What shoe repair services need from their software, from sources outside Wave and outside Nexa:
Wave covers the money side of a repair shop well. The free Starter plan has unlimited invoices and bookkeeping, and Pro at $19 a month ($228 a year) adds automatic bank import, receipt capture and late-payment reminders. It is simple enough to run without an accountant, which suits a self-employed owner who has to keep their own income and expense records for self-employment tax. It also has an optional payroll add-on and weekday live chat and email support. Its feature list doesn't mention tracking unclaimed pairs or when they can be donated. It also doesn't say how it handles state-specific sales tax on repair labor versus retail goods, or the split between resale-exempt materials and equipment. Those are the trade's most specific needs, so ask Wave before relying on it for them.
Nexa covers a lot of the same ground. It has invoices and estimates, expenses, receipt scanning, profit and loss, sales tax tracking, jobs with costing and profit per job, and a simple stock count per product. It works offline and has a Spanish interface. It has no point-of-sale or card reader, and it doesn't run payroll, with no payroll taxes, pay stubs or direct deposit. It has no QuickBooks or Xero sync, and it comes with no hosted support desk or vendor-run onboarding, because you own and run the software yourself. Online card payments go only through your own Stripe account. If you use automated emails or reminders, they send only while Nexa is open on one of your devices.
Over three years Wave Pro comes to $684. Nexa is $279 once, or 3 payments of $99, and runs on one device. Adding optional Cloud Sync at $4.99 a month brings the three-year total to $458.64. A shop already running on Wave's free plan or Pro, with support it relies on, should stay. Nexa's lower cost matters mainly to an owner who wants one-time pricing, offline use, and job-level profit, and who is comfortable without a vendor support desk. In either case, handle unclaimed-pair tracking with a record you keep yourself, or ask each vendor directly before you decide.
Our read for shoe repair services: Stay with Wave: it has hosted support, bank import and a payroll add-on that Nexa lacks, and Nexa's savings alone don't justify switching.
Read on each linked page in October 2026. Check them again before you decide; vendors change plans often.
Wave costs shoe repair services $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 shoe repair services: 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, job tracking 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 shoe repair specialist: 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 shoe repair specialist'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 shoe repair specialist earns $34,000/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 shoe repair services. You own it like you own your Shoe repair machinery (stitcher, finisher).
An honest fit check — because the wrong tool is worse than no tool.
The honest fit: if you're a solo or small shoe repair services 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 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.
I open the counter at 8 with about fifteen pairs on the shelf in different stages, each one with a numbered claim tag stapled through the tongue and the stub in the customer's hand. First up is a full leather resole and heel on a pair of Goodyear-welted dress shoes: I cut the stitching, pull the old sole, clean the welt, cement on a new leather sole, trim it on the finisher, and restitch it through the welt on the machine. Then I build the heel stack, nail on a rubber top lift and burnish the edges with ink and wax. Between jobs the walk-ins keep coming without appointments: a woman with a stiletto heel tip worn down to the metal, a man who wants his work boots in three days, a zipper on a leather boot that's pulled off its tape. I do six heel tips before lunch, a half-sole on a pair of loafers, and three shines and conditions on the brush wheels. One pair of boots has no tag and I have to match it to a stub by the handwriting on the bag. Materials run from a couple of dollars for heel tips to twenty for a leather sole, and I try to remember to charge the difference on the special orders. At closing I count the register, check which pairs are overdue, call customers who haven't picked up in a month, and stuff the supply receipts from the leather distributor into the box I promise myself I'll sort on Sunday.
Real shoe repair services near you who run their business on Nexa — book directly, no platform fee. Are you a shoe repair specialist? Post your business and get found in your area — $2.99 one-time. Or browse every shoe repair specialist 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 $6,110–$31,630 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 shoe repair specialist'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 shoe repair specialist — 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 shoe repair services 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 shoe repair services, 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