed to be fully compatible with cloud and more than 180 applications related to business operation: CRM, POS and inventory management. It supports multiple currencies, and also makes your financial transactions automated, which can be customized by tweaking its rule sets, as per your business requirements.

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ZOHO BOOKS

The name has been present in the market for more than 12 years. This cloud based software supports double entry book keeping, and lets the accountants add manual adjustments for depreciation and other expenses. Supported by a multiple currency option, this software is extremely helpful for time tracking of projects that involve multiple users. You can also make use of its role based access to define the roles of your employees, which keeps data integrity issues at bay.

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ETFs: Tax Efficient and Cheap Investment Vehicles

Tom Lydon  & Max Chen for ETF Trends writes: Instead of watching costs eat away at a portfolio’s overall returns, fund investors can cut down their fees and taxes through cheap and efficient exchange traded funds.

Index-based ETFs passively track an underlying benchmark, and since there are no managers actively monitoring stock trades, these passive ETFs come with low fees, with some of the cheapest costing investors only 0.04% per year. Additionally, ETFs have low turnovers – the frequency at which stocks are bought or sold within the portfolio, which diminish the amount of potential taxable events.

Nevertheless, Nathan Sonnenberg for Morningstar reminds investors to watch for market exposure, fees and tax cost ratios. [The Total Costs of Owning, Trading ETFs]

For starters, investors should have a target goal in mind. One should decide the amount of U.S. stock, international or emerging market exposure he or she is comfortable with. Consequently, people should understand what markets, countries, regions, industries, sectors and stocks an index fund might be exposed to.

Looking at fees, every fund offering comes with some sort of management fee. However, index-based ETFs typically have lower fees than active mutual funds due to ETFs’ passive nature. There are 1,641 U.S.-listed ETFs on the market with an average 0.60% expense ratio.

Moreover, since ETFs trade like stocks, investors will have to watch an ETF’s bid-ask spread or risk incurring a larger than anticipated indirect cost to trading.

The tax cost ratio, or a measure of how much taxes one pays on distributions, can also eat away at over all returns. Investors should try to find ETFs with low tax cost ratios, and data providers like Morningstar provide the stats at gratis.

With these factors in mind, investors have a number of low-cost ETF options to fill out an investment portfolio.

For U.S. stock exposure, the Schwab U.S. Broad Market ETF (NYSEArca: SCHB), which tracks a diversified group of 2,000 U.S. stocks across asset categories, comes with a 1.75% yield, a 0.04% expense ratio and a three-year tax cost ratio of 0.76. Additionally, the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSEArca: VOO), which tracks the S&P 500 index, has a 1.68% yield, a 0.17% expense ratio and a 0.49 three-year tax cost ratio. [Total Stock ETFs: A One-Stop Investment for Portfolio Diversification]

Looking at overseas markets, the Vanguard Total International Stock ETF (NYSEArca: VXUS), which follows broad developed and emerging market stocks, has a 3% yield, a 0.22% expense ratio and a 1.01 three-year tax cost ratio. Moreover, theiShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (NYSEArca: EEM) targets the emerging markets and comes with a 1.57% yield, a 0.67% expense ratio and a 0.46 three-year tax cost ratio.

The 23 Most Influential Business Intelligence Blogs

Justin  Heinz for BI Software Insight writes: Business intelligence never stands still.

In a rapidly changing landscape, even experts need to work hard to stay abreast of the latest developments and insights.

Countless resources exist to shepherd business intelligence users through these fluctuating ideas and frequent innovations.

Below is a collection of the best. Many reflect unique perspectives from across the field of business intelligence: analysts, freelance writers, and executive technology officers.

Others cover distinct aspects of business intelligence, zeroing in on specific subjects like market growth and consolidation, or the role of BI in a small business.

Still more provide a fresh take on contemporary issues and news, offering insightful analysis that goes beyond the surface headlines.

Criteria used to select the bloggers included the quality of their writing and insights, size of their following, and their impact on the BI community.

Each represents a valuable resource for anyone interested in business intelligence.  Check them out below (in no particular order):

1. TechnoSocial Blog

BI Application Specialist Rajasekar Nonburaj works as a consultant for SAP, and is renowned as the founder of the BI professionals LinkedIn network. His blog includes articles which are featured routinely in various IT publications, and videos of him speaking at TEDx events. He addresses topics such as BI vendor selection and social media analytics.

2. Smart Data Collective

This data and analytics blog has a designated section for business intelligence topics, gathering voices from a cross-section of experts in the business intelligence field. BI fields are subdivided into business rules, decision management, knowledge management, market research, and CRM.

3. BI Analysis

BI Analysis is curated by Diego Arenas, a SQL-focused blogger with broad experience with many different business intelligence vendors. He reviews several platforms and covers topics like open data. His posts are in Spanish but are easily translated via GoogleTranslate.

4. In(tegrate) the Clouds

SnapLogic employee Darren Cunningham runs In(tegrate) the Clouds, which covers business intelligence within the Cloud, and general software-as-a-service industry issues.

5. Upstream Info

Augusto Albeghi, the founder of the BI startup Straysoft and a noted BI consultant, writes on industry trends at Upstream Info. His posts are in-depth but freewheeling and express subjects such as data warehousing issues, big data cautionary tales, and Hadoop in an entertaining manner.

6. AllformZ BI Blog

Maintained by Ramesh Babu, this blog offers a variety of educational resources to advance professional understanding of business intelligence. Posts include links to open online courses and resources to supplement these courses. The blog also includes a “bookstore” of relevant reading, and his personal siteincludes BI-related discussions.

7. Forbes Blog: Bruno Aziza and The Tribulations of an Analytical Mind

Formerly a BI analyst for Microsoft and currently with Alpine Now, Bruno Aziza is the author of “Drive Business Performance: Enabling a Culture of Intelligent Execution.” His blog The Tribulations of an Analytical Mind has not recently been updated, but includes insightful commentary on the development of business intelligence. He frequently contributes to Forbes.

8. B-Eye Network Channel: BI & Integration – Colin White

BI Research Founder and President Colin Whitemaintains a blog with whitepapers, case studies, industry analysis, and insight on BI topics. Subjects addressed include Hadoop issues and collaborative BI.

9. Business Intelligence

This deceptively simple blog title is run by Howard Dresner, the man known throughout the BI industry as the “father of business intelligence” for bringing the phrase into the public consciousness in 1989. His blog is full of forward-thinking posts and BI wisdom that anticipates industry trends.

10. Business Intelligence and Cultural Transformation: Peter James Thomas

Peter James Thomas’ blog is an award-winning site addressing best practices in business intelligence and articles discussing the impact of BI on culture and society. His technical posts are made easy to read by supplemental cartoons and illustrative references to everyday life.

11. Key 2 Consulting

A tech-heavy consulting blog that covers BI issues related to SQL. It is curated by business intelligence resource manager Tiffany Heffner.

12.  Business Intelligence Products and Trendsand B-eye Network Blog: Barney Finucane

Barney Finucane’s BI blog purports not to cover industry news but rather to “address hype issues” and thoroughly clarify misinformation and popular misconceptions. His wordpress blog aggregates content from vendors across the web in a single dashboard, giving readers a colorful snapshot of daily news.

13. The Data Doghouse

Run by author and professor Rick Sherman, this blog focuses on BI in the context of data warehousing and decision support systems (DSS). The blog covers updates in the field and includes info on upcoming conferences and events related to the author’s interests. His latest book is the Business Intelligence Guidebook – From Data Integration to Analytics.

14. Meta Analysis

This BI analytics blog covers the topic from every conceivable angle. Posts range from text analysis to the importance of storytelling as a data analyst. It is put together by consultant and author Meta Brown, who is the author of Data Mining for Dummies.

15. Ms. SQL Girl

This blog addresses topics and issues surrounding Power BI, SQL platforms, and other related tools. The author is Julie Koesmarno, an expert in Microsoft platforms and a consultant with Lobster Pot Solutions.

17. Business Analytics News

Marcus Borba’s blog draws on his in-depth technological knowledge of business analytics as a CTO with Brazilian company Spark Strategic Business Solution. In addition to complex analysis he also writes articles debunking common BI myths.

18. Business Intelligence: Process, People, and Products

Although not updated since 2011, Vish Agashe’sblog is a valuable resource for BI users who want to learn more about data governance, data quality, and their effects on a business intelligence system.

19. Decideo.fr: Francophone Community of Business Intelligence Users

Independent analyst Phillipe Nieuwbourg runs this site of news, analysis, and opinion on business intelligence from the French perspective. The site is in French and can be translated using Google Translate.

20. BI Scorecard

Industry analyst and renowned product reviewerCindi Howson is the founder of BI Scorecard and author of Successful Business Intelligence: Unlock the Value of BI & Big Data. The blog includes reviews and commentaries on major industry news.

21. TDWI: Business Intelligence Portal

The Data Warehousing Institute offers a premier aggregation of expert content on business intelligence from a variety of leading writers in the industry. Curators on BI include Boris Evelson, Wayne Eckerson, and Nancy Williams.

22. Ventana Research: Perspectives by David Menninger

As Ventana Research’s Vice President, David Menninger is the director of BI research. His blog is a hub of industry thought-leadership and in-depth analysis regarding the development and use of BI.

23. James Kobelius’ Blog

Former Forrester BI analyst James Kobelius, now working for IBM, keeps up a healthy stream of insights on his unique blog. Stylized similar to Tumblr, he posts brief snippets, ideas, and links to articles, sometimes written by him, relating specifically to big data analytics and innovation in the BI industry.

Sleeter Group Reports Intuit Discontinues Salesforce for QuickBooks

Charlie Russell for Sleeter Group writes: Today Intuit announced that they are discontinuing their Salesforce for QuickBooks subscription service (both the CRM subscription itself and the QuickBooks/Salesforce integration app), effective December 3 of 2014. I wrote about Salesforce for QuickBooks when it was introduced in 2011. All current subscribers have been notified, and there is a transition plan in place to move subscribers from the Intuit version of the subscription to a full-fledged Salesforce subscription.

Am I surprised? No, not really. I’ve been expecting this for some time now. Intuit announced the initial integration with great fanfare, and people thought that this would be a great “strategic partnership” between the two companies. However, the initial integration had a lot of limitations – it was only set up for the lower level of Salesforce capabilities and it didn’t play well with many Salesforce extensions. I’ve never thought of Salesforce as being a product aimed at smaller businesses, so the partnership with Intuit didn’t really make sense to me at the time. [snip].  The article continues @ The Sleeter Group, click here to continue reading...