What estate planners need from their software, from sources outside FreshBooks and outside Nexa:
FreshBooks covers the billing side of an estate planning practice reasonably well. It offers proposals, retainers, time tracking, professional invoice templates, a client portal and accountant access on the Plus plan, which is the $43/month plan that does the core job. It is easy for non-accountants to use. Its client count includes archived clients, so a practice with a long list of past matters can hit the plan's client cap. The features it lists do not address the trade's harder needs. Those are tracking Form 706 due dates and Form 4768 extensions, recording portability elections (including the Rev. Proc. 2022-32 late-election window), keeping the 2026 filing thresholds in client files, and handling advance fees under state trust-account rules such as California's. For an attorney-run practice, the trust-account point matters most. Retainer billing is not the same as keeping advance fees in a client trust account, and nothing in FreshBooks' feature list says it does that.
Nexa has proposals and estimates that convert to invoices, payment plans, a client pay portal through your own Stripe account, a CRM with notes and tags, a task board, projects with sub-steps and templates, time tracking, and bookkeeping with bank reconciliation and profit and loss. It has no trust-account handling and no legal deadline or election tracking. A task board could hold reminders, but it is not a tracker built around estate tax dates. Its automated emails, such as reminders and sequences, send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices, so they are unreliable for deadlines. It also has no QuickBooks or Xero sync, no hosted support desk and no vendor-run onboarding. Clients have no street-address field.
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 for the same period. Nexa is cheaper, but price is not the deciding factor here. If you already use FreshBooks for invoicing, staying costs you nothing in capability. Switching would save money but would not close the gaps on deadlines, portability records or trust accounting. Whichever you pick, the trade's core need is a separate tool built for law practices that handles trust accounting and deadline calendaring.
Our read for estate planners: Neither tool covers estate planners' core needs, which are trust-account handling and tax-deadline and election tracking, so look at legal practice management software with trust accounting and deadline calendaring.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
FreshBooks costs estate planners $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 estate planners: Neither FreshBooks 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 $1,548 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 estate planner: 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 estate planner'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 Estate Planner 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 estate planners. You own it like you own your Will, revocable living trust, and pour-over will drafting software.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small estate planners 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.
People come to me to talk about the one thing they'd rather not: what happens after they're gone. The first meeting is mostly listening, then mapping the family. Who's the surviving spouse, which kid is responsible with money, who needs a special-needs trust, who's been written out and why. I build the package, will, revocable living trust, durable power of attorney, healthcare directive, and walk them through it in plain language because legalese is how plans get ignored. The part clients underestimate is funding. A trust that isn't funded is an empty box; if the house and the brokerage account aren't re-titled into it, everything still drags through probate. So I keep a funding checklist for every client and chase the deed re-recording and the beneficiary updates for weeks after they think we're done. I watch the exemption thresholds because a plan that was tax-smart two years ago can need a tweak. Signing day is its own choreography: notary, the right number of disinterested witnesses, the documents in order. The reward is a widow who calls a year later and tells me everything just worked, no court, no fighting.
Real estate planners near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you an estate planner? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every estate planner 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 $3,690–$15,680 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 an estate planner'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 an estate planner — 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 estate planners 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 estate planners, 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