What conflict resolution specialists need from their software, from sources outside FreshBooks and outside Nexa:
FreshBooks covers the general billing side of mediation well. It has built-in time tracking, professional invoice templates, a client portal, a good mobile app, and a 30-day free trial with no credit card. The plan that does the core job is Plus at $43/month for 50 clients, and it adds retainers, which suit mediators who collect a deposit up front. Its client cap is a real problem for this trade. Archived clients count toward it, and the only way to free a slot is to delete the client. A mediator has to keep closed matters on file, so deleting is a poor option. If you set up each party to a dispute as its own client, one matter can use two slots. Nothing in its feature list covers what court-roster work adds. It has no rule that separates the free first two hours on a New Jersey roster matter from billable time, and no way to split one matter's invoices equally between the parties on an ongoing basis. It also has no place for each court's proof of professional liability insurance, training and supervision records, or renewal dates. There is no national license for mediators, so a mediator on several rosters has to track credentials court by court. That work stays outside FreshBooks.
Nexa covers the same general billing: invoices, estimates and proposals that convert to invoices, payment plans, time tracking, a client pay portal that runs through your own Stripe account, a CRM with notes and tags, a booking page with intake forms, and bookkeeping with expenses, reconciliation and profit and loss. It has the same gaps for this trade. It has no credential, insurance or renewal tracker, no split-party invoicing and no free-versus-billable time rule. It also has no street-address field on a client, which matters if your invoices or court paperwork need party addresses. It has no retainer feature in the facts above. Nexa is software you own and run yourself, so there is no hosted support desk or vendor onboarding, and it has no QuickBooks or Xero sync. Its automated emails, such as booking reminders and sequences, send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. Cloud Sync is optional, and without it Nexa runs on one device.
Over three years FreshBooks costs $1,548 ($516 a year). Nexa costs $279 once, or $458.64 with optional Cloud Sync at $4.99/month, so it is cheaper either way. Price is not the deciding factor, because neither tool handles the parts of the work that are specific to court rosters. If you already use FreshBooks, stay. You keep retainers, hosted support, and a portal that doesn't depend on your own computer being open. Switching won't fix the roster problems. A new mediator who works from one device, takes mostly private negotiated-fee matters, and can do without hosted support has a fair case for Nexa on cost. Either way, roster work needs a separate compliance or practice-management tool, or a disciplined spreadsheet. It has to track insurance, training and renewal dates for each court, and it has to handle the split billing and the free two hours.
Our read for conflict resolution specialists: Stay with FreshBooks if you already use it, since neither tool handles roster billing or credential tracking and FreshBooks adds retainers and hosted support; a new solo mediator on private matters can reasonably start with Nexa.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
FreshBooks costs conflict resolution specialists $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 conflict resolution specialists: Stay with FreshBooks 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 $1,548 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 conflict resolution specialist: 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.)
FreshBooks plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median conflict resolution specialist 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 conflict resolution specialists. You own it like you own your private mediation office or a rented neutral conference room.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small conflict resolution specialists 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.
The first session of the day is a business-partnership split, and the two former friends arrive fifteen minutes apart on purpose so they don't meet in the parking lot. She seats them across the table, not facing the door, and opens with the ground rules: no interrupting, no walkouts without telling her. The first hour is mostly her keeping a lid on it, naming the emotion when one of them spikes, reframing 'he stole from me' into 'you feel the books weren't shared.' When they hit a wall she splits them into separate caucus rooms and shuttles between, carrying offers but never the contempt. The hard part is that she can hear, in caucus, exactly how to manipulate each one, and her entire value is that she won't. By afternoon there's a workplace matter and a co-parenting matter, each with its own intake paperwork and its own confidentiality wall. The deals that hold are the ones she gets onto paper the same day, terms initialed before anyone sleeps on it. She ends the day drafting a memorandum of understanding, careful that the language can't be read two ways, because ambiguity is how she gets called back to mediate the mediation.
Real conflict resolution specialists near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a conflict resolution specialist? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every conflict resolution specialist 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 $2,270–$9,030 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 conflict resolution specialist'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 conflict resolution specialist — 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 conflict resolution specialists 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 conflict resolution specialists, 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