What luthiers need from their software, from sources outside Wave and outside Nexa:
Wave handles the money side of a commission business well. Its free Starter plan covers unlimited estimates, invoices, bills and bookkeeping, and Pro at $19 a month adds bank import, receipt capture and late-payment reminders. A luthier can invoice a deposit and a final balance and keep the books without an accountant. But what this trade relies on is a record per client of the deposit terms, whether the deposit is credited to the final price, the place on the waiting list, and the wood species and its documentation. That covers rosewood species and pernambuco harvest dates, which CITES rules require for some international sales. Nothing in Wave's feature list covers that, so the tracking would live in a separate spreadsheet or notebook.
Nexa covers part of that. Estimates convert to invoices, payment plans can stage a deposit and balance, and the CRM has a pipeline board, tags and notes that could stand in for a rough commission queue. Jobs with costing and profit per job help with materials, and there is a simple stock count per product. It has no waitlist, no field built for species or CITES paperwork, and no job templates. Its automated emails (sequences, workflows, reminders) send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices. It is software you own and run yourself, so there is no vendor support desk. It also does not sync with QuickBooks or Xero.
Over three years Wave Pro is $684 ($19 a month, $228 a year). Nexa is $279 once, or 3 payments of $99. Adding the optional $4.99 a month Cloud Sync for all 36 months brings it to $458.64. Nexa runs on one device without sync. A luthier who only needs invoices and books can stay on Wave's free plan and pay nothing. If you want the pipeline and job costing, Nexa is cheaper over three years. Either way, expect to keep deposit terms and wood provenance in a purpose-built record.
Our read for luthiers: Neither tool tracks per-client commission deposits, waiting lists or wood-species and CITES documentation, so a luthier needs a commission-and-materials record-keeping tool alongside whichever invoicing software they use.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Wave costs luthiers $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 luthiers: 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.
Invoicing, job tracking, the books and client records 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 actual work — it automates the business around it. And that part is the same for every luthier: 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.
A lead, a call, a referral — and a quote or estimate that turns it into a booked job.
The part you actually get paid for — with the time, materials, add-ons, and tasks tracked as you go, not guessed at later.
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 luthier'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 luthier earns $40,000/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 luthiers. You own it like you own your Specialized hand tools (fret files, nut files, radius gauges).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small luthiers business that owns its tools and is sick of renting software, Nexa replaces your whole stack for $279 once. If you're scaling past a handful of crews, a fleet platform may fit better — and we'd rather tell you that now than sell you the wrong thing.
Year-round construction in SoCal. Fire season (June-November) drives restoration demand. Drought impacts landscaping. Earthquake retrofitting is ongoing market.
Extreme summer heat drives HVAC demand. Hurricane risk on Gulf Coast. Year-round construction. Rapid population growth in DFW, Austin, Houston, San Antonio creates sustained demand. Freeze events (like 2021) create emergency plumbing/HVAC surge.
Hurricane season June-November creates massive restoration demand. Snowbird season November-March boosts service volume 30-40%. Year-round construction. Pool service is year-round industry. Pest control peaks in summer humidity.
Harsh winters in upstate, moderate in NYC. Construction limited in winter upstate. NYC market is enormous but hypercompetitive. Brownstone/pre-war building maintenance is specialized trade. NYC licensing is notoriously complex.
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, job tracking, the books and client records 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.
My bench day starts with the neck reset on a customer's old dreadnought: I pull the 12th fret, drill into the dovetail pocket, steam the joint loose and pop the neck, then shim and re-cut the heel until a straightedge off the fretboard lands right at the top of the bridge. While the glue cures I pull the frets on a refret job, level the board with a radius block, press in new wire, then dress, crown and polish every fret. Next is a pickup install — reaming the end pin hole for the jack, fitting an under-saddle element and sanding the saddle bottom dead flat so the strings balance. Between repairs I get an hour on the custom build: a steel-string with an Adirondack spruce top and Indian rosewood back and sides, three months and about 120 hours in. Today I'm carving braces, tapping the top and listening for where it's still stiff. The client paid his deposit and wants photos and a progress note every couple of weeks, and I owe him one. Late afternoon I do the setups: string up the dreadnought, adjust the truss rod, file the nut slots, and bring the action down to 5/64 at the 12th fret on the bass side. Then I write up the repair tickets, text two customers that their guitars are ready, record what the rosewood set actually cost, and work out how the next tonewood order fits against a deposit I've already spent on materials.
Real luthiers near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a luthier? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every luthier on Nexa →
The tools of the trade — each a one-time buy that earns its keep for years.
Here's the bar that matters: you spent $1,390–$6,450 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.
We build a luthier'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 luthier — 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 luthiers 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 luthiers, 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