Accounting software is a record system, not just an invoice template. Your business type, sales tax, payroll, inventory, entities, bank feeds, and professional support change the fit.

• Choosing before asking the person who closes the books or files taxes.
• Features assumed from an old plan comparison.
• Historical records with no clean export.
• Payment, payroll, or bank-feed fees left out of total cost.

• Ask the bookkeeper or accountant which records and reports they require.
• List payroll, inventory, sales tax, projects, payments, and users.
• Compare current official plans and total fees.
• Test export, reconciliation, and year-end handoff before migrating.

Ask before you sign up or switch. Their answers usually settle it.

• Which one do you already work in? A system they don’t know can mean slower, costlier month-ends.
• Do you need your own login? In QuickBooks Online, only a primary admin or company admin can invite users. They go to Settings ⚙ > Manage users > Accountants or Accounting Firms > Invite firm. Intuit says an accountant invited this way doesn’t count toward your user limit. In Wave, inviting someone as an Admin, Editor, or Viewer takes Wave’s Pro Plan.
• Do you count stock? Wave says it does not track the unit value of inventory. You record inventory by its dollar value. You also update cost of goods sold, the account for what the sold items cost you, by hand with a journal entry, a bookkeeping adjustment. Wave says you can do that after each sale or in bulk at the end of a period. If you need item counts, check which QuickBooks plan includes inventory tracking, and ask your accountant how they would set it up.
• Who files? Software can calculate sales tax and payroll tax. Ask who actually files, pays, and answers the state when a notice arrives.

Running paychecks is the easy part. Ask which New York filings the payroll service pays and files for you.

Wave’s help is a good example. It lists these New York payroll taxes as ones Wave pays and files:

• New York State, New York City, and Yonkers withholding.
• State unemployment and the New York Reemployment Fund.
• The Metropolitan Commuter Transportation Mobility Tax (MCTMT).

Wave says it only calculates New York State Disability Insurance (SDI) and New York Family Leave Insurance (FLI). It does not pay or file those. Wave also says tax payments and filings are part of its full access payroll subscription.

Ask QuickBooks Payroll, or any payroll service, the same question in writing. Then confirm with your accountant who handles disability and paid family leave.

• Leaving QuickBooks Online: Intuit says that after you cancel, you have read-only access to your data for one year. A former paid subscriber can export to Excel up to a year after canceling. Intuit still recommends exporting or printing before you cancel. Do that.
• Leaving Wave: among invited users, Wave’s permissions table gives data export to Admins only. Editors, Payroll Managers, and Viewers can’t run it, so the export may be on you.
• Check who owns each account. In Wave, the owner is the person whose email was used to sign up, or the current primary email on the account. In QuickBooks, check who holds the primary admin role. It should be the business, not a past bookkeeper. See who should own the passwords.

If your accountant is happy, the bank feed works, and year-end goes smoothly, stay where you are. If you do move, let your accountant pick the cutover date so the old and new books meet cleanly.

We can connect the business process around the accounting system. Accounting and tax decisions belong with a qualified accountant or bookkeeper.

Get a plain-English second opinion

Product features and rules can change. Use the linked source as the current word.

• QuickBooks Online plans — Current official plan and feature source.
• Wave plans — Current official plan and feature source.
• Intuit QuickBooks Help: Invite accountant users — Who can invite an accountant, the menu path, and that accountant invites don’t use a user seat. Checked October 19, 2026.
• Intuit QuickBooks Help: What happens to my QuickBooks Online data after I cancel? — Read-only access and export window after canceling a paid subscription. Checked October 19, 2026.
• Wave Help Center: Understanding user types and permission levels for collaborators — Who counts as the account owner, which roles need the Pro Plan, and which roles can export data. Checked October 19, 2026.
• Wave Help Center: [US] Payroll tax payments and filings with Wave — Which federal and New York payroll taxes Wave pays and files, and which it only calculates. Updated October 12, 2026. Checked October 19, 2026.
• Wave Help Center: Track inventory in Wave — Wave tracks inventory by dollar value, not unit counts, with manual entries for cost of goods sold. Checked October 19, 2026.