leftnode

Sure thing! We don't have one yet, and we're hoping to use this initial beta launch to determine best how to launch it.

Right now when you create a new MajorApi QuickBooks Application, it reads in your items and sales reps so they can be references in invoices you create.

Then we have a database in the middle of the two because you can't have real time reads from QuickBooks with the WebConnector.

Edit: So to answer your question, there's no such thing as real time reads using the WebConnector. You have to send an XML query to QuickBooks which returns the data. We plan on integrating with QuickBooks online soon which will allow real time reads.

No time logging yet. We focused on what we perceived were the two biggest use cases: customers and invoices. Prioritizing our integrations next, we'll look into time clocking.

We just launched this and I can answer questions if anyone is interested.

MajorApi is a RESTful wrapper around QuickBooks. QuickBooks is notoriously difficult to work with. Yes, they do have some REST APIs you can use with their IPP platform, but for developers making custom QuickBooks integrations you're almost stuck using WebConnector.

WebConnector requires you to write your own SOAP server which is not fun. We've written a nice REST service on top of this, so all you have to do is download the WebConnector software from QuickBooks and install the .qwc file we provide, and you can start sending customers and invoices to QuickBooks in under 5 minutes.

Let us know if you have further questions. Thanks!

I have a RESTful Symfony2 bundle that sends an X-Men header with a random X-Person from the comic books:

https://github.com/brightmarch/BrightmarchRestfulBundle/blob...

Yup, and none of that is any fun. As a developer, what would you prefer: writing against their giant XSD schemas or just making a POST request to a URL with invoice information? I'll take REST any day of the week.

That's not a bad idea, however the customer wished to use Quickbooks WebConnector because that is what their Quickbooks consulting agency recommended.

I do a lot of freelancing work to build up my small side business. A job I recently took on was to integrate an ecommerce site into Quickbooks using the Quickbooks Web Connector.

If you've ever had to use this software, I'm sorry. It is not friendly. You essentially have to write your own SOAP server that is called by Quickbooks.

Then you have to send them XML in their QBXML format (of which, the documentation only really works in IE, kind of works in Firefox, and not at all in Chrome -- that's right, just reading the documentation requires a specific browser). Debugging is a pain.

So I thought a service that abstracts that would be a good idea. We would provide the Quickbooks WebConnector file to you, you install it, and then start sending your invoice information to a nice RESTful API.

We handle the rest and ensure your data gets into Quickbooks properly. If you're interested in something like this, please subscribe to the mailing list.

PS. I'm doing the same for the Google AdWords API, which is also not a joy to use -- http://metricsapi.com/tour/google-adwords-rest-api

I did at a previous job. It was a small web development shop owned by a husband and wife, and around 7 employees. I was the lead developer there and getting bored with the work. I proposed that I work 3 days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and be paid 60% of my salary. I spent Tuesday and Thursday working on my side projects.

Eventually the company went out of business, but I had great success with working part time.

One I'd like to add is Docopt: http://docopt.org/ and https://github.com/docopt/docopt

It makes it very simple and intuitive to build command line apps.

I'm just getting start with Python and was using the Requests library this morning. I didn't like that my tests were coupled to both the library and an Internet connection existing.

This just hits the frontpage today and it is exactly what I'm looking for. Thank you!

The title sounds like a negative, like Zapier adjusted their service and all of a sudden Ducksboard had a lot more work to do.

Maybe "How Zapier allowed us to support a hundred new services in half an hour"?

For the Games bundles, I always figured it was Linux users showing that they're willing to buy games if people will make them for Linux.

Yes! Show up at a few local users groups, attend some conferences, actually understand the technology you're recruiting for.

This is a great step forward. I wish it was in an object rather than globally scoped methods, but it's nice to have.

Also, in case you didn't know, you can use bcrypt with PHP5.3 and the crypt() function. It's not as user friendly as this, but you can do it.

Well I think as this issue with Parse shows, you can forget about the IT until you can't. If your app is down due to a mistake like this, it's even more frustrating because you have so little control on the situation.

But certificates cost almost nothing these days, why not just spend the $20-$40 and get a valid one in there?

Is there any value in companies like Parse selling their software as installable on your own servers (i.e., GitHub Enterprise).

I ask, rhetorically, because I built a somewhat competing service that isn't doing too well and I'm looking to make it so you can install it on your own servers.

Why is making it pretty a waste of time? And who says making it attractive took any more time than not making it attractive?

37signals themselves have taken $10 million in external non-traditional VC [1].

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2006/07/20/37-signals-takes-jeff-bezos...

I was confused as well. I assume Freshbooks the name is staying, seeing as http://www.cloudaccounting.com/ appears to be a legitimate site. Freshbooks is a great name.

It's funny you call that late at night, I call it early in the morning. But I totally agree with you. I wake up daily at 3:10 and can get about 3 or 4 hours of good uninterrupted work done. It's also a great time to go to the gym because few else are there.

Why is that a bad thing? Competition is generally good, and it helps prove theres somewhat of a market for these ideas already.

I built a service nearly identical to this (https://accthub.com) and that is one of the biggest issues we're trying to overcome as well.

Yup, same here. I've never heard of her before, but thanks to this link I went to her site, listened to the album and picked up a copy. Great programming music.

Here's our tech stack and right now it's in Postgres as a table with a key/value column.

https://accthub.com/developers/technology-stack

The triggering of custom events is a neat idea, I hadn't thought about that. Right now Accthub is just a data store, but being able to add some backend logic would be very nice.

Thank you for your review.

Thank you. I wanted a way to make it dead simple to calculate your bill. I don't like the idea of being charged per HTTP call. Very easy to let those get out of hand and get a large bill.

He addresses just that. Feeling bad is one reaction, feeling betrayed and entitled to limitless updates of an app that you like is something totally different.

Couldn't developers just build software and sell it without a recurring stream of revenue? I know the holy grail is a monthly charge, but companies are still making a lot of money just selling software for a one time fee.

Case in point, Google just purchased Quickoffice (my previous employer) which just sold software (and didn't until a few weeks before the Google acquisition have a recurring fee product).