FreshBooks vs Nexa The Real Comparison for Storyboard Artists
FreshBooks
$43/mo ($516/yr)
VS
Nexa
$279 once — own forever
or 3 payments of $99
Break even: 6.5 months at FreshBooks's current price.
Does FreshBooks Fit Storyboard Artists? Our Read
What storyboard artists need from their software, from sources outside FreshBooks and outside Nexa:
Storyboard artists need a way to track and document written work-for-hire agreements. Under US copyright law, a commissioned work counts as a work made for hire only if it falls in a listed category. 'As a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work' is one of those categories, and storyboards for film and video often fit it. The parties must also 'expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them' that the work is a work made for hire. Without that signed paper, the artist generally keeps the copyright. So each job needs a stored, signed agreement that states who owns the boards. (copyright.gov)
Storyboard artists need to bill by phase and handle revisions as a separate item. A practitioner thread on Core77 says storyboarding rarely ends at the first draft, because artists often suggest reframing the approach to the client. It also advises a 'costed work breakdown structure' so the client can drop items or defer them to 'phase 2'. Quotes and invoices therefore need to split into stages, such as thumbnails, revisions and final boards, with extra revision rounds billed on their own. (boards.core77.com)
Storyboard artists who work on a freelance basis need to set money aside for tax and pay it quarterly. The IRS says self-employed people generally owe self-employment tax (Social Security and Medicare) on top of income tax. They must file an annual return and 'pay estimated taxes quarterly' using Form 1040-ES, because no client withholds anything. Freelance storyboard income arrives in lumps, one project at a time, so the artist has to estimate this tax and plan for it. (irs.gov)
Storyboard artists working on union animation productions need to track which pay classification a job falls under. The Animation Guild (IATSE Local 839) agreement created a separate 'storyboard revisionist' classification in its 2012 contract. That contract ran from August 1, 2012 to July 31, 2015 and provided 2% annual compounded wage increases. Guild productions pay by classification and contract period, so a storyboard artist moving between union and non-union work needs to record which scale applies to each job. (cartoonbrew.com)
FreshBooks covers the billing side of this trade well. At $43 a month its proposals, time tracking, professional invoice templates and client portal fit a quote that splits into thumbnails, revisions and final boards. Its mobile app and free phone and email support help a solo artist. Its listed features don't mention storing signed work-for-hire agreements, tracking union pay classifications, or estimating quarterly tax. You would keep those in your own files. Watch the client count: the Lite plan covers 5 clients, the count includes archived ones, and a slot only frees if you delete a client.
Nexa covers the same billing ground. It has quotes, estimates and proposals that convert to invoices, and a client pay portal where clients sign estimates and pay by card through your own Stripe account. Missions with sub-steps can hold the phases of a job, and jobs show costing and profit. The CRM has tags and notes, so you could record which union scale or ownership terms apply to a job. Bookkeeping includes expenses, profit and loss, and 1099 summaries, which help with tax planning. It does not list a quarterly tax estimate, and it does not list a place to store a signed work-for-hire agreement. A signature on an estimate is not a substitute for a written ownership agreement. Nexa has no QuickBooks or Xero sync and no hosted support desk, because you own and run the software yourself. Its automated emails and reminders send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices.
Over three years FreshBooks at $43 a month comes to $1,548 ($516 a year). Nexa is $279 once, or 3 payments of $99, and runs on one device. Adding optional Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month brings three years to $458.64. If you work from one computer, bill a handful of clients and are comfortable running your own software, Nexa costs far less and does the invoicing you need. If you work across phone and laptop, want vendor support, or share books with an accountant, stay with FreshBooks. Whichever you pick, keep signed work-for-hire agreements and a tax set-aside in a separate system.
Our read for storyboard artists: Both handle phased quotes and invoices, and neither stores signed work-for-hire agreements or estimates quarterly tax, so choose Nexa for lower cost on one device or stay with FreshBooks for support and mobile use.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Bottom Line
FreshBooks costs storyboard artists $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.
Can it pay for itself?
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 storyboard artists: 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.
Choose Nexa if:
You're done paying monthly forever
You're a solo operator or small team (1-5)
You need time tracker, invoicing and connect crm in one tool
You're tired of price increases
You want to own your tools like you own your equipment
Choose FreshBooks if:
You have a large team (10+) needing enterprise features
You're deeply invested in FreshBooks's specific workflow
You need a feature Nexa doesn't have yet
Sound Familiar?
The morning starts with the latest script revision dropped in the shared drive overnight, so the first hour is reading the new pages and flagging which sequences changed. By 9:30 the director wants thumbnails for the chase sequence, so you rough small panels fast, blocking eyelines and screen direction before any detail. Mid-morning is a notes call: the director wants the reveal held one beat longer, which means inserting two new panels and renumbering the whole sequence. You work in Storyboard Pro because the timeline lets you slap rough timing under each panel and export an animatic the editor can drop into Premiere. Lunch is at the desk, scrubbing the animatic to check whether the action reads. Afternoon is cleanup on yesterday's approved panels: tightening perspective, adding arrows for camera moves, marking which shots are on ones and which hold. Around four the production coordinator asks for a panel count for the budget, and you realize you've drawn forty more panels than the original quote. You note it to raise on the next invoice. The day ends exporting a fresh PDF of the act, labeled with the date and revision letter so nobody boards off a stale version again.
Boards approved on a Friday get rewritten over the weekend, and tracking which panel revision matches which script draft becomes a nightmare by Monday's production meeting
Directors give vague camera notes ('make it feel bigger') and the back-and-forth eats unbilled hours that never make it onto an invoice
Animatic timing changes force re-cutting hundreds of panels, but there's no clean way to log the extra panel count for a per-panel billing rate
Studios pay net-60 on a kill-fee schedule, so a cancelled sequence leaves you chasing partial payment for boards already drawn
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.
What FreshBooks Actually Costs Storyboard Artists
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.
Three years at today's price
Year 1$516
Year 2$516
Year 3$516
Three years of FreshBooks$1,548
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-by-Feature
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.
What "$279 Once" Does And Doesn't Buy
It buys the software, not a service contract. You install Nexa and it runs on your machine. There is no seat count, and nothing stops working if you stop paying, because there is nothing to stop paying.
FreshBooks's monthly fee is not only rent. It pays for their hosting, their support desk, and their engineers shipping changes every week. If those matter to how you work, that is a real thing you would be giving up.
Cross-device sync is the one optional extra — $4.99/month if you want your data mirrored between machines. Skip it and Nexa still works; you just sync manually.
The honest risk of buying once: you are betting on us still being here to improve it. The honest risk of renting: the price is theirs to raise, and the graveyard section below is a record of tools that did exactly that.
What FreshBooks Does Better
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.
Very user-friendly for non-accountants
Built-in time tracking
Excellent mobile app
Professional invoice templates
Client portal
A smaller bill up front: plans start at $23/month, against $279 paid once for Nexa.
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.
What FreshBooks Is Built For
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)
The Lite plan covers 5 billable clients, Plus covers 50, and Premium and Select cover unlimited clients. The client count includes archived clients, and deleting a client frees a slot. (freshbooks.com)
Plus adds proposals, retainers, financial reports, receipt scanning, accountant access, double-entry reports and bank reconciliation. Premium adds custom email templates, automated client emails, project profitability and accounts payable. (freshbooks.com)
It offers a 30-day free trial with no credit card required, and a 30-day money-back guarantee after purchase. Free phone and email support is included during the trial. (freshbooks.com)
The Select plan includes 2 team seats, Advanced Payments, Easy Switch migration, onboarding, a dedicated Account Manager and dedicated phone support. Lower card fees and capped ACH fees apply on this plan. (freshbooks.com)
The FreshBooks AppStore advertises 100+ apps. The core tools are invoicing, billing and payments, expenses and payroll. Time tracking, bank reconciliation, client retainers and mobile apps are also listed. (freshbooks.com)
The site says its support staff are based across North America and that it "never transfers you to other departments." It also says the support team has won 11 Stevie Awards. (freshbooks.com)
What people outside FreshBooks and outside Nexa say:
NerdWallet rates FreshBooks 4.7/5 and calls it "a good fit for freelancers and service-based businesses with straightforward accounting needs." It calls the invoicing "exceptionally user friendly" and says all plans include time tracking. It also praises the project management tools included in all plans as a "solid value-add for freelancers." (nerdwallet.com)
NerdWallet's criticisms: the Lite plan lacks bank reconciliation, accountant access and double-entry reports. Reporting is limited, and standard reports can't be filtered by client. Users report payment processing delays, especially with Stripe, and some sync issues. Support is mainly by phone, with online help going through a chatbot. The review says FreshBooks trades functionality for simplicity, so businesses with complex accounting needs may want another product. (nerdwallet.com)
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Where business tools fit — for a storyboard artist
Software doesn't do the creative work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every storyboard artist: 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.
1
Find the work
Land the project
↓
An inquiry becomes a proposal becomes a signed project — with the scope and the deposit locked in.
CRM / contacts
Estimates & proposals
Booking / scheduling
then ↓
2
Manage the work
Do the work
↓
The work itself — tracked against the project: hours, milestones, revisions, and expenses, so nothing bills late or goes uncounted.
Job / project tracking
Time tracking
Expenses, materials & add-ons
then ↓
3
Bill for it
Send the bill
↓
The work becomes the invoice — the hours, the add-ons, the materials, the deposit credited — totaled and sent, instead of re-typed at 9pm.
Invoicing
Deposits & credits
then ↓
4
Get paid
Collect payment
↓
Paid by card or link, the deposit credited, and what's overdue chased — without you doing it by hand.
Card / online payments
Automatic reminders
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.)
Calculate Your Full Stack
FreshBooks plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
Switching from FreshBooks
1
Export your data — Go to Settings → Export Data. Download clients, invoices, expenses, and time entries.
2
Set up Nexa — 15-minute setup. Import your client list and expenses from CSV.
3
Parallel run — Run both for 1-2 weeks. Re-create unpaid and recurring invoices in Nexa; keep the FreshBooks export as your invoice history.
4
Cancel FreshBooks — Cancel subscription. Download a final data export for your records.
✓ 30-day money-back guarantee. Zero risk.
What This Means for Storyboard Artists
The median Storyboard Artist 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 storyboard artists. You own it like you own your Toon Boom Storyboard Pro.
Is Nexa actually right for a storyboard artist?
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
Right for you if
You run solo or a small team — like the 25,000 storyboard artists in the US who do, and you wear every hat.
You're tired of paying every month for a monthly subscription stack and a pile of apps that don't talk to each other.
You want invoicing, scheduling, and client tracking in one place — not scattered across five apps.
You'd rather own your software once, the way you own your Toon Boom Storyboard Pro.
Look elsewhere if
You have a large team that needs enterprise seats, granular roles, and dedicated admin staff — Nexa is built for solo and small operators (1–5), and a bigger platform will serve you better.
You need full payroll for a large team or deep, SKU-level inventory — that's not what Nexa is for.
You're genuinely happy paying monthly and don't mind stitching tools together. No tool fixes a workflow you already like.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small storyboard artists 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.
What storyboard artists actually deal with
Boards approved on a Friday get rewritten over the weekend, and tracking which panel revision matches which script draft becomes a nightmare by Monday's production meeting
Directors give vague camera notes ('make it feel bigger') and the back-and-forth eats unbilled hours that never make it onto an invoice
Animatic timing changes force re-cutting hundreds of panels, but there's no clean way to log the extra panel count for a per-panel billing rate
Studios pay net-60 on a kill-fee schedule, so a cancelled sequence leaves you chasing partial payment for boards already drawn
A day in the life of a storyboard artist
The morning starts with the latest script revision dropped in the shared drive overnight, so the first hour is reading the new pages and flagging which sequences changed. By 9:30 the director wants thumbnails for the chase sequence, so you rough small panels fast, blocking eyelines and screen direction before any detail. Mid-morning is a notes call: the director wants the reveal held one beat longer, which means inserting two new panels and renumbering the whole sequence. You work in Storyboard Pro because the timeline lets you slap rough timing under each panel and export an animatic the editor can drop into Premiere. Lunch is at the desk, scrubbing the animatic to check whether the action reads. Afternoon is cleanup on yesterday's approved panels: tightening perspective, adding arrows for camera moves, marking which shots are on ones and which hold. Around four the production coordinator asks for a panel count for the budget, and you realize you've drawn forty more panels than the original quote. You note it to raise on the next invoice. The day ends exporting a fresh PDF of the act, labeled with the date and revision letter so nobody boards off a stale version again.
The tools a working storyboard artist actually owns
Toon Boom Storyboard Pro
Wacom Cintiq pen display
Clip Studio Paint
Photoshop
FrameForge for 3D camera blocking
a tabbed binder of the shooting script
Local storyboard artists on Nexa
Real storyboard artists near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee.
Are you a storyboard artist? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time.
Or browse every storyboard artist on Nexa →
The kit a working storyboard artist owns
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
Toon Boom Storyboard Pro
Wacom Cintiq pen display
Clip Studio Paint
Photoshop
FrameForge for 3D camera blocking
a tabbed binder of the shooting script
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.
How To Read This Page
We make Nexa. It is one of the two options compared here, so read this with that in mind. We have tried to make FreshBooks's case the way we would want ours made — their strengths above are their own published feature list, not our summary of it.
The prices are FreshBooks's published list prices, checked on the date shown in the sources below. Plans change; check theirs before you decide.
No customer quotes appear on this page because we do not have any from storyboard artists we can verify. For user testimony, read the independent reviews — FreshBooks on G2 and on Capterra — where the reviewers are not selling you anything.
Check the price yourself:FreshBooks's own pricing page is the source for every figure above, read on the date shown in the sources section below.
We are not neutral about subscriptions, and that is the argument, not a hidden assumption: software you pay for once is cheaper over three years than software you rent, unless you need something only the rented one does.
How we put this guide together
We build a storyboard artist'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 storyboard artist — 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.
Where the numbers come from
Vendor pricingHoneyBook $432/yr, FreshBooks $516/yr, Toggl Track $144/yr, Harvest $132/yr — taken from each company's published plans, last verified September 2026. Pricing moves; each name above links straight to that vendor’s own pricing page so you can confirm it before you decide.
Income contextThe $45,000 median we cite for the typical storyboard artist is occupational median annual pay from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (Occupational Employment & Wage Statistics), compiled April 2026. We use it only to show software spend as a share of real income — your own numbers will differ.
Three-year mathMulti-year totals are today's list price multiplied by the number of years. No price rise is projected, so the figure can be checked against the vendor's own pricing page; if they raise it, the real cost is higher.
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.
FAQ
Is Nexa really a FreshBooks replacement?
For solo storyboard artists 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.
What does FreshBooks do that Nexa doesn't?
FreshBooks has features like Very user-friendly for non-accountants and Built-in time tracking that some businesses rely on. For most solo storyboard artists, these aren't dealbreakers.
How fast does Nexa pay for itself?
At $43/month, Nexa pays for itself in 6.5 months. After that: $516 saved every year.
Can I pay in installments?
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.