What carpenters need from their software, from sources outside QuickBooks and outside Nexa:
Disclosure first: the publisher of this page makes Nexa. We have not tested either product with working carpenters and have no testimonials to offer, so everything below comes from QuickBooks' published plan and feature lists, Nexa's own feature list, and public BLS and IRS material on the trade. QuickBooks covers the bookkeeping side of a carpenter's business well. It has bank feed reconciliation, comprehensive reporting, 800+ integrations, and accountants already know it, which matters when a self-employed carpenter hands over the books at tax time. Project profitability and inventory tracking start at the Plus plan, and free 1099 e-filing needs Advanced, so the $38/month plan is mainly bookkeeping. It does not handle weather-driven rescheduling, per-job licence class and number (for example California C-5 framing versus C-6 finish work), a deposit-cap check on invoice templates, or mileage logs. Those need a separate record whichever tool you pick.
Nexa covers more of the bid-to-payment workflow. It has estimates, quotes and proposals that convert to invoices, which clients can sign and pay by card through your own Stripe account. It also has jobs with costing and profit per job, assignment of jobs to team members with a crew view, a simple stock count per product, and expenses, bank reconciliation and 1099 summaries. Weather delays are the weak spot. Nexa has reschedule and cancel links on its booking page, but no dispatch board, route optimization or GPS, and no job templates. It has no mileage log or licence field either. It does not run payroll, has no full inventory management, and cannot sync or import with QuickBooks, so years of history would stay behind. Its automated emails (reminders, sequences, workflows) send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. It is software you run yourself, with no hosted support desk or onboarding.
Over three years QuickBooks at $38/month is $456 a year, or $1,368. Nexa is $279 once, or $279 over three years on a single device, and $458.64 with optional Cloud Sync at $4.99/month. If you work with an accountant, rely on bank feeds or integrations, or have years of QuickBooks history, stay: Nexa cannot bring that history over, and the savings do not make up for losing it. A solo or small-crew carpenter with no accountant dependency, whose pain is estimates, job profit and getting paid, could reasonably move to Nexa and save money. Either way, keep mileage and licence records separately.
Our read for carpenters: Stay with QuickBooks if an accountant, bank feeds or existing history matter to you; only a solo carpenter whose pain is estimates and job profit has a real case for Nexa's lower cost.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
QuickBooks costs carpenters $456/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 7.3 months it has cost less than QuickBooks, 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 QuickBooks 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 carpenters: Stay with QuickBooks if the needs in our read above apply to you. If they don't, Nexa covers the core invoicing, scheduling and books for $279 once against $1,368 for QuickBooks over three years.
Invoicing, time tracking, job tracking and the books are the pieces of that day. Some tools rent you each piece separately. A few — Nexa among them — bundle the lot into something you buy once. 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. QuickBooks solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
Today's list price is $38/month — $456 a year, from QuickBooks'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 $1,089 less.
If QuickBooks 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.
Today's sticker price only tells you what a subscription costs today. These are dated changes, each linked to the announcement or report it comes from. Tap one for the numbers.
For renewals on or after February 1, 2026, Pro Plus and Mac Plus went from $999 to $1,149 a year for one user, and each extra seat from $200 to $230.
Source: SWK Technologies, Insightful Accountant (Dec 2, 2025)
From July 1, 2025: Simple Start $35 to $38, Essentials $65 to $75, Plus $99 to $115, Advanced $235 to $275 a month.
Source: Woodard Report (May 27, 2025)
After September 30, 2024, new US customers can no longer buy these Desktop editions. Existing subscribers can keep renewing.
Source: Intuit
Only changes we can link to a vendor announcement or a named publication are listed. Plans, add-ons and discounts vary, so check the vendor's current pricing page before you decide.
| Feature | QuickBooks | Nexa |
|---|---|---|
| Invoicing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scheduling | ✗ | ✓ |
| CRM | ✗ | ✓ |
| Time Tracking | — | ✓ |
| Full Accounting | ✓ | ✓ (SIMPL) |
| Task Management | ✗ | ✓ |
| Works offline | — | ✓ |
| Price | $38/mo | $279 once or 3 × $99 |
| 3-Year Total | $1,368 | $279 |
| You own it? | No — stop paying, lose access | Yes — forever |
✓ and ✗ for QuickBooks come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as QuickBooks lacking it: check with them. Three years is at today's price.
Straight from QuickBooks's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
QuickBooks is the better call if you need industry standard - accountants know it specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
QuickBooks Online is aimed at freelancers and new businesses, small and mid-size businesses, product-based businesses, and nonprofits. Larger or more complex operations are pointed to Desktop Enterprise (up to 40 users) or Intuit Enterprise Suite (multi-entity). (quickbooks.intuit.com)
What people outside QuickBooks 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 carpenter: 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.
A lead, a call, a referral — and a quote or estimate that turns it into a booked job.
The part you actually get paid for — with the time, materials, add-ons, and tasks tracked as you go, not guessed at later.
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 carpenter'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.
QuickBooks plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median carpenter earns $49,000/year. At $456/year, QuickBooks 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 carpenters. You own it like you own your Table saw and miter saw.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small carpenters business that owns its tools and is sick of renting software, Nexa replaces your whole stack for $279 once. If you're scaling past a handful of crews, a fleet platform may fit better — and we'd rather tell you that now than sell you the wrong thing.
Local rates and saturation vary widely — price for the city you serve, not a national average.
Year-round construction in SoCal. Fire season (June-November) drives restoration demand. Drought impacts landscaping. Earthquake retrofitting is ongoing market.
Extreme summer heat drives HVAC demand. Hurricane risk on Gulf Coast. Year-round construction. Rapid population growth in DFW, Austin, Houston, San Antonio creates sustained demand. Freeze events (like 2021) create emergency plumbing/HVAC surge.
Hurricane season June-November creates massive restoration demand. Snowbird season November-March boosts service volume 30-40%. Year-round construction. Pool service is year-round industry. Pest control peaks in summer humidity.
Harsh winters in upstate, moderate in NYC. Construction limited in winter upstate. NYC market is enormous but hypercompetitive. Brownstone/pre-war building maintenance is specialized trade. NYC licensing is notoriously complex.
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 →Active community — tool picks, pricing, and day-to-day questions.
Open on Reddit →Invoicing, time tracking, job tracking and the books are the pieces of that day. Some tools rent you each piece separately. A few — Nexa among them — bundle the lot into something you buy once. The sections below price both routes honestly.
Most of my work is finish carpentry and small builds: trim, doors, built-ins, stairs, and decks in the summer. Every job starts with measuring, and I measure more than once, because a wall is never square and a floor is never level; the skill is making the work look perfect against a house that isn't. For trim I'm coping inside corners instead of mitering them so the joint stays tight when the house moves, scribing to wavy walls, and shimming door jambs until the reveal is even all the way round. Built-ins and cabinets start as drawings the client approves, then a material list, then shop time cutting and assembling before a day or two of install. Material cost swings month to month, so my quotes have an expiry date. I keep the site clean every night because I'm working in someone's home. Most of my jobs come from word of mouth and from contractors who hire me for the finish work, so a crisp miter and showing up on time are my marketing. Evenings go to quotes and ordering lumber for next week.
Real carpenters near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a carpenter? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every carpenter on Nexa →
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
Here's the bar that matters: you spent $1,560–$4,180 on tools that last for years, and never thought twice. So why should the software cost more than your whole kit — every single year? Hold it to the same standard as a good tool: $279, once.
We build a carpenter'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 carpenter — 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 carpenters and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. QuickBooks may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
QuickBooks has features like Industry standard - accountants know it and 800+ app integrations that some businesses rely on. For most solo carpenters, these aren't dealbreakers.
At $38/month, Nexa pays for itself in 7.3 months. After that: $456 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