What fleet maintenance need from their software, from sources outside QuickBooks and outside Nexa:
Two different jobs are bundled in this question, and it helps to separate them. The first is the books. QuickBooks covers that well: bank feed reconciliation, comprehensive reporting, bill pay with ACH, 800+ integrations, and a format most accountants already know. On higher tiers, classes and locations can tag spend by truck, which gives you cost per unit. The second job is the regulated vehicle file, and QuickBooks does not cover it. A motor carrier must keep a record per vehicle: company number, make, serial number and year. The record must show the nature and due date of each required inspection and maintenance task, plus a dated log of inspections, repairs and maintenance. It is kept where the vehicle is housed or maintained for 1 year, then 6 months after the vehicle leaves your control. Annual inspection reports are kept 14 months and must be retrievable by vehicle and date. Nothing in QuickBooks's feature list stores a service history or tracks a due date, so a shop invoice there is only a cost. For heavy trucks at 55,000 pounds or more, Form 2290 adds first-use month, mileage against the 5,000-mile limit (7,500 for farm vehicles), and a vehicle count, with e-filing required at 25 or more vehicles. QuickBooks lists none of that.
Nexa is our product, so weigh this accordingly. It covers the shop and business side: estimates that convert to invoices, recurring invoices, jobs with profit per job, assigning jobs to team members, time tracking, a payroll CSV of hours x rate, expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, 1099 summaries, and a simple stock count per product. It does not cover the vehicle file either. It has no per-vehicle record, no inspection report storage by vehicle and date, no Form 2290 tracking, no fleet tracking or dispatch board, and no full inventory management. It does not run payroll taxes, pay stubs or direct deposit, and it has no sync or import with QuickBooks, so moving the books over would mean re-keying. A recurring job could act as a reminder, but Nexa's automated emails send only while it is open on one of your devices, which is a weak base for an inspection deadline. Nexa is also software you run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding.
Over three years, QuickBooks at $38 a month costs $1,368, which is $456 a year. Nexa costs $279 once (or 3 payments of $99), or $458.64 over three years with optional Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. Neither price buys the compliance file, so the price gap should not drive this decision. What to do: if your accountant already works in QuickBooks, keep it for the books and do not switch for fleet reasons. Add a dedicated fleet maintenance system alongside it. Check that it keeps one record per unit with the identifying fields above, schedules inspections and service by due date, keeps a dated repair log, stores inspection reports by vehicle and date, and can produce the records on request. If you run heavy trucks, also check that it tracks first-use month, mileage per vehicle and vehicle count for Form 2290. Nexa only fits a small shop that wants invoicing and job costing and has no regulated fleet to document. This is our plain-language reading of the federal recordkeeping and Form 2290 rules, not legal advice. Confirm current wording and deadlines with the regulators or a qualified compliance advisor.
Our read for fleet maintenance: Neither covers the per-vehicle maintenance and inspection record a motor carrier must keep, so keep QuickBooks for the books if you already use it and add a dedicated fleet maintenance management system.
Neither product on this page is built for it. These kinds of software are. The examples are not ours and these are plain links, not affiliate links; each goes to the product's own page for that capability.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
QuickBooks costs fleet maintenance $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 fleet maintenance: Neither QuickBooks nor Nexa is the main system for this work; start with the specialist software above. Nexa only makes sense beside it, at $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 fleet maintenance technician: 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 Fleet Maintenance Technician 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 fleet maintenance. You own it like you own your Heavy-duty floor jack, bottle jacks, and tall jack stands for trucks and vans.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small fleet maintenance 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.
You manage the health of a yard full of vehicles, and the day is built around keeping them on the road, not in your bay. The morning starts with the PM list, which trucks are due by mileage or engine hours, and you pull the first one in for an oil and filter service, a chassis lube, and a full safety look-over. Downtime is the enemy because every hour a truck sits is a load the owner isn't hauling, so you work fast and batch services. You're tracking which unit got what and when, because in a fleet of near-identical vans it's easy to skip one or do another twice. A driver reports a soft brake pedal, so you measure the linings, find one axle near the limit, and schedule it before it becomes a DOT problem. Midday you're doing a pre-trip-style inspection on a truck approaching its inspection deadline, checking lights, tread depth, and brake stroke, and documenting it so the paperwork holds up if it gets stopped. Your mobile van handles a unit too busy to come in, doing the service in the customer's own lot. The afternoon is parts ordering for next week's PM batch and updating each vehicle's service history. You close by mapping out which trucks are due next and confirming the owner's preferred service windows.
Real fleet maintenance near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a fleet maintenance technician? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every fleet maintenance technician 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 fleet maintenance technician'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 fleet maintenance technician — 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 fleet maintenance 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 fleet maintenance, 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