What lead paint inspectors need from their software, from sources outside QuickBooks and outside Nexa:
This page compares two bookkeeping tools, and a lead paint inspector's regulated work is not bookkeeping. The compliance job has three parts. The first is a report template with every required field: inspection dates, building address and construction date, owner contact details, each inspector's name, signature and certification number, testing method and XRF serial number, and a row for every painted component tested. The second is an archive kept at least 3 years and searchable by client and property, because the owner must get a copy. The third is an expiry calendar for each inspector (3 or 5 years, depending on the initial course), for the firm's EPA fees every 3 years, and for any state program. QuickBooks covers none of these. It does the money side well: bank feed reconciliation, comprehensive reporting, 800+ integrations, and an accountant who almost certainly already knows it. It also includes phone support with a paid plan and a 30-day free trial with no contract. Paid plans cap users (Simple Start 1, Essentials 3, Plus 5), so a firm with several inspectors should check the cap before choosing a plan.
Nexa has the same compliance gap. It has no inspection report template, no report archive and no certification calendar. A client record has no street-address field, yet every report must name a building. Its jobs can be assigned to team members, who each see a crew view of their own jobs, but nothing tracks a certification number, a renewal cycle, a firm fee date, or a state rule such as Wisconsin's two-year term and firm-affiliation requirement. On the money side it covers invoices, estimates, jobs with profit per job, time tracking, and bookkeeping (expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, 1099 summaries), and it works offline. Its automated emails send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices, so don't rely on them for a renewal warning. It has no sync or import with QuickBooks, so an accountant would work from exports. It doesn't run payroll, and as software you own and run yourself it has no hosted support desk. The publisher makes Nexa, and we have no inspector testimonials for either product. The requirements above come from the federal report-content and record-keeping rules and from state program rules, not from user reviews.
Over three years QuickBooks at $38 a month is $456 a year, or $1,368. Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 with optional Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. The gap is real but small next to an expired certification or a report missing a required field. So the money decision doesn't solve the compliance problem, and the two should be handled separately. If an accountant works in QuickBooks, keep it for the books. A solo inspector on one device with no accountant could use Nexa for invoicing and job costing. In either case, the compliance side needs a records tool: a report template with every required field and signature block, an archive searchable by property and owner, and expiry dates per person, per firm and per state, with reminders that don't depend on an app being open. A multi-state inspector should confirm each state's cycle and fee directly with the program.
Our read for lead paint inspectors: Neither covers report templates, a 3-year searchable archive or certification expiry tracking, so use a records and compliance-tracking tool for that and keep whichever bookkeeping tool you already have.
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 lead paint inspectors $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 lead paint inspectors: 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.
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 lead paint inspector: 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 Lead Paint Inspector 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 lead paint inspectors. You own it like you own your XRF analyzer for in-place lead-paint readings.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small lead paint inspectors 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.
Day starts with the calibration check - I shoot the XRF against the known standard three times before I take a single billable reading, because an instrument that drifted invalidates everything I do after it. First job is a risk assessment on a pre-1978 rental with a small child, the trigger for most of my work. I go component by component with the XRF - window sills, troughs, door jambs, baseboards, the porch rails - logging each reading against the floor plan, because lead hides on the friction and impact surfaces. The sills read hot, so I take dust wipes with templates to measure how much lead-loaded dust is actually on the surfaces a toddler touches, and a soil sample from the drip line under the old painted siding. Everything's labeled and chain-of-custody is filled out, because the wipes go to the lab and the clearance hinges on lead-loading numbers I can't read in the field. Afternoon is a clearance at a unit that just finished abatement - the family's in a hotel waiting to come home, and they legally can't until my wipes come back under the HUD limits. I document the visual, take the clearance wipes, and explain to the anxious tenant that it's the lab's timeline now, not mine. End of day is writing the risk-assessment report around the pending dust-wipe results, logging XRF readings, invoicing, and making sure tomorrow's client ordered a clearance and not the inspection they think they need.
Real lead paint inspectors near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a lead paint inspector? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every lead paint inspector 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 $19,350–$46,400 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 lead paint inspector'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 lead paint inspector — 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 lead paint inspectors 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 lead paint inspectors, 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