Pete's dashboard

Ed Molyneux replied on November 04, 2008 13:27 to the problem "Credit card account showing an ever increasing debt" in FreeAgent Central:

Paul,

You can indeed explain a transaction as 'Transfer to Another Account'.

It's just that it has to be while you're adding the explanation for the first time.

You can't turn another explanation type into a transfer, for dull reasons to do with the way the opposite end has to be handled.

That should work for you - you explain the current account transaction as a transfer, and a manual entry will appear at the other end reflecting the paid-in amount.

Let us know how you get on...

Pete replied on November 04, 2008 12:24 to the problem "Credit card account showing an ever increasing debt" in FreeAgent Central:

Hi Ed,

I have exactly the same problem because my bank is the RBS, therefore the same online credit card banking system. It's very frustrating that they don't include payments to the card as a transaction, and I can see no way of viewing/downloading these payment transactions. It seems the only way of doing this on FA is to treat it as type: Other Money In, and Category: Misc Income receipt. Is there a better way to treat this that you can think of?

Obviously the outgoing money from my current account shows up in the uploaded statement, so maybe it would be useful to have a type 'Transfer to Another Account' or something else when adding an explanation to an uploaded statement transaction, just like as is included in the 'Add a Manual Statement' page. I assume there is a reason why this isn't featured in the 'add an explanation' page Type dropdown?

Obviously this is not a fault of FA, but I can't imagine the RBS group are likely to change their very, very, very, crap online Business Credit Card system anytime soon, so are there any plans to accomodate this on FA? Any suggestions are most welcome otherwise!

Cheers,

Pete.

Pete replied on November 03, 2008 12:36 to the question "Editing recurring invoices?" in FreeAgent Central:

I've got a recurring invoice setup but it's not automatically emailing to my client. The problem is that I can't edit the settings for the recurring invoice so I amunable to select the check box to enable the feature. Or am I stupidly missing something? :-(

Olly replied on November 03, 2008 12:32 to the question "Editing recurring invoices?" in FreeAgent Central:

Hey Pete,

When you create a recurring invoice, it is scheduled to email automatically after the first recurring period. For example, if you create a new invoice dated today and set it to recur weekly, the first time it will be emailed automatically will be in 1 weeks' time so you have to manually send the first invoice.

We'll have a think about making the workflow a bit more flexible in this area in the coming weeks.

Pete asked a question in FreeAgent Central on November 03, 2008 11:52:

Editing recurring invoices?

How do I automatically email a recurring invoice after it's already been set up?

Olly replied on October 28, 2008 12:17 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

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.

Pete replied on October 28, 2008 12:08 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

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?

P.

Olly replied on October 28, 2008 11:00 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

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!

Pete replied on October 28, 2008 10:21 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

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?

Olly replied on October 28, 2008 10:01 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

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.

Pete replied on October 28, 2008 09:28 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

I'm actually just wanting a timer for FA or build one myself. However I have no idea where to start with the API.

johnjreeve replied on October 27, 2008 22:51 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

Maybe check out Intervals, a web-based time tracking service with multiple timers.

Petey replied on October 02, 2008 09:41 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

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?

Olly replied on September 09, 2008 16:56 to the problem "Tasks not deleting" in FreeAgent Central:

Hi Pete

You can only delete a task which hasn't been included on a timeslip. It looks like we were displaying the Delete this Task link when the task was included on unbilled timeslips which wasn't right and has now been corrected.

If you really want to delete this task you'll have to first delete the timeslips which refer to the task.

Let me know if this works for you.

Mark Davis replied on August 08, 2008 00:53 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

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.

Roan replied on August 07, 2008 08:59 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

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.

Brenda replied on August 07, 2008 06:39 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

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.

Olly replied on August 05, 2008 14:45 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

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

Olly replied on August 05, 2008 14:40 to the question "Create invoice without a project" in FreeAgent Central:

Hi Petey

When you have a single client for a single job, you're right that requiring a project seems like an unnecessary step, but projects are actually integral to a lot of the FreeAgent internals so it's not a straightforward change on our side unfortunately. That said we are still chatting about how best we might support this, so we're not discounting the idea at all!

In the meantime, you should add the designer as a client and create a single project called, say, 'Office Sublet'. This is something you only have to do once, and you can then create a single monthly recurring invoice which will emailed to the client every month. Once you've done that, there's no more input required from you -- it's all handled automatically by FreeAgent! :-)

The main advantage of going through the extra step of creating a project is that your invoices are all neatly categorised, so should you need to bill the same client for a different job in the future, you just create a new project.

naderby replied on August 05, 2008 14:31 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

Today it seems to work. Maybe it was fixed, maybe I was dumb.