What travel agents need from their software, from sources outside FreshBooks and outside Nexa:
FreshBooks covers the general bookkeeping side of this trade. On the $43/month plan you get invoicing, expenses, financial reports, bank reconciliation and a client portal. It is easy for non-accountants to use, and it comes with free phone and email support during the trial. An agent could invoice each booking and keep a running record of commission and service-fee income, which feeds quarterly estimated tax and Schedule C. The plan covers 50 clients, and archived clients count toward that limit. What FreshBooks does not list is what this trade is regulated on. It lists no separate trust-account tracking, no per-location registration renewal dates or fees, and no way to see how long a client deposit has been held, which matters for Washington's five-business-day rule.
Nexa covers similar general ground. It has invoices, estimates, payment plans, a client pay portal through your own Stripe account, expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, a balance sheet, cash flow, 1099 summaries and receipt scanning. That is enough to log commission and fee income per booking and to total it for quarterly estimates. Like FreshBooks, it has no stated trust-account feature, no registration-renewal tracker and no deposit-aging view. It also has no manual journal entries, which makes working around that gap harder, and no QuickBooks or Xero sync. It is software you own and run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding. Its automated emails and reminders send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices.
Over three years FreshBooks at $43/month comes to $1,548 ($516 a year). Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 if you add optional Cloud Sync across devices, and without Cloud Sync it runs on one device. An agent who is comfortable running their own software and only needs invoicing and income records could save a lot with Nexa. An agent who values phone support and a hosted service has reason to stay with FreshBooks. In either case, client money held for suppliers, registration renewals and Washington's deposit deadline need a tool built for them, not a general invoicing or bookkeeping package.
Our read for travel agents: Neither tool documents trust-account tracking or registration-renewal management, so use a trust-accounting tool built for travel sellers alongside whichever invoicing tool you prefer.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
FreshBooks costs travel agents $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 travel agents: 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, invoicing, scheduling 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 travel agent: 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 travel agent'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 travel agent earns $40,000/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 travel agents. You own it like you own your GDS access (Sabre, Amadeus).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small travel agents 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 →Client records, invoicing, scheduling 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.
Most of my clients come to me for trips that are too complicated or too important to book alone: honeymoons, multi-generation family trips, destination weddings and group tours. It starts with a long conversation about budget, pace, who's travelling and what they actually enjoy, and from that I build an itinerary: flights, hotels, transfers, tours and dinner reservations, with the timing between them worked out. My supplier relationships matter; I know which resorts upgrade my clients and which tour operators actually show up. Once the trip is booked, I'm tracking deposits and final payment deadlines, passports and visas, travel insurance, and documents, then everything changes when an airline moves a flight. When something goes wrong mid-trip, a cancellation or a missed connection, my client calls me, often at odd hours. Most of my income is commission from hotels, cruise lines and tour operators, paid after travel, plus a planning fee for complex itineraries. I stay current with training and site visits, because recommending a place I've seen is worth more than any brochure.
Real travel agents near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a travel agent? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every travel agent 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 travel agent'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 travel agent — 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 travel agents 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 travel agents, 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