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Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?
I keep coming back to FreeAgent Central to look on it's progress. I so want to use it, the accounting is priceless to an unorganised freelance designer such as myself. But I need very thorough time tracking, like you see at FreshBooks <http://www.freshbooks.com/timetrackin...> in that I need to start and pause timers on a per project level many times during a day and have all the individual periods of time added as individual entries to bill.
I'm afraid a daily timeslip just doesn't cut it for me or for those who happen to go and out many projects in a day spending bits of time fixing and tweaking designs.
So what I need to know is, is this ever going to appear in FreeAgent or do I have to keep using Studiometry forever which is driving me nuts!?
I'm afraid a daily timeslip just doesn't cut it for me or for those who happen to go and out many projects in a day spending bits of time fixing and tweaking designs.
So what I need to know is, is this ever going to appear in FreeAgent or do I have to keep using Studiometry forever which is driving me nuts!?
I’m hoping!
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Inappropriate?Hi naderby,
While we will never say never, this functionality isn't on our roadmap for the immediate future.
What we are doing, is looking at integrating third party time tracking widgets with FreeAgent so you can track time exactly as you described and feed this into your FAC account.
I know it's not exactly what you're after but it could be a good solution, and we should have some more news on this in the coming weeks.
I’m hoping that would work for you
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Inappropriate?Thank you for your reply Roan.
Sorry to keep mentioning FreshBooks, but their widget seems about right <http://www.freshbooks.com/widgets/tim...>. I would use FreshBooks but it doesn't have the UK accounting that attacks me.
I'm looking forward to seeing the fruits of the integration and hopefully it will close the missing hole in this great product. If there are any questions you need to ask somebody such as myself as to what is required please feel free to ask me.
I’m becoming more positive
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Inappropriate?The Freshbooks' widget is exactly the type of thing we're talking about, but like I say, it won't be something we develop in-house. Initially at least.
Stay tuned for an upcoming announcement though. -
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Inappropriate?We'd hoped to be able to announce something in the last couple of weeks, but that hasn't happened.
I can't give any guarantees as we're not in charge of development but I'm reliably informed that a FreeAgent compatible widget for Windows and Mac will in the offing shortly.
Sorry I can't be more specific at the moment, but we'll let you know as soon as we hear anything.
I’m impatient too
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Inappropriate?I'm totally in agreement with naderby as a freelance web designer. If it had a simple task management system it would be fantastic. I'm floating in between Freshbooks and Freeagent at the moment and Freeagent is winning the contest because of the accounting but task time tracking on a project would be the absolute clincher and I'm sure most people in this industry would agree. There would be no need for basecamp, or freshbooks then. -
Inappropriate?Hi Petey,
Our current level of time tracking does allow for basic entry of tasks/timeslips against a project, as well as timesheet report generation.
Apart from the timer widget functionality, are you requiring more than this? I'd be really interested to know what.
With regards to the aforementioned time widget, it looks like the wait won't be too long. :)
I’m happy that our users won't be waiting too long for widgets
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Inappropriate?Hi, why not use two tools? I use FAC and Freshbooks for two businesses and use Harvest for time tracking in both cases. OK, not as integrated as I would like but best of breed in their respective camps.
I’m happy
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Inappropriate?I'm trying to streamline my working process, not make it more complex.
I’m looking for the holy grail.
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Inappropriate?We could try to do something simple to our existing timeslips which might work:
What if we had the concept of a 'live timeslip' - you create an normal one (to set the project etc) but you also have a start button?
In our very simple initial version we might only show the start time rather than a fancy counting clock, but then when you press a stop button, the elapsed time would be added to the total.
Would that do as a starter for ten?
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Inappropriate?Yeah that's the type of thing that I'm looking for. The fancy clock isn't as important as the ability to start and stop timers on projects many times a day and have these individual chunks of time appear as separate items on a bill.
I can start 4 timers an hour sometimes. I need that 15mins fixing a design project counting on a customer bill as an individual item (and a reason for that particular chunk of time in a project would be nice too). And yes, I might sometimes expect to bill 4 or more individual chunks of time on a project in one day so I don't want to simply add a daily timesheet, it's too limited.
To be honest, the new widget looks promising (it also knows if you walk away from the computer and stops the timer), maybe you should wait to see what that is like first?
I’m sensing a solution will be soon!
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Inappropriate?Timepost now supports FreeAgent, and can be downloaded for both Mac and Windows. There is a free trial available that runs for 30 minutes at a time, and the full version can be purchased for only $39.
http://www.timepost2.com/
I’m excited
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Inappropriate?That's great news Mark.
Thanks for all your hard work, and I'm sure FreeAgent users will appreciate it. I know I will.
Great looking new site btw
I’m stoked
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Inappropriate?Great news guys! Looks great and thanks for all the effort on this.
I have registered my trial account and downloaded the trial Timepost and the timeslip posting works very well!
However, and please bare with me here as I'm unfamiliar with FreeAgent at the moment and could be wrong, can someone do some checks for me because I'm finding that individual timeslip enteries posted from Timpost will not Invoice.
I can add a manual timeslip and it'll invoice straight away but the Timepost one's are completely ignored.
Thanks.
I’m expecting egg on my face
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Inappropriate?Today it seems to work. Maybe it was fixed, maybe I was dumb.
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Inappropriate?Naderby
Rest assured you're not dumb -- we gave FreeAgent a tiny tweak last night to resolve a small teething problem ;-)
Let us know how you get on with Timepost
I’m happy
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Inappropriate?Not to rain on the Timepost parade, it's a very nice widget, but does this mean FA isn't going to pursue developing its own? It's a little disappointing to have to pay extra (I know, I know... it's only $39 US) for functionality that should really be included in FA as standard.
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Inappropriate?Hi Brenda,
While we won't rule anything out, time tracking like that provided by Timepost, isn't on our immediate roadmap.
I'll write a little more about this on a Central post later, but it's tricky balancing act responding to feature requests while still trying to keep the software simple and easy to use for everybody.
Looking through GetSatisfaction you'll see so many other great ideas that people would like to see from FreeAgent, and we just don't have enough time in the day to do all of these right now.
So for the moment we feel that the level of time tracking within FAC is good enough for most freelancers. If you do need more than this, and of course some people do, then there's Timepost, which is, as you say, very reasonably priced.
Our Time Tracking will undoubtedly improve as time goes on, but for now we're concentrating on other areas of the application, making big improvements that will benefit everybody.
Sorry, it's not exactly the answer you're looking for, but hopefully it explains our reasoning. -
Inappropriate?Hi Brenda,
While FreeAgent staff are busy adding necessary accounting features, we are committed to providing you with an ideal time tracking solution. Our sole focus is on time management, which allows us to add niche features that may never be available through a web application. We pay attention to all our customers and continuously add new features, services, and platforms that they demand.
I’m confident
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Inappropriate?Hi guys, any more development on your own freshbooks style timer? I'm still using my freshbooks clock to track my time and then put the timeslips in manually into FA. No offence to Timepost but I just don't want to fork out any more money on addons. If I was able to work out the API I would build my own Flash clock for FA in a browser popup (Freshbooks style) or AIR app. and even donate it if you were interested. Any pointers for getting started with the API and Flash?
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Inappropriate?Maybe check out Intervals, a web-based time tracking service with multiple timers.
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Inappropriate?I'm actually just wanting a timer for FA or build one myself. However I have no idea where to start with the API.
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Inappropriate?Pete,
The API (still in beta, since not all of the FreeAgent functionality is available through it as yet) is documented here: http://www.freeagentcentral.com/devel....
It really is straightforward to get Time and Project data in and out of FreeAgent using most programming languages -- it just involves making a couple of HTTP requests and parsing some basic XML.
Which programming language would you like to write your timer in? I'm sure there are guides to using REST APIs (which the FreeAgent API is) for most popular languages.
I’m excited
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Inappropriate?Hey Olly. I was hoping to do it in Flash (AS3) perhaps as an AIR app. Once I can find any examples of the basics of REST with Flash it should be no problem. Any suggestions?
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Inappropriate?Hi Pete
I don't have any direct experience of ActionScript, but I've just had a quick Google around and it looks like the flash.net package contains everything you'll need for communicating with FreeAgent (the URLLoader, URLRequest and URLRequestHeader objects in particular).
I can't verify the correctness of the following at all, but I would imagine this is partly what you'd need to do to make a GET request to FreeAgent to obtain a list of projects in XML format:
var projectsUrl:String = "https://[yourdomain].freeagentcentral.com/projects";
var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest(projectsUrl);
request.requestHeaders.push(new URLRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/xml"));
request.requestHeaders.push(new URLRequestHeader("Accept", "application/xml"));
request.requestHeaders.push(new URLRequestHeader("Authorization", "Basic " + base64Encode(email + ":" + password)));
request.method = URLRequestMethod.GET;
I hope this helps!
I’m excited about a FreeAgent AIR app
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Inappropriate?Hi again,
I assume this base64Encode method requires a class like from:
http://dynamicflash.com/goodies/base64/
e.g.
import com.dynamicflash.util.Base64;
var projectsUrl:String = "http://yourdomain.freeagentcentral.com/projects";
var userName:String = "username";
var userPassword:String = "password";
var encoded:String = Base64.encode(userName + ":" + userPassword);
var loader:URLLoader = new URLLoader();
var request:URLRequest = new URLRequest(projectsUrl);
request.requestHeaders.push(new URLRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/xml"));
request.requestHeaders.push(new URLRequestHeader("Accept", "application/xml"));
request.requestHeaders.push(new URLRequestHeader("Authorization", "Basic" + encoded));
request.method = URLRequestMethod.GET;
try
{
loader.load(request);
}
catch (error:Error)
{
trace("Unable to load requested document.");
trace(encoded);
}
Any ideas why this isn't working?
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Inappropriate?Hi Pete,
I'm afraid not, although actually you probably don't need to do the encoding at all on the email/password -- just set them as plain text (I just cut and pasted my example above from a different site verbatim).
If that doesn't work I recommend asking on a dedicated ActionScript forum, or perhaps a programming QA site like the excellent http://stackoverflow.com as we don't have any direct AS experience.
Good luck and do let us know how you get on.
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