What ghostwriters need from their software, from sources outside Wave and outside Nexa:
Wave covers the bookkeeping side of ghostwriting well. Its free Starter plan includes unlimited estimates, invoices, bills and bookkeeping records. Pro adds automatic bank import, receipt capture, late-payment reminders and file attachments on invoices and estimates. That suits a trade with a few very large payments, where chasing late money and keeping clean books matter most. Pro also gives free access to a Block Advisors tax pro role, which helps a self-employed writer with quarterly estimates and Schedule SE. Wave does not list payment plans for a flat fee paid in set instalments. It also has no proposal-to-invoice flow, no time tracking for hourly work, and no client records meant to hold a signed NDA and credit terms.
Nexa covers more of the project-billing side. Proposals, quotes and estimates convert to invoices, and payment plans can split a flat fee into set amounts. It also has time tracking, expenses, profit and loss, 1099 summaries, and a CRM with notes and tags. That fits proposal work and full manuscripts billed as separate jobs. Nexa does not list an NDA or credit-terms field, so confidentiality records would live in notes. It has no tax-estimate or quarterly-payment help. It has no QuickBooks or Xero sync, and the only bank feature listed is reconciliation, so there is no automatic bank import. If you use automation, Nexa's reminders and sequences send emails only while it is open on one of your devices. It is software you own and run yourself, with no hosted support desk.
Over three years Wave Pro costs $684 ($19 a month, or $228 a year). Nexa costs $279 once, or 3 payments of $99, and runs on one device. Adding Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month for 36 months brings the three-year total to $458.64. A writer who relies on automatic bank import, receipt capture and tax-pro access, or who is fine on the free plan, should stay with Wave. A writer whose main frustration is invoicing flat fees in instalments and turning proposals into invoices could try Nexa, but would give up bank import and the tax-pro role.
Our read for ghostwriters: Stay with Wave: its bank import and free tax-pro access matter more to a self-employed ghostwriter than Nexa's payment plans, and Nexa has no NDA or tax-estimate features either.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Wave costs ghostwriters $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 ghostwriters: Stay with Wave if the needs in our read above apply to you. If they don't, Nexa covers the core invoicing, scheduling and books for $279 once against $684 for Wave over three years.
Invoicing, client records, time tracking 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.
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 creative work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every ghostwriter: 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 ghostwriter'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 ghostwriter earns $48,000/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 ghostwriters. You own it like you own your Writing software (Scrivener, Google Docs).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small ghostwriters 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 →Invoicing, client records, time tracking 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.
By 8 I'm listening back to yesterday's interview with my business-book client, a founder who talks in stories, not chapters. I transcribe the good parts, pull the lines that sound like him, and build an outline for chapter 6 of 12: the opening anecdote, the framework, three examples, and a close that leads into chapter 7. The book is 50,000 words over four months, and I'm two months in. The problem is that chapters 4 and 5 have been sitting with him for three weeks unreviewed, and my next milestone payment is tied to his sign-off, so I send a polite nudge with a date and the short list of questions I need answered. Midmorning I write, about 2,000 words, keeping his verbal habits and cutting mine. After lunch I switch to my memoir client, an 80-year-old woman whose recordings I'm working through for her childhood chapter. I check dates and names with her daughter, because memory blurs. At 3 I write three blog posts for my monthly retainer clients, each in a different voice. Late afternoon is the business side: updating my chapter tracker with word counts and review status, sending an NDA to a new prospect, and writing a quote where I have to choose between per-word, a flat fee, or a lower fee plus a royalty share. I can't show that prospect my best work, since none of it has my name on it, so I send redacted samples.
Real ghostwriters near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a ghostwriter? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every ghostwriter 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 ghostwriter'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 ghostwriter — 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 ghostwriters 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 ghostwriters, 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