What heavy equipment mechanics need from their software, from sources outside QuickBooks and outside Nexa:
QuickBooks covers the general accounting side of this trade well: bank feed reconciliation, comprehensive reporting, and a format accountants already know, which helps at tax time. Plus adds project profitability and up to 40 classes and locations, which could be used to track jobs or machines. Its 800+ integrations may help fill gaps. But nothing in its feature list speaks to this trade's field-service billing: separate shop, field, overtime and holiday labor rates, mileage or zone travel charges, or per-machine fuel records for Form 4136 claims. Those would have to be built with its general tools or an add-on. The $38/month plan also caps users at 1 or 3, depending on tier.
Nexa covers more of the job side: invoices and estimates, jobs with costing and profit per job, assigning jobs to team members, time tracking, and today's job stops sent to Google Maps in time order. It also covers the books (expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, balance sheet, 1099 summaries, sales tax tracking, purchase orders) and works offline, which suits remote worksites. It does not list multiple labor rates, mileage or zone travel charges, or fuel-by-type and per-machine records. It does not run payroll (it only totals hours x rate in a CSV). It has no dispatch or route optimization, only a simple stock count, and no sync or import with QuickBooks, so switching means re-entering history. Its automated emails send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices, there is no hosted support desk or vendor onboarding, and card payments go only through your own Stripe account.
Over three years QuickBooks at $38/month is $456 a year, or $1,368. Nexa is $279 once (or 3 payments of $99), and $458.64 if you add Cloud Sync at $4.99/month, or $279 on one device. Nexa is much cheaper, but cost is not the deciding factor here. A shop that already has QuickBooks and an accountant who relies on it should stay, since Nexa gives up that familiarity and the integrations without fixing the fuel-credit or travel-billing gaps. A solo mechanic with no bookkeeper, who mainly needs invoices, jobs and time tracking on one device, could reasonably choose Nexa. Whichever you pick, you will need to keep fuel type, use and machine details in separate records.
Our read for heavy equipment mechanics: Keep QuickBooks if you already use it with an accountant; neither tool handles field travel rates or per-machine fuel records out of the box, and Nexa only makes sense for a solo, single-device shop that mostly needs invoices, jobs and time tracking.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
QuickBooks costs heavy equipment mechanics $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 heavy equipment mechanics: 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 heavy equipment mechanic: 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 heavy equipment mechanic 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 heavy equipment mechanics. You own it like you own your hydraulic flow and pressure test kit.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small heavy equipment mechanics 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.
Heavy equipment mechanics often don't work in a shop at all; they work wherever the machine died, which means a muddy job site, a quarry, or a logging deck reached by a service truck loaded with hydraulics tools, a crane, and an air compressor. The day frequently starts with a down call: an excavator that won't swing, a dozer leaking hydraulic oil, or a loader throwing a fault on the OEM laptop. Field diagnosis is its own skill, since the machine can't come to a lift and a hydraulic pressure test in a ditch is the only way to know if it's a pump, a valve, or a cylinder. The work is heavy in every sense, with final drives, track chains, and components that need a press or a crane just to handle. Preventive maintenance is the quieter half of the job: reading hour meters, changing fluids and filters, measuring undercarriage wear, and telling a contractor when a rebuild is coming so a failure doesn't strand a crew. The biggest frustration isn't the iron; it's the logistics. Travel time, crane hours, and parts runs pile up before a single repair begins, and keeping each machine's hour-meter and wear history straight across a contractor's fleet is what separates planned rebuilds from emergency tows. Get that history wrong and the next breakdown costs the customer a day of downtime.
Real heavy equipment mechanics near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a heavy equipment mechanic? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every heavy equipment mechanic 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 $68,300–$222,300 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 heavy equipment mechanic'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 heavy equipment mechanic — 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 heavy equipment mechanics 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 heavy equipment mechanics, 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