Hey Chris,

Authorize.net would definitely do it organically in FreshBooks. I've heard of people doing the manual billing connection before, but I've never actually seen it. It should work in theory though! You would just be making a connection to Google Checkout using their API to process the amount and if that was approved, you would make a payment update to that invoice in FreshBooks.

You might want to start a new thread or you can also try to talk to some of the recommended programmers here: http://developers.freshbooks.com/implem … ultants-2/

Good luck =)

Hi Steve-

Thanks for the response.  You wrote:
>>>You would still require an auto-bill capable gateway in FreshBooks to do this

I believe I understand that an account with Authorize.net will enable this.

>>>an custom-built integration that will send the charges to the non-autobill capable gateways.

...so I think I'm asking for a price to build this for Google Checkout, from a custom contractor.  Does that clarify what I want?  I'm new to Freshbooks, are there still contractors reading this, or should I start a new thread?

thanks

Chris

Thanks Steve!

Email has been sent.

Cheers
Phil

Hey Jim!

Can you tell us a little more of how you track time? Are you doing this in basecamp and then importing into FreshBooks or are you importing into FreshBooks first, and then tracking the time in FreshBooks.

If you can, could you send us a support ticket to support@freshbooks.com and put Attn: Steve in the subject. We'll jump into your account and see whats going on!

Thanks =)

Hey Phil!

We might be able to fix this from our end. Can you send us an email at 'Support@ Freshbooks.com' with your FreshBooks URL and I'll try to do some changes for you!

Just put attn: Steve in the subject

Hey Chris!

There is a way to auto-charge an invoice in FreshBooks and not send out the original invoice. You would just set both the 'send by: Email and Snail Mail' to 0, or unchecked.

You would still require an auto-bill capable gateway in FreshBooks to do this or an custom-built integration that will send the charges to the non-autobill capable gateways.

Let me know if that makes sense =)

Hey Deitch!

Are you looking to show the actual time entry notes on the invoice? Or did you just want to show that you used the retainer for that time period?

If you just want to show that you used the retainer but don't need to show the hours or notes, you can try using the group by "single" line. This will just summarize the project based on the flat project amount and will just show 1 hour as a reference.

Would that work for you? If you'd prefer, you can give us a call and we can work this out together live. We are available at 1-866-303-6061 from 9-6 EST. Monday to Friday. Might be a little faster for you =)

Hi there RSimpson,

Thanks for participating in the forums and glad to be speaking to a fellow Glaswegian :)

Unfortunately, there is no payment gateway that integrates with us that supports auto-billing for our customers in the U.K. This is something that the team is aware of and I have added your vote (and mine) to get a payment gateway partner that supports the U.K.

I wish I had better news but I will do my best to make sure the product team knows that you would highly benefit from having a auto-bill capable gateway in the U.K.

Cheers,
Ramin

Any suggestions on how to fix this would be much appreciated.

Cheers
Phil

Hi there Sanjeev,

Thank you for participating in the forums! I would send a email to api at freshbooks.com and they will let you know if we are interested in integrating with your service.

Cheers,
Ramin

Hi RSimpson. I'm sorry, but there's nothing new to report. I can pass your desire to see a UK-based payment gateway on to our product and integrations teams, though.

Just realized something about what you wrote. These are non-hourly projects. I might record hours for my internal bookkeeping purpose, but I don't want hours on the invoices, period, because my relationship is one of monthly retainer, not hourly rate.

Fresh ChimChan wrote:

Hey there deitch,

What you can do here is set up a project with a "Flat Project Amount" billing method. Once that's done, you can log your hours to this project as you normally do.
To set up the recurring bill to go out monthly for this project, you'll want to create a recurring profile that has a monthly frequency and check off the box "Include: Unbilled hours". With this set up, every month you'll have an invoice automatically sent out for the flat project amount while still pulling in the time entries to the invoice.

I hope this is what you were looking for.

I know several consulting businesses that work that way. Customers pay for a block of, say, 40 hours, and must pay that amount every month whether they use it or not. Some of them allow unused hours to be rolled over, i.e. used beyond the prepaid block the following month.

In my case, I am not actually billing by the hour, but by the month. Your case may still help me, though.

How do you enter the project, hourly or fixed project? And how do you create the invoices?

keybiz wrote:

This is way I am doing it for my customers now. I have customers who pay me a fixed amount per month and I charge them accordingly. If they have less hours the hours roll over, if they have more and there are no roll over hours I charge them.
I haven't found a good way to do the roll over hours. I need to program a separate system to keep track of those hours.
Also, the hours logged in the ticketing system are not  transferred to the projects, which I think is a huge miss. I would love to use the ticketing system, when my customers call in with an issue and they do the trackign from there. However the two are not related as far as I can see.

Eric

@ChimChan, thanks for the suggestion.

It seems to me that would work better for a fixed fee, e.g. $10k for a project. In my case, I have a flat monthly fee, e.g. $2k per month (not the real number, but you get the idea). Each month, I send out an invoice for that $2k on the first of the month. What Flat Project Amount would I put on such a project?

I guess if it is a fixed length project, e.g. 5 months, then I can make the Flat Project Amount $2k*5 = $10k, and have the recurring billing $2k each 1st of the month, but I don't know if that makes sense. Does it?

And what do I do if it is open-ended, e.g. the project is $2k per month without a limit until either party terminates?

Fresh ChimChan wrote:

Hey there deitch,

What you can do here is set up a project with a "Flat Project Amount" billing method. Once that's done, you can log your hours to this project as you normally do.
To set up the recurring bill to go out monthly for this project, you'll want to create a recurring profile that has a monthly frequency and check off the box "Include: Unbilled hours". With this set up, every month you'll have an invoice automatically sent out for the flat project amount while still pulling in the time entries to the invoice.

I hope this is what you were looking for.

Hello,
We have our own payment gateway like paypal/google checkout. We have a simple button, if its integrated into ecommerce applications, people can easily manage their payments.
Can you please let me know how we can integrate our payment service with freshbooks like paypal you did paypal integration?

Thanks,
Sanjeev

2 and a half (almost) months since the last update. Any further forward with this folks?

Hi folks,

I'd REALLY like to use auto-billing (taking payments automatically) but NONE of the auto-bill capable gateways are available for use in the UK. On top of that, I had a look at PayPal Payflow Pro and I didn't even bother to check if it were possible to use it in the UK because it's prohibitively expensive.

Does anyone know of an auto-billing solution for UK customers that will work with FreshBooks that won't kick my bottom line into the middle of next week?


Cheers,
Robert

(so, given my clarification, are those merchant account vendors still appropriate to my solution?)

Also, I've had a nomenclature issue lately. I would call my payment process "autocharge", not auto bill. I would like to find a solution that allows us to automatically charge a credit card once a month based on a single invoice, not one that allows us to automatically send an invoice every month.

regards-

Chris

Thanks for the quick response.

I spoke with someone on phone support and he helped me to understand that using these APIs:
http://developers.freshbooks.com/docs/recurring/

I could create my own invoice template that would, in fact, allow me to take advantage of Google Checkout's recurring billing API.  Can you confirm that this is impossible?  If it is, then I'll have to move to another solution.

thanks in advance for your help