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
$16 Free and paid plans
Free accounting and invoicing; Pro roughly $16/mo and payment/payroll fees are extra. Pricing changes — verify.
Verified 2026-06-08
$0 Free — full app
Wave strengths
- Integrated invoicing and bookkeeping
- Built-in payment and payroll processing
Considerations for self-employed tradespeople
- 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.
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
Which app fits your needs?
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 contact us at [email protected] to request a correction.
Free time tracking
Record stops and trips, review your hours, and export reports without a subscription.
- Automatic stop and trip recording
- Unlimited stops, drives, and days
- Review and edit stops and trips
- Rounded billable hours, exported as text or CSV
- Travel log with estimated distances
- 7-day summary view
- History stored on your phone
Control your location history
TradesTimer stores your history on your phone. Address lookups send coordinates to an address provider. You choose where to share your hours and travel exports.
See the privacy policy for details about address lookups, exports, and other data use.