What mortgage brokers need from their software, from sources outside FreshBooks and outside Nexa:
FreshBooks covers the billing and bookkeeping side of a small brokerage. It has invoicing with professional templates, a client portal, time tracking, an excellent mobile app, and (on Plus and above) receipt scanning, bank reconciliation, financial reports and accountant access. It is easy for non-accountants, and it comes with free phone and email support and a 30-day free trial. Nothing in its feature list addresses what a broker is regulated on. That means tracking annual NMLS continuing education hours by subject mix and renewal date, tying each compensation payment to its governing agreement and keeping it retrievable for three years, or keeping dated records of when an application was received and when the Loan Estimate went out. Client limits also matter: Lite covers 5 billable clients and Plus covers 50. Archived clients count toward the limit.
Nexa covers a similar bookkeeping base: invoices, estimates, expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow and receipt scanning. It also adds a CRM with a pipeline board, tags and notes, which a broker could use to jot down dates by hand. It has no continuing-education tracker, no compensation-to-agreement record keeping and no disclosure-deadline feature, so the compliance work would be manual there too. It has no QuickBooks or Xero sync and no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding, because you own and run the software yourself. Without the optional Cloud Sync it runs on one device. If you use its automated emails, they send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices.
Over three years FreshBooks at $43 a month comes to $1,548 ($516 a year). Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 over three years if you add Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. The price gap is real, but neither tool covers the regulatory records that define this trade. Keep whichever one you already use for invoicing and books. Don't switch just to save money or expect either to meet your compliance needs. Handle continuing education, compensation records and Loan Estimate dates in a dedicated mortgage compliance and loan-origination tool. If you stay with FreshBooks, its support and accountant access are worth keeping. A solo broker who is comfortable running their own software and has no use for hosted support could reasonably choose Nexa on cost alone.
Our read for mortgage brokers: Neither tool tracks continuing education, compensation-to-agreement records or Loan Estimate dates, so a mortgage compliance and loan-origination tool is the missing piece, and your choice between these two comes down to cost and support.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
FreshBooks costs mortgage brokers $516/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 6.5 months it has cost less than FreshBooks, and you own it after that. What it is not: hosted-for-you software with a support desk and a roadmap you can lobby. That is the trade, and the rest of this page is the detail behind it.
Nexa is $279 once, about $23 a month over its first year. Its Drain Guard reads your expenses (from a linked bank, an imported statement, or ones you type in), finds the charges that repeat, and adds them up by the month. Keep or Cut then walks you through them one at a time. Cancel $23 a month of charges you'd forgotten about and Nexa has paid for itself inside the first year, before you count the FreshBooks bill you'd stop paying.
It depends on what you find and what you cancel, so we don't promise a number. In our demo data, Drain Guard finds 5 subscriptions adding up to $110.13 a month. That is sample data, not a customer's.
The verdict for mortgage brokers: Neither FreshBooks nor Nexa is the main system for this work; start with software built for it. Nexa only makes sense beside it, at $279 once against $1,548 for FreshBooks over three years.
Client records, scheduling, invoicing and job tracking are the pieces of that day. Some tools rent you each piece separately. A few — Nexa among them — bundle the lot and carry their own booking link, with no per-appointment cut. The sections below price both routes honestly.
None of that is a software problem you can buy your way out of in one click — it is why the tool you pick matters more than what it costs. FreshBooks solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
Today's list price is $43/month — $516 a year, from FreshBooks's own pricing page. Every figure below is that price, multiplied. Nothing is projected.
Nexa: $279 once (or 3 × $99). Over the same three years, that is $1,269 less.
If FreshBooks raises its price, the three-year cost goes up; if it cuts it, the cost comes down. We don't guess which. Add-ons, extra seats and card-processing fees are not included, on either side.
| Feature | FreshBooks | Nexa |
|---|---|---|
| Invoicing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scheduling | ✗ | ✓ |
| CRM | ✗ | ✓ |
| Time Tracking | ✓ | ✓ |
| Full Accounting | ✓ | ✓ (SIMPL) |
| Task Management | — | ✓ |
| Works offline | — | ✓ |
| Price | $43/mo | $279 once or 3 × $99 |
| 3-Year Total | $1,548 | $279 |
| You own it? | No — stop paying, lose access | Yes — forever |
✓ and ✗ for FreshBooks come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as FreshBooks lacking it: check with them. Three years is at today's price.
Straight from FreshBooks's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
FreshBooks is the better call if you need very user-friendly for non-accountants specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
FreshBooks says it is "perfect for everyone from self-employed professionals to growing business owners." It lists four audiences: freelancers, solopreneurs, businesses with employees, and businesses with contractors. (freshbooks.com)
What people outside FreshBooks and outside Nexa say:
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Software doesn't do the actual work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every mortgage broker: find the work, manage it, bill for it, get paid. Each step has a tool — and the right single tool runs the whole loop, so the handoffs are automatic and you get back to the actual work. Tap a step to see what gets automated.
An inquiry becomes a proposal becomes a signed engagement — the terms and the retainer set.
The work you're paid for — with the hours, tasks, and expenses tracked against the engagement instead of reconstructed at month-end.
The work becomes the invoice — the hours, the add-ons, the materials, the deposit credited — totaled and sent, instead of re-typed at 9pm.
Paid by card or link, the deposit credited, and what's overdue chased — without you doing it by hand.
You can stitch four separate subscriptions across these four steps, or run one tool that does the whole flow so a booking becomes a job becomes an invoice becomes a payment without re-typing. Either way the goal is the same: less time on the business of the business, more on the actual work. (Nexa is built to be the one — but the honest options for each step are above and below.)
This is the connection that makes the rest worth it. A mortgage broker's job already holds the services, the hours, the add-ons, and the materials — so the invoice builds itself from the work instead of you re-typing it at 9pm. Toggle an add-on or nudge the hours and watch it recompute.
You didn't write this invoice — the job did.
FreshBooks plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median mortgage broker earns $70,000/year. At $516/year, FreshBooks is a recurring slice of that — paid again every year, whether the year was good or not. Owning the same jobs outright is $279 once, and the slice stops.
Nexa is $279 once. Invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, accounting — all connected, built for mortgage brokers. You own it like you own your Loan origination software.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small mortgage brokers business that owns its tools and is sick of renting software, Nexa replaces your whole stack for $279 once. If you're scaling into a large team with dedicated admin staff, a bigger platform may fit better — and we'd rather tell you that now than sell you the wrong thing.
Your people are already online — swapping real numbers, tool picks, and war stories. Here's where to find them.
Active community — tool picks, pricing, and day-to-day questions.
Open on Reddit →Active community — tool picks, pricing, and day-to-day questions.
Open on Reddit →Active community — tool picks, pricing, and day-to-day questions.
Open on Reddit →Client records, scheduling, invoicing and job tracking are the pieces of that day. Some tools rent you each piece separately. A few — Nexa among them — bundle the lot and carry their own booking link, with no per-appointment cut. The sections below price both routes honestly.
A loan starts with a conversation about what the borrower wants and what they can actually qualify for. I collect pay stubs, tax returns, bank statements and credit, calculate their debt-to-income ratio, and look for problems early, like a recent job change, self-employment income or a gap in credit, because surprises in underwriting kill deals. Then I shop the loan across lenders for the best combination of rate, fees and terms, and explain the trade-offs, points versus rate, fixed versus adjustable, in plain language. Once they're under contract on a house, the clock starts: I submit the file, order the appraisal, answer every condition the underwriter sends back, and keep the buyer's agent and the title company updated so we close on time. Rates move daily, so locking at the right moment matters. Compliance runs through everything: disclosures sent on time, licensing in every state I work in, and careful records. I'm paid at closing, either by the borrower or the lender, and the amount is disclosed up front.
Real mortgage brokers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a mortgage broker? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every mortgage broker on Nexa →
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
You paid for these once because good tools last. That's the bar your software should clear too — priced like a tool you own, $279 once, not a subscription that costs more than your kit every year.
We build a mortgage broker's guide the same way every time, and we'd rather you trust it than take it on faith. Nexa is our product, so the test we hold ourselves to is simple: a tool only "wins" a job here when it genuinely does that job better for a mortgage broker — and where something free, open-source, or buy-once does it better, we say so and link you to it. Where Nexa falls short (payroll is the honest example), we name the alternative outright.
Found something out of date? Prices change and we don't catch every move the day it happens. This guide is published and maintained by the Nexa team; if a figure here is wrong, tell us and we'll fix it — getting it right matters more to us than the sale.
For solo mortgage brokers and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. FreshBooks may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
FreshBooks has features like Very user-friendly for non-accountants and Built-in time tracking that some businesses rely on. For most solo mortgage brokers, these aren't dealbreakers.
At $43/month, Nexa pays for itself in 6.5 months. After that: $516 saved every year.
Yes. Nexa is $279 as a one-time payment, or 3 payments of $99 ($297 total). Either way it's a one-time purchase — no subscription, no recurring fees ever.
Own your tools. Stop renting your software.
Get Nexa — $279 Once