What college admissions consultants need from their software, from sources outside FreshBooks and outside Nexa:
FreshBooks covers the billing side of this trade well. Built-in time tracking handles hourly clients. Professional invoice templates, proposals and retainers on the plan that does the core job (the $43/month tier) suit package clients. Proposals set out services and fees at the start, which the IECA says a consultant should do. A client portal, a mobile app and free phone and email support add to that. It has no admissions-specific features. It has no contract template that defines the consultant's role and avoids promising admission. It has no way to hold a student's own FERPA consent. It also has no marker showing that all income comes from families, so you have to handle those points in your own documents. One practical limit is that the $43 plan covers 50 clients, and archived clients count toward that. A consultant with years of past students may need to delete records or move to an unlimited-client tier.
Nexa covers the same billing basics. It has estimates, quotes and proposals that convert to invoices, payment plans for packages, time tracking for hourly work, and a client pay portal where families pay by card through your own Stripe account and sign estimates. Its CRM has notes, tags and a pipeline board, and you could record consent details there. It does not provide admissions contract templates or FERPA consent tracking, so the same gap exists. Its caveats matter: 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. Any automated emails or reminders send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. It has no QuickBooks or Xero sync and no Google Calendar sync.
Over three years FreshBooks at $43/month comes to $1,548 ($516 a year). Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 over the same three years if you add Cloud Sync at $4.99/month. A solo consultant who works from one computer, wants a low fixed cost and is comfortable with no vendor support should consider Nexa. A consultant who relies on phone support, retainers, accountant access or a mobile app, or who wants the vendor to run the software, should stay with FreshBooks. FreshBooks also offers a 30-day free trial with no credit card needed, so you can test it first. In either case, put your service scope, fee terms, no-guarantee language and student consent forms in documents outside the software.
Our read for college admissions consultants: Both handle package and hourly billing and neither handles admissions-specific contracts or FERPA consent, so choose Nexa for a low one-time cost on one device or stay with FreshBooks for hosted support, retainers and accountant access.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
FreshBooks costs college admissions consultants $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 college admissions consultants: Either can do the job, for the reasons in our read above. On price alone, that is $279 once against $1,548 for FreshBooks over three years.
Client records, scheduling, invoicing 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. 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 college admissions consultant: 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 college admissions consultant'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 College Admissions Consultant earns $55,000/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 college admissions consultants. You own it like you own your Common App and Coalition App familiarity.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small college admissions consultants 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.
Client records, scheduling, invoicing 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.
A college admissions consultant runs a seasonal marathon, and in the fall the days bend entirely around deadlines that don't move. A typical afternoon is a video session with a junior or senior, building or refining a balanced college list, weighing reach, target, and likely schools against the family's budget and the student's actual record. A huge share of the work is essays: reading the latest draft of a personal statement, asking the questions that pull a real story out of a guarded teenager, and resisting the temptation to just rewrite it, because admissions officers can smell an adult's hand and the essay has to stay the student's voice. The logistical load is relentless during application season, because each student has a different mix of early-decision and early-action deadlines, school-specific supplements, recommendation requests, and scholarship cutoffs, and one missed date can cost a year. The consultant tracks dozens of moving pieces across multiple students simultaneously, every supplement essay tied to its school, every deadline tied to its student. Layered on top is the family relationship: parents are paying, deeply anxious, and want constant updates, while the student needs the consultant to protect their independence, so the consultant manages two relationships per client. Evenings in peak season are spent reviewing drafts and double-checking that nothing is due tomorrow that isn't ready.
Real college admissions consultants near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a college admissions consultant? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every college admissions consultant 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 college admissions consultant'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 college admissions consultant — 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 college admissions consultants 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 college admissions consultants, 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