While the original Wave developers have been focused on making a faster, better accounting application, we brought on an additional team, lead by Sean Walberg, to work on a payroll solution for small businesses. And today, we’re all proud parents, happily announcing the newest member of the Wave family.

Wave Payroll is a ridiculously easy, feature-rich payroll application for small businesses. And if you’re already a Wave Accounting customer, you’ll definitely see the family resemblance:

• we took something hard and made it easy
• we took something expensive and made it affordable
• we took business tools used by big companies, and re-built them for small businesses like yours

In small business accounting, your enemies are shoeboxes of receipts, spreadsheets and clunky software. That’s where your pain comes from, so that’s where Wave Accounting comes to the rescue.

When it comes to payroll, the enemies are payroll calculators, government forms, check-writing and stress-inducing, time-sucking calculations and remittances. So now that’s where Wave Payroll comes to the rescue. Focused on small businesses with 9 employees or less, we’ve built an awesome payroll tool that you can use without being a payroll expert — a tool that lets you pay your employees with confidence.

Wave Payroll is only for Canadian businesses at the moment. Expect the U.S. version to launch later this year (you can visit WavePayroll.com now and add your name to the advance list).

Huge features, tiny flat-rate pricing

Wave Payroll costs a simple $3 per employee per payroll (and even less as your company grows). Simple as that. No setup charges, no hidden costs. And what you get is a pretty awesome list of features:

• direct deposit
• all your calculations done easily and correctly
• withholdings and remittances to the government done automatically
• tax forms and ROEs issued automatically (for the 2012 tax year)
• electronic employee pay stubs
• easy integration with Wave Accounting

…and a lot more.

The Wave team — accounting and payroll — is committed to helping you run your business. We want to make back-office tasks easy, so you can focus on what you do best. We’ll keep on working on Wave Accounting and Wave Payroll, making them better, adding features, and making your life easier. I encourage you to check out Wave Payroll and let me know what you think!

We’ve also made it our mission to save you even more money by acting like your very own purchasing department. We track down great deals on products or services just for small businesses, and we make them available to you. You get a chance to save money, we get paid by the supplier, and Wave stays free! High fives all around.

And we’re talking about high-quality offers, too, often from big brands like American Express, Dell, Micrsoft and Capital One (offers vary depending on where you live). You’ll never see a flashing “Lose 5 Pounds in 5 Days” ad in Wave. Ever. For starters, we like you just as you are, but more importantly, we’d never waste your time like that. We’ll make sure the deals are for things that can help your business succeed, and put more money back in your pocket. We’ll also make sure our deals never get in the way of you doing your accounting.

Starting this week, you may see some additional deals advertised in Wave. The “Your Week in Numbers” email you probably get from us each Monday will now contain a special deal each week. You can also opt in to receive the brand new Wave Deals email, which will feature extra-special and exclusive offers, no more than a couple of times per month. (Not sure if you’ve opted in already? You can control your email preferences on your Account page.) And as always, there are dozens of deals on your Business Savings page, with new ones added every week.

I’ll also add that Wave never shares any information about individual customers with our advertisers. We might tell an advertiser, “We have 4,500 customers in the Portland area,” but we make sure that nothing personally identifiable ever leaves our hands. Your identity is never revealed. Your email address is never shared. Your individual spending and earning are never divulged.

We think this all makes for a great business model: Wave makes money while our customers save money. I hope you agree!

Thanks for supporting Wave as we grow. Thanks for taking time to give us your feedback, so we can continue to make Wave the best tool possible for small business owners. Thanks for making us a part of how you run your business. Thanks for recommending us to your friends and colleagues. And thanks for giving us a chance to prove to you that small business accounting doesn’t have to be difficult.

It’s been a busy year here at Wave. Our favorite parts were milestones like our first birthday in November (which we hit with more than 100,000 small businesses signed up in over 200 countries) and receiving Deloitte’s Companies-to-Watch award. We’re also proud of the features and improvements we rolled out in 2011, including recent updates that make Wave faster than ever.

We’re less pleased about growing pains, such as times when our site was slow, or when you experienced problems with bank connections or other bugs. Thanks for your patience on those occasions, and please know that we care immensely about these performance issues. Our goal is to keep getting better in everything we do, and we hope we’ll score more goals, with fewer penalty minutes, in 2012 and onwards.

On behalf of the entire Wave team, I’d like to wish you a prosperous 2012. We look forward to working with you, and continuing to find ways to make your small business accounting even easier.

—Kirk Simpson, co-founder and CEO of Wave Accounting

That being said, we know that small business never sleeps, so we’ll still be available. You may experience longer-than-usual response times from support between December 24 and January 3, and then we’ll be back in full-swing, ready to implement more of the fun new features we have planned for the new year.

From the entire Wave team, however you’ll be celebrating the holidays this year, enjoy! We’re looking forward to working with you next year, and continuing to find ways to make your small business accounting even easier.

Each Top 20 CEO described their company to the audience, who were actively buying and trading virtual stocks in real time as the presentations occurred. To add to the excitement, the stock prices were streamed in real time on televisions throughout the room, as well as on the CIX website. Well, the audience spoke, and finishing the evening off with a virtual stock price of 21.96, Wave was named People’s Choice in Information Communication Technology.

As everyone streamed into the office this morning, a few of our developers took it upon themselves to stream “We are the Champions” by Queen on one of our televisions to kick off the celebrations. I wanted to take a moment to congratulate to all of the CIX Top 20, who each put on excellent presentations, and thank all of the audience members for your support!

For more information, see our press release.

Wave's very first logo!

I’ve always been big on commemorating important events. Birthdays, anniversaries, I’m a fan of them all.  Whenever it’s an employee’s birthday at Wave, we celebrate. These milestones are important to me, and worth drawing a little attention to.  So it seems only fitting that I take a moment to recognize today’s important milestone, Wave’s first anniversary.

It’s incredible to see how far we’ve come, from the excitement when we hit our first 1,000 signups, to now, when we’re getting thousands of signups every week. In only one year, we’ve had 100,000 small businesses sign up with Wave, and we’re showing no signs of slowing down.

I have to say, James and I are honored that you’ve chosen to bring us into your businesses.  We understand the level of trust involved in letting anyone (or anything) into your small business.  Your business is a very real part of who you are, and each and every tool you use reflects that.  It’s no small feat to be embraced as someone’s business tool of choice, and I assure you, it’s an honor we certainly don’t take lightly.

Team building day at Wave

Wave has come so far, and James and I can’t, nor would we want to, take all of the credit.  We made a point when Wave first launched to surround ourselves with incredible people. The Wave team works hard, but to leave it at that would be a gross understatement.  Every time we walk into the office, we’re surrounded by passion, energy, enthusiasm, and innovation. We’re a growing group of talented people (up to 24 from our original 10), and the team never fails to impress us, always finding new ways to think outside the box, outdo themselves, and raise the bar every single day.

With this remarkable group of people, and all of the amazing customers who have already embraced Wave, I know that this is just the beginning. We have all sorts of incredible features and improvements coming up, and Wave is just going to keep improving. You’ve chosen to make Wave a little part of how you run your business, and we promise we’ll work hard to make this one of the best decisions you’ve made.

So, to our loyal customers, the amazing Wave team, and my rock-solid co-founder James, thank you for a great first year. And now, it’s time to celebrate with a little cake!

Co-founders Kirk Simpson & James Lochrie

]]> http://waveaccounting.com/wave-turns-one/feed/ 1 http://waveaccounting.com/wave-accounting-named-in-cix%e2%80%99s-top-20/ http://waveaccounting.com/wave-accounting-named-in-cix%e2%80%99s-top-20/#comments Thu, 10 Nov 2011 20:00:30 +0000 Kirk Simpson http://waveaccounting.com/?p=5738 Earlier today Wave was named one of Canada’s most innovative companies by CIX (Canadian Innovation Exchange), and we couldn’t be more excited.  Each year, CIX highlights the 20 hottest, innovative companies working in Digital Media and Information and Communication Technology, and after the great year we’ve had we’ve been named to the list for 2011. (See our press release.)

Along with CEOs from the other Top 20 companies, I’ll be speaking at the showcase on December 1st at the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto. Each company in the Top 20 will present, and then the audience uses virtual currency to buy and sell virtual shares in the 20 participants. The company with the highest valuation at the end of the day wins the People’s Choice award. It should be a fun day.

It’s great being a part of an event, and a business community, that values innovation. Every day I have the pleasure of meeting new innovators of various descriptions, from the companies using Wave to high-octane tech ventures that are shaking up the business world. There’s cool stuff going on all around, so to be honored by CIX as one of the country’s most innovative companies of the year really means a lot to all of us here at Wave.

Companies-to-Watch winners are widely viewed as potential global leaders in technology industries.  To win this award, young companies need to illustrate that they have the incredible management team and forward-thinking technology to manage fast growth — and to make sure that growth happens.  These companies often go on to score high rankings in the Fast 50™ awards (Deloitte’s largest award category) once they have been operating for the required five years.

Being recognized as a leader in innovative technology is a huge honor.  We’ve made it our focus here at Wave to break new ground and put small business owners first, and it looks like people are starting to take note in a really meaningful way.

I want take a moment and say a big thank-you to all of our incredible customers, everyone who has cheered us on and supported us so far, and to Deloitte, for recognizing Wave.

You small business owners are the reason we keep raising the bar, and we promise not to stop any time soon.

For full details, download Deloitte’s press release or Wave’s press release (PDF).

So I wanted to take this opportunity to say: Keep up the good work!

Launched by the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), Small Business Week celebrates the underdog, the Mom-and-Pop operation, the Work at Home-er, as well as the first, third, or sixth-time entrepreneur.

There are lots of local events throughout Canada happening this week, where small business owners can get together, celebrate their successes, network, and discuss the challenges they’ve faced.  I know you’re busy, but I’d suggest taking the time if you can to check some of them out.

If you find yourself in Toronto, Wave will be at the Small Business Forum at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre on Tuesday (free admission), and at the Financial Technology Show on Thursday. We’d love to meet you!

For our Non-Canadian users, I’d hate for you to miss out on all the fun. So take a minute out of your very hectic day and pat yourself on the back.  Because your business may be small, but your accomplishment certainly isn’t.

Here in the office, we’re all pretty ecstatic about what this means for Wave (and in extension for your small business). In the immediate future, this funding will be used to help support an even faster rate of ongoing application development and improvement.  It also means the launch of a highly anticipated and very exciting new complementary application later this year (stay tuned to find out the specifics, this app is worth the wait).

CRV and OMERS will provide more than just capital,  they’ll provide valuable expertise and insights as Wave continues to grow.  Charles River Ventures is dedicated to helping exceptional entrepreneurs turn their ideas into category leaders in high-growth technology and media ventures, and for the past ten years their funds have been ranked among the industries top performers.  OMERS Ventures is the new $180 million venture capital arm of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS) pension fund, and it focuses on early-stage companies with the intention of remaining on with successful companies as a life-cycle investor.

Speaking of growth, we’re already moving quickly down that path, with almost 75,000 small business signups in over 198 countries, all in under one year (by the way, I’d like to extend a warm welcome to our newest country, Greenland).  Now, with the strength of CRV and OMERS Ventures behind us, we’re more confident than ever that Wave’s constant growth, development,  and innovation won’t be slowing down any time soon.

For full details, download the press release.