What solar panel cleaners need from their software, from sources outside QuickBooks and outside Nexa:
QuickBooks covers the money side of this trade well. It is the tool accountants know, and it has bank feed reconciliation, comprehensive reporting and 800+ integrations. The $38/month plan covers the core job. That is $456 a year, or $1,368 over 3 years. It also has a free plan, but that plan allows only 2 invoices a month unless you use QuickBooks Payments. Phone support comes with a paid subscription. What the plan details we have don't show is anything built for how panel cleaning is priced: a per-visit minimum alongside a per-panel rate, a travel surcharge past a set radius, or per-property access notes and difficulty factors. Recurring visits at intervals that change as a system ages, and tracking of fall-protection training for roof work, are also not listed. You would likely handle all of these with manual line items and notes, or with a separate tool.
Nexa covers more of the day-to-day work. It has quotes and estimates that convert to invoices, recurring invoices and recurring jobs, job costing with profit per job, and notes and tags in its CRM. It also sends each day's stops to Google Maps in time order and has a client pay portal that runs through your own Stripe account. It does bookkeeping too: expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, and sales tax tracking. It has no minimum-charge or travel-surcharge rule that we can point to. A client record has no street-address field, which is awkward for site-based work. It has no QuickBooks import or sync and no payroll, so an accountant on QuickBooks would have to work from exports. It also has no hosted support desk. If you use its automation, the automated emails and reminders send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices.
Over three years QuickBooks at $38/month costs $1,368. Nexa costs $279 once, or $458.64 with the optional $4.99/month Cloud Sync. Without sync it runs on one device only. A solo cleaner who wants recurring jobs, job profit and a simple pay portal, and who doesn't need a bookkeeper in QuickBooks, will likely do well on Nexa and save money. Stay with QuickBooks if your accountant works in it, you rely on its bank feeds and integrations, or you want vendor phone support. Neither tool has the trade-specific pricing rules built in, so you would handle minimums and travel charges by hand in either one.
Our read for solar panel cleaners: Switch to Nexa if you are a solo operator who wants recurring jobs and lower cost, but stay with QuickBooks if your accountant or integrations depend on it.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
QuickBooks costs solar panel cleaners $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 solar panel cleaners: Either can do the job, for the reasons in our read above. On price alone, that is $279 once against $1,368 for QuickBooks over three years.
Scheduling, invoicing, client records and job tracking 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 solar panel cleaner: 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.)
This is the connection that makes the rest worth it. A solar panel cleaner's job already holds the services, the hours, the add-ons, and the materials — so the invoice builds itself from the work instead of you re-typing it at 9pm. Toggle an add-on or nudge the hours and watch it recompute.
You didn't write this invoice — the job did.
QuickBooks plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median solar panel cleaner earns $38,000/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 solar panel cleaners. You own it like you own your Water-fed pole system.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small solar panel cleaners 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, client records and job tracking 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.
I load the truck by 6:30 while the glass is still cool: water-fed pole, soft-bristle brushes, the DI tank topped off to 200 gallons, and I check the TDS meter reads zero so nothing spots when it dries. First stop is a 24-panel rooftop wash on a two-story colonial. I set the ladder standoff off the gutter, clip my harness to the roof anchor I installed on the first visit, and work the rows top to bottom, brushing and rinsing so the pollen and bird droppings don't just smear into the frames. I note two cracked tiles and a nest under the array and photograph them for the homeowner. By the third house the tank is close to empty, so I refill at the shop before heading east. One roof today is a steep 10/12 pitch my pole can't reach safely from the ground, so it's full harness work, an extra $50 and half an hour, and I remind the customer why it's on the quote. Another homeowner asks whether cleaning really makes a difference, so I show him his inverter readings from before and after last spring's wash. Midafternoon the sun heats the glass and I have to slow down so the water doesn't flash off and leave marks. By evening I'm writing up the jobs, sending invoices with the before-and-after photos, and going through the customers who were due six months ago and haven't rebooked, because nobody reminds them but me.
Real solar panel cleaners near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a solar panel cleaner? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every solar panel cleaner 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 solar panel cleaner'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 solar panel cleaner — 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 solar panel cleaners 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 solar panel cleaners, 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