I like FreeAgent a lot. I’ve been using it for a year or so and it’s a great time saver.

Recently I’ve started trying out the Projects and time tracking features. They seem great too and a significant improvement over my ancient MS Access db for tracking time and materials.

There’s a problem though. Backup. When I was just using FreeAgent for invoicing I didn’t mind the manual ‘Export my Data’ backup method. I only invoice once or twice a month so it was simply part of my routine to backup afterwards. With time and materials I’m entering data several times a day – and this data is vital to my business.

I need this data. I need it if FreeAgent is down, I need it if my Internet is down. I do not want to lose it. And I’m honest enough with myself to know that under no circumstances will I remember to back it up often enough!

Fortunately FreeAgent uses a standard web interface. This gives me the option to write some code to automatically complete the login form, navigate to the ‘Export my data’ link and download it for me. So that’s what I’ve done. It’s a PHP class available at Github. I used PHP as it’s the language I’m most familiar with, but it would port to a *nix shell script quite easily.

I now have this scheduled to run daily which leaves me free to gain all the benefit of FreeAgent’s time tracking without any nagging doubts that I’m reliant on someone else to get at my vital data.

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