Wave vs Nexa The Real Comparison for Collectible Dealers
Wave
$19/mo ($228/yr)
VS
Nexa
$279 once — own forever
or 3 payments of $99
Break even: 14.7 months at Wave's current price.
Does Wave Fit Collectible Dealers? Our Read
What collectible dealers need from their software, from sources outside Wave and outside Nexa:
Dealers have to separate collectibles gains from other gains when they keep records and prepare taxes. The IRS says net capital gains from selling collectibles, such as coins or art, are taxed at a maximum rate of 28%. That is higher than the rate on most other long-term gains. Software therefore needs to tag each item as a collectible and track its cost basis and holding period. (irs.gov)
Dealers in precious-metal coins and bars need to know when a sale is reportable on Form 1099-B. A sale of gold, silver, platinum or palladium is not reportable unless the form is one the CFTC has approved for trading by a regulated futures contract. Even then, it is not reportable if the quantity is below the minimum needed to satisfy that contract. Sales to the same customer within a 24-hour period are aggregated, and the exception does not apply if the broker knows the customer is trying to avoid reporting. This calls for tracking metal type, form and quantity per customer per day. (irs.gov)
The Form 1099-B instructions include a 'Collectibles' checkbox in Box 3. It is checked when the proceeds reported in box 1d come from a collectibles transaction. A dealer's records should therefore flag which sales are collectibles so the form can be filled in correctly. (irs.gov)
Sales-tax treatment of coins, bullion and currency differs by state, so dealers selling across state lines need per-state tax rules. A March 2022 Numismatic News report counted 35 states with complete or partial sales-tax exemptions for bullion, coins and currency. It also named five states with no sales tax and ten states plus DC with no exemption at that time. The article is from 2022 and may be out of date, and exemption rules and minimum purity thresholds (for example, a proposed rise from 80% to 90% in Alabama) have been changing. (numismaticnews.net)
Wave covers the general bookkeeping side of a collectibles business: invoices, bills, receipt capture, and on Pro, automatic bank import and categorizing. The Starter plan is free, and Pro is $19 a month. What the feature list does not show is anything specific to this trade. Nothing mentioned tags an item as a collectible, tracks cost basis and holding period per piece, or flags sales for the 28% collectibles rate or the Form 1099-B collectibles box. Nothing tracks metal type, form and quantity per customer per day for the 24-hour aggregation rule. Per-state sales-tax rules for coins and bullion are not listed either. A dealer would have to keep that detail in a separate record.
Nexa covers invoicing, expenses, bank reconciliation, profit and loss, a balance sheet, 1099 summaries, sales tax tracking, receipt scanning, and a simple stock count per product. It does not have full inventory management or valuation, and nothing in what I can state about it shows collectible tagging, per-item cost basis, holding periods, or per-customer-per-day metal tracking. It has no QuickBooks or Xero sync, and it is software you run yourself with no vendor support desk. Its automated emails send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. It shares Wave's main gap for this trade.
Over three years, Wave Pro is $228 a year, or $684 in total, and the free Starter plan costs nothing. Nexa is $279 once, which is the full three-year cost on one device. With optional Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month, the three-year cost is $458.64. Price is not what decides this. A dealer already on Wave should stay there, and the free plan may be enough, but should add a dealer-specific system for item-level cost basis, holding periods, and per-customer metal reporting. A dealer on neither should not expect Nexa to fill that gap.
Our read for collectible dealers: Neither tool tracks per-item collectible cost basis, holding periods, or per-customer daily metal sales, so a dealer needs an inventory and compliance tool built for precious-metal and collectibles dealers, with either one handling the general books.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Bottom Line
Wave costs collectible dealers $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.
Can it pay for itself?
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 collectible dealers: Neither Wave 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 $684 for Wave over three years.
Choose Nexa if:
You're done paying monthly forever
You're a solo operator or small team (1-5)
You need financial suite and task manager in one tool
You're tired of price increases
You want to own your tools like you own your equipment
Choose Wave if:
You have a large team (10+) needing enterprise features
You're deeply invested in Wave's specific workflow
You need a feature Nexa doesn't have yet
Sound Familiar?
The day often starts before the shop is open, scrolling Facebook groups and answering a 'what's this worth' text with a photo of someone's grandfather's coin album. Mid-morning is a buy: a guy walks in with three shoeboxes of late-'80s and '90s commons, and you're pricing the whole lot in your head, paying for the handful of rookies and stars while the rest is bulk. Then it's sorting and triage, pulling anything worth slabbing into a stack for the next PSA bulk submission and noting which raw cards to list. Afternoons disappear into photographing and listing, front and back scans, condition notes, comps pulled from recently-sold. You pack the day's eBay sales into toploaders and bubble mailers, print labels, and reconcile which consignors got paid. Weekends are the real grind: load the car at 5 a.m., set up the booth, lay out the showcases, and spend ten hours trading, haggling, and watching for the deal that walks up to your table. By the end you're counting cash, logging show sales, and trying to remember which sale needs tax collected for that state.
Tracking cost basis across thousands of single-card SKUs, what you paid on a bulk collection buy vs. what each card is worth, so you actually know your margin instead of guessing
Grading-submission turnaround and fees, float on PSA/CGC bulk orders tied up for months, plus deciding which cards clear the grading-cost-vs-value threshold
Consignment accounting, tracking whose cards are whose, the agreed split per item, and cutting accurate payouts after marketplace fees
Multi-state sales-tax compliance and marketplace-fee drag, collecting and remitting tax for every show state while eBay/COMC/PayPal/show fees quietly eat 12-15% of each sale
The books and job tracking 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. Wave solves some of it. So does Nexa. The difference is what you are left holding in three years.
What Wave Actually Costs Collectible Dealers
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.
Three years at today's price
Year 1$228
Year 2$228
Year 3$228
Three years of Wave$684
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-by-Feature
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.
What "$279 Once" Does And Doesn't Buy
It buys the software, not a service contract. You install Nexa and it runs on your machine. There is no seat count, and nothing stops working if you stop paying, because there is nothing to stop paying.
Wave's monthly fee is not only rent. It pays for their hosting, their support desk, and their engineers shipping changes every week. If those matter to how you work, that is a real thing you would be giving up.
Cross-device sync is the one optional extra — $4.99/month if you want your data mirrored between machines. Skip it and Nexa still works; you just sync manually.
The honest risk of buying once: you are betting on us still being here to improve it. The honest risk of renting: the price is theirs to raise, and the graveyard section below is a record of tools that did exactly that.
What Wave Does Better
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.
Free plan covering unlimited invoices and bookkeeping
Bank transaction import on Pro
Receipt capture
Late payment reminders
Simple enough to run without an accountant
A free plan to start on (with limits), so you can use Wave before paying anything.
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.
What Wave Is Built For
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)
The Starter plan costs $0 and includes unlimited estimates, invoices, bills and bookkeeping records. (waveapps.com)
Pro costs $19 USD a month or $190 USD a year. It adds automatic bank transaction import (for banks Plaid supports), automatic merging and categorizing of bank transactions, and automated late-payment reminders at 3, 7 and 14 days after the due date. (waveapps.com)
Pro lets you put your logo and brand colors on invoices, remove Wave branding from footers, and attach files to invoices and estimates. It also adds user roles (admin, editor, viewer), and the payroll manager and Block Advisors tax pro roles are free. (waveapps.com)
Online card payments on Starter cost 2.9% + $0.60 (Amex 3.4% + $0.60). On Pro the first 10 transactions each month are 2.9% + $0, then 2.9% + $0.60. (waveapps.com)
Wave Advisors starts at $149 a month and includes a dedicated bookkeeper and monthly financial statements. Payroll is an add-on starting at $25 a month in one region and $40 in the other; the page does not say which price applies where. (waveapps.com)
Wave lists a mobile app for invoices, expenses and receipts, and 256-bit SSL encryption with PCI-DSS Level 1 certification. Live chat and email support runs Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 4:45 PM Eastern, and is tied to optional add-ons. (waveapps.com)
What people outside Wave and outside Nexa say:
NerdWallet lists a free plan and straightforward invoicing as pros. Its cons are no built-in third-party integrations, no advanced features such as mileage, time tracking or inventory, no live support unless you pay, and no audit trails. (nerdwallet.com)
NerdWallet says "An overwhelming number of Wave reviewers criticize its customer support." It adds that the paid plan "doesn't address Wave users' biggest complaint: customer service." (nerdwallet.com)
Tech.co praises the free tier, affordable add-ons and the way Wave "does the basics well." It concludes "Wave is definitely worth it" for side businesses that don't need specialist accounting features. (tech.co)
Tech.co criticizes Wave for lacking advanced features such as budgeting, cash flow projections, stock handling and project accounting, and for struggling to scale with growing businesses. It also says phone and live chat support come at a premium. (tech.co)
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Where business tools fit — for a collectible dealer
Software doesn't do the actual work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every collectible dealer: 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.
1
Find the work
Win the job
↓
A lead, a call, a referral — and a quote or estimate that turns it into a booked job.
CRM / contacts
Estimates & proposals
Booking / scheduling
then ↓
2
Manage the work
Do the job
↓
The part you actually get paid for — with the time, materials, add-ons, and tasks tracked as you go, not guessed at later.
Job / project tracking
Time tracking
Expenses, materials & add-ons
then ↓
3
Bill for it
Send the bill
↓
The work becomes the invoice — the hours, the add-ons, the materials, the deposit credited — totaled and sent, instead of re-typed at 9pm.
Invoicing
Deposits & credits
then ↓
4
Get paid
Collect payment
↓
Paid by card or link, the deposit credited, and what's overdue chased — without you doing it by hand.
Card / online payments
Automatic reminders
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.)
Calculate Your Full Stack
Wave plus whatever else you're paying for:
Email yourself this comparison?
Switching from Wave
1
Export your data — Go to Settings → Data Export. Download customers, invoices, transactions, and accounts.
2
Set up Nexa — 15-minute setup. Import your client list and bank transactions from CSV.
3
Parallel run — Run both for 1-2 weeks. Re-create recurring invoices in Nexa and check your bank imports.
4
Cancel Wave — Cancel paid features. Your free account data stays accessible for records.
✓ 30-day money-back guarantee. Zero risk.
What This Means for Collectible Dealers
The median collectible dealer earns $32,000/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 collectible dealers. You own it like you own your PSA/CGC/BGS grading submission supplies (Card Saver semi-rigids, submission forms, bubble mailers).
Is Nexa actually right for a collectible dealer?
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
Right for you if
You run solo or a small team — like the 40,000 collectible dealers in the US who do, and you wear every hat.
You're tired of paying every month for a monthly subscription stack and a pile of apps that don't talk to each other.
You want invoicing, scheduling, and client tracking in one place — not scattered across five apps.
You'd rather own your software once, the way you own your PSA/CGC/BGS grading submission supplies (Card Saver semi-rigids, submission forms, bubble mailers).
Look elsewhere if
You have a large team that needs enterprise seats, granular roles, and dedicated admin staff — Nexa is built for solo and small operators (1–5), and a bigger platform will serve you better.
You need full payroll for a large team or deep, SKU-level inventory — that's not what Nexa is for.
You're genuinely happy paying monthly and don't mind stitching tools together. No tool fixes a workflow you already like.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small collectible dealers 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.
The books and job tracking 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.
What collectible dealers actually deal with
Tracking cost basis across thousands of single-card SKUs, what you paid on a bulk collection buy vs. what each card is worth, so you actually know your margin instead of guessing
Grading-submission turnaround and fees, float on PSA/CGC bulk orders tied up for months, plus deciding which cards clear the grading-cost-vs-value threshold
Consignment accounting, tracking whose cards are whose, the agreed split per item, and cutting accurate payouts after marketplace fees
Multi-state sales-tax compliance and marketplace-fee drag, collecting and remitting tax for every show state while eBay/COMC/PayPal/show fees quietly eat 12-15% of each sale
A day in the life of a collectible dealer
The day often starts before the shop is open, scrolling Facebook groups and answering a 'what's this worth' text with a photo of someone's grandfather's coin album. Mid-morning is a buy: a guy walks in with three shoeboxes of late-'80s and '90s commons, and you're pricing the whole lot in your head, paying for the handful of rookies and stars while the rest is bulk. Then it's sorting and triage, pulling anything worth slabbing into a stack for the next PSA bulk submission and noting which raw cards to list. Afternoons disappear into photographing and listing, front and back scans, condition notes, comps pulled from recently-sold. You pack the day's eBay sales into toploaders and bubble mailers, print labels, and reconcile which consignors got paid. Weekends are the real grind: load the car at 5 a.m., set up the booth, lay out the showcases, and spend ten hours trading, haggling, and watching for the deal that walks up to your table. By the end you're counting cash, logging show sales, and trying to remember which sale needs tax collected for that state.
The tools a working collectible dealer actually owns
Penny sleeves, toploaders, one-touch magnetic holders, and 5,000-count storage boxes
Locking glass display cases and table risers for show booths
Digital scale, jeweler's loupe, and a UV/blacklight for spotting trimming and restoration
Photo lighting setup (lightbox, copy stand, phone) for listing scans and front/back shots
Square reader or Clover terminal for taking cards and tap-to-pay at shows
Local collectible dealers on Nexa
Real collectible dealers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee.
Are you a collectible dealer? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time.
Or browse every collectible dealer on Nexa →
The kit a working collectible dealer owns
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
Core kitEssential
Grading submission supplies
$60–$250
Core kitEssential
Loupe, light and inspection kit
$30–$150
Core kitEssential
Photography lightbox and camera
$100–$500
Core kitEssential
Storage boxes, sleeves and cases
$80–$350
Core kitEssential
Safe or secure storage
$200–$1,200
Core kitEssential
Thermal label printer and scale
$100–$400
Upgrade
Display cases for shows
$150–$700
The core kit, bought once$570–$2,850
Here's the bar that matters: you spent $570–$2,850 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.
How To Read This Page
We make Nexa. It is one of the two options compared here, so read this with that in mind. We have tried to make Wave's case the way we would want ours made — their strengths above are their own published feature list, not our summary of it.
The prices are Wave's published list prices, checked on the date shown in the sources below. Plans change; check theirs before you decide.
No customer quotes appear on this page because we do not have any from collectible dealers we can verify. For user testimony, read the independent reviews — Wave on G2 and on Capterra — where the reviewers are not selling you anything.
Check the price yourself:Wave's own pricing page is the source for every figure above, read on the date shown in the sources section below.
We are not neutral about subscriptions, and that is the argument, not a hidden assumption: software you pay for once is cheaper over three years than software you rent, unless you need something only the rented one does.
How we put this guide together
We build a collectible dealer'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 collectible dealer — 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.
Where the numbers come from
Vendor pricingQuickBooks $456/yr, Wave $228/yr, FreshBooks $516/yr, Square — taken from each company's published plans, last verified September 2026. Pricing moves; each name above links straight to that vendor’s own pricing page so you can confirm it before you decide.
Income contextThe $32,000 median we cite for the typical collectible dealer is occupational median annual pay from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (Occupational Employment & Wage Statistics), compiled April 2026. We use it only to show software spend as a share of real income — your own numbers will differ.
Three-year mathMulti-year totals are today's list price multiplied by the number of years. No price rise is projected, so the figure can be checked against the vendor's own pricing page; if they raise it, the real cost is higher.
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.
FAQ
Is Nexa really a Wave replacement?
For solo collectible dealers 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.
What does Wave do that Nexa doesn't?
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 collectible dealers, these aren't dealbreakers.
How fast does Nexa pay for itself?
At $19/month, Nexa pays for itself in 14.7 months. After that: $228 saved every year.
Can I pay in installments?
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.