What flooring installers need from their software, from sources outside QuickBooks and outside Nexa:
QuickBooks covers the money side of this trade well. Its list includes bank feed reconciliation, comprehensive reporting, 800+ integrations and the fact that accountants know it. That helps a small installer whose bookkeeper or tax preparer already works in it. It handles invoicing, and its paid plans include bill pay with free ACH. Job-level profitability is a different matter. Project profitability sits on the Plus tier, not the $38 plan. Neither QuickBooks nor any general bookkeeping tool gives you the trade's most distinctive need, a per-job lead-safe record. That means firm and renovator certification status, the build year of each pre-1978 job, proof the Renovate Right pamphlet was delivered, and compliance records kept for three years. The rule's thresholds date from 2010 trade press, so check the current rule before building a process around them.
Nexa covers the day-to-day flow: quotes and estimates that convert to invoices, clients signing estimates and paying by card through your own Stripe account, and payment plans. Payment plans can handle a small deposit with the balance due on completion. It also has jobs with costing and profit per job, time tracking, expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, and a crew view for assigned jobs. Its clients have no street-address field, and nothing in it tracks lead-safe certification or per-job compliance records, so it does not solve the regulatory need either. It cannot sync or import with QuickBooks, it does not run payroll (no payroll taxes, pay stubs or direct deposit), and it has no hosted support desk. Any automated emails (sequences, workflows, reminders) send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices.
Over three years QuickBooks at $38 a month costs $1,368 ($456 a year). Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 over three years if you add Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. Without Cloud Sync it runs on one device. If an accountant relies on QuickBooks, or you need payroll or phone support, stay with it. If you work alone or with a small crew and mainly want quotes, deposits and profit per job at a lower cost, Nexa is a reasonable fit. For lead-safe compliance, plan on a dedicated compliance and recordkeeping tool or a disciplined per-job checklist alongside either one.
Our read for flooring installers: Neither tool tracks lead-safe certification or per-job compliance records, so you need a dedicated compliance record-keeping tool; for everything else, stay with QuickBooks if your accountant depends on it, and Nexa is the cheaper fit for a solo or small crew.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
QuickBooks costs flooring 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 flooring installers: Neither QuickBooks nor Nexa is the main system for this work; start with software built for it. Nexa only makes sense beside it, at $279 once against $1,368 for QuickBooks over three years.
Invoicing, time tracking, job tracking 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. 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 flooring 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.)
This is the connection that makes the rest worth it. A flooring installer'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.
QuickBooks plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median flooring installer earns $43,000/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 flooring installers. You own it like you own your Flooring nailer and stapler.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small flooring 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.
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 →Active community — tool picks, pricing, and day-to-day questions.
Open on Reddit →Invoicing, time tracking, job tracking 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.
The floor is only as good as what's under it. Before I lay anything I'm checking the subfloor: moisture readings on concrete, flatness with a straightedge, squeaks and soft spots in plywood. Half my callbacks in this trade come from someone who skipped that step. Hardwood and engineered flooring sit in the house for a few days to acclimate before I touch them. On install day it's tearing out the old floor, hauling it, grinding high spots and levelling low ones, then the underlayment and the floor itself, planning the layout so the rows land straight and the cuts at the walls are hidden. Stairs are slow, fussy work and priced accordingly. Tile is its own world: layout lines, thinset, spacers, and a day for the grout. I measure and quote in the evenings, always with a waste factor, and the customer often pays for the material up front because it's special-ordered. Transitions, trim and moving furniture are where jobs run long, so I spell them out in the quote before I start.
Real flooring installers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a flooring installer? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every flooring 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 $1,200–$4,780 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 flooring 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 flooring 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 flooring 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 flooring 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