The book was the main source available to scholars concerning mathematics as it developed in China's tradition.
It is said that when Suanfa Tongzong was first published, it sold so many copies that the cost of paper went up and the lucrative sales resulted in unscrupulous people beginning to print pirated copies of the book with many errors.
The book is considered as an authoritative text on Chinese Zhusuan which is the knowledge and practices of arithmetic calculation through the abacus.
[4] The following is a list of sample problems appearing in the book:[5][4] After its first publication in 1592, it was republished several times later and it became widely popular.
Even in the mid-20th century (1964), the well-known historians of Chinese mathematics Li Yan and Du Shiran remarked that: "Nowadays, various editions of the Suanfa Tongzong can still be found throughout China and some old people still recite the versified formulae and talk to each other about its difficult problems.