Vista Time Tracker Gadget
Now you can track time from your Windows Vista desktop without being logged into FreshBooks.
The Time Tracking Gadget was built by FreshBooks customer, Andrew Flusche, a busy business lawyer with a refreshing philosophy.
I try to run a different kind of law firm. My philosophy is to find the best solution that is economical and pass the savings onto my clients. Other law firms would pay thousands of dollars on some software that is just for law firms.
FreshBooks gives my clients a way to access their bills and pay them, and that’s very economical for me.
Important Security Note: It is not recommended to use the gadget on a shared computer, as your authentication token is stored as a gadget preference. If a malicious person got a copy of the token, he/she could access your account through the API. Only use the widget on computers with users that you trust!
Requirements
Reviews of Vista Time Tracker Gadget
Average Rating Based on 26 Reviews




This is a great tool and it works fine with WIndows 7. I use it every day. Thanks.
A great gadget - have used it for as long as I've been with fresh books - invaluable.
Great! I've been using this for about two years and it's always worked great. I've just bought a new laptop and installed in on a Windows 7 machine with a different screen resolution. The black background image is smaller than the other gadgets on my desktop, even if I click the command to make it larger.
It still seems to work, but I didn't know if you knew about this. Just FYI.
Just what I was looking for. Great work!
My cousin used to have that software before and he was the one who convinced me to use it. And to my surprise its okay, I mean its brilliant !
Was great while it worked, has been crashing and not frequently.
Words great, use it daily! It would be even better if you could add a project (or even a new task) on the fly, but it's still the simplest desktop timer I've seen.
Great tool. Works excellent. Wish it would save the API key so I didn't have to set it every time I opened the gadget but that par for Vista Gadgets. Thanks for the hard work.
This was working great for a few years and has now suddenly stopped. It won't load projects or tasks anymore no matter how many times I restart or refresh my API token. I hope that an update is in the works. This is a truly awesome gadget...when it worked.
Stylish and easy to use, but its kinda small (even when it is not constrained to a "sidebar"). Also, it would be awesome if I could add tasks on the fly.
Exactly what was needed. Thanks!
I've been using this for almost a year on Windows 7 64bit. It was working great but lately it's been crapping out: not submitting correctly, taking forever to load projects, etc. Maybe it has something to do with having a ton of clients/projects/tasks in freshbooks for our
Microsoft Dynamics business now, I dunno.
Any updates planned? Really appreciate the developers work!
Simple and works, what more could you want? And the convenience of it sitting on your desktop is very nice.
I don't get it. I downloaded it and got a round clock with the current time on it. My computer already shows me the time. I thought it was going to look like the picture below the download now button. And more importantly I thought it would allow me to enter project names then let me start and stop the time as spent - keeping a running log of the dates and time spent on each project. I must be missing something.
I love this little gadget. It works fine on Windows 7. I use it on my notebook when I'm at client sites, and have even started using it at home for home projects (I've created an internal Freshbooks project for personl stuff).
One little tip: If the gadget suddenly stops working one day (eg the projects and categories don't show anymore) it just means you need to reset you Freshbooks API key. Log into Freshbooks, go to My Account, and reset your API token (and update it in the gadget as well of course).
Great work Andrew. Many thanks.
Great app. 5 *'s if we could have several timers going at once. Otherwise clean and functional!
I used it nearly every day on Vista and now I am using it without any issues on Windows 7. I love this widget.
This is a great widget. However, it is not very useful for me until there is an option to select a client before selecting a project (much like the Widget in Zendesk works)
Great to have something for Vista (and XP if you want to install the Windows Sidebar 'port', which I did...). But I'm only using XP because my Mac has been sent in for repair, and the reference (e.g. by Freshbooks) Mac version is better in the following ways:
1) Mac app lets you login with username and password (possibly OAuth?). This business of having to find your API key is silly.
2) During a reboot:
a) Mac app keeps running. For me at least, reboots are billable time (but I'm in the software business).
b) As implied by a), Mac app does not reset to 0 after reboot.
3) Minor usability issue, but I like the toggle button on the Mac app (it either says 'Start' or 'Stop') rather than the 'pause' 'play' buttons here
Admittedly, whether to track computer off time depends on whether you want to bill that time...but it doesn't ever make sense to reset the timer to zero because of a reboot. I would say either keep the clock running, or stop it...it's easier to implement 'keep it running', though, because don't have to know when the computer went down.
For an example of how to implement, merely track a list of (start, stop) pairs. When you display the time you merely add stop-start for each pair, and then add current_time-most_recent_start...then if the computer goes down suddenly, you have all the pairs and the potentially 'open' last pair (e.g. the one without a stop time) committed to disk at all times. No lost data.
Does this not work with Windows Vista? I added my address and my token into the settings, but it keeps asking me for it. Any ideas?
Thanks!
For those who want to tinker..
Works in XP!
You just need to download Windows Sidebar, just type Windows Sidebar for XP into google and you'll download everything you need to get it working!
Works like a charm, great app and makes it GREAT to track your hours on various projects throughout the day.
This has been a great addition to my record keeping. My clients get a very accurate accounting of the hours I work - I recommend it highly.
Great add-on...use it every day!
This little app has helped me be more accurate in my time building ASP.NET applications for clients. Thanks Andrew for a great widget!
This is a great little app that sites in the Vista sidebar. Makes logging hours almost too easy

I highly recommend it!