Written by Behdad Karimi Dermeni, CPA · Reviewed by Maryam Ajorloo, CPA
Wave Accounting is still available in Canada, and its basic plan is still free. What changed in 2026 is what "free" includes. Automatic bank imports, receipt scanning, and extra users now sit on the paid tier, so free-plan users enter transactions by hand.
If you opened Wave one morning this summer and your bank transactions had stopped arriving, you are not imagining it. Wave rebuilt what its free plan covers, and the automation most Canadian owners actually relied on moved to the paid side. That is a reasonable business decision on Wave's part. It is also a good moment to ask a question worth asking every few years: is the tool you picked when you were brand new still the right tool for the business you have now?
This guide covers what changed with Wave accounting in Canada, what Wave still does well, and where a Canadian business specifically feels the gaps. Written by CPAs, so the tax parts are correct.
Ready to stop entering transactions by hand? See what ReInvestWealth costs and start free for 30 days.
What changed on Wave's free plan in 2026
In June 2026, Wave moved three things off its free plan and onto its paid tier. Checked against Wave's own pricing page as of August 2026, the free plan no longer includes:
Automatic bank imports. The live feed that pulled transactions in from your bank on its own. On the free plan you now create records manually.
Receipt scanning. Snapping a receipt and having the details read off it is a paid add-on.
Additional users. Inviting your bookkeeper, your accountant, or a business partner into the account requires the paid tier.
Existing free accounts were not shut down. They were moved onto the newer free plan, which keeps invoicing, double-entry bookkeeping, and reports. The automation is what left.
Here is why that specific change stings more than a price increase would. Manual data entry is the single task accounting software exists to remove. A tool that sends invoices but makes you type in every bank transaction has handed back the worst job in bookkeeping. If you have 200 transactions a month, that is not a small inconvenience, it is a standing weekly appointment with your own bank statement.
What Wave still does well
An honest comparison has to include this part, because Wave earned its Canadian following for real reasons.
Wave is Canadian. It was founded in Toronto in 2009 and has been part of H&R Block since 2019, so it is not some US product that bolted on a Canadian option as an afterthought. Its invoicing is genuinely good and genuinely unlimited, even on the free plan. It does proper double-entry bookkeeping rather than a simplified in-and-out ledger, which matters when your accountant eventually looks at the file. Its payroll handles Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) remittances and produces T4 slips for Canadian employees.
If you are a brand new sole proprietor sending 4 invoices a month and running fewer than 20 transactions, Wave's free plan still does the job, and typing those in by hand takes 10 minutes. Nobody needs to switch tools out of principle.
The question is what happens at 200 transactions instead of 20.
Where Wave leaves Canadian owners short
Three gaps show up specifically for Canadian businesses, and they get wider as you grow.
Categorization is still your job. Even on the paid tier, bank transactions arrive and wait for you to sort them. Wave will suggest and remember patterns, but the monthly cleanup is work you do. This is the difference between software that imports your data and software that actually does your bookkeeping.
Sales tax stops at the report. Wave tracks GST/HST and will produce a sales tax summary. Filing the return is a separate errand you run yourself, which we come back to below because it is the biggest one.
Your accountant costs you a seat. Since June 2026, sharing the file with your bookkeeper or accountant means paying for the tier that allows extra users. For an owner who works closely with an accountant, and most incorporated Canadian owners do, that is a real friction point in the one workflow that should never have friction.
Sales tax is the part Canadian owners underestimate
This is where a Canadian business diverges most from an American one, and where generic software reviews are least useful.
If your taxable sales exceed $30,000 in a single calendar quarter or across four consecutive quarters, you have to register for GST/HST. After that, you are filing returns on a schedule, and what you file depends entirely on where you are:
HST in Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Prince Edward Island
GST plus PST in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba
GST plus QST in Quebec, where QST is filed with Revenu Quebec rather than the CRA
GST only in Alberta and the territories
Most accounting tools will calculate these amounts for you. Far fewer will transmit the return.
The CRA publishes a list of software it has certified for GST/HST Internet File Transfer, and the list is short. ReInvestWealth is on it. So are Intuit QuickBooks and Sage. Wave is not, so with Wave you are taking the numbers off a report and re-entering them into CRA My Business Account yourself.
We want to be precise here rather than oversell it, because this gets misrepresented constantly: we are not the only Canadian software that can file to the CRA, and anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing. QuickBooks and Sage are certified too. What is true is that Wave is not, and that filing from inside the same books that categorized the transactions all year turns filing into a review instead of a reconstruction. You can see the full certified list on the CRA's own page for third-party GST/HST software.
If you just want to check the arithmetic on a specific invoice, our free GST/HST calculator will do that in a few seconds without any of this.
Filing GST/HST by hand this quarter? ReInvestWealth files it for you, straight from books the AI has already categorized.
ReInvestWealth: an AI-first Wave alternative in Canada
We built ReInvestWealth AI-first, which is a design decision rather than a marketing line. Legacy accounting software was built in an era when a human was always going to do the categorizing, so the software's job was to import data and get out of the way. You cannot retrofit that assumption out of a platform. It has to be built in from the start.
What that means in practice:
The AI Bookkeeper does the categorizing. Transactions arrive and get categorized, with the sales tax treatment applied. There is very little left for you to do, which is the entire point. It was trained by CPAs, which is why it handles the Canadian cases correctly rather than guessing at them.
Bank connections are included. Connect your bank, credit card, and loan accounts and transactions flow in automatically. We support 10,000+ financial institutions, and if yours is not connectable you can upload statements instead.
Smart Shoebox handles receipts. Upload them or forward them by email to Smart Shoebox, and the details get read off automatically and matched to the right transaction. That match is what makes a write-off defensible if the CRA ever asks.
Sales tax filing is built in. GST and HST go to the CRA and QST to Revenu Quebec, from the same books.
Invoicing is unlimited, with Stripe connected if you want to get paid by card, and Stripe activity reconciles into the books on its own.
Your accountant is welcome. Invite them in and share clean books. The AI handles the routine bookkeeping so your accountant spends their time on tax planning and advisory, which is what you are actually paying them for. We are built by CPAs so you do not have to be one, not built to replace the one you have.
3,000+ Canadian entrepreneurs run their business on ReInvestWealth, and we hold a 4.8 rating on Capterra. If you want the longer version of how we compare to the bigger incumbents, our guide to whether QuickBooks is worth it for a Canadian small business works through that decision in detail, and our roundup of the best cloud accounting software in Canada covers the wider field.
When you should stay on Wave
We would rather you make the right call than the flattering one. Stay where you are if:
You are running very few transactions. Under about 20 a month, manual entry is genuinely fine and free is hard to beat.
Invoicing is basically all you need. If you are not registered for sales tax and not tracking many expenses, Wave's free invoicing covers it.
You depend on Wave's payroll and it works for you. Switching bookkeeping tools mid-year while payroll is running is more disruption than it is worth. Wait for year-end.
You are pre-revenue. Do not pay for accounting software before you have accounting to do.
The moment to move is when the manual work starts costing you more than the software would, which for most service businesses lands somewhere around GST/HST registration.
How to switch from Wave to ReInvestWealth in 5 steps
Switching bookkeeping software has a bad reputation, mostly earned by tools that make you export a CSV and pray. Here is the actual sequence.
Pick your switch date. The first day of a fiscal quarter or year is cleanest, because it keeps one filing period entirely in one system. Do not switch mid-quarter if you can help it.
Run your final reports out of Wave. Pull a profit and loss, a balance sheet, and a sales tax summary as of your switch date, and save them. These are your opening position and your paper trail.
File any outstanding sales tax return from Wave. Close out the period you already tracked there. Do not carry a half-finished return across the boundary.
Connect your bank accounts to ReInvestWealth. Transactions start importing and the AI Bookkeeper begins categorizing them. Add your opening balances from the reports in step 2.
Invite your accountant and confirm the first month. Have them look at the first full month of categorized transactions. That one review catches anything set up wrong while it is still cheap to fix.
Migration is free with an annual plan, and our team handles the move for you. Details are on the pricing page.
3 tips to make the switch stick
Keep your Wave data for 6 years. The CRA can reassess a return for 3 to 4 years as a matter of course, 6 years where it suspects misrepresentation, and there is no limit for fraud or failure to file. Export your Wave reports and keep them somewhere you will still find them in 2032.
Use one business account, only for business. Every mixed personal and business transaction is a decision someone has to make later. A dedicated account removes that work before it exists. This is the single highest-return bookkeeping habit there is.
Forward receipts the moment you get them. Set up email forwarding to Smart Shoebox and forward the receipt from the confirmation email while you are already in your inbox. Receipts you deal with later are receipts you deal with in March.
The bottom line
Wave is still a real option in Canada, and for a very small operation the free plan still works. But the 2026 change moved the automation behind the paywall, which means the free version now hands you back the manual work, and the paid version still leaves categorization and sales tax filing on your plate.
If you are a Canadian business past the $30,000 mark, filing sales tax on a schedule and working with an accountant, the honest comparison is not free versus paid. It is how many hours a month you want to spend on your own bookkeeping.
Stop typing in transactions. Connect your bank, let the AI Bookkeeper categorize, and file your GST/HST from the same books. Start free for 30 days.
Frequently asked questions
Is Wave accounting still available in Canada?
Yes. Wave is a Toronto company, has been part of H&R Block since 2019, and continues to serve Canadian businesses. It has not shut down or exited Canada. What changed in 2026 is which features its free plan includes.
Does Wave file GST/HST returns to the CRA?
No. Wave tracks GST/HST and produces a sales tax summary report, but transmitting the return is something you do yourself through CRA My Business Account or another filing channel. Wave does not appear on the CRA's list of software certified for GST/HST Internet File Transfer.
Which accounting software is certified by the CRA for GST/HST filing?
The CRA publishes and updates its own certified list for GST/HST Internet File Transfer. ReInvestWealth is on it, along with Intuit QuickBooks and Sage products, among others. Being certified means the software can transmit your return to the CRA directly instead of producing numbers you re-enter by hand.
Does Wave connect to Canadian bank accounts?
It can, but as of June 2026 automatic bank imports sit on Wave's paid tier. On the free plan you create transaction records manually. ReInvestWealth includes bank connections and supports 10,000+ financial institutions.
Do I need to register for GST/HST before I switch accounting software?
The two are unrelated. You must register once your taxable sales pass $30,000 in a single calendar quarter or across four consecutive quarters, whatever software you use. That said, registration is a good moment to reassess your tools, because that is when sales tax filing becomes a recurring job rather than a one-time question.
A note from our CPAs: This guide is educational and covers the general rules for Canadian small businesses. Software features and pricing change, and tax situations vary, so check current details with the provider and talk to your accountant about your specific circumstances. (If they use ReInvestWealth, they will already have clean books to work from.)
Written by Behdad Karimi Dermeni, CPA
Co-founder of ReInvestWealth and a founding community builder at Stripe. Behdad built ReInvestWealth to give smart, busy entrepreneurs CPA-level accounting without the CPA-level price tag. Read more · Connect on LinkedIn
Reviewed by Maryam Ajorloo, CPA
Maryam Ajorloo is the co-founder of ReInvestWealth and a CPA who specializes in small business tax, sales tax, and everyday bookkeeping. She helps entrepreneurs keep clean, audit-ready books and make sense of write-offs, filing deadlines, and the numbers behind their business. Read more · Connect on LinkedIn
