What irrigation technicians need from their software, from sources outside QuickBooks and outside Nexa:
QuickBooks covers the money side of an irrigation business well. It has invoicing, bank feed reconciliation, comprehensive reporting, 800+ app integrations, and it is the tool accountants already know. It does not cover what is specific to this trade. The sourced needs are a Texas irrigator license with its three-year renewal and CE hours, annual backflow test due dates for each customer device, the tester's own certification and gauge calibration dates, and per-zone fall shutdown records. Nothing in its feature list tracks those. Plus adds project profitability and inventory tracking, but still no device records or credential expiry.
Nexa covers more of the job side. It has recurring jobs, per-job costing and profit, a crew view of assigned jobs, today's stops sent to Google Maps in time order, and time tracking with a payroll CSV. Missions with sub-steps and templates could hold a shutdown checklist, and a recurring job could stand in for an annual test. Its client records have no street-address field, and it has no job templates, no per-device records, and no tracking of license, certification or calibration expiry. It also has no QuickBooks sync or import, does not run payroll, and has no dispatch board. Its automated emails send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices, so a due-date reminder cannot be relied on if the app is closed. Support is self-serve.
Over three years QuickBooks at $38 a month is $1,368. Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 with the optional $4.99 monthly Cloud Sync for all 36 months. That is a real saving, but it does not close the compliance gap. Keep QuickBooks if your accountant works in it. If you are a solo operator who mainly needs invoices, jobs and simple books, Nexa is a cheaper way to do that part. In either case, track licenses, test due dates and calibration in a field-service tool built for that, or in a disciplined calendar or spreadsheet.
Our read for irrigation technicians: Neither tracks license, certification, calibration or per-device test due dates, so look for field-service software with asset and compliance records, and keep QuickBooks for the books if your accountant uses it.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
QuickBooks costs irrigation technicians $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 irrigation technicians: 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.
Scheduling, invoicing, job tracking and client records 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 irrigation tech: 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 irrigation tech earns $42,000/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 irrigation technicians. You own it like you own your Trencher or pipe puller.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small irrigation technicians 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 →Scheduling, invoicing, job tracking and client records 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.
It's spring, so I'm doing startups before 8. At the first house I open the main valve slowly so the pipes don't hammer, close the backflow test cocks, and run each zone off the controller, walking the yard for broken heads and bad spray patterns. I swap two heads, turn the arcs off the driveway, and set the watering schedule, and I'm out in about 30 minutes. At 9 I'm on a broken mainline repair. The yard is soggy by the fence, so I dig carefully with a shovel until I find the split in the 1-inch PVC, cut out the bad section, and glue in a repair coupling with primer and cement. The parts are about $35 in PVC and fittings, out of the bins in my truck. I let it cure, pressurize, check for leaks, and run the whole system before I backfill. That's two hours. After lunch I do a free estimate for adding a zone to water a new garden bed, measuring the run, checking pressure and flow at the hose bib, and seeing whether there's a spare station on the controller or it needs a new valve. Then I head to two winterization callbacks from last November, a cracked backflow and a valve that won't shut off. My schedule is booked two weeks out and the phone keeps ringing between stops. At night I restock the truck, write up the estimate, bill the day's jobs, and put the callbacks on the whiteboard in the garage.
Real irrigation technicians near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you an irrigation tech? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every irrigation tech 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 $5,420–$31,950 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 an irrigation tech'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 an irrigation tech — 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 irrigation technicians 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 irrigation technicians, 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