What art teachers need from their software, from sources outside Wave and outside Nexa:
Wave covers the bookkeeping side of this trade well. Its Starter plan includes unlimited invoices and bookkeeping records at no charge. Pro ($19 a month, $228 a year) adds automatic bank import, automatic categorizing, receipt capture and late-payment reminders. That helps a self-employed teacher with uneven income keep the clean income and expense records the IRS looks at when it decides whether a studio is a business or a hobby. Wave's page doesn't describe class booking, group-class capacity, or tagging a sale as private lesson versus group class. Washington's group-class sales tax, in effect since October 1, 2025, makes that tagging important. Its support is tied to optional add-ons and runs weekday business hours Eastern time.
Nexa covers more of the teaching workflow. It has a public booking page with intake forms, group-class capacity, and reschedule and cancel links. It also has invoices, payment plans, a client pay portal through your own Stripe account, and sales tax tracking. Its bookkeeping includes expenses, receipt scanning, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, and balance sheet. The limits matter: Nexa has no QuickBooks or Xero sync and no Google Calendar sync, and its automated emails (reminders, sequences, workflows) send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. It's software you own and run yourself, with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding. It runs on one device unless you add Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month. It doesn't run payroll, but a solo studio teacher is unlikely to need that.
Over three years, Wave Pro comes to $684. Nexa is $279 once (or 3 payments of $99), or $458.64 with Cloud Sync for the full period. Wave's free Starter plan costs less than either if you only need invoices and records. If you already invoice and keep books in Wave and have no group-class booking problem, stay put. If you sell group classes with limited seats and want booking, class capacity and sales tax tracking in one tool you own, Nexa is worth a look. Be ready to keep it open for reminders and to support yourself.
Our read for art teachers: Stay with Wave if invoices and clean books are all you need; choose Nexa if you sell capped group classes and want booking and sales tax tracking, and can live with its open-to-send emails and self-run setup.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Wave costs art teachers $228/year at today's list price. Nexa is $279 once for invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking and accounting in one suite — so after 14.7 months it has cost less than Wave, 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 Wave 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 art teachers: Either can do the job, for the reasons in our read above. On price alone, that is $279 once against $684 for Wave over three years.
Scheduling, client records and invoicing 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. Wave solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
Today's list price is $19/month — $228 a year, from Wave'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 $405 less.
If Wave 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 | Wave | Nexa |
|---|---|---|
| Invoicing | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scheduling | ✗ | ✓ |
| CRM | ✗ | ✓ |
| Time Tracking | ✗ | ✓ |
| Full Accounting | ✓ | ✓ (SIMPL) |
| Task Management | ✗ | ✓ |
| Works offline | ✗ | ✓ |
| Price | $19/mo | $279 once or 3 × $99 |
| 3-Year Total | $684 | $279 |
| You own it? | No — stop paying, lose access | Yes — forever |
✓ and ✗ for Wave come from its own published feature list. — means the feature isn't in that list, which is not the same as Wave lacking it: check with them. Three years is at today's price.
Straight from Wave's own feature set. If one of these is the reason you pay them, that reason does not disappear because Nexa is cheaper.
Wave is the better call if you need free plan covering unlimited invoices and bookkeeping specifically, or if your team is large enough that per-seat pricing still beats buying software outright.
Wave says it is built for small business owners and solopreneurs at every stage, not accountants. Its page names freelancers, contractors and consultants. (waveapps.com)
What people outside Wave 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 art teacher: 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.
An inquiry becomes a proposal becomes a signed engagement — the terms and the retainer set.
The work you're paid for — with the hours, tasks, and expenses tracked against the engagement instead of reconstructed at month-end.
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 art teacher'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.
Wave plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
The median art teacher earns $30,000/year. At $228/year, Wave 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 art teachers. You own it like you own your Art supplies for classes.
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small art teachers 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.
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, client records and invoicing 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 teach drawing and painting to kids after school and to adults in the evenings, in my own studio and at a community centre. Each term is planned around skills that build on each other: line and shape first, then value and shading, then colour mixing, then composition, with a project at the end of each block so students have something they're proud to take home. Preparing a class means testing the project myself, cutting paper, mixing paint into palettes, and setting up still lifes or reference photos, and for kids it means planning for the ones who finish in five minutes and the ones who never want to stop. In class I demonstrate first, then circulate, correcting a grip, showing someone how to lift colour out of a wet wash, and finding something genuinely good in every piece. Adults need a different kind of encouragement: most of them were told as children they couldn't draw. Supplies are a constant cost, paper, paint, brushes that students destroy, and I track them so the materials fee covers them. Cleanup takes as long as setup. Parents sign up by the term, adults buy class packs, and I run holiday camps and private lessons in between, plus a student exhibition every spring.
Real art teachers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you an art teacher? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every art teacher 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 an art teacher'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 an art teacher — 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 art teachers and small teams, yes. invoicing, scheduling, CRM, time tracking, task management, and full accounting — all for $279 once. Wave may be better if you have a large team (10+) or need enterprise-specific features.
Wave has features like Free plan covering unlimited invoices and bookkeeping and Bank transaction import on Pro that some businesses rely on. For most solo art teachers, these aren't dealbreakers.
At $19/month, Nexa pays for itself in 14.7 months. After that: $228 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