QuickBooks
Xero
FreshBooks
Wave
Square
Inv. Simple
76%
Of QuickBooks' 2,363 App Store reviews are one to three stars. Xero 66%, FreshBooks 53%.
What it does
Finishes on the phone
Create, send, collect and mark paid standing in front of the customer. No screen tells you to open the full site to complete the job.
Shows the feed
Bank connection health gets its own screen instead of being buried in settings, because integration failure is the defining complaint of this category.
Exports cleanly
Into whatever ledger your accountant already insists on. We own the invoice-to-paid loop, not the general ledger.
Why we're building it
The numbers below are about the budgeting apps people use today — not about Feedwatch. We read 7,555 one-to-three-star reviews of invoicing and accounting apps written by people who were already paying to work out what actually goes wrong before designing anything.
10.8%
Of complaints are integration failures — roughly five times the rate across the rest of the study.
291
Reviews that explicitly say the mobile app can't do what the web app does.
7,555
Low-star reviews read across the category to produce these figures.
Bank feeds
They rot when a bank changes platform, and the vendor doesn't own the failure. Reviews describe feeds that worked for months, then stopped, with help articles pointing at settings that no longer exist.
Same-vendor apps
Products from one company that refuse to talk to each other, leaving the customer re-entering data by hand into software they pay for.
Support
Four to five working days for a billing error. Accounting software has mistaken itself for an enterprise vendor.
How Paid Onsite works
1
Create
An invoice or estimate built in under a minute on a phone, with the lines you actually use. Totals render correctly — which sounds absurd to have to promise, and is a real one-star review.
2
Send and collect
Sent from the device, paid by the customer from the email, matched against the bank feed automatically when the money lands.
3
Reconcile
Connection health for your bank feed on its own screen, not buried three levels into settings. Export cleanly to whatever ledger your accountant insists on.
What people actually say
Small businesses pay $15–90 a month and then discover the mobile app is a demo of the web app. These are real reviews from paying subscribers.
“I used to be able to run my whole business through this app on my phone. Now, it is utterly useless. I send estimates and invoices, and the totals are $0.”
QuickBooks · 1★ · 43 votes
“I subscribed because it pulls feeds from bank. It worked till a month ago. Now the bank has moved to a new platform and Zoho does not support it. Now I am stuck.”
Zoho Books · 1★ · 94 votes
“None of the apps talk with each other automatically. You have to tediously integrate them (doesn't always work), then you have to enter & re-enter info.”
Zoho Books · 2★ · 248 votes
Paid Onsite is built for:
Trades on site
Plumbers, electricians and HVAC crews invoicing from the van rather than at 9pm.
Solo consultants
People whose accounting need is the invoice-to-paid loop, not a general ledger.
Anyone re-typing
If your apps don't talk to each other, you are the integration. That is 10.8% of this category's complaints.
Escaping QuickBooks
76% low-star share means incumbency here is switching cost, not satisfaction.
Pricing
Not chargeable yet — the product is in development. This is what it will cost, published now so nobody is surprised later.
Free
$0
For a single account, or for trying the method before trusting it.
- 2 connected accounts
- Connection health and uptime history
- Manual and CSV import
- No second-provider failover
- No locked rules
Standard
$8 / month
Or $72 a year — two months free. Everything the product does.
- Unlimited connected accounts
- Multi-provider failover on every institution
- Full 30-day connection history per account
- Locked categorisation rules, auto-detect off
- Export everything, any time, no ceremony
Founding
$149 once
Three years of Standard included, then your renewal is locked at today's annual price for as long as you keep it.
- Everything in Standard
- Three years included from launch day
- Renewal locked at $72/year, in writing
- Direct line to us on what gets built next
Why there is no lifetime plan
Every connected bank account costs us money every month, for as long as it stays connected. A true lifetime price would eventually have to be withdrawn, throttled, or quietly degraded — which is precisely the complaint that produced this product in the first place. So the Founding plan locks a renewal price rather than pretending the running cost disappears. That promise is one we can actually keep.
What's actually built
There is a running demo at /app — synthetic accounts, no sign-up, nothing to install. Here is exactly where the line sits between what works and what doesn't.
Working in the demo
- Connection status derived from sync attempts that really ran — not a stored flag
- Automatic failover to a second provider, with the trace of both attempts
- 30-day feed uptime computed from that same history
- Category rules that rewrite past transactions and report how many changed
- Transaction list, filtering, and per-account detail
Not built yet
- Real bank connections — the demo simulates the institution
- Accounts, sign-in, and anything touching real money
- Budgets, goals and forecasting
- Mobile apps — the demo is web only
- Shared household access
Built in the open.
Paid Onsite is in development. No card, nothing to install — the demo is open to anyone right now. Leave an email for build notes and first access, or ask for a walkthrough and we'll take you through it properly.
One email address, stored to tell you when it ships. No newsletter, no sharing.