If you are searching for a Wave alternative because you want better free invoicing, Sengi is not what you need. If you are searching because Wave shows your revenue but you still do not know whether your projects are profitable per hour, Sengi answers that question. They serve different purposes.
Wave is free accounting and invoicing software. It sends invoices, tracks income and expenses, and generates financial reports. It makes money from payment processing fees and payroll services, not from subscriptions. Sengi does not replace Wave for accounting or free invoicing.
Sengi is a profitability tracking tool. It calculates your effective hourly rate per project in real time, alerts you when budgets are burning too fast, and reveals which clients are worth your time. Wave cannot do this, and its business model means it never will.
Why Wave cannot show your effective hourly rate
Wave's architecture is identical to any other accounting tool: it organizes money by category (income, expenses), not by project effort. A $3,000 invoice for a project that took 20 hours and a $3,000 invoice for a project that took 60 hours appear identical in Wave. Both are $3,000 of income. Wave has no concept of hours worked, effort budgets, or effective hourly rate.
Unlike FreshBooks or QuickBooks, Wave does not even offer a time tracking feature. There is no hours field anywhere in the product. This makes the profitability gap even wider: you cannot even manually log hours alongside your invoices in Wave.
Wave's business model explains why. Wave is free because it monetizes payment processing (2.9% + $0.60 per transaction) and payroll. Its incentive is to process more transactions, not to help you understand whether the projects generating those transactions were profitable. Showing you that a client is costing you $50/hr effective might cause you to drop that client, which would reduce Wave's payment processing revenue. The incentive structure points directly away from building profitability features.
For a deeper look at why accounting software as a category cannot track freelance profitability, see Why Accounting Software Cannot Track Freelance Project Profitability.
| What you need to know | Wave | Sengi |
|---|---|---|
| Send invoices | Yes (free) | Yes |
| Track income and expenses | Yes | No (not its purpose) |
| Effective hourly rate per project | No | Yes (real-time) |
| Time / effort tracking | No | Yes |
| Project budget alerts | No | Yes (at 80% and 100%) |
| Scope creep detection | No | Yes |
| Payment processing | Yes (2.9% + $0.60 fee) | Yes (via Stripe) |
| Financial reports | Yes | No (not its purpose) |
| Payroll | Yes (paid add-on) | No |
| Price | Free (monetizes payments) | $29/month |
The question behind “Wave alternative”
Freelancers searching for Wave alternatives usually have one of these frustrations:
“I need more features than Wave offers.” If you want more robust accounting, FreshBooks, QuickBooks, or Xero are the next step up. Sengi is not more powerful accounting software.
“Wave is free and I use it, but I still do not understand my profitability.” This is the gap Sengi fills. Wave is free, but the cost of not knowing your effective hourly rate can be thousands of dollars per year in underpriced projects. The invoice-earnings gap exists whether your invoicing tool costs $0 or $50/month.
“Wave's payment processing fees are too high.” If this is your concern, Sengi uses Stripe (2.9% + $0.30 for standard processing) and focuses on profitability tracking rather than being a free invoicing platform.
What Wave is genuinely good at
Wave is remarkable for what it offers at no subscription cost:
- Professional invoicing with online payment acceptance
- Income and expense tracking
- Bank connections and transaction importing
- Financial statements (profit and loss, balance sheet)
- Receipt scanning
- Unlimited invoices and unlimited bank connections
For a freelancer whose needs are purely accounting (send invoices, track money in and out, prepare for taxes), Wave is hard to beat on value. The limitation is not what Wave charges. It is what Wave measures, which is money, not effort.
Why “free” invoicing still has a hidden cost
Wave is free to use. But using it without knowing your effective hourly rate has a cost. If your average project creeps by 30% in hours and you do 15 projects per year, you are working the equivalent of 4 to 5 extra projects for free. At a target rate of $125/hr and 35 hours per project, that is over $18,000 in annual income that exists on your Wave invoices but was never earned at your target rate.
Wave shows the invoices. It cannot show the gap. Sengi costs $29/month ($348/year) and makes the gap visible. The math is straightforward: if knowing your effective hourly rate helps you recover even $1,000 in underpriced work per year, the subscription pays for itself nearly three times over.
Sengi vs Wave: FAQ
Is Sengi a replacement for Wave?
Sengi replaces Wave's invoicing function for freelancers who want simpler invoicing with built-in profitability tracking. It does not replace Wave's accounting features (expense categorization, bank reconciliation, financial reports). If you need full accounting, you can use Wave for books and Sengi for profitability, or evaluate whether Sengi's invoicing alone meets your needs.
Why would I pay for Sengi when Wave is free?
Wave is free because it monetizes payment processing, not because invoicing has no value. Sengi costs $29/month because it provides something Wave does not: your effective hourly rate per project, calculated in real time, with budget alerts and scope creep detection. If this insight helps you reprice one underperforming project per quarter, it pays for the subscription many times over.
Can Wave track project profitability?
No. Wave does not have time tracking, effort logging, or any mechanism to connect invoice amounts to hours worked. It cannot calculate your effective hourly rate because it only sees one side of the equation (the fee) and has no concept of the other side (the hours).
Does Sengi offer free invoicing like Wave?
Sengi has a 14-day free trial that includes invoicing. After the trial, invoicing is included in both the Starter ($29/month) and Pro ($49/month) plans. Sengi's invoicing is not free indefinitely like Wave's, but it includes profitability tracking that Wave does not offer at any price.
What is the real cost of using free invoicing without profitability tracking?
The cost is invisible until you calculate it. If scope creep adds an average of 10 untracked hours per project at a $125/hr target rate across 15 projects per year, that is $18,750 in annual income that your invoices show as revenue but your effective hourly rate reveals was earned at well below your target. For more on this hidden cost, see The Invoice-Earnings Gap.
Should I switch from Wave to Sengi?
If your primary need is accounting (tax prep, financial statements, bank reconciliation), keep Wave. If your primary frustration is not knowing whether your projects are profitable, add Sengi alongside Wave or evaluate whether Sengi's built-in invoicing is sufficient to replace Wave entirely. Many freelancers find that once they start tracking their effective hourly rate, the accounting detail becomes less urgent than the profitability insight.