Introduction

With FormAssembly’s FreshBooks integration you can turn your web form into a powerful business tool. A sales form, a work order form, or any other form can be set up to generate invoices and receive payments through FreshBooks.com.

For instance, a professional electrician can build a work order form using FormAssembly and set it up so that invoices are created via his FreshBooks account.

Upon finishing his work on site, our electrician would get the sign-off from the customer, complete the form and submit it. FormAssembly collects the data, FreshBooks.com invoices the customer and our electrician can go home and have a cup of tea…

Requirements

In order to use the FreshBooks connector, you must have an account with FreshBooks.com and a Professional Plan account with FormAssembly.com.

As your build your web form with FormAssembly, make sure that you collect the following information:

• client name,
• organization,
• email address
• postal address (if you intend to send invoices by mail)

Typically, your form should also list billable items and allow quantities to be defined.

Setup the FreshBooks Connector

To enable the FreshBooks Connector, go to the Connectors Setup page by selecting your form in the ‘Forms’ tab (1) and clicking the “Connectors” tab (2). Then click the “configure” link on the right under the FreshBooks Connector header.

Run Mode (A)

To enable your FreshBooks connector, select the Interactive run mode.  You may choose the Background mode instead if you want to silently ignore any FreshBooks error message while trying to submit a form.

FreshBooks Authorization (B)

FormAssembly needs to know your FreshBooks System Name.

After filling in the System Name and clicking the Authorize button, you will be redirected to FreshBooks and sign in from there. When successful, you will return to the Connector configuration page and see the Connector has been authorized as (C) shows.

Specify the Action to be Performed  (D)

Choose which action you’d like FreshBooks to perform.  You may want to create an Invoice, an Estimate or a Recurring Billing, which sends invoices on a predetermined schedule.

If you prefer, you may create invoices as draft by checking the corresponding box. This ensures that your client will not be billed immediately.

If you choose to set up a recurring billing profile, you will need to specify the billing frequency and how long the it should go on. You’ll be able to further manage your client profiles in FreshBooks.

Field Mapping (E)

The field mapping describes which fields in your form collect the information needed by FreshBooks to create your invoices or estimates.

FreshBooks requires the information listed in the Client Information, Client Address and Items for Sale sections.

Note that if you are not invoicing an organization but a person, you should map the Organization Name field to the person’s name.

In most cases, all fields will be “defined in the form”, in which case a drop-down menu appears and lets you select the corresponding field in your web form.

If some information is needed but not collected in the form, you can choose to provide a predetermined value in the mapping settings, by choosing the ‘defined here’ option in the drop-down menu and entering the value in the text input.

Optionally, if an item is not required, it can be omitted by choosing “not used…”.

Once you’re done, don’t forget to click ‘Apply’ to save your settings. You’re now ready to test your form.

Troubleshooting

The Event Log

The FreshBooks connector keeps a log each time it is executed and record error messages when they occur. You can review the log by clicking the “view log” link under the connector tab.

Successful log messages are in green. Error messages are red. You can review the response in error by clicking the ‘view response’ link. If you are able to resolve the issue, you can resend the data to FreshBooks with the ‘Resend’ link to ensure that the invoice is created.

Remarks

Client Quota: This connector creates new ‘client’ accounts when no existing client is found for a given email address. Since FreshBooks pricing model imposes quotas on the number of clients you can manage, be sure to keep an eye on your form submissions. If you reach your client quota, FormAssembly will not be able to create the corresponding invoices.

Duplicate Clients: Note that since the connector uses the email address to identify clients, it is possible to end up with duplicate clients in FreshBooks if a different email addresses is entered in the form.