What bicycle repair techs need from their software, from sources outside Wave and outside Nexa:
Wave covers the money side of a repair shop well. Its free plan includes unlimited estimates, invoices, bills and bookkeeping, so a tech can quote a tune-up and bill it without paying anything. Pro, at $19 a month, adds bank transaction import, receipt capture and late-payment reminders at 3, 7 and 14 days, and it is simple enough to run without an accountant. What Wave's feature list doesn't show is the shop-specific part: work-order tickets that tie parts to labor lines, a flag when a part is on a ticket with no install charge, or a separate e-bike labor rate. Those are the controls that guard against parts going out unbilled for labor. Wave's list also doesn't say how it handles sales tax on repair labor, which depends on the state.
Nexa covers more of the job-side work. It has estimates that convert to invoices, and clients can sign them in a pay portal. It also has jobs with costing and profit per job, time tracking, sales tax tracking, a simple stock count per product, and receipt scanning. That fits time-based pricing and checking what a job actually earned. But Nexa has no listed check for a part billed without labor, no tune-up package or e-bike rate feature, and no point-of-sale or card reader. Its stock count is not full inventory management. Online card payments go only through your own Stripe account, and automated emails such as reminders send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. It is software you run yourself, with no hosted support desk. It also has no QuickBooks or Xero sync, no bank-feed import like Wave Pro's, and it does not run payroll.
Over three years Wave Pro comes to $684 ($19 a month, or $228 a year). Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 with the optional $4.99 monthly Cloud Sync. Without sync it runs on one device. A tech who only needs to quote and invoice can stay on Wave's free plan, or Pro if they want bank import. A tech who wants job costing and time tracking and can live with one device could consider Nexa. Neither is built around the repair ticket, so a shop that mainly worries about parts leaving without labor should look at a repair-shop work-order and point-of-sale tool.
Our read for bicycle repair techs: Neither shows work-order tickets that link parts to labor and flag a missing install charge, so a tech who needs that should look at a repair-shop work-order and point-of-sale tool.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Wave costs bicycle repair techs $228/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 14.7 months it has cost less than Wave, 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 Wave 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 bicycle repair techs: Neither Wave 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 $684 for Wave over three years.
Invoicing, scheduling, client records and time 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. Wave solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
Today's list price is $19/month — $228 a year, from Wave'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 $405 less.
If Wave 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 | Wave | Nexa |
|---|---|---|
| Invoicing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scheduling | ✗ | ✓ |
| CRM | ✗ | ✓ |
| Time Tracking | ✗ | ✓ |
| Full Accounting | ✓ | ✓ (SIMPL) |
| Task Management | ✗ | ✓ |
| Works offline | ✗ | ✓ |
| Price | $19/mo | $279 once or 3 × $99 |
| 3-Year Total | $684 | $279 |
| You own it? | No — stop paying, lose access | Yes — forever |
✓ and ✗ for Wave come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as Wave lacking it: check with them. Three years is at today's price.
Straight from Wave's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
Wave is the better call if you need free plan covering unlimited invoices and bookkeeping specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
Wave says it is built for small business owners and solopreneurs at every stage, not accountants. Its page names freelancers, contractors and consultants. (waveapps.com)
What people outside Wave 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 bicycle repair tech: 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 bicycle repair tech'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.
Wave plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median Bicycle Repair Tech earns $38,000/year. At $228/year, Wave 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 bicycle repair techs. You own it like you own your A repair stand with a rotating clamp.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small bicycle repair techs 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.
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.
Invoicing, scheduling, client records and time 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.
He flips the open sign and the first walk-in is already waiting with a flat, so the day starts behind. He clamps a road bike into the stand for a booked overhaul, strips the drivetrain, and runs the chain checker, which is stretched past 0.75, so that's a new chain and probably a cassette the customer didn't budget for. He texts a quote and waits, because nobody likes a surprise bill. Walk-ins keep trickling in between booked jobs, each one a flat or a brake adjustment that he can't really say no to, and each one pushes the overhaul later. A distributor order is half-arrived; the customer's been waiting a week on a back-ordered freehub and keeps calling. He bleeds a set of hydraulic brakes, trues a wobbly rear wheel, and re-checks his torque on a carbon seatpost twice because cracking someone's frame is a nightmare he refuses to live. By close he's got three bikes tagged 'waiting on parts,' a counter full of small cash sales he hasn't logged, and a tune-up he promised for tomorrow that he hasn't started. He sweeps the bay, wipes down the stand, and writes himself a note to call about the freehub first thing.
Real bicycle repair techs near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a bicycle repair tech? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every bicycle repair tech 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 $470–$2,030 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 bicycle repair tech'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 bicycle repair tech — 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 bicycle repair techs and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. Wave may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
Wave has features like Free plan covering unlimited invoices and bookkeeping and Bank transaction import on Pro that some businesses rely on. For most solo bicycle repair techs, these aren't dealbreakers.
At $19/month, Nexa pays for itself in 14.7 months. After that: $228 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