What video editors need from their software, from sources outside FreshBooks and outside Nexa:
FreshBooks covers the invoicing and money-tracking side of freelance editing well. It is easy for non-accountants, has built-in time tracking, a strong mobile app, professional invoice templates and a client portal. The plan that does the core job (Plus, 50 clients) adds proposals, retainers, financial reports, receipt scanning, accountant access and bank reconciliation. Those help with project-burst income and with handing records to a tax preparer. Support is free by phone and email during the trial, and it has a 30-day trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Its limits for this trade: the client count includes archived clients, so a long client history can hit the cap unless you delete old ones. Nothing in its feature list covers per-job ownership or license terms, or W-9 collection. That part stays in your contracts and your own files.
Nexa covers a lot of the same ground, as software you own. It has estimates, quotes and proposals that convert to invoices, and clients can sign estimates and pay by card in a client portal through your own Stripe account. It also has recurring invoices and payment plans, time tracking, expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, cash flow and 1099 summaries. Cash flow and 1099 summaries speak directly to idle weeks between jobs and to tracking what you pay assistants, colorists or sound mixers. Jobs with costing and profit per job can show which projects paid. It works offline. Like FreshBooks, it has no dedicated place for a per-job ownership record, so rights terms still belong in your contracts. Nexa has no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding, no QuickBooks or Xero sync, and no accountant-access feature in its list. It does not run payroll. If you use automated emails, sequences or reminders, they send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. Without the optional $4.99/month Cloud Sync, it runs on one device.
Over three years FreshBooks at $43/month is $516 a year, or $1,548. Nexa is $279 once (or 3 payments of $99), and $458.64 over three years if you add Cloud Sync at $4.99/month. A solo editor who is comfortable running their own software, invoices a modest number of clients and wants 1099 summaries and cash-flow views should find Nexa fits and costs much less. An editor who wants a hosted service with phone and email support, accountant access, or a polished mobile app should stay with FreshBooks. Whichever you choose, keep a written ownership or license record for each job outside the tool.
Our read for video editors: Both handle invoicing, time, income and 1099 tracking for a freelance editor, and neither tracks per-job rights terms. Choose Nexa to pay less and run it yourself, or stay on FreshBooks for hosted support, accountant access and the mobile app.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
FreshBooks costs video editors $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 video editors: 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 job tracking are the pieces of that day. Some tools rent you each piece separately. A few — Nexa among them — bundle the lot into something you buy once. 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 video editor: 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 video editor'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 video editor earns $48,000/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 video editors. You own it like you own your Editing workstation (high-spec CPU/GPU, 64GB+ RAM).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small video editors 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.
Your people are already online — swapping real numbers, tool picks, and war stories. Here's where to find them.
Active community — tool picks, pricing, and day-to-day questions.
Open on Reddit →Active community — tool picks, pricing, and day-to-day questions.
Open on Reddit →Active community — tool picks, pricing, and day-to-day questions.
Open on Reddit →Active community — tool picks, pricing, and day-to-day questions.
Open on Reddit →Time tracking, invoicing, client records and job tracking are the pieces of that day. Some tools rent you each piece separately. A few — Nexa among them — bundle the lot into something you buy once. The sections below price both routes honestly.
A project lands as a folder of raw footage and a vague request, so the first job is organising: logging clips, syncing audio, labelling the good takes and building a rough structure before I touch the timeline. The rough cut is about story; I'm cutting interviews down to the strongest lines, finding the order that makes sense, and laying B-roll over the joins. Then the fine cut: pacing, transitions, music that fits and is properly licensed, and sound levelled so dialogue is clear on a phone speaker. Colour correction comes next, matching shots from different cameras so it looks like one piece. Captions and graphics go on last, and I export versions for each platform, landscape, square and vertical, each with its own crop. Revisions are where I protect my time; my agreement sets the number of rounds, and I timestamp every note so feedback is specific. I back up every project to two drives. I bill some clients per project and some monthly for a set number of videos, and I track my hours on both so I know which are worth keeping.
Real video editors near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a video editor? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every video editor 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 video editor'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 video editor — 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 video editors 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 video editors, 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