Wave is free accounting and invoicing, and for a small studio that is a genuinely good deal: unlimited invoices and estimates, proper double-entry books, and a deposit you can request on an estimate once online payments are on. What it cannot do is hold an order across time. Books record what happened; an order in a workshop is a thing that has not happened yet — half paid, in production, promised for June — and that state has no home in a ledger.
Wave · checked 9 September 2026
We make Ordamo, so we are an interested party. What we can be is checkable: written by the people who built it for their own furniture studio in Buenos Aires, every price taken from the other side’s own page with the date we read it, and their wins listed above ours.
| Wave | Ordamo | |
|---|---|---|
| Built around | The books: invoices, expenses, the P&L | The order between the deposit and the delivery |
| The record before any money moves | An estimate, then an invoice | An order, with what is agreed, promised and still owed |
| Deposit and balance | A deposit requested on an estimate; partial payments recorded | Both, with dates, on the order — nothing is issued |
| What is owed across everything open | Per invoice, in the ledger | One screen, sorted by unpaid and overdue |
| What a production run cost per piece | An expense in the books, against no piece in particular | A received batch writes what the run really cost onto its products |
| Margin per order | No — a P&L for the business | Per order, after the real cost lands |
| Where the piece has got to | Not part of it | A status and a readiness date on the order |
| A page the customer can open | An invoice to pay | One link per order: what is paid, what is owed, when it will be ready |
| Accounting and tax | Yes — it is the product | No |
| Price | Free, then $19/mo or $190 a year | $29/mo, one plan |
Built for orders that take weeks to deliver, start in a message and get paid in parts.
Add a customer and their order
Deposit taken, balance still owed, and the date you promised.
Send your customer their order page
One link that updates itself, instead of twenty messages.
Record what the batch cost
What a run really cost, over the pieces it produced. One button puts that on the products it made.
See what you actually made
Revenue, cost and margin per order. Money in, money out, cash on hand.
Accounting is correct precisely because it only records what has happened: money in, money out, a deposit sitting as a liability until the piece is delivered. That correctness is why it cannot help you on a Tuesday in April, when the question is which of nine open commissions are still owed money and which are due to be ready before the end of the month.
Wave will take a deposit on an estimate and record what came in against the invoice, and that is more than most free tools do. What it will not do is treat the order as a thing with a state — agreed, in production, ready, delivered — because a ledger has no such column, and so that state lives in your head and in a chat thread instead.
The workshop's invoice for a run of six lands in your accounts as one expense in one month. Nothing divides it across the six pieces, and nothing tells you which orders those pieces belong to, which is exactly why margin per order is a number a spreadsheet ends up carrying. Here a received batch does that division and writes the result onto the products.
If your problem is invoices and books, take the free tool and do not pay us anything. This comparison only matters when the thing you cannot keep track of is the order — and then you keep Wave for the books and let something else hold the commissions.
$0, then $19/mo
The Starter plan is free with unlimited invoices, estimates and accounting. Pro is $19 a month or $190 a year and adds bank import, receipt capture and automatic reminders. A deposit can be requested on an estimate when online payments are switched on, and partial payments are recorded against the invoice.
$29/mo
One plan, per business, everything included. $0 today, first charge after 7 days, cancel in one click. 14-day money-back on the first month. Nothing is metered.
What is in the planWe are not the only answer, and pretending otherwise wastes your afternoon.
Free invoicing with a deposit field and a client portal, up to five clients. Then $14 a month.
HoneyBookProposals, contracts and invoices with deposits, for a service business. $29 a month billed yearly, plus card fees from 2.7% + 10¢.
Zoho InventoryStock, invoices and retainers in one suite, at the same $29 a month. Free to 50 orders a month.
The whole categorySix families of tool, what each one answers, and the three questions that pick between them.
It can request a deposit on an estimate once online payments are enabled, and it records partial payments against the invoice, so the money side is covered. What it does not carry is the order itself — a piece agreed in March, in production in April, promised for June — so the status, the readiness date and the production cost live outside the books.
The Starter plan is free with unlimited invoices, estimates and accounting; Pro is $19 a month or $190 a year and adds bank import, receipt capture and automatic reminders. Ordamo is $29 a month and is not accounting software. Confirm the current position on waveapps.com before deciding on the strength of a number here.
No, and it should not be sold as one. There is no ledger here, no reconciliation and no tax filing, so whatever else you do you keep an accounting tool. Ordamo replaces the spreadsheet beside it: open orders, their deposits, their delivery dates and what each one earned.
Only when the order is the problem. If your commissions fit comfortably in the invoices you have issued, do not pay us anything. The moment you are reconciling a list of deposits against a folder of invoices to find out what you are owed, that reconciliation is the job this does.
Run both — it is the normal answer. The customer's name and the agreed total exist in each; everything else does not overlap, because one holds the books and the other holds the order, the batch cost and the margin. Ordamo exports what an order earned in a form your accountant can take.
Wave and FreshBooks compete on the same ground — invoices and books, one free and one paid — and either can hold a deposit. Neither holds an order in production or a page the customer can open. If the deciding question is bookkeeping, compare those two; if it is the commission itself, that is a different category.
No. It records what was agreed, what has been paid and what is still owed, and exports that for whoever does your books. If you need a tax document out of the same tool, keep the invoicing tool and let this hold the order.
You do not, entirely: keep Wave for the books. Export customers and open invoices as CSV, import the file as it comes, turn each part payment into a deposit with the date the balance is due, and add the batches currently in production.
The free Starter plan, the $19-a-month or $190-a-year Pro plan and what Pro adds read from waveapps.com/pricing on 9 September 2026; the deposit request on an estimate with online payments enabled, and the recording of partial payments, from Wave's own material the same day. Software pricing moves; confirm with the vendor before deciding on the strength of a figure here.
$0 today · first charge after 7 days · cancel in one click
Built for orders that take weeks to deliver