Dictate in any app · Finance

Voice typing in Wave

Wave is free accounting for very small businesses, which means the owner is the bookkeeper. Hold a key and talk: Typally transcribes and types it into Wave without you touching the keyboard.

This is a vendor guide from the makers of Typally. Anything we say about Wave is worth verifying — third-party features change without notice.
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In short

  • Wave's own dictation: None. Memo, description and note fields are typed.
  • What Typally does instead: behaves like a keyboard, so it reaches parts of Wave a built-in feature would not.
  • Best used for: transaction memos

Does Wave have built-in dictation?

None. Memo, description and note fields are typed.

Why dictate in Wave at all?

A sole trader doing their own books at the weekend has every incentive to skip the description field. It surfaces a year later as a transaction nobody can categorise and an accountant's query they are paying to answer.

In practice people use it for: Transaction memos, invoice line descriptions, customer notes, and receipt annotations.

How to dictate in Wave

There is no Wave extension or add-in involved — Typally behaves like a very fast keyboard:

1

Download and sign in

Grab the build for your platform and create an account.

2

Focus the Wave field you want the words in

Make sure Wave has the cursor in the intended field; that is the only thing that decides where words appear.

3

Press and speak

Hold, talk, release. Long passages are fine.

4

Read it before you move on

Some Wave fields are short and truncate. Keep memos to a sentence or two.

What Typally adds in Wave

Typally types into Wave's memo and description fields in the browser, so the sentence that saves a year-end query costs about eight seconds. For a business with no bookkeeper, removing the typing cost is what makes the habit survive past the first month.

What this looks like in practice

A freelancer speaks a one-line memo on every transaction that is not obviously routine. At year end the accountant's query list is four items rather than thirty, which is a smaller bill.

One habit that makes it work better

Describe anything unusual at the moment you record it. That is the only time you know what it was.

What to watch out for in Wave

Some Wave fields are short and truncate. Keep memos to a sentence or two.

Frequently asked questions

Does Wave have dictation?

No. All fields are typed.

Which field is worth the effort?

The memo on unusual transactions. That is what year-end queries are made of.

Can I dictate invoice descriptions?

Yes, and describing the work rather than the hours reduces client questions.

Try it in Wave

The free plan gives you 100 minutes a month without a card — enough to find out whether talking beats typing for you.

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