What children book illustrators need from their software, from sources outside Toggl Track and outside Nexa:
Toggl Track is a time tracker, and a good one. It runs on web, desktop, mobile and browser, and gives project and client reports, estimated versus actual time, billable rates and invoicing. For a picture-book illustrator, that answers one question well: how many hours a 32-page book really took, set against a flat advance. It doesn't touch the money schedule of a trade contract. A picture-book advance usually arrives in three non-refundable parts: on signing, on delivery of the agreed work, and on publication. Toggl Track has no per-book record of those milestones and due dates. It has no earn-out status against the advance and no place to log royalty payments, which are a percentage of publisher receipts, vary by book type, and are usually paid twice a year, months after the work is done. It also has no place for signed contracts or the rates you quoted. Its team features, Gantt charts and integrations add little for a solo illustrator.
Nexa covers part of the payment side. Invoices with due dates, and payment plans, can record each advance milestone as its own line per book. Client records with notes, time tracking, and jobs with profit per job can sit beside them, and the expense and profit-and-loss bookkeeping shows what came in. Nothing in Nexa's feature list handles royalty percentages, earn-out against an advance, or a library of contracts and pricing references such as Graphic Artists Guild sample contracts. Its card payments run only through your own Stripe account, which doesn't matter when a publisher pays you by other means. It is software you own and run yourself, with no vendor-run onboarding and no QuickBooks or Xero sync, and it runs on one device unless you add Cloud Sync. If you use its automated emails or reminders, they send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices.
Over three years, Toggl Track at $12 a month costs $432 ($144 a year). Nexa costs $279 once, or 3 payments of $99, and $458.64 over the same period with Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. If you only want to know how long books take, stay with Toggl Track. If you want staged advances invoiced and tracked alongside your books, Nexa is the closer fit. But the trade's core need is a per-title ledger of advance, earn-out and royalty payments, plus a contract library. Neither tool does that, so for that part use a royalty-and-contract tracker, or a spreadsheet kept for the purpose.
Our read for children book illustrators: Neither tool tracks per-title advance earn-out, royalty payments or a contract library, so use a royalty-and-contract tracker, and keep Toggl Track or Nexa only for time and invoicing.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Toggl Track costs children book illustrators $144/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 23.3 months it has cost less than Toggl Track, 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 Toggl Track 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 children book illustrators: Neither Toggl Track 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 $432 for Toggl Track over three years.
Time tracking, invoicing, client records and scheduling 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. Toggl Track solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
Today's list price is $12/month — $144 a year, from Toggl Track'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 $153 less.
If Toggl Track 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.
| Feature | Toggl Track | Nexa |
|---|---|---|
| Invoicing | ✗ | ✓ |
| Scheduling | ✗ | ✓ |
| CRM | ✗ | ✓ |
| Time Tracking | ✓ | ✓ |
| Full Accounting | ✗ | ✓ (SIMPL) |
| Task Management | ✗ | ✓ |
| Works offline | — | ✓ |
| Price | $12/mo | $279 once or 3 × $99 |
| 3-Year Total | $432 | $279 |
| You own it? | No — stop paying, lose access | Yes — forever |
✓ and ✗ for Toggl Track come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as Toggl Track lacking it: check with them. Three years is at today's price.
Straight from Toggl Track's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
Toggl Track is the better call if you need simple time tracking specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
Toggl Track's product page lists agencies and professional services teams, software and IT teams, law firms, and accounting and finance teams. It also names three sizes of customer: freelancers and solo users, growing teams, and large organizations. (toggl.com)
What people outside Toggl Track 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 children's book illustrator: 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.)
This is the connection that makes the rest worth it. A children's book illustrator'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.
Toggl Track plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median Children's Book Illustrator earns $45,000/year. At $144/year, Toggl Track 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 children book illustrators. You own it like you own your an iPad Pro with Apple Pencil running Procreate.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small children book illustrators 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.
Time tracking, invoicing, client records and scheduling 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.
A picture book lives or dies on the page turn, so I start a new project by breaking the author's manuscript into the standard 32-page signature, deciding what art falls on each spread and where the surprise reveal should land after a turn. I thumbnail the whole book small and fast, because composition problems are cheap to fix in pencil and expensive in finished paint. Once the author approves the thumbnails I move to character design, and this is where the real grind begins: I build a model sheet so my fox has the same snout, the same proportions, and the same little scarf in every single one of the fourteen spreads, because kids notice instantly when a character drifts off-model. Mid-day I'm rendering in Procreate, layering color and texture, then the afternoon brings the revision the author always has, they want the girl to look 'a little happier' on page nine, which means reworking a face I'd considered finished. Before anything goes to the printer I soft-proof in CMYK and tweak the saturated skies and warm skin tones, because the screen lies and the printed book is what the child actually holds. Late in the day we have the awkward conversation about rights, the author assumes the flat fee buys full copyright when my quote was for a licensed use, so I point back to the agreement before I package the final files at full print resolution with bleed.
Real children book illustrators near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a children's book illustrator? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every children's book illustrator 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 children's book illustrator'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 children's book illustrator — 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 children book illustrators and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. Toggl Track may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
Toggl Track has features like Simple time tracking and Desktop and mobile apps that some businesses rely on. For most solo children book illustrators, these aren't dealbreakers.
At $12/month, Nexa pays for itself in 23.3 months. After that: $144 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