What home inspectors need from their software, from sources outside QuickBooks and outside Nexa:
Full disclosure first: Nexa is made by the publisher of this page, so weigh what follows with that in mind. We have tried to hold Nexa to the same standard as QuickBooks, and the verdict below is not a recommendation to buy Nexa. QuickBooks covers the money side of an inspection business well. Its own feature list includes bank feed reconciliation, comprehensive reporting, 800+ app integrations and multi-currency support. It is the tool accountants know, and plans above the entry level add users and accountant seats if you hire an office hand or an associate. Phone support comes with a paid subscription. It does not cover what a licensed inspector has to keep on file. That includes each policy's amount and expiry date, since licensing states require errors and omissions coverage and proof of it. It also includes records of continuous coverage for each license period, as Texas requires, and reports and supporting documents kept for years. Texas has proposed a four-year minimum for reports, and that was still only a proposal as of May 2026. QuickBooks also doesn't send a pre-inspection agreement with state-specific language, collect the signature before the appointment, and store the signed copy with the job. None of that appears in its listed features.
Nexa covers more of the business side in one tool. It has invoices, estimates that clients can sign in a pay portal (card payments go only through your own Stripe account), a CRM, a public booking page with intake forms, jobs with costing and profit per job, time tracking, expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, and receipt scanning. It works offline, which suits field work. It has the same gaps as QuickBooks on the trade's compliance needs. Its feature list has no insurance policy and expiry tracking, no license-period record file, and no long-term report storage. Signing an estimate is not the same as signing a state-specific pre-inspection agreement. Nexa also has no sync or import with QuickBooks, so moving means re-entering your data. It is software you own and run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding. Without the optional Cloud Sync it runs on one device. If you use its automated emails or reminders, they send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. It has no multi-seat accounting setup comparable to QuickBooks's accountant seats.
Over three years, QuickBooks at $38/month ($456 a year) costs $1,368. Nexa costs $279 once, or $458.64 with optional Cloud Sync at $4.99/month. Nexa is cheaper, but price is not what decides this for an inspector. If you already use QuickBooks and your accountant works in it, keep it, because Nexa adds nothing for the inspection-specific work and you would lose the accountant's familiarity. A new solo inspector who wants simple invoicing and job costing on one device could reasonably use Nexa, but that is a small saving on the lesser part of the job. Whichever you choose, pair it with a dedicated inspection-reporting tool that handles agreement e-signing before the appointment, long-term report and record retention, and insurance and license tracking.
Our read for home inspectors: Neither QuickBooks nor Nexa covers an inspector's core needs (pre-inspection agreements, multi-year report retention, insurance and license tracking), so use inspection-reporting software with agreement e-signing and record retention alongside whichever accounting tool you already have.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
QuickBooks costs home inspectors $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 home inspectors: Neither QuickBooks 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 $1,368 for QuickBooks over three years.
Scheduling, invoicing and client records 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. 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 home inspector: 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 home inspector'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 home inspector earns $58,000/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 home inspectors. You own it like you own your Thermal imaging camera (FLIR).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small home inspectors 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 →Scheduling, invoicing and client records 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.
My first inspection is at 9, a 2,000 square foot ranch built in the '70s. I start outside: the roof from the ladder, looking for cracked shingles and lifted flashing, then gutters and grading around the foundation, and the siding and window sills poked with an awl for rot. Inside I test every outlet I can reach, run the faucets, fill and drain the tubs, and put the moisture meter on the ceiling stains. At 10 I'm in the attic on my knees, checking insulation depth and finding bathroom fans vented into the attic instead of outside. At 11 I pull the electrical panel cover: double-tapped breakers and aluminum branch wiring on a couple of circuits, which goes in the report with a recommendation to have an electrician evaluate. Then the water heater, the furnace, and the crawl space with a flashlight. I photograph every defect, because the photos carry the report. The buyer's agent wants the report tonight, so I start writing it in the truck and walk the buyer through the big items before I leave. At 2 I have a 3,500 square foot colonial with a finished basement, twice the rooms and a second furnace. Between inspections I invoice the morning client, book two inspections for next week around agents' and buyers' schedules, and return three referral calls from agents. I stay out of the price negotiation and just report what I found. I finish the ranch report at 9pm and send it.
Real home inspectors near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a home inspector? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every home inspector 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 home inspector'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 home inspector — 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 home inspectors 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 home inspectors, 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