Why the FreshBooks Chrome extension keeps logging you out

The official FreshBooks Time Tracker asks you to sign in again after 12 hours. Here is why, what you can do today, and what we would build instead.

You start a timer in the morning. The next morning you open the extension and it asks you to sign in again. The day after, same thing. If you have installed the official FreshBooks Time Tracker for Chrome, you already know this routine.

What is going on

The extension is not broken in the way a bug is broken. It is doing what it was built to do, and it was built a while ago.

The FreshBooks help page says it plainly: you stay signed in to the extension for up to 12 hours after closing the browser, then it asks you to log in again. Twelve hours is the number. Not a day, not a week.

The listing on the Chrome Web Store tells the rest. Version 3.4, last updated in October 2022, about 4,000 users, and a 2.5 star average from 45 ratings. The store description still promises that soon you will be able to track time from Asana and Trello. That "soon" is now four years old.

Here is the part that bothered me. The FreshBooks API itself does not force the 12 hour limit on the user. An access token lasts 43,200 seconds, which is 12 hours, but the API also hands out a refresh token that does not expire and can be traded for a new access token. An extension that used it properly would keep you signed in without asking again. The API allows it. The extension just does not do it.

Two more limits worth knowing before you plan your day around the extension. The API allows one running timer per user, and every time entry must belong to a client (the project is optional). And the help page says that if you need to create a new project, you have to do it in your web browser, not in the extension.

What you can do today

There is a workaround that costs nothing. Open the FreshBooks time tracking page on the web and pin the tab. The web timer is not tied to the extension's 12 hour sign-in, and the timer keeps running on FreshBooks' side, so it is still there when you come back. It is not as tidy as a popup in the toolbar, but it will not interrupt you at 2 pm.

I'd skip the extension entirely until it gets an update. A tool that asks for your password twice a day is not saving you time, it is spending it. How many times did it log you out this week?

What we would build

We want to make a small Chrome extension for FreshBooks time tracking, and we want to know if enough people actually want it before we build it. If 30 people sign up, we ship it.

Three promises, and only three:

  1. It keeps you signed in. The API supports that, so the extension will too.
  2. You can search for the client and project instead of scrolling a list.
  3. It opens fast and gets out of the way.

If that sounds useful, add your email here: https://danorie.com/fbtrack

We would build this ourselves, we are not affiliated with FreshBooks, and the waiting list is the only thing on that page.

Sources

freshbooks · chrome-extension · time-tracking