What french drain installers need from their software, from sources outside QuickBooks and outside Nexa:
QuickBooks covers the money side of a drain business well: accountants know it, and it has bank feed reconciliation, reporting, 800+ integrations and bill pay with free ACH. Plus adds project profitability and up to 40 classes and locations, which can tag a job but aren't date fields. Its published list shows no dig-ticket date, mark-expiry date, re-notify reminder, trench depth, protective-system or competent-person field. It also lists no job-type tax flag or exemption-certificate storage. We haven't run it on a live job, so "not listed" means we found no mention. Test each in the 30-day trial before relying on it. These records matter because in Idaho marks last no more than 3 weeks and the excavator maintains them, and OSHA expects a protective system at 5 feet or deeper. Capital-improvement versus repair treatment also changes whether you charge sales tax, and that rule must be confirmed with your state.
Nexa's publisher wrote this page, so weigh that. Nexa covers crew work: jobs with profit per job, assignment with a crew view, today's stops in Google Maps, estimates that convert to invoices, expenses, bank reconciliation, 1099 summaries and sales tax tracking. It has none of the compliance fields above. Its clients also have no street-address field, which is awkward when a locate ticket is tied to a job site. A Mission's sub-steps could hold a ticket checklist. But Nexa's automated emails send only while it is open on one of your devices, so they are a weak safeguard for a mark that can lapse while you're on site. It also has no QuickBooks import or sync, no payroll taxes, pay stubs or direct deposit, no integration library, and no hosted support or onboarding. You own and run it yourself.
Over three years QuickBooks at $38 a month costs $456 a year, or $1,368. Nexa is $279 once (or 3 payments of $99), or $458.64 with optional Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. The price gap is real but shouldn't decide this, because neither tool holds the records that carry the legal and safety risk. If you already use QuickBooks, keep it for the books, your accountant and your integrations, and don't move to Nexa for compliance. Track ticket date, mark expiry, re-notify date, depth, protective system, competent person and tax status in a job-management tool with custom job fields and date-based reminders. A written checklist works until you have one. Nexa suits only a new one-device shop with no accountant that wants one-time pricing for quoting and scheduling and keeps compliance records elsewhere.
Our read for french drain installers: Neither tool holds dig-ticket, trench-safety or tax-exemption records, so use a job-management tool with custom fields and date reminders for those, and keep QuickBooks for the books if you already have it.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
QuickBooks costs french drain 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 french drain 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.
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 french drain 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 French drain 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 french drain installers. You own it like you own your trencher or mini-excavator.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small french drain 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.
The job is a chronically wet side yard, so you start by confirming the trench line and shooting grade with the laser, because the whole system lives or dies on continuous fall. The trencher opens a clean cut to the depth you need, but halfway down the line you hit a mat of tree roots and have to switch to hand digging to ease the trench around them without losing your slope. You line the trench with non-woven filter fabric, lay in a few inches of washed gravel, and set the sock-wrapped perforated pipe on top, checking the drop with the laser every few feet so there's no belly. More gravel goes over the pipe, then you fold the fabric over the top like a burrito so silt from the surrounding soil can't migrate in and choke it. You tie the run to a solid pipe that carries water to a pop-up emitter at the low end of the yard. A cleanout at the head lets the homeowner flush it years from now. Backfill, tamp, and the trench all but disappears, which is the part customers struggle with, because they paid for something they can no longer see. You walk them through the cleanout and the emitter, and remind them not to bury the pop-up under mulch. The test is the next downpour, and you want the call to never come.
Real french drain installers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a french drain installer? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every french drain 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 $6,800–$42,300 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 french drain 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 french drain 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 french drain 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 french drain 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