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hyperlinks to receipts
Would be very useful to be able to add a hyperlink having created a new out of pocket expense - this would allow linking of my scanned in receipts that I store online. Come to think of it would be useful for all receipts.
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OK, Mike - thanks.
We're using Ruby on Rails, in which it is ridiculously easy to make expose a RESTful API and make any data you can see on FreeAgent also available via the API. In fact, it'll be via nearly an identical URL to the one you see for the web interface.
We'll certainly think seriously about adding 'attachments' to everything we can.
There are some initial small hurdles to be overcome (authentication via HTTP-basic and/or an API-token based system - would these be secure enough?) but other than that I think we have a good handle on all of this.
Please do bear with us - you'll need to get all your friends, and their friends too, signed up to FreeAgent if we are to have the luxury of the time to be able to do this.
So get referring! We'll get you to API nirvana as soon as we can!
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Tim, djwhisjky, Mike and all:
Could you let us know what, for you, would be a minimum scope for an API that meets your needs?
We are planning initially for focus on supporting Time-and-expense widgets and mini-applications. Then we'll probably offer feeds of Timeline and Accounting data (subscribe to your tax timeline via iCal, build a 'How much in Dividends?' Widget etc) before finally building support for full read/write access to the rest of the data.
I'm guessing the last of these is really what you're after, but the time taken to achieve all of this should not be too great. It's only software, after all ;-0
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That would be pretty cool. At the moment you can enter whatever you like in the Receipt Reference box. A URL is OK (but we probably need to make the box bigger).
We technically could allow you to click through to that URL from the expense list, but we'd need to take a look at the security issues (might we expose ourselves to some scripting vulnerability?).
I suspect that your level of tech-savvy and organisation is beyond most of our users - chucking the receipts into a (manila) folder is as far as they get - so going much further than we already support might be overkill.
Of course, what I would _love_ to do is take in webcam/mobile snapshots of receipts and OCR them - save on entering the receipts at all. Maybe an email address you could send pics from your mobile into your account for later explanation? The OCR side of things might come later...
The company thinks
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Inappropriate?That would be pretty cool. At the moment you can enter whatever you like in the Receipt Reference box. A URL is OK (but we probably need to make the box bigger).
We technically could allow you to click through to that URL from the expense list, but we'd need to take a look at the security issues (might we expose ourselves to some scripting vulnerability?).
I suspect that your level of tech-savvy and organisation is beyond most of our users - chucking the receipts into a (manila) folder is as far as they get - so going much further than we already support might be overkill.
Of course, what I would _love_ to do is take in webcam/mobile snapshots of receipts and OCR them - save on entering the receipts at all. Maybe an email address you could send pics from your mobile into your account for later explanation? The OCR side of things might come later...
The company thinks
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Inappropriate?"I suspect that your level of tech-savvy and organisation is beyond most of our users - chucking the receipts into a (manila) folder is as far as they get - so going much further than we already support might be overkill."
I have to disagree with you completely on that one. Your average freelancer has to be their own IT department, and a large proportion of freelancers have some IT involvement in their chosen careers.
Also, isn't using a new third party start-up web-based service for your company accounts somewhat innovative and forward thinking?
I'd like to suggest taking this one step further, and creating a basic web services SDK to allow interrogation of ones accounts and the creation of a third party developer addon community around FreeAgent. This service has a lot of potential, and it would be very useful not to have it so standalone, but integrated with existing systems :)
I’m confident
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Inappropriate?Mike, this is totally on our list of things to do. The possibilities are pretty exciting (see other thread on Mileage) and we accept it's the only way to go.
Our current platform (Ruby on Rails) is particularly suited to building APIs, so once the dust has settled from us getting our accounting and invoice handling sorted out (;->) you can expect to hear more.
Then anyone (you!) could build the scan/OCR app which posts direct to FreeAgent.
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Inappropriate?At the risk of getting too distracted today andnot doing any work (I seem to have spent the entire day playing with FreeAgent), this would be brilliant!
Please keep in touch with me when you're working on your API. I would be keen to assist with beta testing once you get to that stage.
As you can suspect, we (and no doubt everyone else) already has CRM/Support/Excel Spreadsheets/Databases/Whatever lying around, and it would be brilliant to integrate.
I’m loving FreeAgent
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Inappropriate?I'm completely like totally and utterly excited about the whole API thing... have got some good ideas for integrating etc...
I’m excited
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Inappropriate?The question of how easily we can integrate FreeAgent with the rest of our record-keeping systems is going to be absolutely crucial for us in determining how much we use it going forward. Personally, I would love to be able to create hyperlinks to our invoices and receipts, but assuming we're not going to get that, can you give us any idea as to when the API might be available? -
Inappropriate?Tim, djwhisjky, Mike and all:
Could you let us know what, for you, would be a minimum scope for an API that meets your needs?
We are planning initially for focus on supporting Time-and-expense widgets and mini-applications. Then we'll probably offer feeds of Timeline and Accounting data (subscribe to your tax timeline via iCal, build a 'How much in Dividends?' Widget etc) before finally building support for full read/write access to the rest of the data.
I'm guessing the last of these is really what you're after, but the time taken to achieve all of this should not be too great. It's only software, after all ;-0
The company thinks
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Inappropriate?Hi Ed,
When talking about API's, there's two ways to go here. Ultimately we're running three seperate systems (one for accounting, one for software reseller sales tracking, CRM and online activation and FreeAgent). I'd like FreeAgent to be the center of our operation as far as bookkeeping is concerned.
In order to do this, we would need access to - at a minimum - read invoice data, read client data, and bank account data, others might need timesheet/time tracking, but we don't use this facilty (although I'm sure it would be a nice to have API).
Alternatively, we could be talking about a simple API that just loads SQL views into an XML or CSV formatted dataset which can be retrieved with a simple HTTP request. The ability to make simple aggregated reporting and data queries would be very useful for us (I can give our accountant access to on the fly data) and design third party desktop apps to retrieve FreeAgent position data.
Lastly, and a feature long asked for, would be the uploading and storing of receipts. Given an API, I could make an application to scan and add an expense "directly" into FreeAgent. if you could allow access over HTTP to push a base64 encoded image along with some properties to define the expense - into the database (and also allow retrieval of all via online API and web based viewing of receipts) - then I would be in heaven!
Good luck!
I’m excited, thankful, confident and happy
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Inappropriate?OK, Mike - thanks.
We're using Ruby on Rails, in which it is ridiculously easy to make expose a RESTful API and make any data you can see on FreeAgent also available via the API. In fact, it'll be via nearly an identical URL to the one you see for the web interface.
We'll certainly think seriously about adding 'attachments' to everything we can.
There are some initial small hurdles to be overcome (authentication via HTTP-basic and/or an API-token based system - would these be secure enough?) but other than that I think we have a good handle on all of this.
Please do bear with us - you'll need to get all your friends, and their friends too, signed up to FreeAgent if we are to have the luxury of the time to be able to do this.
So get referring! We'll get you to API nirvana as soon as we can!
The company thinks
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