Getting Started with the API

For those of you who want to get started quickly with the new API, here are the three steps to get started:

1. Click your white “Settings” link on the top right corner inside your system.
2. Click your blue “Enable FreshBooks API” link on the right hand side.
3. Click your checkbox to the left of “Yes, I agree to the API terms of service”.

If you have PHP installed on your server or website you get started quickly with our sample code. Enjoy.

API Ideas: Integrating FreshBooks with a 3rd Party Payment Gateway

You’re running a business online, and you need to automate your billing. Processing credit card transactions is a good first step, but after you’ve collected your money, what’s next? How do you manage your accounts receivable? Where do customers go to review their transaction history, when e-mails are so easily spam-filtered or accidentally deleted?

Enter FreshBooks

With our new API, it’s now possible to record arbitrary payments against invoices. This means you can collect credit card details from your clients, initiate a transaction with a 3^rd party payment gateway (Google Checkout, Authorize.net, etc.), and then record the successful payment in your FreshBooks account. This combines the flexibility of dealing directly with your payment gateway while leveraging FreshBooks’ proven, easy-to-use platform for managing you and your clients’ money.

Why bother?

Instead of spending expensive developer hours building your own billing solution, you can leverage FreshBooks proven services for:

• Sending your clients professional-looking receipts via snail mail
• Let your clients review their payment history and print receipts
• Monitor your progress; generate detailed revenue reports
• Timesheet, estimate and invoice functionality for consulting services

You could build this stuff yourself, but it’s a lot of work that you don’t need to do. Concentrate on building your business, and let FreshBooks handle the billing side of things.

How do I get started?

This post is more of a general overview, but I’ll be following up with a technical walkthrough using an example gateway. Please stay tuned.

API Version 2.0: What’s new?

Payments and Items

By being able to enter (and update) your own payments, we’ve opened the door to integration with other 3rd party payment gateways – make a transaction with your gateway, record the payment in FreshBooks.

You can also import or export your FreshBooks items. Okay, not huge, but a nice bonus.

Better data retrieval

We’ve introduced flexible methods for retrieving lists of existing FreshBooks data.

Some examples uses could be getting a list of all your invoices made during 3rd quarter 2006, or extracting a complete payment history for a particular client.

Lightweight interface

We’ve reduced the clutter. The new API requires significantly less XML to send and decode.

Better developer resources

We’ve launched this brand new documentation page, as well as a dedicated blog for keeping tabs on new API additions.