What scrap metal haulers need from their software, from sources outside QuickBooks and outside Nexa:
QuickBooks covers the money side of hauling well. It has bank feed reconciliation, comprehensive reporting, and 800+ app integrations, and accountants know it. The higher plans add inventory tracking, classes and locations. It does not cover the compliance records this trade is asked for. Dealers must keep per-load records with the seller's details, the vehicle's license number, the time and date, and the kind and weight of the metal. Some states regulate scales, set how and when scrap must be paid (for example, mailed checks above a legal threshold), and require hold periods and ownership paperwork for catalytic converters. QuickBooks has no load ticket, weight, plate or hold-date tracking built for this.
Nexa covers invoices, estimates, jobs with costing and profit per job, expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, 1099 summaries, time tracking and a stock count per product. It works offline. Nothing in its feature list covers per-load weight and material records, vehicle license numbers, per-converter documents or hold dates, or payment rules by metal type. It has no street-address field on a client. It has no GPS, dispatch or route optimization, and it does not sync or import with QuickBooks. Its automated emails send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. It is software you own and run yourself, with no hosted support desk.
Over three years QuickBooks costs $1,368 ($38 a month, $456 a year). Nexa costs $279 once, or $458.64 with the optional $4.99 monthly Cloud Sync. Price is not the deciding factor here. If you already use QuickBooks for the books and your accountant relies on it, keep it. Do not move to Nexa expecting it to solve scrap compliance. Whichever you use, add a scrap-yard or recycling compliance tool that logs each load, weight, vehicle and converter hold, and check your state's rules.
Our read for scrap metal haulers: Neither covers the per-load, payment-rule and converter-hold records this trade needs, so look for scrap-yard compliance and load-ticketing software and keep your current bookkeeping.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
QuickBooks costs scrap metal haulers $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 scrap metal haulers: 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 scrap metal hauler: 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 Scrap Metal Hauler 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 scrap metal haulers. You own it like you own your Flatbed or dump trailer with a magnet or grapple.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small scrap metal haulers 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.
Every morning starts by checking where scrap prices landed, because copper, aluminum, brass, and steel each move on their own daily market, and the whole business is the spread between what I pay to pick it up and what the yard pays me to drop it. I run pickups off Craigslist calls, demolition sites, and standing accounts with shops that generate offcuts, and the magnet on the truck is constantly working because ferrous and non-ferrous have to be separated before they ever hit the yard scale. The money is entirely in sorting: a trailer of mixed steel pays pennies a pound, but if I pull the copper wire, the brass fittings, and the clean aluminum out and bin them separately, the same load is worth three times more. I'll torch down an oversized I-beam in the yard so it fits the trailer and grades right. At the scrap yard everything crosses a certified scale and each metal grade gets its own ticket, and reconciling those tickets against what I paid the seller is where I find out if a load actually made money. Certain material, catalytic converters and bulk copper especially, needs documented sourcing and seller ID because the yards and the law watch it for theft. I get home and the office work is matching tickets to pickups so I know my real margin per load.
Real scrap metal haulers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a scrap metal hauler? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every scrap metal hauler 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 $11,080–$50,190 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 scrap metal hauler'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 scrap metal hauler — 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 scrap metal haulers 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 scrap metal haulers, 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