What aircraft detailer need from their software, from sources outside QuickBooks and outside Nexa:
QuickBooks covers the money side of an aircraft detailer's airport obligations better than Nexa does. The Scottsdale permit fee is the greater of a flat minimum or 2.5% of gross income from all services sold, due by the 20th of the following month. To total that per airport per month, you tag each sale with a location. Locations (up to 40) come with the Plus tier, which costs more than the $38 plan, so the cheapest plan does not do this. Bank feed reconciliation, reporting, 800+ integrations and the fact that accountants already know it all help with the monthly payment and the books. QuickBooks does not cover the compliance records. It has no per-job log of service date, owner, N-number, make and model, which Scottsdale requires you to keep for six months and show the airport director on request. It has no home for safety data sheets, the wash plan (containment method, water use per wash, chemicals used) or insurance certificates, and no reminder for the due date. Hangarkeepers liability is an insurance question that no bookkeeping tool answers. The broker page we found lists repair shops, FBOs and paint shops and does not mention detailing, so ask a broker whether it applies to you. These requirements come from one airport's documents, not from a national rule. Other airports, and any FAA or environmental requirements that apply to your chemicals and wash water, may differ, so check with each airport and your own advisers.
Nexa covers the job and bookkeeping side: jobs with costing and profit per job, recurring jobs, invoices and estimates, a client pay portal that takes cards through your own Stripe account, expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, sales tax tracking, time tracking, and offline use. It does not cover the airport-specific needs either. Client records have no street-address field, and nothing in it is built for N-number logs, safety data sheets, insurance certificates, or permit fee and due-date tracking. It has no sync or import with QuickBooks, so switching means re-entering your history, and it has no app marketplace. It is software you own and run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding. We make Nexa, so weigh this comparison accordingly. Its automated emails and reminders send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices, and without the optional Cloud Sync it runs on a single device.
Over three years QuickBooks at $38 a month ($456 a year) costs $1,368. Nexa costs $279 once, or 3 payments of $99, and $458.64 over three years if you add Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. The saving is real, but it does not remove the airport paperwork, because neither tool handles it. Either way you keep a simple aircraft log, a folder of chemical sheets and current certificates, and your own calendar reminder for the permit payment. If you use an accountant, bank feeds or integrations, or you need location-tagged sales to total the fee per airport, stay with QuickBooks and keep the log beside it. Nexa suits a detailer with no accountant relationship who mainly wants job profit tracking at a lower price, and who accepts re-entering history and running the software without vendor support.
Our read for aircraft detailer: Stay with QuickBooks if you rely on an accountant, bank feeds or location-tagged sales for the airport permit fee, and keep a separate aircraft log and compliance folder, since neither tool covers them.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
QuickBooks costs aircraft detailer $456/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 7.3 months it has cost less than QuickBooks, 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 QuickBooks 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 aircraft detailer: Stay with QuickBooks 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 $1,368 for QuickBooks over three years.
Invoicing, time tracking, job tracking and the books 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. QuickBooks solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
Today's list price is $38/month — $456 a year, from QuickBooks'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 $1,089 less.
If QuickBooks 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.
Today's sticker price only tells you what a subscription costs today. These are dated changes, each linked to the announcement or report it comes from. Tap one for the numbers.
For renewals on or after February 1, 2026, Pro Plus and Mac Plus went from $999 to $1,149 a year for one user, and each extra seat from $200 to $230.
Source: SWK Technologies, Insightful Accountant (Dec 2, 2025)
From July 1, 2025: Simple Start $35 to $38, Essentials $65 to $75, Plus $99 to $115, Advanced $235 to $275 a month.
Source: Woodard Report (May 27, 2025)
After September 30, 2024, new US customers can no longer buy these Desktop editions. Existing subscribers can keep renewing.
Source: Intuit
Only changes we can link to a vendor announcement or a named publication are listed. Plans, add-ons and discounts vary, so check the vendor's current pricing page before you decide.
| Feature | QuickBooks | Nexa |
|---|---|---|
| Invoicing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scheduling | ✗ | ✓ |
| CRM | ✗ | ✓ |
| Time Tracking | — | ✓ |
| Full Accounting | ✓ | ✓ (SIMPL) |
| Task Management | ✗ | ✓ |
| Works offline | — | ✓ |
| Price | $38/mo | $279 once or 3 × $99 |
| 3-Year Total | $1,368 | $279 |
| You own it? | No — stop paying, lose access | Yes — forever |
✓ and ✗ for QuickBooks come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as QuickBooks lacking it: check with them. Three years is at today's price.
Straight from QuickBooks's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
QuickBooks is the better call if you need industry standard - accountants know it specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
QuickBooks Online is aimed at freelancers and new businesses, small and mid-size businesses, product-based businesses, and nonprofits. Larger or more complex operations are pointed to Desktop Enterprise (up to 40 users) or Intuit Enterprise Suite (multi-entity). (quickbooks.intuit.com)
What people outside QuickBooks 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 aircraft detailer: 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.
A lead, a call, a referral — and a quote or estimate that turns it into a booked job.
The part you actually get paid for — with the time, materials, add-ons, and tasks tracked as you go, not guessed at later.
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.)
QuickBooks plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median Aircraft Detailer earns $48,000/year. At $456/year, QuickBooks 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 aircraft detailer. You own it like you own your Aviation-approved waterless / dry-wash products safe for painted and bare aluminum skins.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small aircraft detailer business that owns its tools and is sick of renting software, Nexa replaces your whole stack for $279 once. If you're scaling past a handful of crews, a fleet platform may fit better — and we'd rather tell you that now than sell you the wrong thing.
Invoicing, time tracking, job tracking and the books 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.
Detailing aircraft is detailing with consequences. Everything I touch is governed by what's safe for aviation surfaces, so I can't grab a product off a parts-store shelf; the wrong chemical near an acrylic window, a control surface, or a static wick can create a real airworthiness problem, not just a cosmetic one. A lot of my work is a careful dry or waterless wash because hangars and ramps often don't want runoff, and I'm lifting baked-on bug strikes from the leading edges, exhaust soot from the belly and tail, and brake dust off the gear. Brightwork is its own craft, hand-polishing bare aluminum and leading edges to a mirror without burning the surface or harming de-ice boots. Windows get acrylic-safe cleaner only, worked gently, because crazing or a scratch in a windscreen is expensive and dangerous. I work off non-conductive ladders and platforms to reach the tail and the top of the fuselage, and I'm constantly mindful of antennas, probes, and pitot tubes I must never bump. Scheduling is a dance with flight times, the FBO, and the owner's travel, so a wash window can be narrow. When a plane rolls out of the hangar gleaming for its owner's trip, clean belly and polished spinner, that's the satisfaction, done by the book.
Real aircraft detailer near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you an aircraft detailer? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every aircraft detailer on Nexa →
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
Here's the bar that matters: you spent $820–$3,500 on tools that last for years, and never thought twice. So why should the software cost more than your whole kit — every single year? Hold it to the same standard as a good tool: $279, once.
We build an aircraft detailer'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 an aircraft detailer — 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 aircraft detailer and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. QuickBooks may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
QuickBooks has features like Industry standard - accountants know it and 800+ app integrations that some businesses rely on. For most solo aircraft detailer, these aren't dealbreakers.
At $38/month, Nexa pays for itself in 7.3 months. After that: $456 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