How to export your books from Wave

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Wave's Data Export

Wave has a built-in export. Click your business name, open the business settings, and under Other choose Data Export. You can export Accounting, Receipts or Payroll. Wave emails a download link to the account's primary email address, and the link is active for 24 hours. Check your spam folder if it doesn't arrive.

A few rules from Wave's help centre:

• Only the owner or an admin can export. Viewers and Editors can't.
• The export covers only the business you are in. If you have several businesses in Wave, export each one.
• The Accounting export is four files, in XLS or CSV: an accounting file with your journal entries and transactions, a bill items file, a customers file and a vendors file (vendors and contractors).
• The Receipts export is a .zip of the receipt images you uploaded.

The reports to add

The accounting file is a long list of transactions. Useful for the archive, but you don't want to rebuild your books from it line by line. Add these reports, exported from Wave's Reports page:

• Trial Balance as of the day before your switch date. These are your opening balances.
• Aged Receivables and Aged Payables as of the same day, so you know who owes what and what you owe.
• Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss for each year you used Wave.
• Account Transactions for each year, which you can filter by date, for a readable general ledger.
• Sales tax reports and copies of every return you filed from those figures.

Pick a switch date at the start of a month, ideally at the start of your fiscal year, and run the trial balance and aging reports together.

What isn't in the export

As far as we can tell from Wave's help centre and a July 2026 migration guide, these are not in the standard Data Export. Check your own export before you close anything:

• Products and services. Copy them from the list or a sales report.
• The chart of accounts as its own list. The account names appear in the trial balance and transactions.
• Invoice line detail and invoice PDFs. Download the PDFs you'll need, at least every open invoice, one by one.
• Estimates and recurring invoices. Note the active ones.
• Sales tax settings and bank rules. Set them up again.
• The link between receipts and transactions. The receipts .zip has the images, not which expense each belongs to.

Before you close the account

Wave describes closing an account as permanent and tells you to be sure you have all the information you need first. Wave also says to cancel any payroll subscription before closing, and that it must keep online payment history for a time, which its support team can help you reach.

You don't have to close the account to move. Many people stop entering in Wave, keep it as a free read-only reference for a while, and close it once the new books have been through a year end. Either way, keep your exports for as long as the tax rules say: generally 3 years in the US (4 for payroll records) and 6 years in Canada.

Starting new books from the files

The cleanest move from Wave is balances, not history. Your old years stay in the Wave exports; the new program starts on your switch date with:

1. Your chart of accounts, rebuilt from the trial balance account names.
2. Customers and vendors from Wave's customers and vendors files, each with what is open on the switch date.
3. Products and services.
4. Every other balance from the trial balance: bank (the reconciled balance), cards, loans, assets, sales tax payable, equity.
5. A check: the new trial balance on the day before the switch date equals Wave's, account by account.

Doing it in AcboBooks

AcboBooks has no Wave importer. Wave's files come in through Lists → Import from Excel or CSV, which imports customers, vendors, products and services, the chart of accounts, journal entries, invoices and bills. It matches common column headings, checks every row and tells you which rows need fixing, then posts everything or nothing.

• Customers and vendors: Wave's customers and vendors files load with little change. Add an Opening balance column with each name's open total and the switch date, and AcboBooks creates one opening invoice or bill for it, which ages and can be paid. Or import the open invoices themselves if you want each one separate.
• Accounts: make a sheet with name, type and number from the trial balance. Use AcboBooks' type names (Bank, Income, Expense, Other Current Asset…). Balance-sheet accounts can carry an opening balance and date.
• Opening balances land in Opening Balance Equity. When everything is in, move what remains there into your equity accounts with a journal entry.
• Bank transactions from the switch date come in from your bank's OFX, QFX or CSV statement files under Bank Feeds, with bank rules you set up once. AcboBooks doesn't connect to banks live.

Wave is free for its core bookkeeping and AcboBooks costs $399.99 once, so the move is usually about something Wave doesn't do for you, such as inventory, desktop payroll, or keeping the books on your own PC. Try it with the 15-day trial before you close anything, then do your first reconciliation in the new books.

QuickBooks® is a registered trademark of Intuit Inc. Xero is a trademark of Xero Limited. Wave is a trademark of Wave Financial Inc. AcboBooks is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any of them.

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