Migrate From Wave to Zoho Books

Note: This migration document is for the existing Wave customers who are outside the US and Canada and want to migrate to Zoho Books.

Zoho Books is an easy-to-use accounting app that will help you manage your everyday business finance needs efficiently.

In this guide, we want to help you migrate from Wave to Zoho Books without a hitch. Depending on your business needs, there are two ways in which you can migrate to Zoho Books:

Method 1: Follow this method if you don’t want to have old transactions in Zoho Books.

  1. Set up Zoho Books
  2. Export and import customers, vendors, and products
  3. Start using Zoho Books

Method 2: Follow this method if you want to migrate most of your data from Wave to Zoho Books.

  1. Set up Zoho Books
  2. Export and import customers, vendors, products, services, bills, invoices, and receipts
  3. Start using Zoho Books

Set up Zoho Books

Sign up for Zoho Books

If you’re a Wave customer from outside the US and Canada, Wave would have redirected to a Zoho Books landing page from where you can sign up for Zoho Books.

Before you can start migrating your data to your Zoho Books organization, it’s useful to familiarize yourself with the differences in terms used in Wave and Zoho Books.

Understanding the terms in Zoho Books

While most of the terms used in Wave and Zoho Books are the same, there are a few terms in Zoho Books that are different from Wave and they are listed below for your reference.

Terms Used in Wave Terms Used in Zoho Books
Business

Context: Wave refers to your account as a business and you can create multiple businesses in Wave to manage different businesses.
Organization

Context: Zoho Books refers to your Zoho Books account as an organization and you can create multiple organizations to manage different businesses.
Products & Services

Context: In Wave, Products & Services are used in the sidebar under Sales and Purchases tabs where you can create the products and services you sell and buy.
Items

Context: In Zoho Books, Items is used instead of Products & Services and it is available in the sidebar as a module. You can create the products and services you sell or buy in this module.
Price

Context: In Wave, Price is used when you are creating a product or service to denote the selling price and the purchase price.
Selling Price and Cost Price

Context: When you create an item in Zoho Books, you can enter different prices for selling the item and purchasing the item.
Notes / Terms

Context: When you create an invoice in Wave, you will find Notes / Terms at the bottom to enter any note or terms for your customer.
Customer Notes and Terms & Conditions

Context: Similarly, when you create an invoice in Zoho Books, you will find two separate text boxes for Customer Notes and Terms & Conditions to enter any note or terms to be displayed to customers.
Receipts

Context: Receipts module is available under the Purchases module in Wave where you can upload your expense receipts and create transactions.
Expenses

Context: Similarly, Expenses is available under the Purchases tab in Zoho Books using which you can create expenses and attach receipts to them.
Income by Customer

Context: In Wave, you will find this report under the Reports module and it gives you the details about all the income you’ve received from your customers.
Receivable Summary & Receivable Details

Context: In Zoho Books, there are two reports equivalent to the Income by Customer report. Receivable Summary report gives you a summary of all the amounts you have received or yet to receive from your customer while Receivable Details report gives you a detailed view into the transactions.
Aged Receivables

Context: This report gives you details about all the unpaid and overdue invoices for the last 30, 60, and 90+ days.
Aging Summary

Context: In Zoho Books, you will find a similar report in the Reports module under Receivables that will give you details of unpaid and overdue invoices for the last 15, 30, 45, and 45+ days.
Purchases by Vendor

Context: In Wave, you will find this report in the Reports module and it gives you the details about all the business purchases you’ve made from your vendors.
Payable Summary & Payable Details

Context: In Zoho Books, Payable Summary and Payable Details are equivalent to the Purchases by Vendor report. Payable Summary report gives you a summary of all the amounts you have paid or yet to pay your vendor while Payable Details report gives you a detailed view into all the purchase transactions.
Aged Payables

Context: This report gives you details about all the unpaid and overdue bills for the last 30, 60, and 90+ days.
Aging Summary

Context: In Zoho Books, you will find a similar report in the Reports module under Payables that will give you details of unpaid and overdue bills for the last 15, 30, 45, and 45+ days.

The basic navigation of Wave and Zoho Books are similar, and if you’re used to the navigation in Wave, you will find it easy to navigate in Zoho Books. However, there are a few differences between Wave and Zoho Books.

Products & Services
In Wave, this module is present under the Sales and Purchases tab in the sidebar. However in Zoho Books, Products and Services are referred to as Items and they are available as a separate tab in the sidebar.

Customer Statements
In Wave, this is a module that is available under the Sales tab in the left sidebar. In Zoho Books, you will be able to generate a customer statement for a customer by going to the Customers module, selecting the customer and generating a customer statement.

Reconciliation
This is a module that is present in the left sidebar under the Accounting tab. In Zoho Books, you can perform the reconciliation process for bank and credit card accounts from within the Banking module in the left sidebar.

Items and Banking Sidebar

Settings & Integrations
In Wave, these are present in the left sidebar below the modules. In Zoho Books, Integrations are a part of Settings and you can access Settings by clicking the Gear icon at the top right corner of the window.

Settings Migration Sidebar

Quick Create Option
The option to quick-create transactions, contacts, and items are present in Wave’s Dashboard. In Zoho Books, the option to quick-create transactions, contacts, and items are present in the top bar. It can be accessed from any screen of Zoho Books enabling you to create transactions faster.

Quick Create Option

Switching to a different business account
If you have multiple business accounts in Wave, you would have clicked your business name at the top left corner to access your other business accounts. In Zoho Books, we refer to business accounts as organizations. If you create multiple organizations in Zoho Books, you can access them by clicking your organization name at the top right corner of the window and selecting another organization.

Switch to another business account

Search
In Wave, you would have had the option to filter and find transactions limited to each module. However, in Zoho Books, you will find the option to search your records on the top bar in any page. Also, you can perform advanced search and find specific records that you are looking for.

Search Zoho Books

Help and Support
In Wave, you will be able to reach support by clicking the chat bubble at the bottom right corner of the window. Similarly, in Zoho Books, you can click the Contact Support button at the bottom right corner to reach support. Also, you can click the Help icon at the top right corner to find useful help resources in carious formats instantly. Also, each module provides you with Page Tips to help you contextually.

Help & Support

Now that you’ve become familiar with navigating Zoho Books, let’s get started with setting up Zoho Books for your business.


Set up your Organization Preferences

Setting up the organization ensures that the correct information about your business or company is used in all the transactions and records.

To set up your organization:

Org-profile-preference Configure org profile

Learn more about setting up your organization profile.

Configure Taxes

Next, you will have to configure taxes and the applicable tax rates. This allows you to apply the associate taxes or tax treatments to items, contacts, and transactions.

To configure taxes:

Configure Taxes in Zoho Books

Also, you can create new tax groups, configure how the taxes are tracked in Zoho Books under Tax Settings, and track tax on sale of digital services if you’re selling to overseas EU member state customers.

Configure Currencies

Based on the country you have selected during the sign up, that country’s currency will be assigned as the base currency and a set of foreign currencies are pre-populated in Zoho Books. If you sell to overseas customers in foreign currencies, you can add new currencies to assign them to a customer and use them in transactions. Also, Zoho Books allows you to enable automatic fetching of exchange rate feeds.

Prerequisite: You can change your base currency only if you are using the Zoho Books – Global edition and you have not created any transactions.

To configure currencies:

Configure Currencies

Learn how you can enable the automatic fetching of exchange rate feeds and perform other actions.

Customize Templates

Zoho Books offers you various templates for all the transactions you record in Zoho Books such as estimates, invoices, payment receipts, bills, vendor payments, journals and more.

You can customize the templates according to your business needs. To customize a template:

Customize Templates

Similarly, you can customize templates of other modules and set them as default templates.

Customize Email Notifications

Zoho Books allows you to customize the email notifications that you will send to your customers when you email and invoice or other transactions. so that you can include all the details you want to include. Also, you can insert placeholders to display specific field values to your customers.

To customize an invoice email notification:

Customize Email Notification

Similarly, you can create, edit, and set default email templates for other modules.

Configure Users and Roles

In Wave, you would have added new users using the available default roles of Admin, Editor, Payroll Manager, and Viewer.

Will you be the sole user of Zoho Books?
Skip this section and go to the Add bank or credit card account section as you will be the admin of your Zoho Books organization and will have complete access to everything.

However, in Zoho Books, apart from the default roles, you can create customized roles for your users which allows you to have greater control over which module is accessible to whom. Before you go ahead and invite a user, try creating a customized user role. To create a role:

Create New Role

Next, when you invite a new user to Zoho Books, you will be able to select this role.

To invite new users to Zoho Books:

Invite Users

Note: Refer the plan you’re subscribed to, to know the number of users you can add to Zoho Books.

Add bank or credit card accounts

Wave provided you with an option to import bank statements so that you can add transactions to an account. Also, the option to reconcile transactions in Wave with the bank statements manually. However, in Zoho Books, you can directly add your bank or credit card accounts and set up automatic fetching of bank feeds for categorization and reconciliation.

Note: When you import the Chart of Accounts, your bank or credit card accounts will be auto-populated in the Banking module. However, you can choose to add bank accounts manually.

To add a bank account to Zoho Books:

Add bank account

If you’ve added your bank account from the list of bank accounts, the bank feeds will be fetched into Zoho Books automatically. If you added the account manually, you will have to import the bank statements manually. We suggest that you import bank statements into Zoho Books after completing the migration process.

Learn how you can manage your bank accounts and credit cards in Zoho Books from our help documents.

Set up integrations

In Wave, you may have integrated with BlueCamroo. If you did, you may want to switch to a CRM software that works with Zoho Books. Zoho CRM works seamlessly with Zoho Books and enables you to manage your leads and deals efficiently.

Check out the free plan of Zoho CRM and learn how you can migrate from BlueCamroo to Zoho CRM.

If you had set up zaps using Zapier in Wave, you can integrate your Zoho Books organization with Zapier and set up the same zaps in Zoho Books as well.

Apart from these integrations, Zoho Books offers you many more integrations with other apps that will ensure that your data is not stuck in silos.


Export data and import it into Zoho Books

Export Data from Wave

Exporting your data from Wave allows you to import them into Zoho Books and refer the records in future easily. However the data export options in Wave are limited.

You can follow the following two methods to export your data from Wave:

Wave’s Data Export Option

Using this bulk data export option, you will be able to export all your transactions, bills, customers, and vendors as a ZIP file in CSV or Excel format. Also, you will be able to export all the receipts you had uploaded as a ZIP file.

To download these files:

Export Data from Wave

Now, go to your email inbox and use the download link to download the ZIP files to your device. Unzip them to view all the files.

Pro Tip: Make sure you download the ZIP files using the download link you receive from Wave, as the link will be active only for 24 hours.

Export Data Using Wave Connect Add-on

It is likely that you may be using the Wave Connect add-on provided by Wave to download and upload data. Using this add-on you can export the products & services and invoices from Wave.

If you have not configured the Wave Connect Add-on before, you can set it up easily. Else, go to the next section: downloading data from Google Sheets.

To set it up:

Wave Google Sheets Integration Page Allow access to Google Account

Wave Connect add-on will be installed in Google Sheets.

Next, you can enable the Wave Connect add-on in Google Sheets and download Wave’s data.

To enable the add-on:

Wave Connect Enable Wave Connect Account Wave Allow Access

Immediately, your Wave account and that Google Sheet will be connected.

Download data from Google Sheets

Download Customers Popup Download Exported Data

Download Trial Balance Report

To download the Trial Balance report:

Download Trial Balance Report Menu Trial Balance popup Download Exported Data

Now, you can use these CSV files to import your data into Zoho Books.

Import Data into Zoho Books

Zoho Books has built a Migration Wizard to help you upload your CSV files and import your data into Zoho Books easily.

To migrate data using the migration wizard:

Migration Wizard Export Data Import Files

Note: If you want to import the paid invoices and the payments made for invoices, you will have to import them manually.

Import Transactions

Note: Opening Balances in Zoho Books is the amount you have in the different accounts of your business at the start of an accounting period, or when switching to a new accounting system. When switching from Wave you need to ensure that all your accounts and their balances are brought into Zoho Books.

If you’re switching to Zoho Books at the end of your financial year, the closing balances of the previous year should be entered as your opening balances for the current year in Zoho Books.

If you’re switching to Zoho Books during any other time of the financial year, you can generate a Trial Balance report on the date of migration to identify all the debit and credit balances of your accounts.

Import Opening Balances

Now, your data from Wave will be available in Zoho Books.


Want to import the bills and receipts?

Import your bills, and receipts into Zoho Books and ensure that the status of the bills is accurate for it to reflect properly in your Trial Balance report.

Import Bills

You would have downloaded the import file for bills using the Data Export option in Wave. You can import them into Zoho Books easily.

To import bills:

Import Bills Option

Pro Tip: You can download the sample import file to know the format of the import file, i.e. the columns and data to be included in the import file.

Insight: Make sure that the file size is not more than 1 MB.

Import Bills Choosing File Import Bills Page 2

Similarly, to import outstanding invoices:

Note: You can import only the paid invoices by removing all the rows that have the Status column as unpaid.

Also, if you want to set up an approval process for invoices, you can set it up easily from Settings in Zoho Books. Learn How >

Next, follow the same steps that you followed to import bills in Zoho Books. Learn more about managing invoices in Zoho Books from our help documents.

Import Receipts

The receipts you had in Wave can be uploaded to Zoho Books where it can be stored securely to create expenses or for any future reference. The receipts will be imported into the Documents module on the left sidebar.

Prerequisite: Before you can import the receipts, you have to enable the Documents module in Zoho Books.

Next, you can upload the receipts to Zoho Books. To upload:

The receipts will be uploaded into Zoho Books which can be auto-scanned if you have purchased the Auto-scan add-on. Also, in your everyday use, you can upload your receipts and documents in Zoho Books by emailing them or uploading from a cloud service.

Handling non-exported data

Estimates, receipt transactions, and recurring invoices cannot be exported from Wave to import them into Zoho Books. Although Wave allows you to export all transactions, at the moment it is not possible to import them directly into Zoho Books as all the transactions are listed together. You will have to modify the sheet manually into a suitable format before you can import it.

If you want a record of these transactions in Zoho Books, the best option is to create estimates, receipt transactions, and recurring invoices manually in Zoho Books.

Sync Transactions

After you have imported all the required transactions, it is important that you check if they’ve been properly synced with the Opening Balances. This will ensure that you get accurate account values in the Trial Balance report.

If you had imported transactions that are dated on or before the migration date, then you need to sync them manually with the Opening Balances in Zoho Books. To sync opening balances:

Wave Sync Transactions

Compare Trial Balance report from Wave and Zoho Books

Finally, you will have to make sure that all the records that you’ve imported into Zoho Books are posted into the correct account and the account balance matches between Wave and Zoho Books.

So, generate the Trial Balance report in Wave and generate the Trial balance report in Zoho Books and compare the values to check if they are the same. If there is any mismatch, you will have to check the records created for those accounts and make sure they match.

With this final step, you’re all set to start using Zoho Books!


Set up Online Payments

Zoho Books allows you to receive payments online from your customers and enables you to collect payments faster. Set up a payment gateway to get started with collecting payments.

If you are using Zoho Books – Global edition, you can set up Stripe, our preferred payment gateway to start collecting payments from your customers.

To set up your integration, you will have to connect your Stripe account first and then configure the integration to start tracking payments.

Connect to your Stripe account

If you have a Stripe account, you can connect it with Zoho Books easily. To connect your Stripe account with Zoho Books:

Set up Stripe Connect Stripe Account

You will be redirected to the configuration page of your Zoho Books account to finish setting up the integration. Once it is set up, you will be able to start receiving payments from your customers.


Do you have recurring invoices in Wave where you were using the card information stored in Stripe to collect payments automatically?
You can import the card profiles easily into Zoho Books and set up recurring invoices in auto-pilot mode. Learn How >


Zoho Books Mobile Apps

You can manage your business finances from anywhere using the Zoho Books’ iOS and Android mobile apps. The mobile apps are packed with features, from adding customers to generating and viewing your reports.

Download Zoho Books from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store.


Do more with Zoho Books

Zoho Books offers a lot of useful features that will make it easier to manage your business finance. Explore >

Now that you have migrated to Zoho Books successfully, you can customize your organization further. You can set up payment gateways to accept online payments or integrate with other apps such as Zoho CRM and Zoho Analytics.

Zoho Books also has many features that you can utilize to streamline your accounting process, here’s some of them to get you started:


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