What bookkeepers need from their software, from sources outside Harvest and outside Nexa:
Harvest covers the time-and-billing side of bookkeeping well. It has one-click timers and timesheets, invoices generated from tracked time and expenses, online client payments, overdue reminders, recurring retainers, hours- or fee-based budgets with over-budget alerts, and billing rates per person, project or task type. Its QuickBooks Online and Xero integrations on the paid plan matter to many bookkeepers. It does not appear to record whether an engagement is bookkeeping only or involves return preparation, which decides whether a PTIN is needed. Nothing in its listed features tracks retention periods per record type and client, or supports secure disposal of client data. Its activity log is only on the Enterprise plan, at $17.5 per seat per month billed monthly. So the trade's compliance needs are mostly left to you.
Nexa covers more of the bookkeeping itself: expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow, 1099 summaries, sales tax tracking and receipt scanning. It also has time tracking, invoices, recurring invoices, payment plans, and a client pay portal that runs through your own Stripe account. It does not sync or import with QuickBooks or Xero, and it has no manual journal entries. It also does not run payroll. It offers only a payroll CSV of hours times rate, with no payroll taxes or pay stubs. Nothing in the facts I have covers engagement-scope flags, retention clocks, access controls or activity logging. Its automated emails, such as reminders and sequences, send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. Nexa is software you run yourself, with no vendor support desk or onboarding.
Over three years Harvest on the $11 monthly plan costs $396 ($132 a year). Nexa costs $279 once, or $99 in three payments. Adding Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month for 36 months brings it to $458.64, which is more than Harvest. Without sync it is cheaper, but it then runs on one device only. If you already bill through Harvest or rely on its QuickBooks or Xero connection, stay, and keep your scope and retention records somewhere else. Consider Nexa only if you work from a single device, don't need QuickBooks or Xero sync, and want bookkeeping reports and invoicing in one purchase. Either way, a practice that touches tax preparation should check its own Safeguards Rule obligations, because neither product is shown to meet them.
Our read for bookkeepers: Stay with Harvest for time billing and its QuickBooks and Xero connections, and cover scope, retention and security with a separate records tool, because Nexa lacks that sync and costs more over three years once Cloud Sync is added.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Harvest costs bookkeepers $132/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 25.4 months it has cost less than Harvest, 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 Harvest 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 bookkeepers: Stay with Harvest 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 $396 for Harvest 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. Harvest solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
Today's list price is $11/month — $132 a year, from Harvest'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 $117 less.
If Harvest 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 | Harvest | Nexa |
|---|---|---|
| Invoicing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scheduling | ✗ | ✓ |
| CRM | ✗ | ✓ |
| Time Tracking | ✓ | ✓ |
| Full Accounting | ✗ | ✓ (SIMPL) |
| Task Management | ✗ | ✓ |
| Works offline | ✗ | ✓ |
| Price | $11/mo | $279 once or 3 × $99 |
| 3-Year Total | $396 | $279 |
| You own it? | No — stop paying, lose access | Yes — forever |
✓ and ✗ for Harvest come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as Harvest lacking it: check with them. Three years is at today's price.
Straight from Harvest's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
Harvest is the better call if you need clean, simple interface specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
Professional services teams that bill clients by the hour, including advertising and marketing, architecture, construction, law, accounting and finance, consulting and IT, design, and software development. The site also says it serves teams of all sizes, types and industries. (getharvest.com)
What people outside Harvest 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 bookkeeper: 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.)
This is the connection that makes the rest worth it. A bookkeeper'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.
Harvest plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median bookkeeper earns $45,000/year. At $132/year, Harvest 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 bookkeepers. You own it like you own your Accounting software licenses (for client work).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small bookkeepers 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.
Local rates and saturation vary widely — price for the city you serve, not a national average.
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 →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.
Month-end is my deadline. Around the fifth, clients' bank and card feeds have closed and I start reconciling: every account, every transaction, matched to a receipt or an invoice, until the books agree with the statement to the cent. The work is mostly in the exceptions: a deposit that's actually two invoices, a transfer coded as income, a personal expense on the business card, a vendor paid twice. I chase clients for the receipts they swore they'd upload. For some clients I run payroll twice a month, which has hard deadlines and zero room for error. Then I close the month, produce a P&L and balance sheet, and send a short note on what changed and why, because a report nobody understands is worthless. Sales-tax returns land on their own calendar by state. Around tax season I'm cleaning up the year and preparing a clean package for the CPA. Most clients are on a monthly flat fee, so the ones with messy books cost me real hours, and every year I'm deciding which to reprice and which to let go.
Real bookkeepers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a bookkeeper? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every bookkeeper 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 bookkeeper'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 bookkeeper — 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 bookkeepers and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. Harvest may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
Harvest has features like Clean, simple interface and Automatic invoice generation from time that some businesses rely on. For most solo bookkeepers, these aren't dealbreakers.
At $11/month, Nexa pays for itself in 25.4 months. After that: $132 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