Migrate from Wave

Wave moved bank auto-import behind its paid tier, so a lot of Wave users are now exporting CSVs by hand. SuperBooks recognises Wave's own CSV formats and fills in the column mapping for you.

This guide covers transactions, which is the part SuperBooks can import today. Customers and invoices are covered at the end, including what Wave does and does not let you take with you.

What you can bring across

Step 1 — Get your transactions out of Wave

You have two routes. Both give you a CSV that SuperBooks can import, but only one gets its columns filled in for you.

SuperBooks recognises the two layouts Wave publishes for its own CSV template, the three-column and four-column shapes shown in Step 2. When your file matches one of those, the columns are mapped automatically. Wave does not publish the column headers of its report and data exports, so those files are imported through the same wizard with the column mapping step filled in by hand. Nothing is lost either way, and the mapping step takes about a minute.

Route A: export a report (one account at a time)

1. In Wave, open Reports.
2. Choose Account Transactions (General Ledger).
3. Set the date range and filters you want.
4. Click Export at the top right and choose CSV.

Route B: export all of your data

Use this when you are leaving Wave entirely.

1. Click your business name, then Business settings.
2. Open Other → Data Export.
3. Request the export. Wave emails you a link, and that link is only active for 24 hours.

The accounting export arrives as four files: an accounting file with journal entries and transactions, a bill items file, a customers file, and a vendors file. Receipts come separately as a ZIP of the original images.

Step 2 — Check the file's shape

Wave works with two transaction layouts, and SuperBooks detects both.

Three columns — one signed amount:

Date,Description,Amount
2026-01-05,Client retainer,1500.00
2026-01-06,Office chair,-249.99

Four columns — money in and money out kept apart:

Date,Description,Deposits,Withdrawals
2026-01-05,Client retainer,1500.00,
2026-01-06,Office chair,,249.99

Either is fine. You do not need to convert one into the other.

Dates

Wave writes dates as YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY/MM/DD. Month names and three-letter abbreviations work too, so 2026/Jan/05 and 2026/January/5th both import.

Amounts

Spaces, commas, apostrophes and decimal points are all understood as number punctuation, so 1 000,54, 1'234.56 and 1,234.56 each import as the number you would expect. A negative can be written with a minus sign or in brackets: -249.99 and (249.99) mean the same thing.

Currency symbols are ignored. The currency comes from the SuperBooks account you import into, not from the file — the same rule Wave uses. If your Wave data spans several currencies, export one file per currency and import each into the matching account.

Step 3 — Import into SuperBooks

1. Open Transactions and start a bank connection.
2. In the connect dialog, click Import from Wave.
3. Drop in your CSV.

When the headers match one of Wave's two published layouts you will see a note confirming which one was detected, and every column will already be mapped. For any other Wave file, pick the matching column yourself from each dropdown. Then review the mapping, choose the account to import into, and confirm.

Credit card exports

Wave writes credit card files the other way round from bank files: purchases are positive and payments are negative. If you are importing a Wave credit card export into a SuperBooks credit account, turn on Inverted amount under Settings in the mapping step. Choosing a credit-type account switches this on for you.

If some rows cannot be read

SuperBooks does not quietly drop rows it cannot parse. Every row it could read is imported, and the rest are listed with a row number and a reason — a missing date, an amount it could not read, or a row with both a deposit and a withdrawal filled in. The summary tells you how many were imported. Fix the listed rows in your file and upload it again.

Re-uploading is safe. Every imported transaction gets a fingerprint built from its account, date, amount, currency, description and counterparty, so rows that already imported are recognised and skipped rather than duplicated.

Step 4 — Categories

Wave transactions arrive uncategorised.

SuperBooks does not carry Wave's account names across, and that is deliberate. Wave builds each business a different default chart of accounts depending on the business type chosen at signup, and it does not publish those lists — so matching them up would mean guessing, and a wrong guess files a transaction somewhere plausible and silently wrong. Landing everything in Uncategorized keeps the whole import in one reviewable place instead.

From there you can select rows in bulk and assign a category, and SuperBooks learns from what you pick as you go.

What is not covered yet

Customers and invoices. Wave has no CSV export for either. Its own help centre says invoices "cannot be printed or exported in bulk", and both the customer and invoice export buttons route you to Wave Connect, a Google Sheets add-on. There is no documented file format behind it, so SuperBooks has nothing stable to import. If you have a Wave Connect sheet you want to bring over, get in touch and we will look at it.

Receipts. Wave's export gives you a ZIP of the original images. Upload them to the SuperBooks Vault, where they can be matched to transactions.

Payroll. Wave exports payroll for Canadian businesses as two CSVs, employee profiles and pay stubs. SuperBooks does not import either.

Sources

Everything above is drawn from Wave's own documentation:

• What to do if Wave can't read your statement in CSV format — accepted date and amount formats, the three- and four-column shapes, and the credit card sign rule
• Upload a bank or credit card statement in .csv format — links Wave's transaction import template
• Download your account data — the data export, its four accounting files, and the 24-hour link
• Export a report — exporting the Account Transactions report as CSV
• Print or export invoices in Wave — invoices cannot be exported in bulk
• Export customers — customer export goes through Wave Connect