Today we are releasing the FreshBooks API.

You can find Ben’s wonderful documentation here. The API now has its own blog to share recent updates, scripts, samples and examples - if you are a developer, subscribe. We also have a forum just for those of you who are playing with the API.

Who is API for?

• Developers connecting FreshBooks with their own systems or cool desktop widgets.
• Web application developers, web hosts, or subscription services who want to avoid drowning in lost time building their own billing backend.
• Companies needing to replace their existing billing backend because a lack of reporting, payment history, and friendly dispute mechanisms is upsetting customers and internal developers.
• Anyone with good ol’ customers that need good ol’ invoices via snail mail.

What Can You Do with the API

Every day, new web applications are joining the Software-as-a-Service movement. We wanted to contribute back to our fellow peers in the simplest way possible, and the best way we know how, and help them get their money in the door. With the API, you’ll be able to:

• Deliver professional invoices over email and through the good old snail mail.
• Efficiently track outstanding accounts receivable.
• Cordially manage billing disputes.
• Record payment histories for your customers’ peace of mind.
• Smoothly collect payment online collecting by credit card, PayPal, or eCheck.

Because the API allows you to manage clients, create invoices, and record payments, it’s easy to slide it into your existing billing system. Don’t go through the agony of learning how to mail invoices, negotiate with payment gateways, and track those delinquent customers yourself! You should only have to worry about your own business.

Other Thoughts Regarding the API

Of course, because the API is a true open API, you can do a lot more with it. FreshBooks doesn’t want to own you. Get your data out, play with it, and shove it back in. Hook FreshBooks up with your favorite productivity tool or desktop widget. (Tip: We’ve already integrated Basecamp! Maybe you want to integrate with some of the other great services out there.) Stuck with QuickBooks? We’re building an import/export tool. Now, you can build an import/export tool for your own favorite or least favorite application.

Have any other cool ideas? Maybe you want to build your own end-to-end sales operations company. Go ahead. Build it on our backs. We’re not asking for a cut from your sweat.

Join our developer community and let us help you with your next steps.

BTW - we were planning to launch the API and documentation around noon, but we’ve been outed by Techcrunch and a few other blog posts, so you can expect this post to be updated throughout the day as more content trickles out. In the meantime, please roll with us. Thanks.
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Ali is a manic guy. Just listen to him, “sleep is my biggest distraction from work. It’s really hard for me to manage. Like I want to stay up every night and work on it and then I’m tired in the morning and I’m trying to figure out how to form that balance so I can work more and still not have red eyes.” What could possibly be so important that he’s sacrificing his health?

Ironically, he’s trying to grow CanadaHomeHealth.com, a Canadian version of America’s Drugstore.com, up from scratch. And he’s doing it because it’s most fun he’s ever had.

Ali has had his share of good jobs before. Ali is the creator of the (in)famous BrickBreaker game on the RIM Blackberry. “I think I’ve destroyed a couple thumbs myself,” he laughs. He’s also done user interface design at Microsoft. However, neither of those plum positions appealed to him. He craved the challenge of starting a business from scratch and growing it huge.

The kernel of the idea was straightforward. His father is a pharmacist at Guelph. Originally, Ali started by selling a few products online from his father’s store, and unexpectedly things just took off. As Ali says, “we just started seeing people coming in without really any marketing. Hey, this is kind of neat, this is fun, it markets itself. People are ordering at midnight and when I’m not even in the store. It became really fun that way. So we just added products and added products. We have 5,000 now and we’re still going.”

That was enough, and so now CanadaHomeHealth has become his passion. As he says, all day and night,

All I think about is scale; I want it to be big, and that’s important for me, for the staff that work with me, and just for the project goal in itself. I just want to see how can you make something out of a garage become something that people have heard about.

I really like what I’m doing. This is the first time I’ve ever been in a job where this is what I want to do. This is the kind of job I like. I love the relationship I have with customers all over Canada. I love managing the stock. I love the fact that it’s changing every day and that I’m right into the code but right into the business and the PR. Oh, I love the fact that it’s really overwhelming! I always want to be in that state. So I’m worried that one day this will become stable and then it won’t be fun any more. That’s something that I worry about.

I haven’t seen someone who wanted it more than Ali. He’ll get there in the end, no doubt. Let’s just hope he takes better care of his own health.

It all started one day, hanging out at the mall. These Ryerson University undergrads, all friends, were sitting there and noticed a curious event. A girl was going from store to store handing out résumés, looking for a job, any job. Here was someone, young, probably a student, who needed a simple job to make ends meet. The best she could do is bet that at least one store needed to replace staff recently lost in their high-turnover retail world.

They saw the pain. They did their research. As it turns out, people who need to work hourly wage, high turnover jobs don’t want to waste money and time commuting for a job that doesn’t pay as much money for their time. Yet, the existing job sites did nothing to address this pain. Enter JobLoft.com, a brilliantly simple idea. List hourly wage jobs by proximity to people’s homes, and text message job listings as they come available to candidates willing to pounce immediately. For employers this was a no brainer: quickly fill jobs with happier employees less willing to quit.

And then enter the Dragon’s Den. JobLoft got their big break on the CBC’s angel investment reality TV show. They were so close to not going. “We went in last minute to the audition. We didn’t even think we would go,” said Chris, but in the end, “I remember telling Lee before the cameras were on like, well, we have nothing to lose.” Not only did they not lose, but they convinced every single Dragon to invest in their company. They did it with poise, with preparation, with professionalism, and with day-glo orange ties.

Things didn’t work out with the Dragons, but it was all for the best. The exposure gave them needed momentum, and JobLoft.com is growing rapidly. It has funding. It has customers. It is profitable. It has a good chance of being a true success story. And it’s only been a year since they started.

What’s next for Canada’s next team of tech entrepreneurs? If anything, the experience has helped them grow together. Three of the four founders live together, with the fourth close by. They have learnt how to balance stress, friendship, and dirty dishes, which is something to be envied. Well, they’re keen to finish establishing JobLoft.com. Then, they have more ideas to work on.

I’d say they are good bets.

While Omar had already gotten his feet wet in the TorCamp community, DemoCamp 13 was his big introduction to the crowd. He was demoing ProductWiki, which for many there was an altogether novel concept. ProductWiki joins the very thin ranks of the commercial, public, open content wikis on the Internet, like WikiTravel and WikiHow. In Omar’s own words, ProductWiki is “what would happen if you took Wikipedia and Consumer Reports and they had a baby.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given a rowdy, half-drunken room of TorCampers, ProductWiki received a lukewarm reception. Well, a surly reception. And that’s unfortunate because ProductWiki harbours a small secret that makes all the difference in the world.

ProductWiki is profitable. Not just break-even profitable, but enough that three engineers could justify leaving their Silicon Valley jobs to move back to Canada and work full time on what they consider first and foremost a labour of love. As Omar says, “it is nice being able to pay ourselves without having to work for any other boss.”

So, how did they get from an idea to having control over their own lives? They believe in what they are doing, and that gives them the energy to work all day long through good times and bad. All Omar wants is to have “an impact on the world, that’s really all I care about. How that comes about right now is ProductWiki, which I am pouring my heart and soul to.”

And second, they are a family business. Omar works with his sister and brother-in-law out of their house. When the riskiest move starting a business is picking the right partners, working with family is a huge leg up. As Omar says, you have “more bonds that keep people honest.” Then again, I can sympathize as a younger brother myself, that there is a huge downside to working out of his older sister’s house. “I’m an expert now on marriage, because I watch them. They’re a married couple, and I see them 10 hours a day, day in and day out. So maybe it can be too much information.”