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I’m
happy
Client login and payment facility
It would be cool if clients could login to FreeAgent with a specific, locked down view so they could see their full account history and potentially pay outstanding invoices too, via PayPal or other similar payment service? :-)
Promoted
Responses
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I’m
sad
3Hi,
Thanks for the reply, but with the greatest of respect, you keep making that argumentagain and again, its over 2 years already!
"automated bank feeds and the interface redesign which have monopolised our development focus for the last 6 months or more.
It's still something we will look at, but it's just been pushed down the list by other things, big and small"
Who asked for these features and when did they become all so important.
Seriously, we are your loyal customers and we're screaming for this. You may not have lost any/ much business over this (yet) but that doesn't mean that we are happy to be fobbed off forever, sorry if this sounds like a rant, I don't mean it to be.
I really like Freeagent, but its not meeting all my needs right now.
Please, please re-think and bump it up the list, give us something concrete, commit to it, or just tell us its never going to happen, but don't keep giving it the same old line all the time.
Mark -
I’m
dissappointed
3this is rather disappointing - it's one of the most asked for features in online accounting systems, and two years on theres still nothing to show from the freeagent devs. it cant be that difficult to give us a client portal - after all, you already allow the emailing of invoices with a custom paypal link, and you dont exactly track those transactions for me, i still explain them myself - why cant we have a portal where clients can log in, see their account status, and pay bills - bill payments would still be handled manually as they are now through bank account statement imports and paypal synchronization, so wheres the major issues?!?! -
I’m
Hopeful
3Can we expect this anytime soon? This is the only thing I'm holding out for...
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EMPLOYEE
I’m
happy
Hi Sid,
Yes, we'd definitely like to do this, but we're a little way off yet.
The first thing we are going to do is improve user access in general, and you'll see this in the release after next.
That will pave the way for creating new roles, of which a client could be one.
We'll get there!Comment -
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I’m
confident
Yep - you've done great so far, so I'm sure you will :-)
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I agree it is a good idea. Even if it were to allow a client to login and generate their own report of time spent on a project - would save them being on my back about forwared them info every 5 mins.
Ben -
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Hi Ben,
We've now laid the foundations for this, but we're still a while away from an implementation.
You do know that you can generate pdf reports of timesheets in the meantime? -
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Thanks
Yes I look forward to using them - it is going to save me a ton of time over my current Excel nightmare solution I have used for lat 9 years. Change is good :)
Ben -
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2Fantastic idea this. Would be great if there was something you could do with domain name records so that logins could be on https://whatever.mycompany.com - but I suspect that might be a whole other kettle of fish :) -
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I’m
happy
1This is a great idea, it proved invaluable when I used to use Blinksale to invoice clients - they could login and reprint lost invoices whenever they wanted. Saved me loads of time! -
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I’m
excited
Any news on this? -
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This would be a great feature, even if they could just see account history online to begin with.
Payment online would be nice, but I don't accept credit cards (or PayPal for that matter) because of the ridiculous percentage based pricing they have. Debit cards are fine (not through PayPal) as they are a flat rate of like 50p, but a 4% charge with a credit card on a £2000 bill isn't worth it!
Dunno if you'd be able to filter to debit cards only (I suspect that would be down to the payment processing company though). -
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This would be a great feature as my design projects involve multiple elements which will include time sheets, estimates on multiple projects and this would help clients understand the amount of hours that go into a project they are not billed for. One of my biggest frustrations has been a good way to manage large projects with out the endless extra hours of administration and communicating with clients in an effective way. Client access to their account would be ideal.
I have only started using FA and love it . It is easy to use and gets rid of having to use Excel which is a total nightmare. It is a great system for a small interior design business or any freelance business and I will be recommending it. -
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1I would love this. I'm moving from Freshbooks and that's the one thing that's missing. In Freshbooks, I can see when users look at invoices or estimates (they aren't attached to the email) so there's no "I didn't get that invoice" or anything like that. I think FreeAgent is better all around than Freshbooks, though I will miss that one feature. -
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FreeAgent seems great so far, but I too would love to see this feature and it would keep me from teetering towards FreshBooks.
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Is an excellent idea !! other systems have this function !! FAgent need add this function and win over others systems !!
Es una idea excelente, si bien otros systemas ya tienen esta función, si FAgent la implementarÃa superarÃa a su competencia !! -
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I’m
undecided
1Personally I think enabling a client to log in and see all their quotations & invoices would be excellent. But like binarymonkey above, I would not want to pay credit card fees on my clients payments. Also the majority of my clients are large corporates and there is no way they would pay via credit card, it's 30-45 day terms and either bank transfer or heaven forbid... even cheques still!
And of course, the payment terms are dictated by the client when they are large.
They are forever loosing invoices though.. so allowing them to have a way to log in and re-download invoices and see reports on what their projects have cost would I am sure be very useful to them.
I guess for some of my smaller clients they might have paid online, but still, you have the issue of the card charges compared to no charge for an online transfer. -
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I’m
happy
I don't know if this would help anyone at all, but I've just implemented a plug-in for the content management system we build which links customers in there to contacts on FreeAgent. It allows a customer to then login to our site, look at all of the invoices and go through to SagePay to pay them individually or pay in bulk. It doesn't mark them off as paid as this isn't yet possible in the API, but I built reporting into the system which makes explaining the transactions very easy.
If anyone's interested in possibly having this feature on their site, I'd love to see if I can help at all. Also, if there's a big enough demand, and it's not something that will appear in FreeAgent very soon I'll make a few modifications and make it a subscribable on-line service (I'd be happy to integrate other payment systems too).
My contact details are on here, please drop me an email or a call. -
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I’m
concerned about the lack of response
Hi FA..
I notice that there hasn't been a developer response to this idea in a while. Have you gone cold on building this functionality, or just don't have time to provide an update on progress?
Interested...-
Sorry for the lack of response.
We've certainly not gone cold on the idea, but other things have taken priority, and that's going to continue to be the case over the next few months.
This will be something we tackle, but I'm honestly not sure when it's going to be. -
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I’m
relieved
Thanks for the feedback - it's comforting to know that the threads are being read :-)
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I’m
excitied for the future
Yep I'll add my vote for that feature too, seems like an excellent idea esp if there was an additional bucket per client where I could store their signed contract. Clients can login to see: their contact details, their estimates, their invoices and additional docs (e.g. contract). -
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I’m
Hopeful
3Can we expect this anytime soon? This is the only thing I'm holding out for...
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Dare I ask... How hard can this be to do?-
Easy if you don't like reliability, stability and ease of use.
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@Pinter, that makes no sense. This type of system is already implemented in a reliable way with freshbooks.
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@Arlo, that makes no sense. It's a completely different product with a different source code. Each have their own challenges. I don't recall FreshBooks keeping track of banking statements at all.- view 2 more comments
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As Joshua points it, it is slightly more complicated for us due to the need to reconcile payments with bank statements, but this isn't a showstopper by any means.
We've made some good strides in prototyping this over the past few weeks, and we will be looking to implement over the coming months. -
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Cool. Please could 2Checkout be an approved payment provider too? The only one we have access to in South Africa.
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Hello all,
Just to give you all an update on this.
Implementing a client payment facility is more difficult with FreeAgent compared with pure invoice-only apps like Freshbooks because they don't have to worry about the banking/accounting side of things. When an invoice is paid by a client we will need to list that as a transaction in a bank account somehow, because that's how FreeAgent records payments.
That's not to say it's impossible (it's not by any means) but it is a little bit trickier.
The reason this hasn't been started yet, is we've simply had our hands full with other features. The last few months have seen us very focused on allowing flexible categories to be set on income and outgoings. Thankfully that's nearly finished and we can start to look to other meaty pieces of work.
So a client payment facility is fairly high on that list. We've started the planning and design work, but actual development won't start until sometime in the new year.
I can't give exact timescales, but I'll keep you all posted with progress. We know how popular this feature is and we are keen to offer it to our users, as soon as we can.
As ever you can see what's currently in development at the Depot
http://depot.freeagentcentral.com/
The client Payment Portal isn't listed there because we already know how much everyone wants it :) -
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Roan - thanks for the update.
Can you advise what payment gateways you will be considering supporting?
Please consider Ogone - a European based provider, with a good array of UK bank merchant providers. One challenge faced by UK companies with global client (US specifically) is the lack of gateway providers that can deal with non US based companies.
Thanks, Graham-
To be honest we haven't decided what payment gateways to support. The most important thing is we get the framework into place, and we can add more gateways over time, based on customer demand.
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1I noticed this thread has recently been updated. I just wanted to add that (speaking as a Wordpress advocate) may be you don't actually need a full blown client portal feature. Buddying up with Gravity Forms might be the answer as this product now features a payment add-on and a forthcoming user registration add-on is also in the pipeline. A possible Freeagent (FA) add-on for Gravity Forms (GF) would give the Wordpress admins the functionality to to create and register a new customer (using GF), create a page for that customer (using GF + an additional plugin to limit access to that page), then populate the page with FA API data for that customer e.g. contact details, estimates and invoices. What's more is GF now have a PayPal Add-on to enable online payment processing.
Just an idea.
I already use GF on http://www.ianmcgrawphotos.co.uk/wedd... to capture details and prices for a shoot. In the short term I would dearly love to be able to fire off that captured form data from GF to the FA API and have it added to contacts and invoices automatically. -
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CHAMP
1Don't forget that we don't necessarily want clients paying online as payment provider commission can be expensive.
If there was a way to offer PayPal or Google Checkout payments with a surcharge added to cover the cost of the payment (say 4%), that would be awesome. -
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I’m
annoyed at the card payment industry
FreeAgent should also include the option for only allowing payment via PayPal if the total amount is less than a certain amount.
Sometimes we are happy to accept the charges if the total is less than £100.
It's unlikely that the client will pay the charges themselves. And don't forget you can't just add the charges to the final bill because the PayPal charge is a percentage of the total. So the customer ends up paying much more than the actual original %.
IMO percentage based charging is a rip off. It should be a flat rate, but what are you going to do.
Let's say your bill is for £2000 - a usual amount if you're building websites.
The PayPal fee would be about £68!
If you make the customer pay this, you might think you just change the total paid to £2068.
But that makes the PayPal fee about £70.30. We'd happily pay the £2.30 fee, but I don't think that our customer would think £68 is reasonable charge for paying by card!
Really the card payment industry as a whole is totally having it off at the moment. Other providers only charge a flat rate for debit cards (although PayPal still decides to charge a whopping 3.4%). Reasonable rates are only available if you're doing gigantic sales volumes - which is great if you are Tesco. But not if you're a small business.
Matthew -
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I believe it's against PayPal T & Cs to add a surcharge to mitigate the PayPal fees.
See the comments here:
http://justcreativedesign.com/2008/11...-
Very interesting, Roan.
In which case I'd like to suggest that in the new public client area that we have some sort of control over what invoices can be paid via PayPal. Potentially as Matthew says, the smaller ones (<=£100) or a specifically PayPal-marked invoice.
What I would hate to see is a bill for around £2,000 with payment expected by BACS or Cheque to see a PayPal payment (with ~£70 fee) come in.
Do Google Checkout have the same policy regarding surcharges? -
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It may be against PayPal's T&C to charge a surcharge to mitigate the fee, but it is perfectly acceptable to charge a fee for the use of paying by credit card. Merchants do it everyday.
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I’m
looking forward to working on this years accounts...
2.9 of the Google Checkout Ts & Cs
Where Seller adds any surcharge to a Funding Transaction for use of the Service, the Seller must clearly inform the Buyer of such charge.
Looks like you could just add a line to the clients invoice to cover this. -
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2Even if allowing clients a way to pay their invoices is difficult, and therefore a way off happening, could you in the mean time allow client access to view / download quotes and invoices? Another feature I miss a bit from Freshbooks is the ability for a client to 'approve' or 'reject' (and comment on) quotes. If the system logs the IP address of the approver etc. it can save having to keep email or handwritten confirmations for a job to proceed (which is quite important to me). -
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I just paid my £30 a month to freshbooks :(
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Good thing you're not tied into a contract ;)
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Good thing you're not tied into a contract ;)
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and now I just cancelled it :P I just don't like the interface... I'm in talks with my website guys now to see if they can add a client portal onto my website so my customers can log in and see their contracts, invoices and certificates... Would really like Freeagent to beat them to the punch :)
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and now I just cancelled it :P I just don't like the interface... I'm in talks with my website guys now to see if they can add a client portal onto my website so my customers can log in and see their contracts, invoices and certificates... Would really like Freeagent to beat them to the punch :)
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Hi Lee, if it helps then we have actually done a few bits using the FreeAgent API for internal tools. We could definitely help you out with a portal system if that's what you're after. Give me a shout via the website if you want t chat about it... www.hallwaystudios.com
Matthew -
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I’m
undecided
nearly 6 months on now from the last input from the dev team????
Would really like to see this soon as I love Freeagent.
You guys have built an excellent site which has transformed the way I looked at Cloud Computing.
If You can make a site this great- Seriously- Why can you develop it to the next level? -
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I’m
hopeful
This is the last thing that I need to make FreeAgent my primary accounting.
Any updates on the status would be nice.. ANYTHING!
BTW.. I am a developer and was considering building something for my site using the API.. as anyone done this with .Net yet? -
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I’m
thankful
I built a system for our site to use the API to collect payments with SagePay, display the PDF etc. Works quite well
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I have written an importer tool in c# so have a basic connectivity library -
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Would anyone be interested in a 3rd party solution for $30 a year if done right? -
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1It would have to be done *very* right. Putting all my accounting and payment collection online was a big enough stretch, let alone relying on a third-party integration.
But there's clearly a demand for it. My biggest concern, if I were you, is that as soon as FreeAgent gets this done on their end you'll loose all your customers overnight. -
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Yes I would rather FreeAgent did it than give another 3rd party access to my account through the API, it only takes 1 security breach!
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Of course...but it's far enough on their road map that it should still be worth doing. I'm not in this for any serious cash - just looking to offset the cost of developing it really.
I've got a very basic version almost done which I shall release and then work on improving it from there...
Have a stable version and a test version that people can use if they want the latest features.
My biggest concern is that they're using basic authentication which means storing encrypted passwords which would need to be decrypted...rather than using traditional "fingerprint"/hash methods. -
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...which leads me onto the idea of simple selling the script itself, then people can deal with the security as they wish.
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What's it written in?
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Which features are you thinking of implementing?
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Pretty much a templated version of the freshbooks client area with multiple client logins for each FreeAgent client.
It's written in PHP 5 -
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I'd quite like to see the code for this in PHP5. I've already written something similar in (ASP) .NET.
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What I think I'll end up doing is work on it over the next week and then put the source up on github, it's been a while since I've given back.
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Any news on this from anybody? -
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I've been too busy to complete the 3rd-party service - I guess they may update their roadmap after last nights update. I'm unsure as to what's changed.
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This will be so useful. Another possibility may be API integration with something like Cannybill
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Hello everyone,
We don't have any more news to share on this just yet, but I just wanted to reiterate that this is something we plan to tackle in the foreseeable future, although it won't be over the next few months.
Obviously it's totally up to any individual developer if they want to build a third party service in the meantime, but it's something to bear in mind.-
"...It won't be over the next few months?"
It's the most requested item and there are no developments except to tell us there are no developments. What gives? -
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Any further news yet? This would make things so easy.
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Would really like this also.....come on guys get it sorted :)
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I’m
frustrated
Well it's been over 2 years - and still no sign of this yet. Jeez.
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I’m
dissappointed
3this is rather disappointing - it's one of the most asked for features in online accounting systems, and two years on theres still nothing to show from the freeagent devs. it cant be that difficult to give us a client portal - after all, you already allow the emailing of invoices with a custom paypal link, and you dont exactly track those transactions for me, i still explain them myself - why cant we have a portal where clients can log in, see their account status, and pay bills - bill payments would still be handled manually as they are now through bank account statement imports and paypal synchronization, so wheres the major issues?!?!
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1you guys really are missing the point of the Get Satisfaction website. Everyone clearly wants this so to my mind this should be a priority for you.
Shame because you do lots of other things so well. -
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I’m
uncomfortable
1Seems weird to see a deep page of requests for a feature that people are willing to pay for matched by such lack of commitment from the owners. Weird! -
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I’m
frustrated and sad
Roan (Product Director) 1 year ago
"We've made some good strides in prototyping this over the past few weeks, and we will be looking to implement over the coming months."
So where is it?
Are we missing something here?
Is there some reason why you don't want us to have this?
I'd pay extra for this, I'm sure others feel the same.
Its by far the most wished for feature, so where is it -
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EMPLOYEE
I’m
sad I don't have anything more exciting to say
Hey,
So a long overdue status update on this. We did get to the stage of prototyping the client payment portal, but it ended up getting put on the back burner because we've been working on a couple of other large features (automated bank feeds and the interface redesign) which have monopolised our development focus for the last 6 months or more.
It's still something we will look at, but it's just been pushed down the list by other things, big and small. Frustrating I know, but that's me being completely honest.
We do know how popular a feature request it is, and we keep track of this page all the time, but I've not had any concrete news to share unfortunately.
We'll keep you posted when we do though. -
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I’m
sad
3Hi,
Thanks for the reply, but with the greatest of respect, you keep making that argumentagain and again, its over 2 years already!
"automated bank feeds and the interface redesign which have monopolised our development focus for the last 6 months or more.
It's still something we will look at, but it's just been pushed down the list by other things, big and small"
Who asked for these features and when did they become all so important.
Seriously, we are your loyal customers and we're screaming for this. You may not have lost any/ much business over this (yet) but that doesn't mean that we are happy to be fobbed off forever, sorry if this sounds like a rant, I don't mean it to be.
I really like Freeagent, but its not meeting all my needs right now.
Please, please re-think and bump it up the list, give us something concrete, commit to it, or just tell us its never going to happen, but don't keep giving it the same old line all the time.
Mark -
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2Agreed with Mark - please make this your next big project/addition to Free Agent.
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We've completed our own script that allows our clients to pay any invoice by card. It automatically marks the invoice as paid within FreeAgent and the client and us get confirmation e-mails, etc.
We do it simply by using the invoice reference against a web link which we add to the invoice templates. E.g.
http://www.yourdomain.com/pay/2383/
It then automatically knows if the invoice is allowed to be paid based on if it is open/overdue (and not draft or paid), and also won't allow payment of invoices under a certain value if we want, etc.
We are also working on bringing in the customers address details from FreeAgent too (but only when the e-mail address or other unique info is supplied with the invoice number in the URL.
A full blown login area for clients to view their invoices is nearly done as well, but our own customers wanted the online payment link more that the login area.
I've said it before, but if anybody out there wants us to write them their own script like this or anything else to extend FreeAgent, give me a shout. For a one-off fee it can probably be done.
Matthew -
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I’m
disappointed
2I really need my clients to be able to login and view invoices, tasks, timeslips, expenses - anything connected with their account. I'm not bothered about them paying online - most clients are happy to use bank transfers, and it's far cheaper that way anyway.
I'd be happy if I could just create a user who had read-only access to 'invoices, estimates and files' (and everything below) but was limited to a single contact or project. Right now I can only give a client access if they can also see all my other projects. Obviously that's not going to work.
I signed up for a new account in time for the new tax year in April and was looking forward to getting all my accounting and billing done in Freeagent this year. To discover that basic client login is completely missing (and unlikely to come any time soon) was certainly a disappointment.
Sorry, it's a really nice system but Freeagent will not be getting any subscription fee from me. I feel like I've wasted a lot of time setting things up and learning how the system works only to be let down by something really basic. -
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I’m
confused
I just looked on the Depot site and it appears this feature is not on the agenda anymore. Sad. -
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Please, Please, Please move this up. I don't need payments online, but a chance for customers to get duplicate invoices etc easily.
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