What fireworks technicians need from their software, from sources outside FreshBooks and outside Nexa:
FreshBooks covers the billing side of a fireworks business well. It has invoicing, built-in time tracking, expenses, a client portal and a mobile app that is handy for sending an invoice from a field site. It does not cover the records that decide whether you can legally shoot. Nothing in its feature list tracks operator licences per person, and North Carolina renews display operator, proximate audience operator and assistant operator licences on different fees. Nothing logs continuing-education hours by licence specialty. Tennessee, for example, requires 6 hours for each specialty on a licence (Outdoor, Proximate, Flame) every three years, with state-approved courses and a signed verification form. Nothing in the list assembles a permit package either. Tampa's package needs an insurance certificate naming the City as additional insured, the lead operator's certification, and the company's storage, transport and shoot licence. There is also a billing limit to know about: Lite covers 5 billable clients, and archived clients count toward that cap. If you outgrow it, the plan that does the core job is $43 a month.
Nexa covers the business side in a similar way: estimates and proposals that convert to invoices, a client pay portal through your own Stripe account, jobs with costing and profit per job, crew assignment with a crew view, time tracking, expenses, bank reconciliation and receipt scanning. It works offline. It has the same compliance gap as FreshBooks: no licence renewal tracking, no per-specialty continuing-education log, no permit-document or credential records, and no barge inspection checklist. It also lacks things FreshBooks offers: no QuickBooks or Xero sync, no app marketplace, no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding, and no payroll beyond a CSV of hours times rate. If you use its automated emails or reminders, they send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices.
Over three years FreshBooks at $43 a month costs $1,548, or $516 a year. Nexa costs $279 once, or $458.64 over the same period if you add Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. Without sync it runs on one device. That gap is real, but a lapsed licence or a rejected permit package costs a show, and neither product addresses that risk. Track renewals, continuing-education certificates, insurance certificates and permit copies in a credential and document-expiry tracker. A spreadsheet with renewal reminders is enough for a few operators. Then choose your billing tool separately. If you rely on FreshBooks support, its mobile app or its accounting connections, stay where you are. Consider Nexa only if you want to own your software, can support yourself, and mainly need invoicing and job costing. The publisher makes Nexa, so treat that last point as a description of a trade-off, not a reason to move.
Our read for fireworks technicians: Neither tool tracks per-person licences, per-specialty continuing education or permit documents, so use a credential and document-expiry tracker for that and keep whichever billing tool you already rely on.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
FreshBooks costs fireworks technicians $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 fireworks technicians: 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 and invoicing 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 creative work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every fireworks technician: 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 creative work. Tap a step to see what gets automated.
An inquiry becomes a proposal becomes a signed project — with the scope and the deposit locked in.
The work itself — tracked against the project: hours, milestones, revisions, and expenses, so nothing bills late or goes uncounted.
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 creative 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 fireworks technician'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 fireworks technician earns $42,000/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 fireworks technicians. You own it like you own your Electronic firing system (FireOne, Cobra, or PyroMax modules with hardwire or wireless field cabling).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small fireworks technicians 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 and invoicing 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 truck rolls before noon for an evening show, loaded the night before from the magazine with a signed inventory log riding shotgun. First thing on site is the survey: pace off the fallout zone, confirm the 70-foot-per-inch-of-shell spacing to the crowd line, check overhead clearance and wind direction, and flag the firing position with cones and tape. Then the labor: setting racks plumb and angled, dropping shells, taping leaders, and color-coding by sequence. Wiring is the slow, careful part, every e-match clipped into the firing module, every cue logged on the cue sheet, then a continuity check module by module while keeping the system safed. The fire marshal walkthrough comes mid-afternoon, tape measure in hand, checking distances and the charged hose line before signing the permit. As dusk falls the crew clears to the safety perimeter, radios go quiet, and the operator counts down to the first cue. The show itself is six to twelve minutes of total focus on the firing panel. Then the worst part: walking the field in the dark with a flashlight, hunting duds and unfired shells, soaking them, and not leaving until every tube is accounted for. Teardown, re-inventory, and the long drive home.
Real fireworks technicians near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a fireworks technician? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every fireworks technician 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 $3,700–$31,900 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 fireworks technician'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 fireworks technician — 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 fireworks technicians 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 fireworks technicians, 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