Cheapest Way to Estimate and Invoice: One-Truck Yearly Cost

What each option publishes (as of October 16, 2026)

Prices are U.S. dollars per month before sales tax. Where a vendor offers a promotion, the list price is used; Invoice Simple also advertises a first-3-months discount on Premium.

Rates come from QuickBooks' rate page (accurate as of September 18, 2026), Jobber's pricing page, Joist's fee article (cards, ACH) and payments page (Tap to Pay) and Invoice Simple's Stripe fee article (May 21, 2026). Joist's help center says an account is set up for a single user (article dated April 17, 2024), which suits a one-truck shop and no one else.

Invoice Simple's own pricing page returned an access-denied error when read automatically on October 16, 2026. Its $21.99 Premium price and plan limits come from an excerpt of that page in a search result, so confirm them on the page before you buy. Its annual price is not used here.

The example shop

These are round example numbers, not benchmarks, and they match the Jobber and Housecall Pro comparison so the two guides can be read side by side.

• One user: the owner, who is also the tech.
• Card volume: $150,000 a year at a $400 average payment, which is 375 payments, about 31 a month.
• Mix: 60% tapped at the job ($90,000, 225 payments), 40% paid online from the emailed invoice ($60,000, 150 payments). No keyed cards, no ACH.
• Plans: the cheapest plan that does not cap documents. At 31 jobs a month, Joist Basics (5 documents) and Invoice Simple Essentials (3 invoices) are too small.

Card fees come first

Card fees are the biggest line, so start there. Percentage plus fixed fee, applied to $400 payments:

Jobber's $11.10 is 2.7% of $400 plus 30¢. Joist's and Invoice Simple's $11.65 is 2.79% of $400 plus 49¢, and their $14.45 is 3.49% plus 49¢. QuickBooks publishes no fixed fee per payment. Joist's article says its card rate is "up to" 3.49%; the table uses the full rate.

The yearly total

Subscription on month-to-month billing plus the card fees above.

The spread from cheapest to dearest is $1,008.63, and $744.75 of it is card fees. Billing choices narrow it only a little. Jobber Core on annual billing is $348.00, which makes its year $4,630.50. Joist Pro on annual billing is $14.17 a month, $170.04 a year, which makes its year $4,958.79. QuickBooks' first-year promotions take $57.00 off Simple Start ($399.00 for the year instead of $456.00) and $30.00 off Lite ($210.00 instead of $240.00).

Read the QuickBooks rows with care. Free's unlimited invoices depend on qualifying for and enabling QuickBooks Payments, and the page does not say who qualifies. We also did not confirm that the 2.5% in-person rate is available on every QuickBooks plan; the rate page lists it without naming plans. The pricing pages list no estimate limit, but ask before you rely on that.

Where the order flips

The ranking depends on three inputs you can check in your own deposits.

Ticket size. Jobber's fixed fee is 30¢, Joist's and Invoice Simple's is 49¢, and QuickBooks has none. At a $150 average payment (1,000 payments a year, same $150,000), the card totals are $4,044.00 for QuickBooks, $4,470.00 for Jobber and $5,095.00 for Joist and Invoice Simple. The gap between QuickBooks and Joist grows from $744.75 to $1,051.00.

Volume. At $50,000 of card payments at $400, card fees shrink and the subscription matters more. Month-to-month totals are $1,348.00 on QuickBooks Free, $1,588.00 on Lite, $1,800.25 on Joist Pro, $1,804.00 on Simple Start, $1,860.13 on Invoice Simple and $2,015.50 on Jobber. Jobber moves from third-cheapest paid option to the most expensive, because its monthly Core price is the highest of the group.

Payment method. An ACH payment is a bank transfer and costs far less than a card on a large job. Take a $4,800 job: a card costs $139.50 on Jobber (2.9% + 30¢), $143.52 on QuickBooks (2.99%) and $168.01 on Joist (3.49% + 49¢). By ACH, Jobber and QuickBooks charge 1%, which is $48.00. Joist's ACH is 1% capped at $15, and Invoice Simple's is 1% + 30¢ with the same $15 cap, so the fee on that job is $15.00. For large invoices, a capped ACH rate is worth more than a lower card rate.

What the cheapest options leave out

The lowest price buys documents and payments, not a field-service system. QuickBooks is accounting software first, Jobber is field-service software with a one-user entry plan, and Joist and Invoice Simple are built around the document: estimate, invoice, payment. Check the plan comparison on each vendor's page for scheduling, accounting sync and reports before you decide on price alone.

None of these replaces a price book. If your estimates start from a blank line each time, the time lost costs more than the difference between plans; see how to build a flat-rate price book. The six-vendor view, with plans that dispatch several trucks, is in field service software for small plumbing shops.

There is also a $0 route for the documents alone. The site's estimate generator and invoice generator produce a printable PDF in your browser, with nothing sent to a server. They do not take payments, so card fees come from whatever processor you add.

Prices and plan limits change often. Re-read each page on the day you sign up.

Next step

Pull last year's card deposits and sort them into in-person, online and ACH, with the average payment for each. Put those three numbers into the arithmetic above, then add the yearly subscription to your overhead in the labor rate calculator to see what it adds per billable hour. For the rules on passing the card fee on to the customer, read credit card fees for contractors.