What manga artists need from their software, from sources outside Toggl Track and outside Nexa:
We make Nexa, so weigh this accordingly. We haven't tested either tool with working manga artists, and we haven't checked either against Japan's Freelance Act. The needs below come from the sourced list we were given, not from interviews. Toggl Track covers the time side well. It has a one-click timer, background tracking, reports by project or client, and estimated vs. actual time, which show whether a chapter or a commissioned illustration paid for its hours. It also lists billable rates, invoicing and financial reports on project and client profitability. Its product page lists nothing for what the Freelance Act (in force since November 2024) asks of an artist working for a publisher. That means keeping the written terms, completion date, amount and payment date, and watching the 60-day payment deadline. It lists nothing for Japan's qualified invoice system either, which matters because 98% of the 1,275 sole proprietors surveyed face losing tax-exempt status. It lists no sales tax tracking for convention tables. Its Gantt charts, utilization reports and team integrations are built for teams, and a solo artist will likely never use them.
Nexa lists invoices, estimates and quotes that clients can sign, payment plans, expenses, receipt scanning (OCR), profit and loss, sales tax tracking and basic time tracking. For a US artist-alley seller, the sales tax and expense records fit the paperwork that venues like Anthrocon require. They are records only. Nexa does not hold or prove your licence, and it doesn't list any way to treat original art differently from printed goods, which some states do (California exempts original comic art). For Freelance Act work, its feature list has no field for contract terms and no 60-day payment alert. We can't say it meets the qualified invoice rules. The only non-English interface we can state is Spanish. It has no card reader for a table and no sync with accounting software. Online card payments go only through your own Stripe account. Any automated emails or reminders send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. You own and run it yourself, with no vendor support desk. Its time tracking is also less developed than Toggl Track's reporting.
Over three years Toggl Track at $12 a month costs $432 ($144 a year). Nexa is $279 once, or 3 payments of $99, and runs on one device. Adding Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month brings three years to $458.64, slightly above Toggl Track. If you draw for a Japanese publisher, neither covers your core need. You need contract and payment-deadline software built around the required terms, the 60-day limit and the qualified invoice format. Keep Toggl Track beside it only if hours per chapter matter to you, and don't switch to Nexa for this. If you mainly sell prints and books at US conventions and don't need detailed time reports, Nexa's sales tax and expense records are worth a trial, but check them against your state's rules first. If all you need is to track hours, stay with Toggl Track.
Our read for manga artists: For manga artists working under Japan's Freelance Act, neither tool covers the core need, which calls for contract and payment-deadline tracking software; US convention sellers can trial Nexa for sales tax records, and anyone who only tracks hours should stay with Toggl Track.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Toggl Track costs manga artists $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 manga artists: 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 manga artist: 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 manga artist'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 Manga Artist 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 manga artists. You own it like you own your Clip Studio Paint (with its screentone and panel tools).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small manga artists 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.
Manga is paced like a treadmill that never slows, so I plot the chapter first, naming the beats and where the cliffhanger panel must fall to pull readers into the next issue. I thumbnail the full chapter in the manga grammar, big establishing panels, tight reaction beats, and a panel flow that reads right to left, which I have to keep reminding Western collaborators is intentional, not a mistake. Then I pencil on the standard frame, ink the linework with the line variation that gives manga its energy, and spend a real chunk of the day on screentone, building texture, shadow, and mood by laying and cutting tone rather than painting gradients. Backgrounds and speed lines come next, because the kinetic feel is half the storytelling. The whole time I'm flipping to character sheets so the protagonist's eyes and hair stay on-model across a run that's already in the hundreds of pages. Lettering and sound effects go in last, placed for the right-to-left read. Late in the day a Western publisher asks for a flipped left-to-right version for their market, which sounds simple but mirrors my asymmetrical compositions and reverses every sound effect, so I'm rebuilding pages I'd called finished. Before I send the chapter I check the tone density at print resolution, because screentone that looks clean on screen can moiré on the page.
Real manga artists near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a manga artist? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every manga artist 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 manga artist'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 manga artist — 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 manga artists 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 manga artists, 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