Different View of Your FreshBooks(tm) Account

For anyone looking for offline time tracking in timerSync, the new BETA available here supports it.

Few notes about this version. After installing, you’ll see new menu item in the systray popup menu: Online

After clicking that item you’ll see the following screen:

After clicking the Synchronize button the syncing will begin and after it finished you’ll see in the timerSync timer window new suffix to the title: offline

While in offline mode you can create new projects and tasks and log time same way as when in online mode. When you finish working in offline mode and you have internet connection, you can switch back to online by clicking the same menu item Online (only now there is no check mark next to it, meaning you are still offline).

Clicking the Online item will bring the Synchronize window again.

Pressing Synchronize button will start the sync process, and after successful end of it, you’ll be in online mode again and your new entries should be in your FreshBooks account.

If you need this functionality, please take a look at the beta.

Despite all the new modern languages that are in wide use today, C++ is still my favorite programming language. But, I must admit, it is not always clear how to do some things that may seem trivial in C# or other languages with a huge framework behind.

I assembled a small example that can be used as a starting point for a more complex project that uses the FreshBooks API from C++. You’ll need to have libcurl downloaded and known to your compiler. In the attachment is a very small C++ class that is a wrapper around the C functions from the library.

The program is requesting for the list of clients for a FreshBooks account. Here is a snippet from the code:

/*****************************************************************/
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
std::stringstream strReq;
strReq << “<?xml version=\”1.0\” encoding=\”utf-8\”?>”
<< “<request method=\”client.list\”>”
<< “</request>”;

curl::Http ht;
ht.option(CURLAUTH_BASIC, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH);
ht.option(CURLOPT_USERPWD, “YOUR-TOKEN-HERE”);
ht.option(CURLOPT_URL, “https://YOUR-ACCOUNT-NAME.freshbooks.com/api/2.1/xml-in”);
ht.option(CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, 0);
ht.option(CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, 2);
ht.option(CURLOPT_PORT, 443);
ht.option(CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, strReq.str().c_str());

ht.execute();

const std::vector& data = ht.last_response();

std::cout << &data[0] << std::endl;

return 0;
}
/*****************************************************************/

You’ll have to link with libcurl_imp.lib. You should change the connection info with a valid token and account name. I believe that’s it, the program should print the list of clients in the console window.

Great! Thanks FreshBooks, many timerSync users were asking why all the time entries end up in the admin’s time sheet. And practically main target of timerSync were only single users. But, now this has changed. Great work gays!

So, anyone interested, here is the announcement.

Basically, you’ll have different tokens for all of your staff members. I found the token for my test staff member at the bottom of his profile page (after logging in as him, of course).

BTW, in the newest timerSync version I added a possibility to change the token once you’ve setup your FreshBooks account.

Just right-click on the account list and a shortcut menu will pop up.

I finally got the time to sit back and think about my pricing policy for timerSync, motivated after a user complained that it really bothers him to pay every year for an upgrade (to have the newest version always) for such a tiny application as timerSync. First I ignored his comment, but now after FreshBooks released their timer widget for Mac and announced the soon release of a Yahoo widget for Vista, it got me thinking.

As it is now, I sell timerSync with 2 options, $19 for 3 months free updates & support and $24 for 1 year free updates & support. And I don’t think the price is too high (I know, compared to free it is), but I tried to get in the shoes of the user who made the complaint and I can understand him. Basic functionality of the timer is to count the time and submit it to FreshBooks. Not a rocket science. All the extras are welcomed (and I plan to add much more), but at the end it is just that, a timer.

At the moment I am thinking to drop the lower price of $19 and keep only the upper $24, with the change that the license would be for lifetime. I just got the idea and I believe I’ll implement it, but I’ll leave it for a few days. I am certain that if I decide to make this change, this will be retroactive, so everyone that bought timerSync will also get lifetime free updates. We’ll see…

Update: I’ve made up my mind, I decided to go this route, so now it is official, timerSync comes with lifetime free upgrades.

It is so late night here, we are heading tomorrow to my wife’s parents house in Krusevo, but I must write this, it looks so funny to me. I am talking about the video clip I discovered on the tape. I had to free up one tape and was waiting for the PC to finish the hard work and while skimming trough the movie I found this sequence. Our son Stefan is playing around the room in the morning wearing a pair of sunglasses. Maybe it is just me, but to me it is great. Don’t watch the room, it is a mess!

Just a quick note to anybody waiting for updates on timerSync; today I released v1.0.0.1. It is a 30 days trial. And a warning, timerSync & invoiceSync are not running well together yet. Best of all is to not install invoiceSync after timerSync is installed. I promise to fix this in the next release of invoiceSync.

http://www.invoicesync.com/downloads/timerSyncSetup.exe

I just resolved a programming problem that I was struggling with for the last day and though maybe it could help to somebody else so here it is.

I used CExtResizablePropertySheet from Prof-UIS and everything worked fine. Then suddenly I realized it stopped showing the watermark area altogether with the page title and subtitle. I could swear it worked in my last release. So, I installed it back and yes, it worked. So, it had to be something I changed very recently.

I found out that I changed the WINVER and _WIN32_IE flags to 0×0500, because I wanted to show balloons from the systray. So, this was one possible change, but I could not go back, I needed the balloons. I started debugging the code and I realized that the code execution skips the part in the ProfUIS library where the watermark should be drawn. The check is something like this:

if( (m_psh.dwFlags&(PSH_WIZARD97)) == (PSH_WIZARD97) )

Hm, the ‘if’ condition was never met. Strange, I was certain I set that flag. And yes, I was setting it. But, then I lookup the definition for that flag, and what a surprise, that flag had a different value for Win2000 and up.

#if (_WIN32_IE < 0x0500)
#define PSH_WIZARD97 0x00002000
#else
#define PSH_WIZARD97 0x01000000
#endif

I had compiled the ProfUIS library without 0×0500 for WINVER and _WIN32_IE defined, and that’s why the flags where different. When I compiled my main program, the new value (Win2000 and above) was used, but ProfUIS library was still using the old value. Then I realize, I should recompile the ProfUIS with these flags defined.

Great, now it is same as before.

I have the first BETA version of the Windows timer widget for FreshBooks. This is great. I could use my previous knowledge from writing InvoiceSync to finish the timer very fast. Anybody interested to have a look, here is a direct link to the installer.
http://www.invoicesync.com/downloads/timerSyncSetup.exe

I don’t have any descriptions prepared yet, but I think it is straight forward and I don’t believe anyone would have problems using it.

And here is a screenshot:

In some days (possible weeks) I will make a separate page for it on my site, but for now this is the only link to it.

Now when the new version of the FreshBooks API is out, I can’t wait to implement the Timer widget in invoiceSync. So, this is my No.1 priority now. I hope that couple of weeks is a realistic forecast for this task.

Well, I am glad “the famous” post about me the spammer is deleted from the FreshBooks forum. The user who created it has notified me that he has deleted it, on my big satisfaction. However, I guess the popular search engines will keep it in the search results for a little longer (I hope not forever). But at least the link is dead. So, this episode is finished. I don’t look back.