What microgreens growers need from their software, from sources outside QuickBooks and outside Nexa:
QuickBooks covers the money side of a microgreens business well. Its comprehensive reporting, bank feed reconciliation and 800+ integrations let you total produce sales over a rolling three-year window, which is what the FDA Produce Safety Rule exemption depends on. The harder part is the split by buyer (restaurants, stores or consumers). Class and location tracking, which is listed on Plus and above rather than the $38 plan, is the natural way to tag sales that way. Accountants also know it. It does not cover the blend-by-blend labels and signs that list mixed varieties in descending order by weight, or the packer name and quantity statement on packaged product. It also doesn't record which licence or registration covers each sales channel and location.
Nexa covers invoicing, a CRM with tags and notes, expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, sales tax tracking, and a simple stock count per product. Tags and the profit and loss report could be set up to separate sales by channel, and it works offline. It has no label or sign templates and no field for licences or registrations. It has no inventory beyond a simple count, no sync or import with QuickBooks, and no app marketplace. It is software you own and run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding. Online card payments go only through your own Stripe account.
Over three years, QuickBooks at $38 a month comes to $456 a year, or $1,368. Nexa is $279 once, or 3 payments of $99. With optional Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month, three years comes to $458.64. If you already use QuickBooks and your accountant works in it, stay, because switching saves money but gives up the reporting and the accountant familiarity. Whichever you use, keep the label templates and licence records in a separate document or spreadsheet, since neither product handles them. A grower with no accountant, a single device and simple needs could reasonably pick Nexa on cost.
Our read for microgreens growers: Stay with QuickBooks if you already use it: its reporting and accountant support carry the sales-by-channel tracking, and Nexa's lower cost doesn't make up for losing them.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
QuickBooks costs microgreens growers $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 microgreens growers: 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.
Invoicing, the books and job tracking 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 creative work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every microgreens grower: 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 creative work. Tap a step to see what gets automated.
An inquiry becomes a proposal becomes a signed project — with the scope and the deposit locked in.
The work itself — tracked against the project: hours, milestones, revisions, and expenses, so nothing bills late or goes uncounted.
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 creative 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 Microgreens Grower earns $35,000/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 microgreens growers. You own it like you own your 1020 growing trays and shelving racks.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small microgreens growers business that owns its tools and is sick of renting software, Nexa replaces your whole stack for $279 once. If you're scaling into a large team with dedicated admin staff, a bigger platform may fit better — and we'd rather tell you that now than sell you the wrong thing.
Invoicing, the books and job tracking 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.
He checks the germination shelf first, lifting blackout domes to see which trays have pushed up and need to come into the light, and which have the gray fuzz of damping-off that means that tray's a loss. The whole operation is a relay of trays at different ages on the racks, and he has to know exactly where each variety is in its seven-to-fourteen-day window. Morning is harvest for today's deliveries: he scissors sunflower shoots, pea tendrils, radish, and spicy mix, weighs them into clamshells against each chef's standing order, and stages the delivery run. Back at the racks he seeds the next succession, weighing seed density because too thick invites mold and too thin wastes a tray. He mists, checks the bottom-water trays, and adjusts the light timer. Midday is deliveries to four restaurants and a grocery account, each expecting their varieties fresh-cut that morning. He realizes he forgot to reseed the cilantro micro two weeks ago, which means next week a chef gets a sorry-no-cilantro text. He logs nothing per tray, so he genuinely can't say whether the finicky basil micro earns its rack space versus the bulletproof radish. Evening he sows tomorrow's soak and worries about the rack that's running behind.
Real microgreens growers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a microgreens grower? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every microgreens grower on Nexa →
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
You paid for these once because good tools last. That's the bar your software should clear too — priced like a tool you own, $279 once, not a subscription that costs more than your kit every year.
We build a microgreens grower'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 microgreens grower — 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 microgreens growers 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 microgreens growers, 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