Tanja's dashboard

Tanja replied on October 07, 2009 22:54 to the question "time tracking widget" in FreeAgent Central:

I've been asking for this for AGES.

When working from home, I use an old desktop timer called Responsive TimeLogger, then manually enter my timesheet in FA at the end of each day. It's a pain, especially if I've worked on several different projects that day.

A Windows-compatible widget would make things so much easier. Practically all of FA's competitors have one -- Harvest, Cashboard, you name it, they all have nice little integrated widgets. A time tracker is becoming less of a "nice to have" and more a "need to have" when you're marketing to freelancers, IMO.

I've been a FreeAgent customer for more than a year. Thorough time tracking has been discussed many times, but we're nowhere closer to a solution than we were a year ago (and I mean a REAL solution, not an unreliable & poorly-supported third-party widget like Timepost that you have to pay extra for). I like FA, but their competitors are starting to look pretty good too, since time tracking is a big issue for me.

Tanja replied on February 13, 2009 10:20 to the question "Time formats" in FreeAgent Central:

Hey Olly, any update on this? I would really really love an account setting so only one format or the other is automatically used for all timeslips, timesheet reports and invoices, etc. (Maybe it could be added to the Country Settings section...)

Tanja replied on January 15, 2009 21:05 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

Sorry to hear that, Andrew. :-(

I have to do manual time entries every day too. It's annoying, especially on days when I've worked on three or four different projects.

Tanja replied on January 08, 2009 02:15 to the discussion "Thorough Time Tracking - will it ever appear?" in FreeAgent Central:

Hey Pete, did you ever manage to build your timer widget? :-)

Tanja replied on January 08, 2009 02:09 to the question "Time tracking widgets?" in FreeAgent Central:

Thanks Olly. I'm just not feeling the love for Timepost (nor do I want to install .NET for various reasons) so I'm hoping other widgets will become available soon. Thanks for the info!

Tanja asked a question in FreeAgent Central on January 01, 2009 23:10:

Time tracking widgets?

Are there any time tracking widgets that can integrate with FreeAgent, or be tweaked to do so?

The only one I know of is Timepost, and I have a couple of issues with it (plus it doesn't look like the product is very well supported/updated) so I'm wondering if there are any others out there. Thanks!

Tanja asked a question in FreeAgent Central on August 15, 2008 18:40:

Time formats

I appreciate the flexibility you've built in for entering time formats (either minutes or decimal) but is there a way to disable one of the methods?

More than once I've edited an existing time entry and used the wrong format by accident -- I always use decimal time, but FA uses minutes as default on all screens, invoices and timesheets, so I have to be very careful to change the symbol as well as the numbers. I even invoiced a client incorrectly yesterday because my 15.25 hours appeared on the invoice and timesheet as 15:25 and my brain was too tired to notice. :-)

Is this something that can be built into our account options?

Tanja replied on July 22, 2008 22:45 to the problem "Issues with displaying company's province/state" in FreeAgent Central:

Thanks Ed. Hope everyone on the team is enjoying the summer!

Tanja reported a problem in FreeAgent Central on July 11, 2008 19:22:

Issues with displaying company's province/state

I have a Universal account (I'm in Canada) and in my Settings, I have my province (BC) entered as the Region/State.

- On timesheet reports, the province doesn't appear at all.

- On invoices, the province appears on the same line as the postal code (both for the client's address and for my company information). I realize that's the standard address format for the UK and USA, but in Canada, the postal code goes after the city (eg: "Vancouver, BC") and then the postal code goes on a separate line. Not a big deal and I'm not expecting a special fix just for us Canadians, but I thought I'd mention it. ;-)

For the invoice devkit, can we change the positioning of elements and add/delete fields in a custom style, or is it meant just for colours and fonts etc?

Tanja replied on July 07, 2008 20:44 to the question "Is there a way to export timesheets?" in FreeAgent Central:

Aww, I feel special now. ;-) Thanks Roan. I'm really pleased with the timesheet reporting already, so I consider any alteration a bonus! Cheers.

Tanja replied on July 07, 2008 19:46 to the question "Is there a way to export timesheets?" in FreeAgent Central:

Thanks Olly, that's great news! (Sorry for the late reply, I've been out of town.)

Glad to see the comments have been added to the timesheet. Perfect!

The only suggestion I have is to perhaps modify the widths of the two info columns. It appears to be split 50/50, but I have lengthy project names, so I could use a lot more space for the date/project details and less for the client's name and address... say a 40/60 split instead, or even 35/65. That's just me being super-picky though. It's not a deal-breaker. ;-)

Tanja replied on June 18, 2008 03:29 to the question "Is there a way to export timesheets?" in FreeAgent Central:

Thanks Olly. I'd already worked on a mock-up that I was going to adapt for my own purposes, so I'll send it over to you.

Tanja replied on June 17, 2008 02:14 to the question "Is there a way to export timesheets?" in FreeAgent Central:

Hey Olly, just following up on this... are you still planning to expand FA's time reporting capabilities?

I would love to be able to generate basic weekly and monthly timesheets for my clients. For example, showing the dates/hours worked per task for the specified time period, and then the weekly or monthly task subtotals and totals. And of course a nice header with the company logo (or at least the company/employee name). Not asking much, am I? ;-)

Right now I'm generating PDF timesheets in a separate app (which also serves as my desktop project timer, since there's no time-tracking widget available for FA yet) and then manually copying time entries into FA every few days.

I'd be happy to provide a timesheet mock-up in HTML/CSS, if that would help the dev team?

Tanja started following the idea "Statement of Account" in FreeAgent Central.

Tanja shared an idea in FreeAgent Central on May 23, 2008 20:47:

Business Log/Diary

Has there been any interest in adding a "Notes" or "Business Diary" type of area to FA? Either as a standalone area, or perhaps linked to the Timesheet or Expenses areas?

I keep a daily business log (and I know many other freelancers do) to note the whos, whys and wheres of business-related phone calls, mileage calculations, meal/entertainment expenses and so on. I also use it to explain time/money spent on non-billable activities and things done to support the business -- very important documentation to have if you're ever audited. ;-)

At the moment I'm using a Word document for this (a separate doc for each month) but it's not an ideal solution.

Tanja replied on May 23, 2008 20:25 to the discussion "Canadians - Calculating GST and PST on expenses?" in FreeAgent Central:

The Canadian tax stuff you've added for the "Vin Santo" release looks awesome... I'm playing around with it now and am very, very pleased. No more manual calculations for my expense receipts!

No problems/bugs to report so far with it, but if I run into any, I will let you know ASAP. Thanks again for implementing this for us Canadians. :-)

Tanja replied on May 12, 2008 21:27 to the discussion "Canadians - Calculating GST and PST on expenses?" in FreeAgent Central:

Thanks Ed! Looking forward to testing it out. :-)

Tanja replied on May 12, 2008 02:17 to the discussion "Canadians - Calculating GST and PST on expenses?" in FreeAgent Central:

Hi Ed... just wanted to see if you guys have made any headway on the implementation of a second tax category? My expenses (and GST amounts) are starting to pile up, so if I can't get this to work in FA, I will need to figure something out so I can keep track of everything until it's implemented. :-) Thanks.

Tanja replied on April 07, 2008 00:30 to the discussion "Canadians - Calculating GST and PST on expenses?" in FreeAgent Central:

Thanks Ed, that sounds great, and I really appreciate the extension on the free trial.

Good luck on integrating the Canadian taxes... I am sure it's going to be a nightmare for your development team. Each province has its own rate of PST (except for four provinces, which don't charge PST at all). And then there's the Maritime provinces, which use a single tax called HST ("Harmonized Sales Tax") that's GST plus PST rolled into one. And then there's Quebec (and I think PEI as well?) whose PST is actually calculated on the sales price + GST... *sigh* It's ridiculous.

Re: GST not showing up, yes, that's probably the issue (as this particular client's head office is in the US). However, I still need to charge them GST, as the contract work I'm doing for them is performed in Canada, for a Canadian company, and I bill them in Canadian dollars. Would it be easy for your dev team to add the ability to charge GST to "foreign" clients, or is this a major fix? For now I can just change the client's country in FA; I doubt their payroll folks look too closely at my invoices anyway. *winks*

Tanja started a conversation in FreeAgent Central on April 05, 2008 01:02:

Canadians - Calculating GST and PST on expenses?

A Canadian user here... I've been talking with Ed Molyneux about an issue with expense calculations (thanks again Ed!) and am wondering if any other Canucks have a similar issue.

I charge (and reclaim) GST, but not PST. Since in the vast majority in cases, GST is calculated from the before-tax subtotal (not the subtotal + PST), in the Expenses screen I can't enter the exact total that's on my receipt, as that total also includes PST and therefore the GST will calculate incorrectly. My current solution is to manually calculate and write the "new" subtotal on the receipt, so all the numbers will match up with my FA records whenever I do reviews.

That's fine for the occasional receipt, but when I have lots of expenses, it's a real pain and twice the amount of work. :-)

Any suggestions? FA only uses one tax assignment, not two -- yes, you can specify multiple rates, but you can only apply one of them. Maybe I'm missing something, but I can't see a viable solution. This is a big issue for my business, and it's the only thing preventing me from becoming a paid subscriber... otherwise I am very impressed with FA!

ETA: For some reason, GST isn't being added at all to my invoices for one particular client. The "GST" line and my registration number aren't even appearing on the invoice. I've gone through all the settings I can think of... how can I fix this? Thanks.