What cabinet installers need from their software, from sources outside QuickBooks and outside Nexa:
QuickBooks covers the bookkeeping side of this trade well. Cabinet installers often run their own invoicing, taxes and records, and QuickBooks gives them bank feed reconciliation, comprehensive reporting, project profitability on the higher plans, and 800+ integrations. It is also the tool accountants already know, which helps when a deposit has to be treated as a liability rather than income and sales tax has to follow when the tax is generated. It does not enforce state deposit caps. The caps practitioners report, such as California's 10% limit, are forum accounts and not statute text. Milestone splits like 50/40/10 and a 5-10% holdback are done by building progress invoices or a non-taxable retainer item yourself. The plan that does the core job is $38 a month, and phone support comes with a paid subscription.
Nexa covers much of the billing workflow. Estimates and proposals convert to invoices, payment plans can model a deposit, delivery and install schedule, and clients can pay by card through your own Stripe account and sign estimates. It also has job costing with profit per job, expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, a balance sheet, sales tax tracking and 1099 summaries. It does not enforce deposit caps either, so you set the percentages yourself. It has no manual journal entries, so booking a deposit as a liability the way an accountant might want is harder. It has no sync or import with QuickBooks, so moving over means starting your records fresh. It also has no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding, because you own and run the software yourself. If you use its automated emails or reminders, they send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices.
Over three years QuickBooks at $38 a month is $456 a year, or $1,368. Nexa is $279 once on a single device, or $458.64 with optional Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. If you already work with an accountant, or you want phone support and clean deposit-liability and sales tax handling, stay with QuickBooks. A solo installer with no accountant and simple books, who is comfortable running their own software and wants a lower cost, could reasonably try Nexa, but should expect to handle the retainer accounting by hand.
Our read for cabinet installers: Stay with QuickBooks if an accountant handles your deposit-liability and sales tax records, since Nexa has no journal entries, no QuickBooks import and no support desk, though a solo installer with simple books could save money with Nexa.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
QuickBooks costs cabinet installers $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 cabinet installers: 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.
Time tracking, invoicing, 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 cabinet installer: 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 cabinet installer earns $55,000/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 cabinet installers. You own it like you own your cordless drill/driver and cabinet screws.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small cabinet installers 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.
Year-round construction in SoCal. Fire season (June-November) drives restoration demand. Drought impacts landscaping. Earthquake retrofitting is ongoing market.
Extreme summer heat drives HVAC demand. Hurricane risk on Gulf Coast. Year-round construction. Rapid population growth in DFW, Austin, Houston, San Antonio creates sustained demand. Freeze events (like 2021) create emergency plumbing/HVAC surge.
Hurricane season June-November creates massive restoration demand. Snowbird season November-March boosts service volume 30-40%. Year-round construction. Pool service is year-round industry. Pest control peaks in summer humidity.
Harsh winters in upstate, moderate in NYC. Construction limited in winter upstate. NYC market is enormous but hypercompetitive. Brownstone/pre-war building maintenance is specialized trade. NYC licensing is notoriously complex.
Time tracking, invoicing, 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.
Your whole craft is making dead-level cabinets land on a wall and floor that are neither level nor flat. You start a kitchen by finding the high point of the floor and snapping a laser line around the room for the base cabinets, then locating studs and a level reference line for the uppers. You usually hang the uppers first while the floor's clear, shimming each box to the laser, clamping the face frames tight to each other, and screwing into studs so nothing sags over a dishwasher gap. The base cabinets come next, shimmed level despite the sloping floor, because every error here shows up later in a counter that rocks or a backsplash with a wedge gap. The wall waves, so you scribe the end panels and fillers with the track saw to make the gaps vanish. Mid-morning you open a box and find a wall cabinet arrived with a cracked face, which strands that run until the supplier sends a replacement, and you have to keep the rest of the install moving around the hole. The countertop fabricator can't template until your boxes are set and solid, so the granite schedule rides on you finishing clean today. You install the hardware with a jig so every pull lines up, level the lazy Susan, and walk the homeowner through soft-close adjustments. You leave knowing the counter template, and the whole kitchen timeline, depends on the level lines you set this morning.
Real cabinet installers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a cabinet installer? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every cabinet installer 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 $765–$2,550 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 a cabinet installer'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 cabinet installer — 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 cabinet installers 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 cabinet installers, 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