Wave Accounting has adjusted its name and website in an attempt to convey it is more than just a free, cloud-based accounting product maker and to showcase the full suite of its back-office tools.

Kirk Simpson

Now known simply as Wave, with the new website www.waveapps.com, the small business-focused company is communicating that its invoicing, payroll, payments, receipt management, accounting and other related functions can be found in a central location; all under the Wave brand.

The move was primarily user-driven, as customers were increasingly requesting that as Wave’s offerings grew so did the need to have all of their functions integrated and in one location, according to Wave co-founder and chief executive Kirk Simpson.

“The real driver here is that we’ve all been small business owners. We know they hate doing back-office work so the easiest way to do the task is by having one password, one UI, and it’s easy to get paid on invoices and do the books and not have to find four or five different apps to try to stitch together,” said Simpson. “The macro trend was users asking us to take the same level of ease of use they were finding in accounting and wanting to do it for other things like payroll or vice versa. We are approaching 500,000 registered users so we have the benefit of a lot of feedback on how we can make their small business lives easier, and lots of that feedback centered around bringing everything together in a simple way.”

Simpson stressed that other than certain levels of payroll work, Wave remains free to all users. Wave launched Wave Payroll for the Canadian market in February, and as of November it is available in all 50 U.S. states. Signing up for the product is free; however, running payroll is $5 or less per employee per month, with no charge until the first payroll is completed. There is also no charge for employees not paid in a given month. 

In addition, Wave is planning a January 2013 release of mobile apps for payroll and receipt scanning.