What window tinters need from their software, from sources outside QuickBooks and outside Nexa:
QuickBooks covers the money side of a tint shop well: bank feed reconciliation, comprehensive reporting, 800+ app integrations, and an accountant who almost certainly already knows it. The plan that does the core job is $38/month. It does not cover the trade's distinctive need, which is compliance paperwork. Tint law differs by state and is shifting. For example, a June 2026 industry announcement says New York's legislature passed a bill allowing 50% visible light transmission on the driver's side, rear and back glass, and it does not say whether the governor signed it. Some states also make the installer certify the work, with a doorjamb label or sticker that carries the installer's name and, in some cases, a tax ID or address. Customers with medical exemptions bring physician-attested paperwork that must stay on file with the job. The sources for the Washington and North Carolina rules are from 1993, so check the current statutes. QuickBooks has no feature for per-state film limits, per-job labels, or exemption records.
Nexa covers a lot of shop operations. It has invoices, estimates that convert to invoices, a client pay portal through your own Stripe account, jobs with costing and profit per job, crew assignment, a public booking page, a CRM, time tracking and basic bookkeeping. It works offline and has a Spanish interface. It does not have a per-state legal-darkness record, installer-label tracking, or a medical-exemption file feature. The CRM has no street-address field on a client. Nexa also has no sync or import with QuickBooks, no payroll (no payroll taxes, pay stubs or direct deposit), no point-of-sale or card reader, and no full inventory management. Its automated emails and reminders send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. It is software you own and run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor onboarding.
Over three years QuickBooks at $38/month is $456 a year, or $1,368. Nexa is $279 once, or $458.64 over the same period if you add Cloud Sync at $4.99/month. Nexa is much cheaper, but price is not the issue here. Neither tool tracks the per-state rules, job labels and exemption files that tint shops are exposed on. If your accountant works in QuickBooks or you rely on its bank feeds and integrations, stay put for the books. A very small shop that wants invoicing, jobs and scheduling in one place for less money could try Nexa. In either case, the compliance records need a separate tool: a job-management system built for window film shops, or a disciplined per-job checklist. Keep checking each state's current statute.
Our read for window tinters: Neither QuickBooks nor Nexa tracks per-state film limits, installer labels or medical-exemption files, so a tint shop needs a trade-specific job-records tool for that, and can keep QuickBooks for the books.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
QuickBooks costs window tinters $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 window tinters: 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 window tinter: 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 window tinter 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 window tinters. You own it like you own your heat gun and steamer.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small window tinters 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.
Tinting is a clean-room job done in a regular garage, which is the whole challenge. You start by interviewing the customer about VLT — the legal limit on front sides varies by state, and you'd rather lose the sale than do an illegal 5% that gets them ticketed and pointed back at you. Glass prep is everything: you scrub each window inside and out, hit it with the steamer to lift baked-on film if you're stripping an old job, and chase every speck of lint, because anything trapped under the film shows forever. You either plot the pattern on the machine or cut it on the outside of the glass, shrink it with the heat gun so the film conforms to the curve of a door window, then peel, spray slip solution, and lay it on the inside, working the water and air out with the hard card from the center to the edges. The back glass is the test — one big compound curve with defroster lines, and you have to heat-shrink fingers out of the film before it'll lay flat. Around the dot-matrix border at the top you fight silvering no matter how good you are. You finish by tucking edges below the gaskets, wiping down, and warning the customer not to roll the windows for a few days while it cures, because that's the call you don't want.
Real window tinters near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a window tinter? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every window tinter 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 $3,500–$14,450 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 window tinter'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 window tinter — 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 window tinters 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 window tinters, 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