Moving from Wave

If your books live in Wave, you can bring your bank and credit card transactions into Pennyweight. You export one report per account from Wave, your AI reads it and sends the rows to Pennyweight, one account at a time. New to importing? Start with how importing works.

Export from Wave

These steps are per Wave's help center, and its menus can change. Reports work only in Wave's web version.

• One account at a time (recommended). On the left-side menu, click Reports. In the Detailed reporting section, click Account Transactions (General Ledger). Select the account and the date range, then click Update Report. At the top right, click Export and choose CSV.
• Everything at once. Click your business name at the top right, then Business settings. Under Other, click Data Export and choose Accounting. Wave emails a link to the primary email address on your account, and the link works for 24 hours. The export is four XLS or CSV files: journal entries and transactions, bill items, customers and vendors. It covers every date, with no date filter.
• Receipts. The same Data Export page offers your uploaded receipts as a ZIP file. Keep it yourself: receipts don't move to Pennyweight.

Viewer and Editor roles in Wave can't use Data Export, per Wave's help center.

The Account Transactions report is the easier start. It holds one account, for the dates you chose, and it shows the account's starting balance for that range.

How to do it

1. Export an Account Transactions report for each bank and credit card account you want to bring over. Leave out income, expense and other accounts.
2. Share one report with your AI and say which Pennyweight account it goes into.
3. Ask your AI to use the account on the other side of each line, such as Office Supplies or Sales, as the category, if the report shows it.
4. If the account doesn't exist in Pennyweight yet, ask your AI to add it. A new manual account needs an opening balance before its first import: the balance just before the first row. The report's starting balance is that number. For a card, give what you owed as a positive number. See add a manual account.
5. Your AI shows a preview: new rows, likely duplicates and rows that need a look, and the account's balance after the import. Nothing is saved yet. Compare that balance with the ending balance in Wave's report. See reading an import preview.
6. Say yes to import, then repeat for the next account. When you're done, check the result with after you import.

What you'll see

Your AI reads the report, converts the dates to YYYY-MM-DD, signs each amount from the bank's side and leaves out the starting balance, ending balance and total lines. It shows a preview with the new rows, their categories, and the account's balance after the import. After you say yes, it reports how many rows were saved and any it skipped.

What carries over

Each row brings its date, amount, payee, category text, currency and notes. Invoices, bills, customers and vendors, payroll, receipts and Wave's tags stay behind. See the full list of what doesn't move.

Good to know

• Your AI does the reading. Pennyweight has no Wave importer. It can also read a CSV uploaded straight to it, but that route reads CSV files only, puts the whole file into one account, and converts dates not written as YYYY-MM-DD only when your AI names their order. When your AI reads the export, it picks out each account's rows and converts the dates itself.
• One account per import. Each import goes into a single account. If you use the full Data Export, ask your AI to pick out the lines for one bank or card account at a time and import each set on its own.
• Debits and credits. Wave's report lists each line as a debit or a credit. Pennyweight wants amounts signed from the account's side: money out is negative, money in is positive. On a card, a charge is negative and a payment is positive. Your AI converts them before it sends the rows, and the balance in the preview shows whether it got the direction right.
• Totals and balance lines are left out. Every row needs a date, an amount and a payee. A total line with no date would stop the whole batch, so your AI drops those lines first.
• Transfers appear twice. A payment from checking to your card shows up in both accounts. Import each side into its own account, then check that the pair is linked. An import links a pair on its own only when a row is categorized as a transfer and its other side matches it with clear evidence. Ask your AI to find and link the rest. See link transfers.
• Categories come over unless a rule matches. Each row keeps its category text from Wave. Your active Pennyweight rules run when the import is saved, and a matching rule's category replaces Wave's. The preview shows how many rows your rules would change. To keep every Wave category as it is, ask your AI to import with rules turned off.
• Rules don't move. Pennyweight doesn't import rules from other apps. Rules you add after the import change rows already saved only when your AI applies them. See rebuild your rules after moving.
• Years of history. For many accounts or a long date range, ask your AI to plan the import first. See import years of history across many accounts.