When you work alone, invoicing is the job that waits until the evening. You finish a water heater swap, drive home, and the invoice still sits in your head instead of in the customer inbox. Every day it sits there is a day you are not getting paid. The right tool fixes three things: it sends the invoice from the van, it lets the customer pay by card or bank transfer without calling you, and it chases late payers on its own.
This guide compares four tools a solo plumber can realistically run: FreshBooks, Wave, Jobber and QuickBooks Online Simple Start. We judged them on fast invoicing from a phone, payment fees, automatic reminders, late fees, recurring invoices for service agreements, and expense and mileage tracking. Prices are list prices for a one-person business, before tax, with no introductory offers.
Quick verdict
- Best overall for a solo plumber: FreshBooks Plus. The only tool here combining automatic reminders, scheduled late fees and recurring invoices at every level, at about 38.70 dollars a month on yearly billing.
- Cheapest way to start: Wave Starter. Free, with genuinely good invoicing. You pay in higher card fees and no automatic reminders on the free tier.
- Best if you want job management too: Jobber. Scheduling, quotes and invoices in one app, but the hands-off chasing features sit on the 99 dollar Connect plan, not the 29 dollar Core plan.
- Best if your accountant lives in QuickBooks: QuickBooks Online Simple Start. Solid books and mileage tracking, but the highest card rate here and no automatic late fees.
The four tools at a glance
| Tool and plan | Cost for one person | Automatic reminders | Late fees | Recurring invoices | Card fee / bank fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FreshBooks Plus | 43 dollars a month monthly, about 38.70 a month billed yearly | Yes, on every plan | Yes, scheduled late fees on every plan | Yes, on every plan | 2.9% + 30 cents / 1% |
| Wave Starter | Free. Pro is 19 dollars a month, or 190 dollars a year | Only on Pro | No automatic late fee feature | Yes | 2.9% + 60 cents / 1% |
| Jobber Core | 29 dollars a month billed yearly for 1 user | No, reminders start on Connect at 99 dollars | No late fee feature on the pricing page | Recurring billing support, automatic card charging starts on Connect | 2.9% + 30 cents online, 2.7% + 30 cents Tap to Pay / 1% |
| QuickBooks Online Simple Start | 38 dollars a month, billed monthly | Yes, automatic invoice reminders | No automatic late fees, manual fee line only | Yes | 2.99% / 1% |
FreshBooks: the strongest pure invoicing tool here
FreshBooks is built around the invoice, and it shows. Unlimited invoices, automatic payment reminders, scheduled late fees and automated recurring invoices are included on every plan, including the cheapest one. That matters for service agreements: set the recurring invoice up once and FreshBooks sends it and reminds the customer without you touching it. The mobile app covers invoicing, expense tracking and automatic mileage logging, so the drive between jobs records itself.
The catch is the client cap. Lite costs 23 dollars a month, or about 20.70 dollars a month billed yearly, but allows only 5 billable clients. A working plumber passes five clients in the first week, so Lite is not a real option. Plus, at 43 dollars a month or about 38.70 dollars billed yearly, raises the cap to 50 billable clients and adds bank reconciliation and accountant access. Payments cost 2.9 percent plus 30 cents for standard cards, 3.5 percent plus 30 cents for business cards and American Express, and 1 percent for bank transfers.
Best for: the solo plumber whose main pain is late invoices, and who wants the chasing done automatically. Skip it if: you also need scheduling and dispatch in the same app, because FreshBooks does not manage your job calendar. One note: charging a card kept on file for repeat customers sits in a paid add-on at a higher rate, so recurring invoices are included but fully automatic card charging costs extra.
Wave: the free option, with free option limits
Wave, owned by H and R Block, is the only genuinely free starting point here. The Starter plan costs nothing and includes unlimited invoices, estimates and bookkeeping records, plus invoicing from the mobile app. Bank payments cost 1 percent per transaction with a 1 dollar minimum, matching the best bank rate in this comparison.
The limits show up in two places. Card payments on Starter cost 2.9 percent plus 60 cents per transaction, and that 60 cent fixed fee is roughly double what FreshBooks and Jobber charge, which bites on small repair invoices. Automatic late payment reminders are a Pro feature, so on the free plan you chase late payers yourself. Pro costs 19 dollars a month, or 190 dollars a year, and adds the automated reminders, automatic bank imports and receipt capture, plus a lower card fee on your first ten transactions each month. Wave has no mileage tracker, and it is only available to businesses in the United States and Canada.
Best for: a plumber just starting out who wants zero monthly software cost. Skip it if: you want reminders and late payment chasing to run themselves on day one, or you are based outside the US and Canada.
Jobber: invoicing inside a full job management app
Jobber is the different animal in this list. It is field service software, so the invoice is the end of a flow that starts with a request, a quote and a scheduled job. You build the invoice from the job record, take a card payment in the app with Tap to Pay at 2.7 percent plus 30 cents, or send it for online payment at 2.9 percent plus 30 cents, with bank payments at 1 percent.
The honest catch is plan gating. Core, at 29 dollars a month billed yearly for one user, covers quotes, invoicing, online payments and the client hub. What it does not include is the automation: automated reminders, automatic quote follow ups and automatic payment collection for recurring work all start on Connect, at 99 dollars a month billed yearly for one user. Jobber also does not sync with QuickBooks Online until Connect. So the solo plumber who wants hands-off invoicing is really looking at 99 dollars a month, not 29.
Best for: the solo plumber who plans to hire, or who wants scheduling, quoting and invoicing in one system. Skip it if: all you need is invoicing and bookkeeping, because you would be paying field service prices for a bookkeeping job.
QuickBooks Online Simple Start: the accountant favourite
QuickBooks Online is the mainstream default, and Simple Start at 38 dollars a month is its solo tier. It sends invoices with a pay button, sets automatic invoice reminders, supports recurring invoices for agreements, and tracks mileage automatically in the mobile app. Expense tracking is stronger here than in Wave, and if your accountant already works in QuickBooks, staying in the same system saves real friction at tax time.
Two honest drawbacks. QuickBooks Payments charges 2.99 percent on card payments made through an invoice, the highest card rate in this guide, though bank payments match the others at 1 percent. And QuickBooks has no automatic late fee feature: Intuit own guidance is to add a fee as a manual line item, so the chasing here is reminders only. There is also no yearly billing discount, so budget for the monthly price to creep over time.
Best for: the plumber whose books and taxes matter as much as the invoice itself. Skip it if: automatic late fees matter to you, or you want the cheapest card rate.
What each one really costs on 8,000 dollars of invoices
Plan prices are only half the story, because payment fees land on every invoice. Here is the full monthly cost for a solo plumber sending 8,000 dollars of invoices across 16 jobs, using the realistic plan for each tool. Card totals assume every customer pays by card online, bank totals assume every customer pays by bank transfer instead.
| Tool | Plan cost | Fees if all paid by card | Total, card | Fees if all paid by bank | Total, bank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FreshBooks Plus (yearly billing) | $38.70 | $236.80 | $275.50 | $80 | $118.70 |
| Wave Starter | $0 | $241.60 | $241.60 | $80 | $80 |
| Jobber Core (yearly billing) | $29 | $236.80 | $265.80 | $80 | $109 |
| QuickBooks Simple Start | $38 | $239.20 | $277.20 | $80 | $118 |
Two lessons from the table. First, the plan fee is the small part: payment fees on 8,000 dollars run between 80 and about 242 dollars, so the card rate matters more than the sticker price. Second, steering customers to bank payments saves about 160 dollars a month at this volume, since every tool here charges 1 percent for bank transfers against roughly 3 percent for cards. For reference, Jobber Connect, the tier with the automation, would total about 335.80 dollars on card payments, and Wave Pro on yearly billing about 251 dollars.
Honest limits of this guide
- This comparison is based on official vendor pricing and documentation. Our free trial walkthroughs are still in progress, and hands-on notes will be added to this page when they are done.
- FreshBooks counts billable clients against your plan cap. Check the 50 client Plus cap against your own customer list before buying.
- Payment approval is not automatic anywhere. Each tool runs identity and business checks before you can take payments.
- All four tools are built for the US and Canadian market, and payment features elsewhere vary.
- Prices and fees change often in this category, so recheck the vendor page before you commit.
Prices and payment fees verified on vendor official pages on 30 October 2026. Standard list prices are used throughout, not introductory promotions.
Related reading: our plumbing software guides cover scheduling and dispatch tools, and the how we test page explains our method.