Compare
Wave vs Track and Invoice
Wave is a genuinely good free accounting tool, double-entry bookkeeping, bank connections, a full general ledger. If you need real accounting software and don't want to pay for it, Wave is probably what you're looking for. Where it falls short is time tracking, which it doesn't have at all, and the invoicing side is built as part of an accounting system rather than as a standalone billing tool. If your accountant handles the books and you mainly need to track hours, invoice clients, and manage what you sell, it can feel like more software than the job requires.
Wave vs. Track and Invoice
Track and Invoice Starter | Wave Starter | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly subscription fee | $0 | $0 |
| Time tracking | , | |
| Invoicing | ||
| Expense tracking | ||
| Double-entry accounting | , | |
| Bank connections | , | |
| Receipt attachments | +$8/month add-on | |
| CC processing fee | 3.5% | Fees starting at 2.9% + $0.60 |
| ACH / bank transfer fee | ACH bank transfer (1%, capped at $10) | Free |
| Item cost vs. profit | , |
Who should choose Track and Invoice
Service businesses, designers, contractors, coaches, landscapers, who bill clients for time and work and want a tool organized around that workflow. If your accountant handles the books separately and you just need a reliable way to track hours, log billable expenses, and send professional invoices, Track and Invoice keeps things straightforward without the overhead of an accounting platform. It also handles items and goods alongside services, so everything goes on one invoice.
Who should stick with Wave
If you need full bookkeeping, reconciling bank accounts, tracking all business income and expenses for tax purposes, working with a bookkeeper who needs access to a general ledger, Wave handles that well and the free price point is hard to argue with for the level of accounting functionality it provides.
Why Track and Invoice is different
Wave is accounting software that happens to include invoicing. The whole system is built around a general ledger. Invoices, payments, and expenses all flow into the accounting layer. That's useful if you need it, but it also means navigating an accounting interface to do what is essentially a billing task.
Track and Invoice works the other direction: it's a billing tool, not an accounting platform. You track your time, manage your clients and projects, log expenses to bill back, and send invoices. There's no chart of accounts, no bank reconciliation. Just the billing workflow. For a lot of small service businesses, that's actually all they need, especially when the accountant already has their own system.
Built for the way you work
Running a small business means you feel every dollar, every subscription, every "upgrade to unlock this" moment, every tool that costs more than it should for what it actually does. We felt all of it. Before building Track and Invoice, we were evaluating the same software you're looking at right now, and kept running into the same problem: either the price was hard to justify, or the product was too generic to actually fit the way we worked.
So we built our own. Not to disrupt anything, just to have something functional, honest, and priced like it was made for people who watch what they spend. It turned out other small business owners, freelancers, and solopreneurs were looking for the same thing, so we made it available to them too.
Track and Invoice is straightforward by design. It does time tracking, expense tracking, and invoicing well, without burying those features behind a learning curve or a paywall. If that's what you need, we think you'll feel right at home.
Free Starter plan. Built for service businesses.
No credit card required.