Wave Payroll API
No direct Wave Payroll API: payroll endpoints are absent from Wave's public GraphQL schema. Third parties reach payroll data through Finch's unified API (Organization, Payroll, and Deductions with roughly 24-hour freshness), while Wave's own GraphQL API covers only the accounting side.
Frequently asked questions
Wave Payroll scores F on the API Report Card. No direct Wave Payroll API: payroll endpoints are absent from Wave's public GraphQL schema. Third parties reach payroll data through Finch's unified API (Organization, Payroll, and Deductions with roughly 24-hour freshness), while Wave's own GraphQL API covers only the accounting side.
Without a usable official API, teams fall back on manual exports, file drops, or one-off vendor integrations. The other option is an unofficial API layer like Supergood that automates the authenticated web app directly. Site terms may apply to any integration approach, and how they apply is a determination each team makes for itself.
Wave Payroll is the payroll product inside Wave (waveapps.com), a Toronto-founded small-business financial platform that also offers free accounting, invoicing, payments, and bookkeeping services.
Vertical: Financial Services (SMB Payroll / Accounting). Sub-vertical: SMB payroll bolted onto a free-accounting platform. Running scheduled biweekly/semimonthly/monthly payroll for a handful of W-2 employees. Paying 1099 contractors and generating year-end 1099-NEC / T4A forms.
Moderate.
Employee PII (name, address, SSN/SIN, DOB). Bank account and routing numbers for direct deposit. Wages, salaries, hourly rates, bonuses, commissions. Federal, state, provincial, and local tax withholdings and filings (941, 940, W-2, T4, T4A, 1099-NEC, state UI).
Wave the company was founded in 2010; Wave Payroll's lineage dates to the 2011 Small Payroll acquisition (~15 years old).
Grades measure one thing: can a customer's engineering team get their own data out programmatically? We check six things (whether a real API exists, how access is gated, data coverage, auth quality, docs and developer experience, and stability) and roll them into a letter grade. Grades get re-verified, and they only move on evidence.