Invoicing & accounting for small business
The market leader is the most complained-about product in the study.
What people complain about
| Complaint | Share |
|---|---|
| Reliability — crashes, freezes, “doesn’t work” | 18.6% |
| Missing capability | 13.8% |
| Integration failures | 10.8% |
| Billing & cancellation | 6.9% |
| Customer support | 6.5% |
| Price & value | 6.1% |
| Complexity & onboarding | 5.4% |
| Slowness | 4.8% |
| Mobile-vs-desktop gap | 4.4% |
Dissatisfaction by app
| App | 1–3★ share | Reviews read |
|---|---|---|
| Intuit QuickBooks for Business | 76% | 2,363 |
| Xero Accounting for business | 66% | 1,122 |
| FreshBooks Invoicing App | 53% | 847 |
| Wave: Small Business Software | 44% | 1,296 |
| Square Invoices: Invoice Maker | 39% | 1,284 |
| Invoice Maker; Invoice Simple | 22% | 2,396 |
In their words
“I need to attend a course to be able to properly use this software solution. Please prepare one and provide a link for me so I can attend it soon and start using the software to its fullest potential. Also in web app no option to import BILLS OF SUPPLY when business is not registered under gst. Asked customer care for help but did ñot get any. No option to add bank accounts on mobile app. Not able to record expenses when offline. App is unuseable offline. Now not able to record expense even whil”
Zoho Books - Accounting App · 1★ · 460 votes
“The ease of use is not what my team and I expected. Customer service wasn't able to resolve an issue regarding integration of accounts. The integration with our banking info has been a long drawn out process that we had to troubleshoot on our own because again, the customer support we received was slow to respond and not helpful.”
Zoho Books - Accounting App · 2★ · 344 votes
“They make you pay a minimum $50/year subscription that only allows you to create 3 invoices a month and still only has very limited features. The next level up is $160/year, and this simple app is still full of bugs and often freezes/crashes. Don't bother with this rip off.”
Invoice Simple: Invoice Maker · 1★ · 121 votes
“Whilst the app is seemingly good, you NEED to inform users that there are only a couple of free invoices and that you have to pay thereafter. There is NO mention of this in the beginning. For what should be a 5* I am only giving you a 2* because of this misinformation. I fully understand staff payments but you need to inform potential users of the hidden costs that they will be facing”
Invoice Simple: Invoice Maker · 2★ · 73 votes
This niche passed every gate: the pain is measurable, it recurs across vendors, and the people complaining are the people paying. We built Paid Onsite against it.
What this study cannot tell you
- About 41% of substantive reviews are not matched by the taxonomy, so every percentage here is a floor, not a true rate. The miss rate is roughly uniform across niches, so comparisons between them still hold.
- App-store reviews over-represent the daily user. Buyers complain on G2, Capterra and in churn calls, and those sources are not represented.
- No recency weighting: a complaint from 2021 counts the same as one from last week, so some cited failures may already be fixed.
- Coverage is uneven between stores; where an app is iOS-only in practice its share is computed from Apple data alone.