What live sound engineers need from their software, from sources outside FreshBooks and outside Nexa:
Both products cover the invoicing side of live-sound work, and the page shouldn't pretend either one covers the tax side. The trade's real bookkeeping burden is paying crew and tracking each person's yearly total, collecting a W-9 from each, and issuing 1099s. The filing threshold was raised for 2026 payments, which means fewer A2s and stagehands cross it. On top of that, you need a gear inventory with purchase dates and costs for depreciation or Section 179, a dated job ledger, and a daily mileage log. FreshBooks does well on the billing half. It has invoice templates, built-in time tracking, a strong mobile app, a client portal, and receipt scanning, accountant access and bank reconciliation on the plan that does the core job. Its main advantage for a tax-heavy trade is that an accountant can log in directly. Its own feature list doesn't mention 1099 handling, W-9 collection, job costing, crew scheduling, or separating labor from equipment rental on invoices for states where that matters. The $43 plan also caps you at 50 clients, archived ones included, which a long-running engineer working across venues, promoters and production companies can hit.
Nexa covers more of the crew-and-job side. It has jobs with costing and profit per job, jobs assigned to team members with a crew view of their own work, and today's stops sent to Google Maps in time order. It also has 1099 summaries, sales tax tracking, expenses, receipt scanning, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, and it works offline, which helps in venues with poor signal. It does not collect W-9s. Its only inventory is a simple stock count per product, which is not a dated equipment register for depreciation. It lists no mileage log and no accountant login. It does not run payroll: it produces a CSV of each person's hours times rate, with no payroll taxes, pay stubs or direct deposit. It has no QuickBooks or Xero sync and no Google Calendar sync (calendar export is an .ics file). It comes with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding. Its automated emails, including payment reminders, send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices, so a late-paying promoter won't get nudged while your laptop is shut in the truck.
Over three years FreshBooks costs $1,548 ($516 a year at $43 a month). Nexa costs $279 once, or $458.64 over the same three years if you add Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. Without Cloud Sync, Nexa runs on one device. We make Nexa, so weigh that: if you have an accountant who wants to log in themselves, rely on a phone or email support line, or want the mobile app to invoice from the load-out, stay with FreshBooks. If you run a small crew, care about profit per job and crew assignments, are comfortable supporting your own software, and would rather pay once, Nexa is the cheaper fit. Whichever you choose, neither one is a full answer on gear depreciation, mileage or W-9 collection. Those need a separate record, such as a fixed-asset list and a mileage log that your accountant can work from.
Our read for live sound engineers: Neither tool handles gear depreciation, mileage logs or W-9 collection for you, so keep FreshBooks if you want accountant login and vendor support, and pick Nexa if job profit, crew assignments and a one-time price matter more.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
FreshBooks costs live sound engineers $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 live sound engineers: 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.
Time tracking, invoicing, client records and scheduling 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 live sound engineer: 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.)
FreshBooks plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median Live Sound Engineer earns $45,000/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 live sound engineers. You own it like you own your a digital mixing console (Allen & Heath SQ or Behringer X32).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small live sound engineers 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.
Time tracking, invoicing, client records and scheduling 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.
Load-in is at two for an eight o'clock show, which means the day actually started at noon loading the van. You wheel in the console, run the snake, fly or stack the PA, and set up monitor world while the headliner's tour manager hands you a stage plot that doesn't match the input list they emailed. Line check eats the afternoon, channel by channel, until every mic and DI passes. Soundcheck is a negotiation: the guitarist is too loud onstage, the singer can't hear herself, and you're building monitor mixes on the fly. The opener shows up late with two extra players nobody mentioned, so you're patching new channels minutes before doors. The show itself is the easy part, riding faders, watching for feedback, keeping the vocal on top. Then it's tear-down: coil every cable, case the mics, account for the gear, and load the van at midnight while the bar staff mops. The promoter says he'll settle once the till is counted. You drive home at one, knowing you quoted a four-hour rate for a thirteen-hour day, and that the horn section the opener brought never got added to the invoice.
Real live sound engineers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a live sound engineer? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every live sound engineer 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 live sound engineer'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 live sound engineer — 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 live sound engineers 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 live sound engineers, 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