What executive coaches need from their software, from sources outside FreshBooks and outside Nexa:
FreshBooks covers the core of a coaching practice well. A coach bills a small number of clients on retainers or session packages, and FreshBooks has retainers, proposals, built-in time tracking, a client portal and a mobile app that non-accountants find easy. The money side matters for a sole proprietor, who generally must pay quarterly estimated tax if they expect to owe tax when they file, and who should plan for 15.3% self-employment tax on net earnings, so income has to be tracked net of expenses. FreshBooks Plus adds financial reports, receipt scanning, bank reconciliation and accountant access, so a coach can hand a tax preparer clean numbers. It also offers free phone and email support during the trial, a 30-day free trial with no credit card, and a 30-day money-back guarantee. One limit matters for a small book: Lite covers only 5 billable clients, and archived clients still count until you delete them, so a coach with more clients needs Plus, which covers 50. Nexa is our product, so weigh this read with that in mind. The FreshBooks points come from its own plan list and the IRS rules, not from our product.
Nexa covers much of the same ground. It has invoices, proposals and estimates that convert to invoices, recurring invoices and payment plans, which suit prepaid coaching packages. Clients pay by card through the coach's own Stripe account. It has time tracking, expenses, receipt scanning, bank reconciliation and a profit and loss report for tracking net income. It also has a CRM with a pipeline board and a public lead form, and a booking page with intake forms and reschedule and cancel links. The gaps matter to coaches, who live by their calendars. Nexa has no Google Calendar sync, since calendar export is an .ics file. It has no sync with QuickBooks or Xero, which can complicate handing books to an outside accountant. Its automated emails, including booking, payment and review reminders, send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices, so a closed laptop means a missed session reminder. It is software you own and run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding.
Over three years FreshBooks at $43/month costs $1,548 ($516 a year). Nexa costs $279 once, or $458.64 over the same three years if you add Cloud Sync at $4.99/month to use it on more than one device. The saving is real, but it comes with a calendar that does not sync and reminders that send only while Nexa is open. A coach who wants hosted support, a calendar that stays in step with their books, and accountant access should stay with FreshBooks. A coach with a small roster, one computer, and a willingness to keep Nexa open so its automated emails send, or to send reminders by hand, and to handle their own support, can reasonably choose Nexa for the lower cost.
Our read for executive coaches: Most coaches should stay with FreshBooks for hosted support and accountant access, and only a cost-driven solo coach on one computer who keeps Nexa open so its automated emails send should consider Nexa.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
FreshBooks costs executive coaches $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 executive coaches: 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 executive coach: 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 Executive Coach 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 executive coaches. You own it like you own your 360-degree feedback assessment instruments.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small executive coaches 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.
An executive coach holds confidential, structured conversations with senior leaders, and the day is paced by the calendar of people who control their own calendars least. Sessions often open by revisiting where the client left off, the commitment they made last time, what they tried, what happened, which means the coach has to walk in already holding the thread of a months-long development arc. Early in an engagement the work leans on assessment: debriefing a 360 where the leader hears, sometimes for the first time, how their directs actually experience them, or unpacking a Hogan profile to surface the derailers that show up under stress. The conversations themselves are demanding presence work, asking the question the executive has been avoiding rather than offering advice. Between sessions the coach writes notes that must stay rigorously confidential and never bleed from one leader to another, because the whole relationship rests on trust. Scheduling is its own discipline: executives travel, time zones shift, and a standing Thursday call gets bumped to a hotel lobby in another country. There's also the sponsor relationship, the HR leader or boss who is paying and wants to know it's working, which the coach must satisfy with progress on agreed goals without ever repeating what was said in the room. Evenings are for preparing for tomorrow's leaders and protecting the boundaries the work depends on.
Real executive coaches near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you an executive coach? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every executive coach 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 an executive coach'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 executive coach — 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 executive coaches 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 executive coaches, 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