Harvest vs Nexa The Real Comparison for Virtual Assistants
Harvest
$11/mo ($132/yr)
VS
Nexa
$279 once — own forever
or 3 payments of $99
Break even: 25.4 months at Harvest's current price.
Does Harvest Fit Virtual Assistants? Our Read
What virtual assistants need from their software, from sources outside Harvest and outside Nexa:
Virtual assistants who work for clients as independent contractors need to track self-employment tax and make quarterly estimated payments, because no employer withholds tax from their pay. The IRS says self-employed people generally pay self-employment (SE) tax, which is Social Security and Medicare tax, plus income tax. It says they generally pay estimated taxes quarterly using Form 1040-ES. A net self-employment income of $400 or more requires filing a return. (irs.gov)
Bookkeeping for a VA has to separate the SE tax from income tax and apply the 15.3% SE tax rate to net earnings. The rate is 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare. The IRS page gives the Social Security wage base as $168,600 for 2024. The employer-equivalent portion of SE tax can be deducted when figuring adjusted gross income. (irs.gov)
Client records and contracts should be able to show that the VA is an independent contractor and not an employee. The IRS looks at three categories of evidence: behavioral control, financial control, and type of relationship. The last category covers written contracts, benefits, and whether the relationship is ongoing. A VA who works long-term for one client therefore needs a written agreement and records of how the work is directed. (irs.gov)
Many VAs bill on retainer, so invoicing software needs to handle prepaid monthly hours. A practitioner handbook describes a retainer as a client paying in advance for a set number of hours or tasks. It says retainers are always charged for the month ahead, not the month just ended. It advises billing the full retained amount whether or not the hours are used, and avoiding rollover of unused hours. The same handbook also notes that policies on unused hours vary. (thevahandbook.com)
Harvest covers most of a virtual assistant's billing work. It has one-click timers, invoices generated from tracked time, online client payments, automatic overdue reminders and recurring retainers. That last one matters because many VAs bill a set block of hours a month in advance. Hours-based budgets with over-budget alerts help you see when a retainer is running out. The Teams plan also connects to QuickBooks Online, Xero and Stripe. That helps if you hand your books to an accountant. Harvest's feature list doesn't include self-employment tax tracking, quarterly estimated payment reminders, or contractor-status records. A VA who needs the 15.3% self-employment tax set aside and Form 1040-ES payments planned will have to do that elsewhere.
Nexa covers more of the business side in one place. It has invoices, estimates and proposals that convert to invoices, recurring invoices, payment plans, and a client pay portal that takes card payments through your own Stripe account. It also has time tracking, a CRM, expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow and 1099 summaries. It doesn't sync or import with QuickBooks or Xero, so if your accountant works in either one, you would have to move the data by hand. Nexa is software you own and run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding. Its automated emails, such as reminders and sequences, send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices, so a late-night overdue reminder won't go out if the app is closed.
Over three years Harvest at $11 a month comes to $396. Nexa is $279 once, or 3 payments of $99, and runs on one device. Adding optional Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month brings the three-year total to $458.64. If you already use Harvest, rely on its recurring retainers, or share your books with an accountant through QuickBooks or Xero, stay with it. Consider Nexa only if you want one device, a one-time purchase, and CRM and bookkeeping in the same tool, and you're fine with no accounting sync. Either way, you'll still want a separate tool or an accountant to handle self-employment tax and quarterly estimates.
Our read for virtual assistants: Stay with Harvest if you bill recurring retainers or need QuickBooks or Xero sync, because Nexa has no accounting sync and a one-time purchase doesn't change that.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Bottom Line
Harvest costs virtual assistants $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.
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 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 virtual assistants: 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.
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 Harvest if:
You have a large team (10+) needing enterprise features
You're deeply invested in Harvest's specific workflow
You need a feature Nexa doesn't have yet
Sound Familiar?
I support five clients, and each one has handed me a different slice of their business. For one I manage the inbox and calendar, sorting what needs her attention from what I can answer myself. For another I run the back office: invoices out, bills logged, payments chased, and a weekly summary of where money stands. A third gets social media scheduling and newsletter formatting, and a fourth has me on customer service, answering enquiries within an hour. Every client has their own tools, logins and preferences, so I keep detailed notes and checklists for each one; the job is being reliable enough that they stop thinking about the task at all. I work in time blocks, and I track every hour because most of my clients are on monthly retainers for a set number of hours, and I have to flag it when the work outgrows the retainer. Confidentiality matters: I'm inside people's email, finances and client lists. I invoice at the start of each month and spend a couple of hours a week finding the next client.
Tracking hours across 5-10 clients billing at different hourly rates
Clients expecting 'always available' response times
Scope creep when 'admin support' expands to social media, bookkeeping, and personal errands
Late payments from clients who see VA work as low-priority
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. Harvest solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
What Harvest Actually Costs Virtual Assistants
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.
Three years at today's price
Year 1$132
Year 2$132
Year 3$132
Three years of Harvest$396
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-by-Feature
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.
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.
Harvest'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 Harvest Does Better
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.
Clean, simple interface
Automatic invoice generation from time
Budget monitoring and alerts
Good integrations (Asana, Trello, QuickBooks)
70,000+ companies use it
A free plan to start on (with limits), so you can use Harvest before paying anything.
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.
What Harvest Is Built For
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)
Time tracking uses one-click timers, daily and weekly timesheets, and calendar-based logging. It runs on desktop (macOS, Windows), mobile (iOS, Android) and browser. (getharvest.com)
Invoices are generated from tracked time and expenses. The page also lists online client payments, automatic overdue reminders and recurring retainers. (getharvest.com)
Budgets can be hours-based or fee-based, with over-budget alerts and estimated-vs-actual rollups. Billing rates can be set per person, project or task type. (getharvest.com)
The homepage claims 40+ integrations, with Asana, Slack and Stripe named as examples. The pricing page says the Free plan has 50+ core integrations. (getharvest.com)
The Free plan costs $0 and covers 1 seat, 2 projects and up to 4 custom reports, with time tracking, invoicing and expense tracking. (getharvest.com)
Teams costs $9 per seat per month billed annually ($11 monthly) and adds team reporting, billable and cost rates, CSV import, QuickBooks Online, Xero and Stripe integrations, and scheduled phone support. Enterprise costs $14 per seat per month billed annually ($17.50 monthly) and adds profitability reporting, timesheet approval, an activity log, custom CSV exports and SAML SSO. (getharvest.com)
What people outside Harvest and outside Nexa say:
The Business Dive scores Harvest 3.9/5 and calls it "a well-rounded time tracking and invoicing solution". It praises the user-friendly interface, "smooth" invoicing that pulls in time and expenses automatically, simple timers and timesheets, and "quite massive" integrations. (thebusinessdive.com)
The Business Dive lists these drawbacks: phone support only on paid plans, no GPS tracking, and automatic time capture only through integrated apps. It also notes that Profitability and Activity Log reports need the Premium plan. (thebusinessdive.com)
ITQlick scores Harvest 91/100 and ranks it #3 of 64 time tracking products. It praises real-time budget tracking and API integrations. It criticises a dated UX, a steep learning curve for advanced features, and cost that may be too high for very small businesses. ITQlick says vendors pay it when it connects them with buyers. (itqlick.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 virtual assistant
Software doesn't do the creative work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every virtual assistant: 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.)
Watch a job become an invoice
This is the connection that makes the rest worth it. A virtual assistant'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.
The job Monthly retainer, 20 hours
ServiceRetainer (20 hours)1 × $700$700
TimeLabor — tracked on the job
3 hrs× $35/hr$105
→
The invoice builds itself
Subtotal$955
Invoice total$955
You didn't write this invoice — the job did.
Calculate Your Full Stack
Harvest plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
Switching from Harvest
1
Export your data — Go to Settings → Manage → Export. Download time entries, invoices, and expenses.
2
Set up Nexa — 10-minute setup. Import your client list by CSV, then set up your projects.
3
Start tracking in Nexa — Begin using Nexa time tracker. Import historical time data if needed.
4
Cancel Harvest — Cancel subscription. Download a final export for your records.
✓ 30-day money-back guarantee. Zero risk.
What This Means for Virtual Assistants
The median virtual assistant earns $38,000/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 virtual assistants. You own it like you own your Home office setup (desk, chair, dual monitors).
Is Nexa actually right for a virtual assistant?
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 150,000 virtual assistants in the US who do, and you wear every hat.
You're tired of paying every month for toggl 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 Home office setup (desk, chair, dual monitors).
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 virtual assistants 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.
Virtual Assistants by the numbers — by place
What virtual assistants charge, city by city
$52 /hravg local price
+49%vs national
moderatesaturation
~5,931operators
6%growth
$54 /hravg local price
+54%vs national
moderatesaturation
~3,610operators
4%growth
$47 /hravg local price
+34%vs national
highsaturation
~3,130operators
5%growth
$40 /hravg local price
+14%vs national
highsaturation
~2,333operators
10%growth
$42 /hravg local price
+20%vs national
highsaturation
~1,947operators
7%growth
Local rates and saturation vary widely — price for the city you serve, not a national average.
🎧 The Virtual Assistant Podcast🎧 VA Mastered Podcast
Forums
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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.
What virtual assistants actually deal with
Tracking hours across 5-10 clients billing at different hourly rates
Clients expecting 'always available' response times
Scope creep when 'admin support' expands to social media, bookkeeping, and personal errands
Late payments from clients who see VA work as low-priority
A day in the life of a virtual assistant
I support five clients, and each one has handed me a different slice of their business. For one I manage the inbox and calendar, sorting what needs her attention from what I can answer myself. For another I run the back office: invoices out, bills logged, payments chased, and a weekly summary of where money stands. A third gets social media scheduling and newsletter formatting, and a fourth has me on customer service, answering enquiries within an hour. Every client has their own tools, logins and preferences, so I keep detailed notes and checklists for each one; the job is being reliable enough that they stop thinking about the task at all. I work in time blocks, and I track every hour because most of my clients are on monthly retainers for a set number of hours, and I have to flag it when the work outgrows the retainer. Confidentiality matters: I'm inside people's email, finances and client lists. I invoice at the start of each month and spend a couple of hours a week finding the next client.
The tools a working virtual assistant actually owns
Home office setup (desk, chair, dual monitors)
High-speed internet and backup connection
Project management tools (Asana, Trello, ClickUp)
Communication tools (Slack, Zoom)
Why virtual assistants leave the big platforms
toggl: $10/month for a timer. When you're billing at $25/hour, that's almost half an hour of work per month just for the timer app.
freshbooks: $17/month for 5 clients. Most VAs have more than 5. Next tier is $30/month — over an hour of billable work gone.
harvest: Time tracking and invoicing in one — but $11/month and the invoicing is too basic for client-facing work.
Where virtual assistants actually talk shop
r/VirtualAssistant (Reddit)
r/WorkOnline (Reddit)
r/freelance (Reddit)
FreeU Academy Community (Forum)
Abbey Ashley (YouTube)
Esther Inman (YouTube)
$10K VA (YouTube)
Local virtual assistants on Nexa
Real virtual assistants near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee.
Are you a virtual assistant? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time.
Or browse every virtual assistant on Nexa →
The kit a working virtual assistant owns
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
Home office setup (desk, chair, dual monitors)
High-speed internet and backup connection
Project management tools (Asana, Trello, ClickUp)
Communication tools (Slack, Zoom)
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 Harvest'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 Harvest'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 virtual assistants we can verify. For user testimony, read the independent reviews — Harvest on G2 and on Capterra — where the reviewers are not selling you anything.
Check the price yourself:Harvest'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 virtual assistant'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 virtual assistant — 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 pricingToggl Track $144/yr, FreshBooks $516/yr, Harvest $132/yr, Wave $228/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 $38,000 median we cite for the typical virtual assistant 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.
The field's own bodiesWe anchor what virtual assistants actually need to the people who set the standards — IAAP. We don't speak for them; we point you to them so you can weigh this guide against the profession's own.
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 Harvest replacement?
For solo virtual assistants 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.
What does Harvest do that Nexa doesn't?
Harvest has features like Clean, simple interface and Automatic invoice generation from time that some businesses rely on. For most solo virtual assistants, these aren't dealbreakers.
How fast does Nexa pay for itself?
At $11/month, Nexa pays for itself in 25.4 months. After that: $132 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.